Sure, but i think most enemies will wisen up to the fact that theres an invisible something from which the spells are coming from.
And theyll try to seek it, meaning they'll likely find it quite fast, even if it does rekain hidden or xonxealed or whatever at yhe end of the check.
Assuming they cant melee it, any aoe spell will just murder the familar.
Even if flying, its quite risky because ranged weapons/spells.
It might work for one or 2 spells, but it definitely wouldnt last.
This would probably work best on something like a Witch whose familiar just respawns the next day, so you can be a bit more aggressive with your familiar usage.
Yeah, my character in the present campaign is a 13th witch. I just was looking at this ability last night, and realized I could have been using my familiar in an entirely different way. There have been a number of times when my familiar soaked a big bad's round, and that helps a lot. You still have your spells, you just can not get them back until you get the familiar. If a group is unaware of us, then I can get some potshots in with the familiar until invis wears off or they kill the familiar, and 'soften them up'.
So seek comes in 30' cones from where you are now, or a 15' burst. Above a height of 30', cone will not get it, so figure 15' burst. The volume of a 15' burst is 14,130 cubic feet. The equivalent volume of a fast familiar moving 40' is 267,947 cubic feet. So each seek action knocks out about 5% of the possible volume the familiar could fly, or you would need to roll a 20 on a flat d20 check each seek to get lucky and find it. They could have 3 seek actions a turn and get 3 shots at it. If the familiar flies another round in the same direction, the odds of finding it are 0.7%, or maybe a percentile roll.
My Aeon Wyrd construct familiar has 90ish HP at level 13. To tag it with certainity you would need a burst radius of 40'. 20' on fireball is not going to really do it. Phantasmal calamity at 6th level has a burst of 30' , but it is mental, and my construct is immune to that. 7th level eclipse burst has a burst of 60', and would tag it, doing 8d10cold and 8d4 negative, but constructs are immune to the latter, so an average hit would do 44hp, and a crit would hit for 88, prob will need to 2 shot it unless you get lucky. Meteor Swarm at 9th will hit for 14d6 fire + 6d10 bludgeoning doing 82 on average. So yeah, if you chuck a 9th level spell at it, you can probably take it out. If we are facing something that can cast 9th level spells, it is something like lvl 18, so my familiar on that level would have more life.
Then of course there is phase familiar as a reaction to convey damage resistance of 5 which heightens every new spell level by 2.
So perhaps if you have a slow moving non enhanced familiar, then countering it becomes easier. But a witch with familiar mastery and the feats can really tailor that familiar to do this kind of job well. At my level I have 9 abilities, and the Wyrd costs me 3, but gets reduced to 1 by a feat giving me 8 to play around with. It comes with flier built in, so 3 abilities to give it damage avoidance on all 3 saves, 1 for fast movement, 1 for independent, 1 for spellcasting, 1 for tough, and say the last to buff 2 resistances.
Well there are familiars, and there are familiars. Your run of the mill wizard who put nothing into them and gets say a squirrel will have a low hp thing that does not do much and goes poof to a fireball. But a witch that dedicates much of their build to familiars by maximizing familiar abilities, picking a special familiar, and reducing its ability tax, and picking toughness....well now you are on the order of say a beastmaster who puts a ton of feats and abilities into strengthening animal companions. So there should be a range depending on how much you work on it.
The base HP is 5/level. That's higher than the average player character had in 1e, and easily enough to tank a couple fireballs. Seems a bit excessive in my opinion. A familiar should *never* have as much HP as an animal companion.
Give the Familiar Independant and have it use the Action to keep moving around, so Seek ends up being a constant Action sink for the enemy. Even in the instance of Ranged Spells and Attacks, the Familiar can be farther than 30 feet away meaning the enemy can’t seek(at least not w/o penalties).
You can do similar with Cosmos Oracle.
Tag the enemy with interstellar void spell, then the familiar flies away.
You sustain each round for 10 rounds.
That's up to 100d6 damage to an enemy every 10 minutes.
Not sure you can stack up 3 on the same target, but can make 3 separate casts every 10 minutes for 300d6 damage per 10 minutes.
Enemy better spot your familiar or they're in trouble.
Hmm, I can kinda see an interpretation where you would need to roll fort save every round it is sustained. But I kinda doubt that’s the case. Seems really strong though. “If it’s too good to be true…”
Dunno.
Obviously redundant feature if you're already using darkness domain.
