How about an edge to reroll your familiar similar to roll of bones for shapeshifters?

Without saying "Never":

1) Currently, I don't keep track of how much you've used your familiar, and I'm not interested in doing something like this without the roll-the-bones-like restriction of 'You need to swap this as soon as you see what you've got, without getting to use it a while first.'

2) Probably at level 17 you can't pick / can't afford the edge for it, so I assume 99% of the people who didn't like their familiar would still just reroll.

Damn you for replying at the same time as me.

Why not have the edge be directly correlated to having a certain amount of imm-xp? Like 1000 or 1500. Means the person has a basic-to-decent role.

Then make the person sweat it out a little. Don't offer the edge until level 20 or 25.

it is not as bad as 42+ levels invested.

-----Abernyte

When we talked about it, people seemed kinda split on whether to make an edge like this available for RP reasons, so the edge wasn't included (or written) when we were adding/upgrading familiars.

It might be included at a later date, but it would probably be fairly expensive. If you know there is a familiar you don't want at all, Abernyte is right that deleting and starting over again is probably the best move from a powergaming viewpoint.

If you want to talk about a specific familiar, feel free to email me at adekar.thoreksar@gmail.com and I can respond or forward issues to staff members that code familiars.

I have frustrating memories of one particular conjurer that wanted an owl, but got the Faerie Dragon 3 times, rerolling twice in the process.

After the third faerie dragon, I gave up on caring about my familiar and found he was actually marginally useful in certain situations. He didn't meet the role I made up or play style I had decided for this character, however, so I always felt crippled compared to other conjurers. I adapted, and survived with around 200 hours on this char, but I would never do another conjurer again because of it.

For some things, randomness works well... shifters for instance, since they are decently balanced. For something as crucial as a major class power (familiars), I'd like to see less randomness, or atleast some parity among what the familiars can do.

But when was this?

And were you re-rolling with the same character name? Because there was a point in time when the familiar you received corresponded to your name. If you kept using the same name after deleting, then it would make sense to have gotten the same familiar multiple times.

Of course, if it was more recent, then that wouldn't happen. The system on familiar's changed.

It was about 6 years ago, so not terribly recent. I wasn't aware of the name association at the time, so used the same name each reroll. I vaguely recall the original familiar helpfiles implying the location you first call a familiar from was a factor. Maybe I am remembering that wrong.

Haha, yeah, it was your name. That's kind of funny in a way.