It’s me again… thank you all in advance.
I a trying to build a familiar. To be precise, an elemental familiar(I know I need a mystery for a spirit familiar).
It seems that you can build some incredibly robust spirits or creature with might in the various supplements. Are these used to construct familiars? Is there a guide on how to build familiars?
Rules for building elementals -- and beings with Magic Might in general -- are in Realms of Power: Magic.
I'm not sure if elementals are included under spirit familiars, though; that would be in The Mysteries: Revised Edition.
Elementals aren't spirits, so they definitely aren't included in spirit familiars.
Elementals are animated chunks of "pure" elemental matter and are magical things rather than magical creatures.
There are no special rules for building familiars. You seek out some existing being (typically a magical animal, but could be a spirit or faerie if you have the virtues needed) that is a potential familiar, and then try to befriend it. It you like it, and it likes you, you can then try to bind it as your familiar.
So it would be built according to the normal rules for magical animals/spirits/faeries.
Thank you for the help! I need to read up on jinn, elemental spirits, geni loci
RoP: Magic uses the term "Spirits of the Elements" to describe noncorporeal spirits associated with an element. These are associated with a specific non-living object -- a stream, a mountain, a hearth-fire. There's probably some confusion because "elemental spirits" are mentioned in earlier books like The Mysteries Revised, and "elemental spirits" is easily conflated with "elementals".
I think RoP:M or potentially Mysteries Revised mentions that there could potentially be a Cult out there teaching a version of the Spirit Familiar virtue that would allow you to bind Magic Things rather than Spirits.
Yes! I got a bit turned around. I’m playing a hermetic shir. Trying to keep spirits straight is a whole new part of the game for me.
Thanks!
The same question came up in our saga the other day, so I did a wee bit of research.
By default, hermetic magi can only take magical animals as familiars. Anything else requires some specific virtue or flaw, or specialized knowledge that is not widespread in the Order.
Spirits of the elements are spirits - so by default they are incorporeal, but some may have the power to manifest into a physical shape. That would vary from spirit to spirit.
It is mentioned in RoP:M that some in the Order may know how to turn a mandrake root into a homonculus that can be bound as a familiar. All the details are left unspecified however.
I’m glad I’m not the only one confused by it. I think we are trying to figure out what things I can summon and or bind.
I’m thankful for the input!
For my first time troupe I loosened some restraints, and for the Bonisagus with the Elementalist virtue, I went and said (after the following event) that the virtue allowed her to bind Elemental Spirits as a Familiar.
This was after her character ran into a homicidal icicle, she thought it was so cute I let her adopt it and Bind it as a Familiar. (It helped that she had Lesser Immunity to Ice and the two of them could co-exist long enough to form a bond)
You're making too much of this non-sentience, I think - they have a Cunning Score, which isn't that different from a mundane animal and some magic ones. An intelligence score isn't a requirement for forging a bond - on the contrary, if the magic animal was bound had cunning, it gains an intelligence score.
You are right that it is not entirely obvious what the author meant when they said «non-sentient». The assumption that cunning means the same thing in an animal, a spirit, and a magic thing, that I find to be an extreme position. I would not describe the more or less cunning mammals as non-sentient.
Non-sentient is not the same thing as non-sapient.
Most animals are sentient, but not sapient.
Main problem with elementals as familiars is that they probably can't form the emotional bonds that are a prerequisite for binding a familiar.
What about a jinn, elemental spirit(not elemental, or a gen loci?
What do you mean, what about them? What is it you want to know?
Well, we do know elementals can be trained, as the stuff on training mentions training them. That section in RoP:M also says this applies to
any magical beast with an animal intellect — that is, those with Cunning (Cun)
So presumably this indicates they have animal-level intellect.
Also, knowing they can be trained, we know they can pick up Loyalty toward a person. So they can certainly develop some sort of individual attachment.
There are only two scales: Intelligence and Cunning (Animal Minds). Some of the published elementals have a higher cunning than most animals - Water has Cunning as primary attributes with a +4 which is huge at might 15, and which scales with might - primary scores go up to +12 at Might 50. I frankly have no idea how far from true intelligence this is, because the game doesn't have a scale that slides from cunning to intelligence like some other games... (Which would have been helpful at the higher end of cunning) But non-sentience is probably not far from how animals would be described in mythic Europe. Instinct is seen not as agency but reactions within a prescribed nature... Almost mechanical. I don't read much more into the word than saying don't use intelligence on this type of character.
"Unable to form emotional bonds" should be represented mechanically by a Flaw; it's something that should be very determinant of a thing's personality. We're told what Flaws an elemental has that affect its personality/mind: Poor Memory, Short Attention Span, Simple Minded. Those plus Cunning instead of Intelligence would already make befriending an elemental enough to form a familiar bond with it a difficult task.
In any event, if your troupe decids that binding an elemental as a familiar requires a Virtue, the Virtue should clearly overcome any "non-sentient" limitation.
"Sentience" is basically the capacity to feel things. (From latin sentiens, "feeling")
This can include both very basic things, like feeling pain or being hungry, to more complex emotions like loyalty or grief.
Sentience is not the ability to think, or to be intelligent, although likely a pre-requisite for that.
Primitive animals, like earthworms or fruitflies, may or may not be sentient, but mammals and birds definitely are.
But, sentient or not, elementals are not animals, and magical animals are the only beings a normal hermetic magus can bind as a familiar. So even if it is theoretically possible to bind elementals as familiars, the vast majority of hermetic magi will not have the ability to do so.