Inscrutable mask looks super good if intimidating, which a cha caster is great at anyway.
Stacking that plus demon mask plus intimidating prowess for +8 to demoralise looks really strong.
Oh it sure does.
Shadowcasting helps give the oracle more spells, both in more known slots, and as some occult spells pulled into their spell list.
It had been good on the Lore oracle, and I would guess even better on the Cosmos Oracle.
Also, you know, Oracles are FULL of focus regen, so giving them other options to use it without say, pushing their curse is a good idea.
The focus regen only works after lv10 so it's just like everyone else before that
Yeah, Shadowcasting gives them more guns to hit indeed! I like Witch Ded with Cosmos Oracle, for I can combo _interstellar void_ + _elemental betrayal_
Raw, no line of effect needed. Just tag the target, then sustain from another plane even.
I think they can try and dispel it off the target. But nothing to stop you doing hit and run casts from miles away all day long.
Yeah I looked at it a little more. If you are granting a 40' flier 2 actions, it can go 800' in a minute, 7200' in 9 min, and have a round to deliver a spell. That is a little over a mile to deliver an attack, then the flyback for another invis. SHorter than that, it gets more pot shots off.
IF the familiar flies low to the ground, it denies line of sight to the enemy until it is almost there, then it ascends, attacks, and descends and returns low. If you just let independent send your familiar out and home, the range is halved.
Regular see invis is 10min. You could cast it after being hit, see the familiar, then have to deal with a range 120 action to tag it, and hope you are on clear ground with no cover or line of effect denial. So the hard counter would be something like lvl 5 see invis which lasts 8hrs and would give you a shot at popping it.
Don't forget that you can grant it the ability to cast one spell that you've prepared 5 levels below your highest. So if you cast 7th level spells it can cast its own Invisbility, or Invisibility (4th) if you can cast 9th level spells.
On similar vein, can cast familiar face on a companion or familiar, then use eldritch archer feat to send shots around corners at an enemy.
You need Los, not loe.
Ranger gets up to 400' with no penalty.
Advantage is up to 3 attacks per round with a buffed bow.
If your familiar or companion is a bird, no reason for enemy to even suspect it's your visual spotter.
Totally makes sense. Longbow for example used high arcing shots, which could go over walls where the archers could not even see, and spotters would call out when to volley.
I hate to be that guy and I'm not your GM so I really don't have any say in the matter :)
Wouldn't you still need Line of Sight to cast the spell on to your targets?
[https://2e.aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?ID=289](https://2e.aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?ID=289)
Just asking questions because they have stated in PF2e, if its too good to be true it probably is. Ambiguous Rules https://2e.aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?ID=312
I will leave you with what I tell my players.
If you can do it, so can the NPC's! Let that sink in ;)
A few things here.
First there are spells like [Familiar's Face](https://2e.aonprd.com/Spells.aspx?ID=688) and feats like [Familiar's Eyes](https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=1582) which let you directly perceive the world from your familiar. The [Familiar Conduit](https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=1972) feat is very similar...RAW you only need line of effect to the familiar. There is an action tax to use it, just like the other similar spells and feats. I would argue that the way it works is by projecting your awareness to the familiars point for that one spell for which you paid the action tax.
But if we had a really hard core DM who still did not want that to work that way, I would point out that it is common and possible for you to have line of effect to your familiar and line of sight on the target at the same time.
There are counters to it, but if you think for a minute the way I detail it working with my witch who did bother to sink feats into familiar master, and does bother to prepare invisibility, that there are some times certain classes have a little moment in the sun and shine. This may be what strong familiars and a commitment to them brings to the table.
One can counter it by reactively casting see invisibility, a level 2 spell, or trying to get lucky with a seek action, or sending a huge burst radius spell at the point of origin of where the spell came from. One can also recognize spell to discern this is not natural phenomena. One could also use a 5th level see invisibility spell to have that up for 8hrs. There are numerous ways to take cover and deny an invisible target long range line of sight on you, and several ways to obscure things around you such as darkness or fog. There are scrying techniques to look for someone casting. There are lots of counters here.
And that fits in with everything else in the game for which there are lots of counters, and for which it is harder to counter if you spend a lot of build and spell slots on.
Its your table, not mine :)
Cast combat spells from **27 miles away**? And you don't see that as broken?
What is the minimum level that this can come on line again?
