Update on the status of companions/familiars

[Brennan068]

To the devs, could we please have an update on where you are with our animal companions and familiars? I appreciate that it is a lot of work to do everything that you are with NS4; but these things are part of the power of entire classes of players and to have them shut off for this long with no indication of when we'll be able to get them back is a little frustrating

[bubba_blazer]

I am fairly new, and I am not exactly sure what type of play you are trying to inspire. But the effect of not having scrolls for sale to wizards, and not having familiars has eliminated any freedom of choice in spell selection. You have to take a summon spell to survive. I like spell selection, that's why I don't play a sorcerer. What's more, at least as a sorcerer you can get rid of the summon II and get something more useful when you level up and get Summon III. The wizard is stuck with it as one of his 4 known spells at level 2. I tried to scribe scrolls and trade with someone, but guess what, more than half of the scrolls I have tried to scribe(Summon III, ILMS, Polymorph, all the HOTU spells) can't be scribed.

Although not really an impact for the powergammers you are trying to address, this also has the effect of eliminating any possibility of choosing evocation for a spell school, since conjuration would be the prohibited school.

[Brennan068]

Ummm, yeah, but that is not the intention of this topic. This one was started to request an update on the status of the companions and familiars; not to complain about the changes to the summons or about the fact that you don't require HotU to play (which is why you cannot scribe the HotU spells btw.)

[Terminal Insanity]

im glad im not starting a caster any time soon... those familiars made it just possible enough to level...
without them, people are gonna die all the time and just become a cleric

[Draebor]

I made a sorcerer character, unaware that familiars were turned off temporarily. The result? Died a dozen times in the sewers trying to level from 1 to 2. I finally had to rely on the charity of another character to gain the xp I needed.

This isn't a rant, btw... I understand that in a beta one can expect things to be broken. Simply reporting an observation.