Ask a Paizo Designer #3: Familiar Actions (Feed a Potion? Reload a Crossbow? Deliver a Bomb?)

Paizo Design Manager Mark Seifter drops by to answer community questions! In this edition he clarifies what actions a familiar is able to take. Can they feed you a potion? Reload your crossbow for you? Or deliver a bomb on an enemy?
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[@The_E_Paladin]

Standing there with my Poppet familiar: “I understand the council has made a decision, however, since it’s a stupid ass decision, I have chosen to ignore it.”

[@aneldritchdreamgames5925]

Mage, bleeding out: h...help Familliar, sitting next to the healing potion/elixir: Im sorry tom, im afraid I can't do that...

[@rafasiqalv]

Alchemist: All right Pilst, I need you to open to the door! Familiar: Okay! Alchemist: Now make an Elixir of Life! Familiar: Got it boss! Alchemist: NOW APPLY POISON TO THE ROGUE’S WEAPON!!! Familiar: OH YEEEAHH Alchemist: now could you feed this Elixir to the Wizard? Familiar: I can’t believe you asked me this. What made you think I could do that?

[@scrip3799]

@@rafasiqalv D'oh! Application of poison is an Activate (Interact) activity, just like a potion.

[@rafasiqalv]

@@scrip3799 yeah, Poison Reservoir doesn’t say Poisons don’t need to be Activated. It just says Familiars can do as a single Interact action instead of two

[@TheScarletInfector]

Not being able to feed potions is a big loss. It was one of the few arguments for people who thought the alchemist was good would use to justify it.

[@rylandrc]

I wouldn't count it out yet. There don't seem to be any concrete rules preventing familiars from activating items, so I'm not certain if Mark is remembering the rules correctly (see the other comments on the video). I certainly do appreciate these videos and hearing from a developer though.

[@GM_MorganV]

Peak “stop having fun”. My imp can’t drink a potion. If another imp kills me, it can drink my potion.

[@rafasiqalv]

Well I already expected this from Reloading a Crossbow, the rule that should be clarified is the Reload action itself. This rule about Familiars being unable to feed a potion is horrendous. It makes Familiars just an extra reagent for Alchemists. It’ll be sad if this ends being in a errata, because there’s no rule saying that other than a line talking about Animal Companions.

[@nicholasromero238]

Well, they can still valet for you, which is still a solid action enhancer.

[@pandapruitt2542]

Agreed

[@pandapruitt2542]

@@nicholasromero238 Yeah but that's such a boring and 2d use

[@lergof0202]

My alchemical familiar can litterally use quick alchemy to create a potion, but somehow can't manage to use that potion on someone... so stupid

[@calebthedoomguy2730]

just gonna point out that RAW familiars got shit on pretty hard. There's mot much they can do unless you have a good GM who understands

[@austinobst8989]

Having preloaded hand crossbows on hand to valet to you after you drop them sounds pretty fun. The potion rulling sucks ass though.

[@AlbertoNeurohr]

Familiars don't need to be animals. Alchemist familiars are outright described as constructs. There's rules to make poppet familiars. I don't really see why this ruling that animals can't interact has anything to do with familiars. If it's dextrous and smart enough to make a potion out of reagents, it's dextrous and smart enough to pour a potion down a player's throat.

[@austinobst8989]

Yeah this rulling seems pretty arbitrary and inconsistent. Some familiars aren't animals at all.

[@pandapruitt2542]

Agreed

[@UMCorian]

Wait, wait wait... so an Alchemist with a familiar who has Lab Assistant... their familiar can literally create a healing potion out of rabbit turds and positive thoughts in a few seconds, but cannot figure out how to put the bottle up to someone's mouth and tip? What kind of stupidity is this?

[@andrewcoonradt9513]

There is no rule specifying that a character/familiar needs to be wielding a weapon in order to reload or interact with it. Until it gets errata'd, Mark's ruling is inconsistent with RAW.

