If you let your Apprentice gain a familiar during apprenticeship, can your apprentices familiar aid you in the lab?
I would assume that your Apprentice would also need to be helping in the lab.
The rules say familiars can act as lab assistants, even without having the Gift.
It does not say they can only help their own magus, or that their magus even needs to be present.
So if the familiar in question knows Magic Theory, and is willing, and you have a sufficiently high Leadership score, I can think of no reason why it couldn't assist in the lab.
Even in those few cases where your apprentice has bound a familiar, its (Int + Magic Theory) will most likely not be high enough for it to be of much help though.
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And of course you start to need Leadership to coordinate two or more helpers. There's an exemption for your Familiar, but not for other people's.
Also: is it at all common for an apprentice to have a Familiar? Is this a cunning scheme by the Parens to get more assistants?
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No, it is highly uncommon for an apprentice to have a familiar. Not impossible, but not common at all.
The typical apprentice is kept too busy to have time to search out a potential familiar, let alone have a free season available to bind any that they find. Apprentices also typically have too low Lab Totals to be able to bind any but the weakest familiars.
But, exceptions can exist.
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While it would be rare for an apprentice to bind a familiar, as ErikT mentioned, it would generally be weaker familiars.
That said, there are two things that can help here:
- Said apprentice has the Magical Animal Companion Flaw, and binds it as a familiar. That would get rid of the looking for a suitable familiar, and taking the time to befriend it.
- Said apprentice has something like Magical Focus, and invested in the suitable Arts, and therefore has a reasonable (30+) Lab Total, which means he's also close to his Gauntlet, and his parens encourages him to find and befriend a magical creature to bind.
Some years ago, in a saga now long dead, we had an apprentice with a rather heavy focus on Terram - particularly stone/rock. He encountered, befriended and eventually bound as a familiar, a magical, floating stone.
It was a silly saga, in some ways.
It would be incredibly rare for a familiar to be bound as an apprentice.
That said, most low-powered magical beasts would be possible - a mouse is size -9 IIRC, a cat or raven would be -3, and those lower the lab difficulty nicely.
Now I have an idea for a fun Ex Misc hedge tradition....
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Is there a market to "pound" a Familiar as assistants?
I mean there is stigmata for Magi to assist another Magi past their gauntlet which limits such activities... mostly to Magi that did lesser crimes or those that have no respect for themselves.
Is the order more open to pawning their familiars?
How much would the service cost?
Are Magi too paranoid about sharing secrets?
Do I need to update my Ars Order of Hermes paradigm to include "familair parties" where they all assist a given magi to create awesome effects? Can the familiar then write a labtext of said effect?
W
Wrong question.
Are familiars willing to hire themselves out as lab assistants?
Probably not. At least not unless they get paid very well for the service.
May be the wrong question but yours is also not the answer to my questions.
I'll try again.
Does the Order hold the same stigmata toward familiars being lab assistants than it does for Magi?
If not, then we should talk about how it is being handled within the order as these familiars become quite the prize & Magi having a familiar suddenly have a new dimension to explore. I say new as I haven't seen any hint anywhere that familiars are/can assit in labs other than their bound Magi. No writings about how many pounds they would accept as payments, no story hooks of lab accidents or a Magi refusing to give back the said familiar, nothing.
I think it is an interesting concept and we should define it a bit better.
W
My take on it:
- The Order doesn't have the same stigma attached to a Familiar helping another Magus.
- I would say that a Familiar can't help another Magus in the lab unless the Magus he's bound to his also assisting.
- The Stigma is less prevalent when it's a Fili helping his Parens in the lab.
- The Familiar in question has to agree to assist. Remember, a bound Familiar is intelligent, and might have his own dislike to a particular Magi, and might refuse to help him.
- The payment depends on what the concerning parties agree to. And yes, that includes the Familiars. After all, what the familiar wants, and what his Magi wants, might not align 100% all the time.
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probably as open as the average real person is to pimping their wife.
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So... depressingly much more common that most of us would like to imagine?
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Beside the stigmata (or not), there is the aspect of trust.
The familiar is probably the best friend of the magi. Is the magi ready to leave his best friend within the sactum of another magi, a place where only the law of said magi prevail ? My guess is that a magi will only "lend" his familiar to his most trusted friend. And if it is such a trusted friend, probably the mage won't mind the stigmata associated to helping a friend and becoming his assistant as well.
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#2 makes it go back to my normal setting
Also means that virtually no familiars assist in the lab of other Magi because having a familiar elevates bound Magi and with that, makes it that much less likely to assist in lab work.
#4 I personally believe the relationship varies quite a bit from familiar being a slave/frenemy to the Magi being a slave to Familiar passing through true love or just transactional relationship. Adds depth to the answer of "Can I bind the Dragon?" Question.
That being said, I have been thinking of a Merinita that offers temporary familiars to apprentices in exchange for a future favor. Helps the master, apprentice and Merinita Magi.
W
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#2 is my own headcanon, and isn't RAW.
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I'd happily allow it, should an apprentice have a familiar.
Would the familiar even want to? Well, they're tied closely to the apprentice, so if the apprentice wants to? Sometimes this is slave labour, but if finishing the project quickly and without fuss means the familiar gets more time with the apprentice, so here I can see a motivation.
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I let my best friend play with others... I even let them get a job and have a family of their own.
I get that Familiars can be a bit more than just best pals....
RAW seems to support that Familiars can assist in the lab without the presence of their bonded Magi. Not sure if it goes as far as sharing the gift or if it just gives them access to working with people with the Gift.
Imagine a Summer covenant where the Magi are still close and willing to share familiars for assistance in the labs. It really gives a boost to the value of spending the ressources to secure a familiar. I mean, each familiar can probably grant a +5 to the lab total. Say the covenant has 3, that is a +15 readily available. The Charter might even regulate the use by saying that a Magi can request the assistance of Familiars for covenant sanctioned lab projects. I'd say that abuse of Familiars is one of the signs of a autumn covenant leaning on winter.
W
Don't forget that that "+15" lab bonus requires Leadership 3 (or, more likely, 2 specialised in Lab Work). That's a significant investment, and you only get other Familiars when their owner isn't working in the lab. (And this is assuming maximum cooperation; personally, I think you only get someone else's Familiar if you've persuaded the mage to help you as well. But that's just my opinion: I think the rules support what you are suggesting.)
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