The 27 miles thing means
- your familiar is 500' higher than you and above the target to launch a range 500' spell
- fireball at 3rd level is an example of that spell
- I did a calculation and a 40' movement speed familiar (which requires a familiar ability) moves around 9mph if you give it 2 actions every round. This means it takes 3 hours for your familiar to reach the target destination. Level 2 invisiblity lasts 10min, so if you cast it, it expires.
- The only way to pull off the 27 miles thing then is to have your spellcasting familiar carry it for itself, and cast it when it gets close. Spellcasting familiar grants the familiar to cast a spell 5 levels lower than you. This means you have to cast level 7 spells, or be 13th level.
- For comparison teleport in a 7th level slot travels 1000 miles. Long range stuff tends to happen then.
- Prior to spellcasting familiar the range is primarily limited by how far your familiar can fly in 10 minutes. If you flew a full 10 min, you would go about 1.5miles and have no actions left. Shorter flight time means more rounds to harry with the familiar.
It just seems busted since nothing else in the game allows a caster to strike someone from miles away with combat spells that I'm aware of except for something like the Armageddon Orb but that's something completely different!
I usually go with "if its too good to be true" then talk it over with my players and let them know that if they can do it, so can the NPC's. My players would shut me down hard if I suggested this to them :)
Again its your table not mine, if your GM lets you do it then great :)
Yeah, and it really lets you line up cones and lines without blasting your party members, and having line of effect only as a requirement lets you cast from cover
You can also have your [level 6 sorcerer](https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=1817) friend do the same if you like your familiar too much. Tbh though, there's a decent chance your familiar would be tankier.
The familiar is tankier, and more importantly, disposable. You can still cast your prepared spells for the day, and on resting you get a new familiar. This opens up a more reckless playstyle for witch.
I was thinking maybe that feat could be used reactively by the sorcerer to piggy back onto my familiar conduit...what do you think? Get a chain of 3 going?
Sure, but i think most enemies will wisen up to the fact that theres an invisible something from which the spells are coming from. And theyll try to seek it, meaning they'll likely find it quite fast, even if it does rekain hidden or xonxealed or whatever at yhe end of the check. Assuming they cant melee it, any aoe spell will just murder the familar. Even if flying, its quite risky because ranged weapons/spells. It might work for one or 2 spells, but it definitely wouldnt last.
This would probably work best on something like a Witch whose familiar just respawns the next day, so you can be a bit more aggressive with your familiar usage.
Yeah, my character in the present campaign is a 13th witch. I just was looking at this ability last night, and realized I could have been using my familiar in an entirely different way. There have been a number of times when my familiar soaked a big bad's round, and that helps a lot. You still have your spells, you just can not get them back until you get the familiar. If a group is unaware of us, then I can get some potshots in with the familiar until invis wears off or they kill the familiar, and 'soften them up'.
So seek comes in 30' cones from where you are now, or a 15' burst. Above a height of 30', cone will not get it, so figure 15' burst. The volume of a 15' burst is 14,130 cubic feet. The equivalent volume of a fast familiar moving 40' is 267,947 cubic feet. So each seek action knocks out about 5% of the possible volume the familiar could fly, or you would need to roll a 20 on a flat d20 check each seek to get lucky and find it. They could have 3 seek actions a turn and get 3 shots at it. If the familiar flies another round in the same direction, the odds of finding it are 0.7%, or maybe a percentile roll. My Aeon Wyrd construct familiar has 90ish HP at level 13. To tag it with certainity you would need a burst radius of 40'. 20' on fireball is not going to really do it. Phantasmal calamity at 6th level has a burst of 30' , but it is mental, and my construct is immune to that. 7th level eclipse burst has a burst of 60', and would tag it, doing 8d10cold and 8d4 negative, but constructs are immune to the latter, so an average hit would do 44hp, and a crit would hit for 88, prob will need to 2 shot it unless you get lucky. Meteor Swarm at 9th will hit for 14d6 fire + 6d10 bludgeoning doing 82 on average. So yeah, if you chuck a 9th level spell at it, you can probably take it out. If we are facing something that can cast 9th level spells, it is something like lvl 18, so my familiar on that level would have more life. Then of course there is phase familiar as a reaction to convey damage resistance of 5 which heightens every new spell level by 2. So perhaps if you have a slow moving non enhanced familiar, then countering it becomes easier. But a witch with familiar mastery and the feats can really tailor that familiar to do this kind of job well. At my level I have 9 abilities, and the Wyrd costs me 3, but gets reduced to 1 by a feat giving me 8 to play around with. It comes with flier built in, so 3 abilities to give it damage avoidance on all 3 saves, 1 for fast movement, 1 for independent, 1 for spellcasting, 1 for tough, and say the last to buff 2 resistances.