[@Khalaar]

I'm not one to usually question the rules, but I feel like the familiar ruling around manual dexterity are little off IMO. Not taking into consideration the rules, so you're telling me that a tiny familiar can pick up a crossbow (which is 1 Bulk) AND reload it, but they can't interact with a potion (light bulk btw) to administer it to someone??? It's literally just opening a bottle.... **Edit** Also, there is always the question of how much a familiar can carry or hold as a tiny creature since they don't have their own modifiers, and it looks like it's up to 1 Bulk?? Now taking into consideration the rules, by definition in the CRB, "Most familiars were originally animals, though the ritual of becoming a familiar makes them something more..." To me, this almost seems like if the familiar were an animal, it would lose the 'Animal' trait and gain something like a 'Familiar'. I think the equivalent to that is the 'Companion' trait that you see on companion items, however, the only trait that is applied to a creature upon becoming a familiar is the minion trait. Also, if your familiar can not interact with items such as a potion with manual dexterity (even though the rules for 'interact' has the manipulate trait) because they were originally an animal and had the 'Animal' trait, why would anyone take an animal as a familiar?? I currently have a faerie dragon familiar, and according to the APG, it only has the 'Dragon' trait. By taking him as a familiar, he now has 'Dragon' and 'Minion' as a trait and would allow him to interact with items such as potions because he is not technically an animal. Familiars not striking makes sense because that's strictly mentioned in the CRB under familiars, but manual dexterity strictly states that they can use manipulate actions. I don't see anything about familiars (strictly) not being able to 'activate an item'. Animals can't do it, and to me that makes sense. My little wolf companion probably isn't smart enough to uncork a bottle, but my magical familiar that can talk, cast spells, hand me tools, should be able to activate an item. This is a good series btw, and thank you Mark for taking the time out of your day to answer these lol! It just justifies to me why Paizo is so hesitant about giving rulings on problematic rule questions.

[@scrip3799]

Hm, I don't think Mark did explicitly _say_ familiars can hold 1 Bulk crossbows. There are always L-bulk hand crossbows. But yes, no rule prescribes an uncumbrance limit for familiars. Some GMs choose to make it L Bulk, and some GMs choose to make it 1 Bulk. And you're correct that the "activate an item" sentence cannot reasonably be interpreted to be exclusive to [animal] familiars, as disallowing only [animal] familiars would be granting leshy familiars, homunculus familiars, kitsune Star Orbs, and all the non-[animal] specific familiars an _arbitrary superiority over_ all [animal] familiars. Each GM shall have to draw their own interpretation of what the activation disallowance meant to say.

[@anthonystraus4789]

The reload section talks about changing your grip as part of reloading but it does NOT specify that you MUST be holding or wielding the weapon in order to reload it, only that you must Interact with it. From what rule did Mark determine you must be holding the item to reload it?

[@richl39]

The rules insight is always appreciated. Although I am reminded of a key difference with PF1 and PF2 and that is by default PF2 is balanced around PFS(Organized Play) and the Adventure Paths, while PF1 was depowered in an attempt to balance for PFS. Something for GMs to keep in mind is that if a rule seems restrictive it is ok to loosen it a bit for your home games.

[@nicholasromero238]

The thing about potions seems kinda off. What's the point of having a familiar take lab assistant if it cant use the item it made? From an action standpoint, it's one to command the familiar, even if we say the familiar can hand you the item with thensecond action and take none of yours, that's still a net one action to make your familiar make the item, which is the same if you had just used quick alchemy yourself. Without the limitation that it has to be adjacent, it would make sense, as it would let you generate items in two locations, but with the limitations, the only advantage is would have is if the familiar could also activate the item and essentially give you a one action advantage for quick alchemy created elixirs and tools

[@lincr.1988]

2 questions without clarification here: 1 - If I cast Animate Dead to get a zombie minion, will it be slowed as normal zombies? 2 - How many actions do I need to I need to spit the Major Energy Mutagen and how does it interact with the feat Persistent Mutagen? And one bonus question: Do they have intentions to revise subclasses like Chirurgeon and Eldritch Trickster (considered horrible by many) in a near future, or at all?

