A Monkey Familiar!

[DragonBaneDM]

Last night, the party's Shardmind Wizard said "Can I have a helper monkey that follows me around?". He's a bit younger, and it's their first adventure, so I felt no reason to say no.

So, my plan is to allow him to retrain Careful Summoner for the Arcane Familiar feat. This'll work well, since they're level 4 and he only has one summon in the first place. It's a premade adventure, so I don't want them to have to wait till they level for this.

Here's the thing though. My initial thought was "I'll just refluff the Book Imp or the Crafter Homunculus!", but none of the bonuses make sense.

So, I figure I can build this thing from scratch, but before hand I wanted your guys' input on it. Here's what I'm thinking:

Helper Monkey:
Speed 5, climb 5
Constant Benefits: +2 to Acrobatics and Nature checks (Ugh, kinda useless, right?)
Active Benefits: Savage Claws: Minor Action. Once per encounter, you can cause one enemy adjacent to your Helper Monkey to grant combat advantage until the end of it's next turn. While it is granting combat advantage, your Helper Monkey is in that creature's square.

My idea for the Active Benefit was "Monkey jumps on bad guy's back, distracting it." I realize the downside with this is you can hit your monkey with burst attacks, so any improvement would be chill.

[Kurald Galain]

So, I figure I can build this thing from scratch, but before hand I wanted your guys' input on it. Here's what I'm thinking:
Looks pretty good, except that I would remove the last sentence (about the monkey being in that creature's square). It's a needless complication, and as you say it's a drawback for burst attacks.

Some alternative ideas to consider, (1) the monkey can handle objects and make thievery checks, or (2) the monkey can detect hidden or invisible enemies via scent, or (3) as active benefit, you can gain a move action with climb speed once per encounter

[Sorcerer Blob]

Check out Dragon Magazine #399, it has a list of themes for your players that they can take to help flesh out their characters' backgrounds. This is something traditionally taken at level 1, but would be just fine to do retroactively.

The themes themselves give the players a free level 1 at-will power and expanded options for powers as they progress (ie, they can take their level 2 utility power from either the theme or their class.)

In Dragon 399, under the chapter entitled Heroes of Nature and Lore is the option for the Animal Master theme which allows the player to have an attack in conjunction with their animal pet that grants SA on hit and lets the player choose from four different pets; a cat, a dog, a hawk, and a monkey.

The Monkey pet:
Monkey Level 1 Minion Skirmisher
Tiny natural beast XP 25
HP 1; a missed attack never damages a minion. Initiative +5
AC 14, Fortitude 11, Reflex 13, Will 11 Perception +0
Speed 6, climb 6
Traits
Nimble Fingers
While within 10 squares of the monkey, the monkey's master
can take a standard action to command it to make a Thievery
check to pick a pocket as a free action, using the master's
Thievery modifier with a +2 bonus.
Skills Acrobatics +8
Str 5 (–3) Dex 17 (+3) Wis 10 (+0)
Con 12 (+1) Int 4 (–3) Cha 13 (+1)
Alignment unaligned Languages —

[gurban]

How about using the stats for disembodied hand?

[malachi]

My idea for the Active Benefit was "Monkey jumps on bad guy's back, distracting it." I realize the downside with this is you can hit your monkey with burst attacks, so any improvement would be chill.

Arcane Power, page 137, right-hand column, second bullet states the following:

Immunity: A familiar can't be hit by its master's attacks. You, as the master, can choose to ignore this benefit.

In light of this, the player won't have to worry about blasting his own monkey if you do that, but other characters might.


As a helper monkey, I think it'd make more sense for it to act like a disembodied hand (Dragon 371). On the other hand, you could make it some cross between the rat and spider from Arcane Power (in terms of item manipulation). Hope that helps.

[Badgerish]

I thought the 'Marmoset' familiar was the perfect offical option for this.

not sure which book it's in though, sorry.