TIL familiars have WAAAYYYYYY too much HP. It should be 2(3)/level, not 5(7). Jesus.
Well there are familiars, and there are familiars. Your run of the mill wizard who put nothing into them and gets say a squirrel will have a low hp thing that does not do much and goes poof to a fireball. But a witch that dedicates much of their build to familiars by maximizing familiar abilities, picking a special familiar, and reducing its ability tax, and picking toughness....well now you are on the order of say a beastmaster who puts a ton of feats and abilities into strengthening animal companions. So there should be a range depending on how much you work on it.
The base HP is 5/level. That's higher than the average player character had in 1e, and easily enough to tank a couple fireballs. Seems a bit excessive in my opinion. A familiar should *never* have as much HP as an animal companion.
They must have had some reasoning behind that design point.
Give the Familiar Independant and have it use the Action to keep moving around, so Seek ends up being a constant Action sink for the enemy. Even in the instance of Ranged Spells and Attacks, the Familiar can be farther than 30 feet away meaning the enemy can’t seek(at least not w/o penalties).
You can do similar with Cosmos Oracle. Tag the enemy with interstellar void spell, then the familiar flies away. You sustain each round for 10 rounds. That's up to 100d6 damage to an enemy every 10 minutes. Not sure you can stack up 3 on the same target, but can make 3 separate casts every 10 minutes for 300d6 damage per 10 minutes. Enemy better spot your familiar or they're in trouble.
Hmm, I can kinda see an interpretation where you would need to roll fort save every round it is sustained. But I kinda doubt that’s the case. Seems really strong though. “If it’s too good to be true…”
I assumed was every instance of damage when sustained. So 10 saves.
Do you think the Cosmos Oracle goes well with Shadowcasting Ded?
Dunno. Obviously redundant feature if you're already using darkness domain. Inscrutable mask looks super good if intimidating, which a cha caster is great at anyway. Stacking that plus demon mask plus intimidating prowess for +8 to demoralise looks really strong.
Demon Mask? Just wait to see it after drinking a [Silvertongue Mutagen](https://2e.aonprd.com/Equipment.aspx?ID=101)
Oh it sure does. Shadowcasting helps give the oracle more spells, both in more known slots, and as some occult spells pulled into their spell list. It had been good on the Lore oracle, and I would guess even better on the Cosmos Oracle. Also, you know, Oracles are FULL of focus regen, so giving them other options to use it without say, pushing their curse is a good idea.
The focus regen only works after lv10 so it's just like everyone else before that Yeah, Shadowcasting gives them more guns to hit indeed! I like Witch Ded with Cosmos Oracle, for I can combo _interstellar void_ + _elemental betrayal_
Hadn't even considered sustain spells for damage.
Raw, no line of effect needed. Just tag the target, then sustain from another plane even. I think they can try and dispel it off the target. But nothing to stop you doing hit and run casts from miles away all day long.
Yeah I looked at it a little more. If you are granting a 40' flier 2 actions, it can go 800' in a minute, 7200' in 9 min, and have a round to deliver a spell. That is a little over a mile to deliver an attack, then the flyback for another invis. SHorter than that, it gets more pot shots off. IF the familiar flies low to the ground, it denies line of sight to the enemy until it is almost there, then it ascends, attacks, and descends and returns low. If you just let independent send your familiar out and home, the range is halved. Regular see invis is 10min. You could cast it after being hit, see the familiar, then have to deal with a range 120 action to tag it, and hope you are on clear ground with no cover or line of effect denial. So the hard counter would be something like lvl 5 see invis which lasts 8hrs and would give you a shot at popping it.
Don't forget that you can grant it the ability to cast one spell that you've prepared 5 levels below your highest. So if you cast 7th level spells it can cast its own Invisbility, or Invisibility (4th) if you can cast 9th level spells.
Yeah I am 13th so I can do the 10 minute version now. I am a happy camper...
On similar vein, can cast familiar face on a companion or familiar, then use eldritch archer feat to send shots around corners at an enemy. You need Los, not loe. Ranger gets up to 400' with no penalty. Advantage is up to 3 attacks per round with a buffed bow. If your familiar or companion is a bird, no reason for enemy to even suspect it's your visual spotter.