[@scrip3799]

1. We already know that if a [minion] is given the quickened or slowed condition, like from the Haste or Slow spell, then they gain or lose an action as appropriate, because nothing ever says the trait confers an Immunity to the conditions. The thing we don't know is whether getting a quickened minion to take 3 actions costs you 1 Command action, or 2 Command actions. (The ranger feat Companion's Cry makes 3 companion actions cost you 2 Command actions, but that doesn't use the quickened condition, so it doesn't seem to help us determine an answer.) 2. The major energy mutagen did forget to disambiguate whether spitting costs 1 action or 2 actions; this was an error. I would not expect The Fall of Plaguestone to ever get errata; every erratum requires collaboration between multiple Paizo departments that are more than busy enough as is, so as we all know, they need to prioritize errata to the hardcovers. In any case, 72d6 damage sounds too good to be true, so you must follow the CRB page 444 rule: work with your group to settle on a ruling that is balanced.

[@lincr.1988]

@@scrip3799 So having a zombie as a minion is just awful. Got it. The second question makes sense but they don't need to make an errata for the whole FoP, just a little one for this item specifically. What about the bonus question, any comments?

[@yg.theman]

I kind of hate this ruling. This legitimately makes the game less fun. The idea that they can't activate an item is ridiculous that's why they're familiars and not animals I feel like familiars have been able to do this forever and it's really immersion breaking for the creature who can engage in mad science and make an item not be able to open the bottle he put it in

[@HLCG11]

it can not reload crossbow, that make sense but not able to feed potion to other player? it makes familiars a just spell battery, or a extra reagent. it's a rule that make everything so not so fun.

[@rylandrc]

Where in the rules does it say that familiars can't activate an item? I've been looking for that rules quote and I feel like that's wrong.

[@HowItsPlayed]

Yeah -- this has been a point of some debate. The rules state that animals cannot activate any items (page 604 under companion items). But pieces of text also differentiate animals and familiars as being different things (even though most familiars began as animals). But, regardless, I believe this piece on 604 is what Mark is citing.

[@rylandrc]

@@HowItsPlayed Thanks for the feedback and rules reference. Also it's good to mention that some familiars are specifically not animals, such as specific familiars, Druid leshy familiars, Alchemist alchemical familiars, Kitsune Star Orbs, and Baba Yaga object familiars. It would be very strange imo if whether a familiar is able to activate items is based on whether they started as animals.

[@rylandrc]

@@HowItsPlayed looking into it further, the only trait familiars are given in the familiar rules is the Minion trait. They don't seem to have the animal trait.

[@kevinbarnard355]

@@rylandrc "chose a tiny Animal you want as your familiar"...

[@rylandrc]

@@kevinbarnard355 Read the rules for Familiars further, it talks about how many Familiars *started out* as animlas, but the process of becoming a familiar turned them into something more.

[@RisingStarPF2E]

Everybody I think runs this wrong at some point in time. Me included. Familiars cannot activate. Familiars cannot strike. Familiars don't threaten squares for flanking; and much like eidolons or animal companions unless an item specifies it can be equipped by it; they can't actually have a little backpack or etc RAW. As outlined here its clear they have a bulk capacity of roughly 2.5 althouh its not directly stated. And the lack of activation is because the book doesn't say they can. And it specifically outlines what familiars CAN DO which doesn't include activating. This has now been quadruple confirmed because in PC2 we are getting the "Item Delivery" Familiar Ability that now uses ADMINISTER terminology to activate a item of negligible or light bulk. It's terrifying how 2 years later the information for all of this is available but nobody wants to read or listen to it and Paizo never decided to put this information in an easy to see place.

[@Dreadon1]

how does a potion have an active action? is that removing the cork or are you activating it when you drink it? so many questions on this one.

[@HowItsPlayed]

I think Mark is speaking purely from a rules mechanics perspective and not a narrative perspective. The write-ups for potions all have an "Activate" entry, and therefore by RAW familiars can't use them (per Mark).

