Bug with familiar and -constitution.

[TinyMage]

1. If your familiar dies your constitution is set in red, permanently ( at least as far as I can tell ).

 

2. If you re-raise your constitution permanently with a book ( and probably by other means ) it is still in red.

 

 

This is basically a seperate bug, but if you use the girdle / potion of fortitude it sets your constitution to 18. But if you have killed a familiar and you constitution is now 1 or more less then it was, the girdle and potion will both set your constitution to lower then 18.

 

Even if you use a book to increase your constitution back to the original value, the girdle and potion of fortitude will set it back to 18 - ( however many times you lowered your constitution ).

[CamDawg]

Hmm, sounds like the CON loss spell effect is using the wrong timing mode.

[devSin]

I argue that this is correct. When your familiar dies, you get an unrecoverable -1 penalty to your constitution score, which cannot be recovered by Lum's machine or the book or the girdle or potion or any other means. You'll always be weaker than you were.

 

This actually makes me reconsider all the other timing mode = 9 = bad "fixes." The only one actually screwed was Anomen's, and then only because he was using set (instead of increment). Grr, I guess I'll have to check how all these really work in-game.

 

Regardless, I don't think there's a spell actually attached to the effects, here (instead, it's just hard-coded bye-bye constitution and HP). Somebody else will have to go on the hunt to be sure, though.

[Idobek]

In my mind red=temporary/recoverable change and white=permanent/unrecoverable change. Therefore, the CON loss from a familiar dying should be white.

[Caedwyr]

Why is it an unrecoverable -1 penalty? I thought the deal was that the player just lost 1 constitution for the familiar dying. I don't have the game installed at the moment, but does it say that you will always be weaker than you were somewhere in the familiar spell description?

[BevH]

Description of the Find Familiar spell:

 

This spell enables the caster to attempt to summon a familiar to act as his aid and companion.  Familiars are typically small creatures.  A creature acting as a familiar can benefit a wizard, conveying its sensory powers to its master, conversing with him, and serving as a guard/scout/spy as well.  A wizard can have only one familiar at a time, and he has no control over what sort of creature answers the summoning, if any come at all.

 

(Note: This spell may only be cast by the protagonist.)

 

This creature is always more intelligent than others of its type (typically by 2 or 3 Intelligence points), and its bond with the wizard confers upon it an exceptionally long life.

 

The wizard has an empathic link with the familiar and can issue it mental commands.

 

The caster receives half the familiars total hit points as bonus hit points.  However the caster must take care to treat his familiar well, for if the familiar should die, the caster loses the bonus hit-points and half the familiar's hit-points as damage.  Also, when a familiar dies, the caster loses 1 point of Constitution PERMANENTLY.

 

Example:  A mage has 12 hit points and casts find familiar.  The imp summoned has 18 hit points, so the caster gets a bonus of 9 hit points.  The caster now has 21 hit points.  If the familiar dies the caster loses 9 hit points (putting him back at 12), 1 point of constitution permanently (which may cause additional hit point loss), and takes 9 damage.

[CamDawg]

In my mind red=temporary/recoverable change and white=permanent/unrecoverable change. Therefore, the CON loss from a familiar dying should be white.

Agreed.

[Caedwyr]

I always understood PERMANANTLY as meaning it doesn't go away with time. Things like Wish, or other ways of bypassing the normal rules such as the Tomes, or the Machine of Lum the Mad would fall outside of what I'd consider 'normal' changes.

[devSin]

In my mind red=temporary/recoverable change and white=permanent/unrecoverable change. Therefore, the CON loss from a familiar dying should be white.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I agree to an extent, but it has nothing to do with color. In your mind, a lot of the bonuses you get throughout the game would be temporary/recoverable, except that BioWare only used red for the basic attributes (most everything is applied as an attached effect). In my mind, the difference is more akin to actual vs. base instead of temporary vs. permanent.

 

That said, the way I think the engine handles this means that the red bonus always wins (although you can get back to your previous constitution, it's actually 1 less than your base constitution, which never changed). This has absolutely no effect in-game (whether it's red or white, you're still always going to have (base - penalty) + bonus constitution) until you start to think about temporary or equipped effects. If your gloves set your constitution to 18, you're actually going to be at 17 with the "red bonus" but 18 with "white." I wouldn't be terribly worried about that, but it's also true for bonuses -- if you get +1 "red bonus" to strength, and drink a frost giant strength potion to set strength to 24, you'll end up with 25 strength, which may or may not have been the original intent. This is true with most of your saving throw or XP or class or kit attribute bonuses -- the only difference is that you just can't see it in-game.

 

Since there's not anything that can actually be done in this case (until somebody proves otherwise), I'm not willing to put any amount of thought into it.