A(n un)Familiar Little Trick

[MaxiDuRaritry]

I don't know if this has been done before, but something clicked today while I was looking into more options to use with a wizard character's familiar (rather than tossing it away for something else). The changeling's morphic familiar ACF allows you to turn your familiar into any other type of familiar you could otherwise get, at will, as a full-round action on your familiar's part. This is pretty okay on its own, if only because you can swap between fly speed, burrow speed, stealth, disguising yourself as another wizard entirely, and so on. But I already had Improved Familiar, and I realized that I could change my familiar into any creature on that list, as well. And then I started looking into the Planar Familiar feat, Dragon Familiar, Celestial Familiar, and all of the options that those have. And then I looked at the spell sovereign PrC.

The spell sovereign PrC. From Dragon #357.

That allows you to have a living spell of up to 4th level as your familiar (or 5th level spells, with Sanctum Spell, all of which can be metamagicked out the wazoo for no extra cost).

Which means that, with morphic familiar in play, I could turn my familiar into any AoE/effect/non-targeted spell whenever I want, giving me access to any and all of those spells, basically at will.

This is ridiculously powerful.

So...

1.) Does anyone have any good ideas for appropriate spells to use for this?

2.) Is there any way to turn a targeted spell into an AoE spell to open up some options?

3.) Does the war spell template do anything to this?

4.) Can you have multiple spells on a living spell familiar, since they're allowed in the template itself?

5.) Any other suggestions for blowing this wide open?

[edit] Hmm. If you're high enough level (generally most usable in gestalt, though you could either get it in epic, or possibly with some cheese and double-9s tricks), you could go psion and wizard/spell sovereign, manifest polymorph any object on the living spell familiar and metamorphosis your psicrystal to make them both living creatures of the same size, then use fusion and astral seed on them both (unPAO/metamorphosising them before manifesting astral seed) to turn them into one; that way, the resulting creature gains all the best parts of being both a familiar and a psicrystal, granting even more benefits with powers AND spells.

Oh dear...

[Troacctid]

You're not the first person to think of this (I've seen the interaction mentioned at least once before), but I'm not aware of much optimization that's been done on Spell Sovereign. Living Spells are super weird. Honestly, I think you could just play the combo "fairly" and it would still be stupid strong.

Probably the biggest abuse off the top of my head is that create living spell is a spell-like ability that expends the spell, but doesn't actually require you to cast it, so it allows you to bypass xp and material costs for eligible spells. So, like, free gates and whatnot. It also bypasses long casting times, as it is a standard action no matter what.


Can you have multiple spells on a living spell familiar, since they're allowed in the template itself?
This one is a no—the Living Spell Familiar ability definitely refers to the spell in the singular, not the plural, and the Multiple Creations ability does not interact with the familiar ability.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

The Extra Familiar feat (Dragon #280) nets you multiple familiars, all of which gain the benefits of all of the above (aside from the psicrystal thing, anyway). So now you have multiple morphing living spells oozing around, casting at will spells from every arcane and divine spell list out there.

Now we only need a way to change the Target line to Effect or Area...

[Troacctid]

I don't think there's any way to do that.

[Jowgen]

I don't think there's any way to do that.

Hallow might work. "spell effect lasts for one year and functions throughout the entire site, regardless of the normal duration and area or effect" sounds like it might do the trick; though I can not even begin to contemplate the headache that is combining this with living spell.

[Troacctid]

I don't think that would enable any new cheese that hallow doesn't already enable on its own. Anyway, 5th level spells aren't eligible as familiars.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Dragon #329 gives access to swarm familiars through Improved Familiar. It's on page 98.


I don't think that would enable any new cheese that hallow doesn't already enable on its own. Anyway, 5th level spells aren't eligible as familiars.Sanctum Spell? Though I have no idea how to make it work, even with that.

[Troacctid]

Actually, it's not that complicated—you basically pick one of the listed spells, and that spell's effect is incorporated into the casting of hallow. So you can use create living spell to essentially bypass the material cost and casting time of hallow in exchange for a much shorter duration. Which is fine, but nothing amazing.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Actually, it's not that complicated—you basically pick one of the listed spells, and that spell's effect is incorporated into the casting of hallow. So you can use create living spell to essentially bypass the material cost and casting time of hallow in exchange for a much shorter duration. Which is fine, but nothing amazing.Well, I was referring to a living spell familiar, actually. You need two spells on the familiar instead of just one to make that work, which you already said can't happen.

[Troacctid]

My understanding is that hallow is a single spell that also optionally incorporates the effects of another spell, similar to the kitchen sink of other spell effects that guards and wards can produce. Guards and wards, incidentally, would make a very weird living spell.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

I wonder; if the living spell was of a Sanctum Spell hallow, could you just, y'know, cast the spell you want it to use on the familiar and have it use the spell as a touch attack for the next year?

