Interesting Wizard Familiar, or alternative.

[Hazzardevil]

Soon I'm going to be in a Drow-based 3.5 game. Think the worst of Religion stuffed deep underground and we're the young girls going to Drow Hogwarts. We're all mages of some sort and I'm choosing a familiar, or one of the alternatives.

But we're deep underground and our characters have probably never seen a cat or a bird, so what options are there for a Drow Wizard?

[SangoProduction]

Soon I'm going to be in a Drow-based 3.5 game. Think the worst of Religion stuffed deep underground and we're the young girls going to Drow Hogwarts. We're all mages of some sort and I'm choosing a familiar, or one of the alternatives.

But we're deep underground and our characters have probably never seen a cat or a bird, so what options are there for a Drow Wizard?

first result when I googled Underdark Familiars http://drowcampaign.roleplaynexus.com/drowcreatures.html

4th result: http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?topic=9992.0

first result when I googled Underdark Familiar ACF: http://community.wizards.com/forum/previous-editions-character-optimization/threads/1151316

google is a great friend.

[SinsI]

Take Improved Familiar and build as powerful Blade Guardian(Complete Warrior) as possible. Drow academies are full of people that wouldn't mind putting several inches of cold hard steel into your unprotected back, so you want all protection you can have.

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

Make your character a specialist Conjurer and trade your familiar for Abrupt Jaunt in PH2. That gives you an immediate action 10-ft. teleport usable Int bonus times per day, and you can use that in response to an attack to make the attack automatically fail, either from being out of the opponent's reach or so a ranged attack hits an empty square. It's useful at every level of play and it's almost guaranteed to save your character's life over and over again.

If you still want to have a familiar, get the feat Obtain Familiar in CA along with one of the many get-a-better-familiar feats (http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/lists/feats&tablefilter=familiar) such as Improved Familiar or Planar Familiar or Dragon Familiar, etc. Obtain Familiar has the added benefit of making your prestige class levels that advance your Wizard spellcasting also improve your familiar's benefits.

[SinsI]

Obtain Familiar has the added benefit of making your prestige class levels that advance your Wizard spellcasting also improve your familiar's benefits.
No. "Classes that allow you to cast arcane spells" are those that have the table with Spells per Day entry.
"+1 spellcasting" prestige classes don't count as such unless they have a specific class ability that does that (i.e. Alienist or Fleshwarper).

[TheBrassDuke]

No. "Classes that allow you to cast arcane spells" are those that have the table with Spells per Day entry.
"+1 spellcasting" prestige classes don't count as such unless they have a specific class ability that does that (i.e. Alienist or Fleshwarper).

That's actually rather debatable.

[atemu1234]

No. "Classes that allow you to cast arcane spells" are those that have the table with Spells per Day entry.
"+1 spellcasting" prestige classes don't count as such unless they have a specific class ability that does that (i.e. Alienist or Fleshwarper).

Nope. It's entirely keyed off of caster level, which means they do advance it.

[gorfnab]

Take a look at the Easy Bake Wizard in my signature. It's a Elf (Drow are Elves) Wizard build that has no Familiar (so no ball of potential XP loss), no spellbook (so nothing character breaking that can be stolen), but gets a huge amount of spells known and those spells are stored in the Wizard's mind instead of a spellbook.

[SinsI]

Nope. It's entirely keyed off of caster level, which means they do advance it.
It's keyed off of Class level in arcane spellcasting classes, not caster level.

[ben-zayb]

By RAW, there's no such class that forbids (i.e. not allow) you from casting arcane spells. The feat doesn't say "classes that grant arcane spellcasting".

Edit: not sure about the Forsaker PrC though

[SinsI]

"Without having a level in this class your character couldn't cast arcane spells. With it, he can. So that class allowed your character to cast arcane spells."

[Lerondiel]

Make your character a specialist Conjurer and trade your familiar for Abrupt Jaunt in PH2. That gives you an immediate action 10-ft. teleport usable Int bonus times per day, and you can use that in response to an attack to make the attack automatically fail, either from being out of the opponent's reach or so a ranged attack hits an empty square. It's useful at every level of play and it's almost guaranteed to save your character's life over and over again...


Dont be shy with 'almost guaranteed' my friend....The last Drow campaign I played in was brutal - and Abrupt Jaunt often saved my character's skin multiple times per game session.

[ben-zayb]

"Without having a level in this class your character couldn't cast arcane spells. With it, he can. So that class allowed your character to cast arcane spells."

It enabled your character to cast arcane spells. Fortunately, allow has 2 definitions, which roughly corresponds to either permission ("may") or capability ("can").

[Hazzardevil]

Take a look at the Easy Bake Wizard in my signature. It's a Elf (Drow are Elves) Wizard build that has no Familiar (so no ball of potential XP loss), no spellbook (so nothing character breaking that can be stolen), but gets a huge amount of spells known and those spells are stored in the Wizard's mind instead of a spellbook.
That looks like a guaranteed way to get books thrown at me over the internet, but I'll ask about some of the stuff.

Dont be shy with 'almost guaranteed' my friend....The last Drow campaign I played in was brutal - and Abrupt Jaunt often saved my character's skin multiple times per game session.

I'm undecided about specialisation, but I'm tempted to take conjuration, but I want more than summoning in combat, but I suppose there's creation for that.

[SinsI]

It enabled your character to cast arcane spells. Fortunately, allow has 2 definitions, which roughly corresponds to either permission ("may") or capability ("can").
Since there are no classes that do the former (so you would treat even barbarian as a class that grants such permission), it has the latter meaning.

[ben-zayb]

Since there are no classes that do the former (so you would treat even barbarian as a class that grants such permission), it has the latter meaning.

Except there's already a precedence that if something specifically prohibits spellcasting, it will be stated (Karsite race, Rage ability). Hence the default state that nothing prohibits spellcasting except for these specific examples.

Of course, it's terribly stupid RAW and IMO far from RAI, so houseruling it to what you suggest ses to be the reasonable thing to do.

[Lerondiel]

I'm undecided about specialisation, but I'm tempted to take conjuration, but I want more than summoning in combat, but I suppose there's creation for that.


Summoning is the least of the good stuff with conjuration. Here's a starter list of great spells for that specialist slot - that your character was probably going to learn anyway:

1) Benign Transposition, Lesser Orbs
2) Create Magic Tattoo, Kelgore's Grave Mist
3) Ice Lance, Grt Mage Armour
4) Evard's Black Tentacles, Solid Fog, Orbs
5) Teleport, Cloudkill
6) Planar Binding, Acid Storm
7) Plane Shift, Stun Ray
8) Maze, Grt Planar Binding
9) Gate, Towering Thunderhead...and a heap in the SpC