[@EdgewoodDirk]

Potions tend to have an Interact action to ‘Activate’ it. Interact has the Manipulate trait and Manuel Dexterity gives Familiars the ability to use Manipulate actions (Reloading is an Interact Action) without stating any limitations on the Manipulate actions they can make. I think Mark overlooked that technicality and just defaulted to Familiars can’t ‘Activate’ items, regardless of it being a Manipulate action, which makes it an odd judgement call both RAW and RAI where Familiars can reload crossbows and open doors, but uncorking a potion being not possible. Good video, and pretty informative.

[@kevinbarnard355]

It says you activate them while drinking/feeding them to the recipient. If folks want a house rule to make potions work with familiars, spend an action to stir the ingredients by shaking the bottle or adding a reagent or something like pop rocks. You can do that in advance. As long as it's used within a reasonable time frame (1 round, 1 minute, 10 minutes?), that potion is already activated and just needs to be swallowed/unstoppered which is an interact [manipulate] action that a familiar with manual dexterity can do. If left too long, then you need to add more "pop rocks" to get the potion/elixir primed. This feels very similar to the Alchemist's quick alchemy, so flavorfully appropriate to me. It still requires a non minion to activate the item, but then at the cost of an action outside combat, or right before it's used, the familiar can still administer it.

[@austinobst8989]

Because familiars count as "animals". What about familiars that are definitely not animals? Like star orb or one of the special familiars?

[@Unikatze]

What are some good uses for an Alchemist's familiar? After this video my GM is probably either gonna homebrew or the Alchemist in the party may be retraining and killing Gumball.

[@toodleselnoodos6738]

I think Mark made a mistake. A familiar cannot reload the crossbow because the crossbow isn’t a Companion Item. They can hold it, they cannot wield it. Since they cannot wield it, they cannot reload it. The real reason a familiar and companion cannot activate an item is because it doesn’t have the Companion trait. Additionally, even if it did have the Companion trait, the crossbow would need to be Tiny size to wield it. I feel that Mark is confusing things that happen design wise with what their actual decision was via the CRB printing. Per his example, then a Leshy familiar or any other non-animal familiar can Activate items. Give your Poppet specific familiar Manual Dexterity and it’s now allowed to pass and activate items because it’s no longer an animal. Which means, the intention was to use the companion trait to minimize that access. But that’s not a bad thing, instead, this sounds like an opportunity for creating familiar abilities or specific familiars that CAN do these things. Feats and stuff are meant to be loopholes.

[@Allods132]

Reload I get, but potions? THEY LITERALLY CAN CREATE A POTION FOR AN ALCHEMIST. If they can do that they can feed one. This is a sageadvice level take.

[@LordTridus]

Did they ever look at this? It makes no real sense to me that a familiar with manual dexterity can't feed someone an elixir. All you have to do to "activate" it is drink it. What part of that can't it do, when some random level 1 character can do it? I get not activating permanent magic items or magic ammunition and such, but in this case we're talking about drinking something. I'd definitely house rule this because it makes the whole alchemical familiar kind of pointless aside from as a reagent battery. I realize you're just delivering the bad news here, but that really seems like something manual dexterity should enable. Otherwise what's the point of lab assistant?

[@SwampSilver]

Drop the crossbow (reload 1), familiar picks up and loads, you take back, fire and repeat.

[@austinobst8989]

Same action economy if you just reload it normally

[@11atron]

so I come from the situation where my GM just found this videoand I had my familiar feeding potions. gonna ask him to homebrew since all rules are optional and all that, but this seems really dumb and limiting from that perspective. I had lots of fun ideas for my alchemist familiar like sending him with a smoke stick to cause chaos. To me allowing familiars to activate items doesn't seem too brokenas most effects could be re-created by spells but I'm not an expert at finding wways to break things.the one argument I can think of is that you can possibly make a lot more potions as a alchemist than a person would have spell slotsjustifying the walking over and feeding them a healing potion action cost, but since the heal spell seems so powerfuland versatile I still don't think it's too bad

[@GeeGe.]

I would ask your GM to read the comments here, especially Eric Dinkins' which brings many good points IMO. It really doesn't make much sense at all to not let familiars interact with items that way considering everything they can do.