[Troacctid]

No, you don't cast a spell on a hallow, you just choose which spell effect from the list you want the hallow to incorporate as part of casting the hallow, and you get that as part of the hallow effect for one year. Just like guards and wards—you don't have to actually cast arcane lock and stinking cloud and suggestion and all that crap, they're just included in the guards and wards as part of the spell.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

No, you don't cast a spell on a hallow, you just choose which spell effect from the list you want the hallow to incorporate as part of casting the hallow, and you get that as part of the hallow effect for one year. Just like guards and wards—you don't have to actually cast arcane lock and stinking cloud and suggestion and all that crap, they're just included in the guards and wards as part of the spell.Upon closer inspection (which, honestly, I should've done before time), you are 100% correct. Thing is, you don't even need to swap the familiar's form for another version of hallow. By the looks of things, a single slam on a cobblestone or something gives you hallow plus whatever spell you affix to it, chosen upon "casting."

Too bad you can't create a living spell out of Rary's mnemonic enhancer. NI 3rd level spell slots for everyone!

[weckar]

The way I read it, this would be a really fun build to try and play - and it doesn't look like you need to even know the spell you make your familiar into.
Heck, if the spellcasting requirement were a little more lenient this could go straight onto the Warlock PrC list as the class abilities would work fine for that, mostly.

[Troacctid]

The way I read it, this would be a really fun build to try and play - and it doesn't look like you need to even know the spell you make your familiar into.
Heck, if the spellcasting requirement were a little more lenient this could go straight onto the Warlock PrC list as the class abilities would work fine for that, mostly.
Create living spell only works for spells that you can cast, so warlocks would lose most of the primary functionality of the class unless you did some significant retooling.

[weckar]

The Create seems to be only one class feature out of 6. Warlocks lose worse on other PrCs they are deemed to qualify for.

[Troacctid]

Yeah, but let's be honest, you're not taking the prestige class because you want to be able to rebuke and command any living spells that you might happen to encounter by chance. Like, sure, good luck with that. :smalltongue:

[weckar]

Eh, I've had more than one party eaten by the Mournland who wishes they could have done just that :smalltongue:

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Could we use Ocular Spell, maybe? That turns it to effect: ray. Ray spells never have target lines, that I'm aware of, because you're firing through spaces, and the ray could hit something you're not aiming for (not to mention the fact that you can aim it at things that have full concealment, which you can't with target spells).

You could argue that it still has a target line, but no ray spells I know of off hand have target lines, and if you apply the widening lens (from LoM), it fails to have a target entirely because it's an AoE, so it could very well lose its target line by that point. Not to mention the concealment issue above.

[Troacctid]

Rays can still have target lines. It's uncommon, but the rules allow it, and there are examples, like ray of deanimation. Usually the functional difference is that it prevents you from targeting anything with total concealment, but in this case it also screws with the living spell template.

Ocular Spell doesn't say anything about removing the spell's target line, so the spell should still have a target, making it ineligible for a living spell.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Rays can still have target lines. It's uncommon, but the rules allow it, and there are examples, like ray of deanimation. Usually the functional difference is that it prevents you from targeting anything with total concealment, but in this case it also screws with the living spell template.

Ocular Spell doesn't say anything about removing the spell's target line, so the spell should still have a target, making it ineligible for a living spell.I'm pretty sure you can combine Ocular Spell with a lens of ray widening to forego the Target line, but that's used during casting. I don't know of any other ways to fudge this. Anyone else got some ideas? I'm pretty sure it's doable, since virtually anything is doable under this system; I'm just not sure how...yet.

[edit] The above would probably work for creating a living spell, but not for a living spell familiar. Unless... Can you use the lens widened Ocular Spell version as a template of sorts to turn your familiar into the same thing? Then you could use basically any spell.

[Ruethgar]

Ocular with Ray Burst or Ray Cone would work to make the spell an area effect. Also, Catalogs of Enlightenment for the Ooze Domain Power can get you another turn/rebuke for living spells if you want to gather an army. Furthermore, there are feats that let you specify what spells you are able to cast/learn and the Living Spell template never removes the spell's functuionlity in that reguard. You could also specify Magical Side Effects an other spell templates, however probably not metamagic as those don't actually change the spell cast just modify the effect.

[Troacctid]

An item or effect that's used during casting or that only applies when casting a spell shouldn't affect the living spell by RAW, because the process of creating the living spell does not actually involve casting the spell. So no metamagic rods, no Cloudy Conjuration, no +1 CL with Fiery Burst, etc.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

An item or effect that's used during casting or that only applies when casting a spell shouldn't affect the living spell by RAW, because the process of creating the living spell does not actually involve casting the spell. So no metamagic rods, no Cloudy Conjuration, no +1 CL with Fiery Burst, etc.As noted above, Ray Burst and Ray Cone should work for altering the spell into a burst or cone, and from there, we have Sculpt Spell and such (not that those affect living spells overmuch).

I wonder if we could make acorn of far travel even more abusable with this.