Conjurers have made headlines lately with their more potent familiars. Here are some ideas for general or cabal edges specific to fighting conjurers, just as we have anti-class edges.

CAGED FAMILIAR: A familiar currently fighting a character with this edge cannot be dismissed until he has successfully fled from combat.

SYMPATHETIC STRIKE: Characters with this edge have learned how to focus their blows so that the conjurer feels some degree of his familiar's pain.

BANISHING STRIKE: Characters with this edge have learned how to disrupt the corporeal form of a familiar with ease: each strike against the familiar has a chance to banish the familiar immediately. Familiars who are disrupted in this manner may not be conjured again for 24 hours. Conjurers take no damage when familiars are dismissed by people with this edge.

I think I'd have to make familiars a lot tougher to make these edges fair.

There's just nothing else in the game that has a penalty on the scale that a familiar dying does.

In hero-range PK situations, how often are you seeing conjurers lose their familiars?

It seems like once they hit a certain power level, most familiars have the HP or defense to survive very well, especially with edges. So much so that while a familiar death is a serious bummer, it's actually a low risk. That said, most conjurers don't seem to be shooting for 51 and/or playing very long.

With your snoop-foo and logs and all that jazz, can you say that conjurers having their familiars PKd happens much?

>With your snoop-foo and logs and all that jazz, can you say
>that conjurers having their familiars PKd happens much?

I don't know if I'd say much, but some; in many of those cases, the death of the familiar also kills the master.

Familiars in general seem a lot more powerful than what they were four years ago when no one in their right mind would have willingly used familiars to tank against a warrior. I had chalked this up to familiar edges, although of course I have no way of knowing what conjurers have souped up their familiars with edges.

>Familiars in general seem a lot more powerful than what they
>were four years ago when no one in their right mind would have
>willingly used familiars to tank against a warrior.

In a sense they are; at one point (probably around four years ago), we realized that

A) Most people who got a familiar who didn't have detect hidden just deleted and rerolled

B) Some of the familiars had to be at least somewhat combat-viable to be of any use. It's no help that your faerie dragon can wake you up if you get knocked out (and so on) if it's a very high risk of double-suicide (that is, it'll die, you'll lose 1/3 con, you'll also die and lose another 1/3 con) to have the thing with you.

Generally the familiars that fell into the B category also didn't have detect hidden, and thus were changed to get somewhat more durable with levels.