Telthys Creative: March 2014

Saturday, March 29, 2014

Creative Familiars in 5ED

If you're a long-time D&D/Pathfinder gamer, you're familiar with creative familiars and animal forms. Parrots who can talk, monkeys who can carry things around, legendary gorillas who circumvent normal strength maximums while wielding items without restriction...

This came up last session, so I needed to spend a little effort researching whether Talking Parrot Familiars were a part of 5th edition.

Executive summary:

1. Wizards can't speak through their familiars using rules as written.

2. Familiars are significantly weaker than previous editions.

3. You can create a spell to speak through your familiar (or companion).

Analysis:

Parrots on their own will say nonsense phrases, not meaningful speech.

At this time Familiars do not gain INT, so the Parrot is locked at 2 INT. (spell details below)

You could cast another spell to have your Parrot familiar talk. Message is close to what you're looking for, but it only communicates with the Parrot; doesn't allow it to talk to anyone but you. Magic Mouth would do what you need but it's not in the game yet.

N'Krumah's Faithful Companion spell is very like Find Familiar but avoids the "permanent but dismissable at will" Familiar bond, and there seems to be no feedback effect in 5ED anyway. Perhaps you could change it to be a 2nd or 3rd level spell similar to Magic Mouth, targetable (touch) on your familiar but doesn't need to be "pre-loaded" like a normal Magic Mouth. You can already listen through a familiar, range is unclear but implied 100'. Or, the familiar can cast a touch spell, say normal Magic Mouth that would be loaded at time of casting, technically the familiar spellcasting requires touching a creature but IMHO it would be close enough. That definitely suffers the 100' distance, so preloading the spell might be a closer-to-normal way to do it.

The 2 spells for comparison:

Faithful Companion

Smaller creature is summoned (monkey, parrot, dog, etc.), follows simple orders (fetch, guard, attack)

Find Familiar

1st‐level conjuration (ritual)

You gain the service of a familiar, a spirit that takes an animal form you choose. [statistics and rules removed]

1. within 100 feet of your familiar, you can communicate with it telepathically.

2. as an action, you can see and hear through your familiar's senses

3. your familiar can deliver a spell that requires touching a creature.

Sunday, March 16, 2014

Dwarven Forge gaming tiles - 2013 Dungeon set: Hand-painting steps

Dwarven Forge ran a Kickstarter campaign in 2013 to create expensive steel molds for extremely durable gaming tiles. Their initial foray into this arena was with the Dungeon tile set. I bought a few sets then, and I have pledged for more sets in their current (2014) Kickstarter campaign. The current campaign is for a Cavern set. I should state that the Cavern tiles look more difficult to paint, so I ordered pre-painted tiles this year.

In the previous Kickstarter, I bought unpainted tiles. They were perhaps $30 cheaper for set, and I felt if I wanted to paint them I could handle it myself. Around a month ago, I finally got serious about painting them. Dwarven Forge produced a very helpful in-depth video demonstrating how to paint the tiles. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VCa23FMigw An experienced painter might this video unnecessary, but I certainly felt more comfortable after seeing Stephan's demonstrations. The video covers intricate details like proper drybrushing and color recommendations, to the mundane aspects like mixing paints and cleaning brushes.

The video shows four painting steps. The pictures below show the process from unpainted tiles to final game-ready painted tiles. I also included a picture of a tile painted using stone-texture spray paint. (Had to try it. Would have been a great time-saver.)