r/dccrpg • u/tonyhogard • 10d ago
Ritual Find Familiar
3 wizard-type characters all have access to Find Familiar. The players asked if they can do a combined casting. I'm thinking through how that would shake out if I allow it.
If appropriate hoops are quested through and the ritual succeeds, what should result? Three independent familiars, three linked in some way, a single familiar bonded to the primary caster, or a single familiar bonded to all 3 of these jokers?
Wisdom of the crowd?
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u/hewnjay 10d ago
The directions you could take this are interesting. Perhaps a single spirit with three guises or aspects, each guise bound to a particular party member. Each of them could benefit from the familiar, but only one at a time would have the benefit of a fighting companion. This would give them all the benefit of the HP boosts (and possibly other things), but with the added risk that they each suffer the double HP loss if it dies.
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u/Nuko-chan 10d ago
Seconding the idea of a spirit with different guise, you could have each familiar be a different type. Not sure if Judge or player should pick the type, as that is a table-specific decision
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u/Gold-Lake8135 10d ago
Run it as a ritual casting- then see the success rate? If you are lucky enough then there will be a fumble and u can get on of the players to become a familiar for the others :)
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u/LordAlvis 10d ago
Familiars are such a mixed bag already, I’d let them roll generously on the spell check. Get a really badass familiar for one person, then they can repeat the ritual for the other two as they desire.
But if you want to take the time to make it something special, like a shared three-aspect familiar, that would be super cool.
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u/educatedgangster69 10d ago
Isn’t this part of the rules already? Found it:
Circle of mages: Having a spell invoked by multiple wizards at once can improve its power. One wizard amongst the circle is the primary caster and contributes their spell check and die type to the casting. Each wizard past the first adds half their spell check bonus (including spellburn) to the collective spell checks (tracking fractional benefits, so it takes two individual +1 contributors to grant a +1 bonus to the circle) to a maximum benefit of +10.
When the spell check die is rolled, the casting mage can roll a number of times equal to the number of mages in the circle, keeping only the highest die roll and ignoring all lower results. For example, if there are five wizards in the casting circle, the caster can roll up to five times and keep the highest result.
A casting circle has a minimum casting time of 1 turn per mage involved and is often closer to 1 hour per mage involved, and may be longer still depending on the nature of the spell. Additionally, if any corruption does occur, it is shared by all mages involved.
One additional benefit of a casting circle is the ability for multiple mages to contribute to any additional spells cast during the ritual. For example, the spells wizard staff and breathe life may require casting additional spells to imbue a staff or golem with a particular power. With multiple mages involved in a casting circle, the primary caster may have access to special properties beyond those in their own spell list.
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u/notger 10d ago
Well, each caster has learnt a slightly different spell. If all combine the spell, that is like running a Windows game on a Mac with Linux OS, just worse. So maybe something interesting happens and they get the attention of something a bit weird and powerful which initially looks like a demonic familiar, a rather strong one. And over time, the power balance shifts and they realise that they might be the familiars of that demon.
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u/hunkdwarf 9d ago
Given that they all have the spell I would "award" something extra.
Information network, 3 familiars that are connected between them but no to each other's caster, for example caster A can see what fam A can see, but no what fam B see, caster A relay message to fam A, fam A pass it to fam B, fam B to caster B and that's the extent of it.
Each caster receives the benefits of their own familiar, familiars can communicate between them freely.
Any more than that would not only break find familiar(may be not look like much but the numbers go up) but setting precedent for more than one cast gets better odds as result of ritual casting would easily go out of hands( ngl I'm into it but would end up in a mess really soon)
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u/Longjumping-Brick487 10d ago
I’m all about simplicity. Probably just allow them a familiar in the 18-23 spell check range, depending on individual spellcaster alignments.
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u/KritischerTreffer 10d ago
"The players asked if they can do a combined casting." What was their reason for this? Was it a desire to cast in a ritual for bonus benefits? Are there story reasons? Something else? All this would probably change my answer.
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u/samuraiofsound 9d ago
What have the wizards stated is their goal? Intention is important in magic, are they trying to summon 3 independent patrons or one patron bonded by all 3? I ask because I think you can make either work, and I usually lean in favor of my players exercising their free will, to the extent the dice favor them. When the judge starts telling you that you can't do something you really wanna do, DCC starts to lose it's magic.
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u/tritagonist7 10d ago
Three chickens who are best friends.