[@pxblade]

its answers like this that make me want to give up on p2e... table top games are about saying yes to your players not finding the most convoluted reason why they cant do an incredibly simple action. its the same thing with familiars being required to pick their movement speed from the pointless pool of 2 abilities total, making them a single ability item at the end of the day.

[@rafasiqalv]

While I agree with the first part and it bothers me that a designer said this, I never minded having to get an ability to the speed of the Familiar. Innately, they all get 25ft of movement or you can choose to get 25ft of swim speed. If you want them to Fly, that's considerably better because it ignores dificult terrain, better for scouting, lets you fly over creatures with AoO, etc. it costs an ability. I get that it can feel "bad" for a Wizard have to lose an ability to get a flying owl, but otherwise it creates a situation where all flying options are better. And there's the possibility of investing more feats to get more familiar abilities. With that said, restricting the ability of Familiars to administer a potion/elixir is sad and makes them less interesting, be it for Alchemists, Witches, other characters that have a Familiar or their party. Alchemists suffer way more, because they're the class that works around items.

[@scrip3799]

The point is that _if you want_ the Flight ability, then in your two abilities you choose per day, you choose Flight; you can't get it for free. There's no problem with having a flightless owl if you _don't_ always want to spend an ability on it.

[@lutralutra633]

Thanks for the video, love getting things cleared up by the devs. Within my party we have a question about the cooldown of for example a breath weapon. If you roll for example 1 on the d4 for CD, does this mean that you can use the breath already the next round or that the round after next round. I think it is round 1 breath weapon, round 2 CD, round 3 breath weapon. This seems more balanced than being able to spam it 2 rounds in a row on rolling a 1. But some of my party members think you would be able to use it next round already. My argument is that it states in the book that you can't use it FOR 1d4 rounds, so that indicates that you can't use it for the the amount of rounds you rolled.

[@HowItsPlayed]

I feel like I've read a forum thread where one of the designers (maybe even Mark) clarified that the intention is for the number on the die to represent the number of skipped rounds.

[@lutralutra633]

@@HowItsPlayed I would love to see this thread. I found one where people talked about it but never provided any real proof.

[@jakubczeczot8500]

What happens if I give a Master Destruction Atomic bomb to my Tiny Familiar, he runs to the enemies and "accidently" drops the bomb, won't it explode? Just asking for a friend.

[@rylandrc]

3:16 Interesting tidbit about valet not working with independent.

[@HowItsPlayed]

Agreed!

[@Khalaar]

Yeah, there is a big forum thread about that specific topic so glad to see it was put to rest.

[@laki7480]

Curious how he sees it that way as valet have its special note of one item per action if using a different number of actions...

[@rylandrc]

@@laki7480 Valet mentions commanding the familiar in order to use valet. Perhaps the different number of actions wording is there as future proofing for if certain familiars will have one or three actions when commanded.

[@coolboy9979]

Error in the title. This one is Number 3

[@HowItsPlayed]

Good catch!

[@pandapruitt2542]

They really made familiars suck in 2e imo, I know there are uses outside of combat but nothing you usually can't do yourself by the time you can give it to your familiar so if anything it seriously feels like a useless feat

[@TheRhetoricGamer]

This one confuses me because the rules say "animals" cannot Activate items. It doesn't say familiars. Familiars are not animals. They can look like animals, but they're not animal creatures. The rules do not clearly give them the animal trait, and it makes more sense they would be beasts because they're intelligent. If the animal trait automatically prevents a creature from Activating items, wouldn't that mean an ability that gives you the animal trait would disable you from Activating items?

[@williamvaughn2720]

out of curiosity where does it say that animals cannot activate items? (the book not the video)

[@TheRhetoricGamer]

@@williamvaughn2720 Page 604 under Companion Items. "Normally these are the only items a companion can use .. an animal can never Activate an Item."

[@CraigSteinhoff]

Ok makes sense to me

[@Luluthebluemoon]

Whats the point of the familiar then? Seems pretty useless? just a once per day spell battery and focus and thats it? lame!

[@Talut15]

Meh, no thanks, we will house rule this.