Need Help! I've lost my mind!

[Armyguyclaude]

Hello fellow adventurers, I request your help. My character, of a 5+yr concurrent adventure, has had it's item familiar destroyed! The lost levels isn't the problem, but the fact I've put every skill point I've gotten since level 6 into it! I have officially lost my mind! What can I do?

[Evoker]

You could try buying a Thought Bottle (from Complete Arcane) and storing your experience in it, then getting permanently level drained down to level 5 or lower, then using the thought bottle to 'restore your XP total to exactly what it was when it was stored, negating any levels lost in the interm', and seeing if your DM feels enough pity on you to let you take a dubious interpretation of what 'negating any levels lost' means and say that that can 'respec' those levels.

[Seward]

There might be a certain appeal to playing with no skill points, assuming you don't need prereqs for anything you do. But I would assume that there is some way to re-skill, although it might take time.

Skill points seem to me to be more like "this is the maximum my head can hold" and if you somehow lose some, you should be able to use retraining or rebuilding rules to recover them. If I was your GM I'd probably use the retraining rules for changing skill point selections. It would take time and wealth but eventually you could swap "skill point I lost" for "a point in an actual skill" enough times to recover. This is of course much harder if you are a high intelligence character with a skillpoint rich set of classes rather than Joe The 8 Intelligence Nonhuman Fighter who gets 1 skill point a level.

The thought bottle thing might be better if time is an issue and your GM accepts the logic of it (I'm not sure I do). Retraining is probably cheaper overall in terms of wealth, and it is the sort of thing other party members might pitch in to help out with.

[thorr-kan]

Get thee behind me, Sauron! Not today!

Now that I've got that out of my system, I'd say you're SoL. You places your bets, you takes your chances.

Possible paths to recover might include:
-retraining any feats into Open Minded so you get the skill points back.
-wishes, which solve everything, eventually; or miracle, if you can pull that off.
-pick a fight with a level-drainer, get out of the fight before you die, and hope the DM doesn't interpret lost levels as impacting your remaining skill points.

[Seward]

A quick fix solution would be to retrain feats into one of those "do all trained-only skills untrained with +x to roll on untrianed skill" setups. Inferior to actually having skills but occasionally useful. Those feats tend to be race dependent and Pathfinder has more than 3.5 did, so might not work.

[pabelfly]

If you're earning plenty of money, which I imagine you would after five years with one character, maybe several custom competence items? 90K gold gets you 30 competence bonus in a skill with a custom competence item. Not sure what your DM's item creation rules are though.

[Particle_Man]

If this happens to be a Large character and you happen to have put those skill points into skills that the War Hulk would lose anyhow, you could go for that prestige class? Silver lining and all that?

[Gruftzwerg]

I'll try to provide a workaround.


You need access to Races of Eberron spells for this to work:

Greater Humanoid Essence
Cleric 7 / Artificer 6

&

Greater Construct Essence
Sorcerer/Wizard 9

1. Cast GHE on the remains of your familiar
2. Cast any revive spell you like
3. Cast GCE on your familiar

You could try to buy the needed spells as service if you are lucky (or just bribe your DM with snacks and drinks^^).

Expensive solution, but should work if I didn't missed anything.

[YellowJohn]

On the one hand, that's Item Familiar for you - the feat grants power but at the cost that you are basically Sauron now; you are handing your GM a(nother) way to permanently kill your character. You should expect to periodically run into something that can break your IF & if it succeeds? You paid your money - take your choice.

On the other hand, this is a social game. The rules exist to provide a framework in which you have fun. One of my high-level characters has written into their backstory that their item familiar (their ancestral Katana) got broken, so they went on a quest into the seven heavens of Celestia to find their Great Great Grandfather to re-forge the sword. Would your DM be up for something like that? Side mission to track down the legendary smith to re-forge the macguffin... at a price, of course. Sounds like ADVENTURE!