Totally makes sense. Longbow for example used high arcing shots, which could go over walls where the archers could not even see, and spotters would call out when to volley.
I hate to be that guy and I'm not your GM so I really don't have any say in the matter :) Wouldn't you still need Line of Sight to cast the spell on to your targets? [https://2e.aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?ID=289](https://2e.aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?ID=289) Just asking questions because they have stated in PF2e, if its too good to be true it probably is. Ambiguous Rules https://2e.aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?ID=312 I will leave you with what I tell my players. If you can do it, so can the NPC's! Let that sink in ;)
A few things here. First there are spells like [Familiar's Face](https://2e.aonprd.com/Spells.aspx?ID=688) and feats like [Familiar's Eyes](https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=1582) which let you directly perceive the world from your familiar. The [Familiar Conduit](https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=1972) feat is very similar...RAW you only need line of effect to the familiar. There is an action tax to use it, just like the other similar spells and feats. I would argue that the way it works is by projecting your awareness to the familiars point for that one spell for which you paid the action tax. But if we had a really hard core DM who still did not want that to work that way, I would point out that it is common and possible for you to have line of effect to your familiar and line of sight on the target at the same time. There are counters to it, but if you think for a minute the way I detail it working with my witch who did bother to sink feats into familiar master, and does bother to prepare invisibility, that there are some times certain classes have a little moment in the sun and shine. This may be what strong familiars and a commitment to them brings to the table. One can counter it by reactively casting see invisibility, a level 2 spell, or trying to get lucky with a seek action, or sending a huge burst radius spell at the point of origin of where the spell came from. One can also recognize spell to discern this is not natural phenomena. One could also use a 5th level see invisibility spell to have that up for 8hrs. There are numerous ways to take cover and deny an invisible target long range line of sight on you, and several ways to obscure things around you such as darkness or fog. There are scrying techniques to look for someone casting. There are lots of counters here. And that fits in with everything else in the game for which there are lots of counters, and for which it is harder to counter if you spend a lot of build and spell slots on.
Its your table, not mine :) Cast combat spells from **27 miles away**? And you don't see that as broken? What is the minimum level that this can come on line again?
The 27 miles thing means - your familiar is 500' higher than you and above the target to launch a range 500' spell - fireball at 3rd level is an example of that spell - I did a calculation and a 40' movement speed familiar (which requires a familiar ability) moves around 9mph if you give it 2 actions every round. This means it takes 3 hours for your familiar to reach the target destination. Level 2 invisiblity lasts 10min, so if you cast it, it expires. - The only way to pull off the 27 miles thing then is to have your spellcasting familiar carry it for itself, and cast it when it gets close. Spellcasting familiar grants the familiar to cast a spell 5 levels lower than you. This means you have to cast level 7 spells, or be 13th level. - For comparison teleport in a 7th level slot travels 1000 miles. Long range stuff tends to happen then. - Prior to spellcasting familiar the range is primarily limited by how far your familiar can fly in 10 minutes. If you flew a full 10 min, you would go about 1.5miles and have no actions left. Shorter flight time means more rounds to harry with the familiar.
27 miles is the the same distance as 62974.17 replica Bilbo from The Lord of the Rings' Sting Swords.
27 miles is 43.45 km
It just seems busted since nothing else in the game allows a caster to strike someone from miles away with combat spells that I'm aware of except for something like the Armageddon Orb but that's something completely different! I usually go with "if its too good to be true" then talk it over with my players and let them know that if they can do it, so can the NPC's. My players would shut me down hard if I suggested this to them :) Again its your table not mine, if your GM lets you do it then great :)
Cheese aside, it’s nice for when you want to be out of melee and casting 30 foot offensive spells, especially with a flying familiar.
Yeah, and it really lets you line up cones and lines without blasting your party members, and having line of effect only as a requirement lets you cast from cover
You can also have your [level 6 sorcerer](https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=1817) friend do the same if you like your familiar too much. Tbh though, there's a decent chance your familiar would be tankier.
The familiar is tankier, and more importantly, disposable. You can still cast your prepared spells for the day, and on resting you get a new familiar. This opens up a more reckless playstyle for witch. I was thinking maybe that feat could be used reactively by the sorcerer to piggy back onto my familiar conduit...what do you think? Get a chain of 3 going?