Posted by The Arcane(VIP) on August 11, 2000 at 12:03:16:
In Reply to: Thats sad..Some text posted by The once Kanthalesa on August 11, 2000 at 11:23:26:
Yes, the imp's got loads of roleplay potential, and a couple of somewhat-useful powers.... I can imagine a character that would require imp... for example, a mute who speaks through his imp, to use the most obvious such possibility. Now, what would you do if you came up with this kickass role that you'd love playing, and then come familiar time, you got raven? Considering that without any sort of outside assistance (OOC friends to level with), you can reach that level in 4 hours, rerolling becomes a very viable option.
If anything, it's a design flaw, because some of the familiars are not balanced, unfortunately.
Yes, I rerolled my last conjurer three times because I got imp the first two (I'd have been happy with raven or quasit), simply because the disadvantage of having imp really IS very large. Yes, it being able to talk is nice, but having thieves and assassins be unable to sneak up on you is much nicer.
The neutral familiars, by contrast, are well-balanced. Honestly, if I made a neutral conjurer, I'd be happy with any of the three.
As good-align fams go, the owl is just sweet. Coyote is really only good if you're playing a Master, but if you are, then it's very good. Faerie dragon isn't useless, contrary to popular belief, but I'd much much rather have the owl, which can offer the same benefit in a different form, and then some.
Quasit and raven are each good... imp is several notches below them. With a 67% chance of getting a "good" familiar, with 4 hours of effort required (minimal, compared to a char. that might live for hundreds of hours), it's plenty understandable to delete at that point.
Is it good roleplay? Not really, but it could be argued that deletion isn't really a roleplay concern at all. The very act is OOC. It's only a problem if you're a dumbass and reroll using the same name or something. People delete in the teens all the time, be it because of an untimely death, boredom with the char, or whatever.
The problem lies in the system. If the familiars were completely balanced, this would never be an issue. It seems to me to be a pretty iron-clad rule of game design... if you're going to make something random, beyond the control of the player, then all the random possibilities should be relatively equal. It doesn't matter if, hypothetically speaking, dagger specs are underpowered (they're not), since if I don't want to play a dagger spec warrior, I just don't type "specialize dagger" at 20.
It DOES matter if one muter form is just way better than another, or in this case, if one familiar is way better than another. Pre-revamp mongoose and the old gazelle are examples of forms that simply sucked compared to the other choices. The current ram is dangerously close to that realm of "suckage." If you found out your major form at level 15 and not 45-51, don't you think you'd see people rerolling rams all the time?
I think the imp is ill-conceived as a familiar... the other 8 have some roleplaying function, yes, but they are primarily PK/survival/utility aids. Giving one extra RP-goodness has no place at all in this framework.