[Armyguyclaude]

Thanks all for the ideas, but I think I'm just kind of stuck. The item familiar was destroyed by an anti magic item. I'm playing it off as all my memories were tied to my skill points. It kind of works since my backstory already has memory loss tied to it, but still stinks all that work was all wasted away. I was skill stacking diplomacy so it makes sense I would eventually get nerfed lol.

[Gruftzwerg]

I was skill stacking diplomacy so it makes sense I would eventually get nerfed lol.

If that's the case, I guess we can't help here..^^

Imho, just ask your DM if this was intended or not. If yes, stick to the situation as it is. If not, ask for if he allows any possible solutions.

[Jay R]

The brute fact is this: an item familiar gives you more skill points in return for increased risk of losing them permanently. You chose to accept that risk, and it came up.

You can choose to not put skill points in an item familiar. You would get more skill points, and you can't lose them all.

Or you can choose to put some of your skill points in the item.. You would get some extra skill points and risk losing some of them.

Or you can put all your skill points in your item. In that case, you maximize the number of extra skill points, and risk losing them all.

Those are all valid choices. You chose to maximize the skill points by accepting the risk of losing them all. That means that you accepted the risk of losing them all.

If you had asked for advice earlier, I would say to decide which skills are absolutely necessary, and don't put those points in the item familiar. This reduces the benefit, but you aren't risking losing the most important skills. My wizard with an item familiar does not have spellcraft points or knowledge(arcana) points in the item.

If I were your DM, there might be some way to get them back, but it would take a while, and you would be without them for several adventures. Otherwise, the risk didn't really exist, and the points were free. That's not the intent; you are supposed to get them in exchange for a risk.

In any event, talk to the DM. If you can get them back, only the DM knows how. You might consult a sage to determine if a Wish or a Miracle would do it. Ask the DM if you can slowly get them back via the re-training rules.

But accept the fact that you chose for this risk to be possible, and face the exciting challenge of playing without those points.

[Khatoblepas]

The answer is simple, you're a seasoned adventurer - you find a scroll of Teleport Through Time (or two, and reverse pickpocket the second onto your past self) and go back and steal your own item familiar from yourself. You'll still have been deprived of your familiar for quite a while, right up until you go back in time to get it. Cue a tense scene where you have to find yourself again at the moment where your item familiar would have been destroyed, maybe ensuring that it's stolen while you think your familiar is destroyed.

I'm sure Past-You will forgive you once they realize you've done this to prevent your familiar's destruction.

[redking]

Miracle, maybe. The 5000 XP version. Or just ask the DM for a grand quest to fix the problem.

[Rebel7284]

I have to second wish/miracle. Seems more kosher than teleport through time shenanigans.

[Promethean]

I have to second wish/miracle. Seems more kosher than teleport through time shenanigans.

Teleport through time is designed for shenanigans. That's the entire reason it exists.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

I'd go with teleport through time, as others have mentioned above. Just make sure to replace your item familiar with the broken shards you're carrying around now (assuming the item familiar wasn't just vaporized; in which case, just steal it away and don't bother). Where did the broken pieces of the item familiar come from? Who knows!

Also, this is why I only take the Item Familiar feat for items I literally can't lose, such as an illithid humanoid skin graft, an implanted item, my monk improved unarmed strike, or some other kind of inherent part of myself. I basically have to lose my body parts (or my body entirely) to lose the item familiar. That's not impossible, but it's a lot harder to lose one's heart and still be playable than it is to lose a dagger or a ring.

[edit 1] Can you DCFS or psychic reformation the Item Familiar feat? Wouldn't that negate adding skill points to it, in that case, thereby negating their loss?

[edit 2] Could you commission the creation of an item that appears to be a magic-negating item but instead teleports itself and your item familiar to you, possibly replacing the item familiar with pieces similar to whatever it was you got back? Gotta keep the timeline intact, after all.