Familiar Shenanigans - does this work? Is this too cheesy?

[Monster Manuel]

In my current campaign I'm playing a Life Shaman with an Improved Faerie Dragon familiar. The little guy is amazingly versatile. I have a trick I'd like to pull, but I want to game it out here in the forum before I try it in-game. RAW, I think this will work. I'm just afraid it stinks of cheese.

The Faerie Dragon stats say that it counts as a 3rd level sorcerer. As an effective sorcerer, it should be able to use spell-completion or Spell-Trigger items that key off of spells on the Sorcerer spell list. Which means, a faerie dragon should be able to use, say, a Staff of Fire as long as it "holds it forth in one hand, or what passes for a hand for a non-humanoid creature".

It doesn't say, anywhere, that the staff can't also be held by another creature at the same time.

If my Shaman was holding the Staff of Fire, and the Faerie Dragon was perched on top, maybe even with its' prehensile tail wrapped around it, can the dragon be considered to be holding the staff forth? Could the dragon use its' action to cast a Fireball from the staff, while the Shaman is incidentally holding the same staff, using his action to cast an entirely different spell or drop an Evil Eye on someone?

Let me know if there's some nuance I'm missing that prevents this from working the way I think it does. Also, let me know if, at your table, you would hate me forever for bringing this kind of cheese, or if this sounds legit.

Thanks, Playground.

[Lvl45DM!]

In my current campaign I'm playing a Life Shaman with an Improved Faerie Dragon familiar. The little guy is amazingly versatile. I have a trick I'd like to pull, but I want to game it out here in the forum before I try it in-game. RAW, I think this will work. I'm just afraid it stinks of cheese.

The Faerie Dragon stats say that it counts as a 3rd level sorcerer. As an effective sorcerer, it should be able to use spell-completion or Spell-Trigger items that key off of spells on the Sorcerer spell list. Which means, a faerie dragon should be able to use, say, a Staff of Fire as long as it "holds it forth in one hand, or what passes for a hand for a non-humanoid creature".

It doesn't say, anywhere, that the staff can't also be held by another creature at the same time.

If my Shaman was holding the Staff of Fire, and the Faerie Dragon was perched on top, maybe even with its' prehensile tail wrapped around it, can the dragon be considered to be holding the staff forth? Could the dragon use its' action to cast a Fireball from the staff, while the Shaman is incidentally holding the same staff, using his action to cast an entirely different spell or drop an Evil Eye on someone?

Let me know if there's some nuance I'm missing that prevents this from working the way I think it does. Also, let me know if, at your table, you would hate me forever for bringing this kind of cheese, or if this sounds legit.

Thanks, Playground.

Not arguing about rules but seems legit to me. Just can't use the staff twice in the same round. So if the familiar uses the staff you can't.

[lolcat]

Why can't the staff be used more than once per round? As far as i understand it, actions are tracked per character/creature, not per item.

I.e. a warrior can attack with a sword (full round action), drop it (free action), a neighboring warrior can pick it up (movement action) and attack again with it (standard action).

I'm not claiming to know all of D&D by heart, but i've never heard of tracking actions per item rather than per creature.

[16bearswutIdo]

Why can't the staff be used more than once per round? As far as i understand it, actions are tracked per character/creature, not per item.

I.e. a warrior can attack with a sword (full round action), drop it (free action), a neighboring warrior can pick it up (movement action) and attack again with it (standard action).

I'm not claiming to know all of D&D by heart, but i've never heard of tracking actions per item rather than per creature.

A closer comparison would be "Two warriors are each using one hand to hold a greatsword and swinging with it on each of their turns."

It's to the point of absurdity, IMO. Where does it end? Can the entire party put their hands on the staff and use it each round? RAW you MIGHT have an argument, but it's very obviously not RAI.

[lolcat]

Then the familiar could just use a ready action to use the staff the moment its master has used it?
D&D doesn't map 100% to "reality", so even though it's all the same round things still happen sequentially. Given that, it seems arbitrary to forbid this use and still i.e. allow a monster to kill a PC by dealing them 20 pts of damage, "even though the cleric healed them for 25 points in their action afterwards".

[liquidformat]

ya this doesn't seem particularly cheesy, one of the main reasons people get familiars who can speak and hold things are for spell completion items...

[Elkad]

I wouldn't let both characters use it the same round. The wizard helping the familiar hold it seems fine though.

[Monster Manuel]

I wouldn't let both characters use it the same round. The wizard helping the familiar hold it seems fine though.

Thanks, all. Nice to know I'm not totally off-base, here.

I'm in agreement with the camp that says both characters could not use the staff in the same round. Multiple people might hold the item, but only one can Use it. I'll justify that by saying that a spell-trigger item uses the character's action to make the item cast a spell, but casting that spell still takes the same amount of time it usually would, so it can only "cast" once per round. The staff description says that a spell that takes more than one round to cast still takes that extra time when cast via a staff, which implies to me that the act of "casting" the spell still takes time aside from the command word spoken to Use it. I could see an argument being made for some use-activated items (the aforementioned "hit with a magic sword, drop it, someone else picks it up and hits again" scenario), but for spell-completion or spell-trigger items, I think it's a stretch of the RAW, but letting multiple people use the same item in a single round will get hard to justify. What's stopping 10 Tiny Faerie Dragons from all grabbing onto a Staff of Fire, and blowing through all 10 charges in a single round? That way lies madness...

The key thing seems to be whether or not a Tiny dragon curled around the top of a 6-foot staff can be described as "holding" it, when a medium sized human is actually holding it already. I see no reason why not, and it looks like most everyone agrees, so that's cool.

What about situations where the staff grants an additional benefit to its' wielder? In addition to the spells, for instance, a Staff of Travel gives the wielder a +10 enhancement bonus to speed. Who gets that bonus, in this case? I would argue that if I want the dragon the be able to cast from the staff, they count as the "wielder". They ought to be able to decide on a round-by-round basis, though, yes? Right now the Shaman is the Wielder, so gets +10 speed, but on any round where the dragon wants to use the staff, they become the Wielder, and the Shaman loses that bonus. Fair?

[mucat]

http://i.imgur.com/EUxIcUd.png - "Hold my beer staff and watch this!"

From a balance standpoint, I don't think it would bother me much as GM, though you might argue it's making a tier-1 class incrementally more versatile than it already was. Whether that's a problem would depend on the table, and whether the wizard was already in danger of overshadowing their fellow PCs.

From an immersion standpoint...well, the wizard would need to actively aim the staff at the target while the familiar triggered it. Whether that should eat into the wizard's actions for the round is debatable. I would probably at least make it use the wizard's swift action for the round, if only to avoid setting a precedent for ever-more-convoluted Rube Goldberg setups of one character nudging actions into place for another to complete.

[MisterKaws]

Recently someone mentioned stabbing a staff on the ground and having a crow familiar perch on the staff's head to UMD-cast with it, and I'm all to it on both Rule 0 and Rule of Cool.