Warlock familiars and stealth

[Rias]

Staff have been discussing the fact that warlock familiars are doing a very good job of tying up mobs while stealth characters snipe with impunity. The mobs waste all their time chasing the harmless familiar around instead of searching for who's actually trying to harm them. This goes against the familiar's design intent: As Warlocks may have noticed, mobs will prefer to ignore familiars completely if any other viable targets are around (and visible to that mob). They were designed this way from day one specifically to prevent familiars from being utilized as a "tank". Their distract ability is their only intended defense utility (in their basic form, anyway - additional abilities pending), while measures were taken to specifically prevent their being used as an alternative target in the room that mobs focus on while ignoring real threats.

We are brainstorming how to handle this situation. I didn't want to just drop a changelog one day and say "Sorry, that's gone now" out of the blue. I want to give any Warlocks that depend on this functionality some warning as well as an opportunity to suggest solutions. Our current idea we're kicking around is: When a Warlock hides, their familiar hides with them. Familiars are generally assumed to be constantly bobbing around their master's position, only flitting away from them to perform specific brief tasks (like the distraction procs) and then coming back. With this change, when familiars are hidden in the same room as their master, a familiar won't be discoverable individually by others who are SEARCHing, but will instead be revealed to any searchers who search out the familiar's summoner. This would mean the familiar doesn't need to have any Stealth skill when hidden alongside its master.

[Navi]

Might be worth considering allowing the warlock to remain in a hidden position if they are searched out and an intercepted attempt to drive them out is made.
For example. Warlock is hidden, and snipes an infested lumberjack. Lumberjack traces the shot back and attempts to make an attack, but the familiar intercepts, allowing the warlock to rehide, or flee. I suppose if the familiar is expected to return to the warlock, their hiding position could be revealed, but this adds some nice functionality for stealthy warlocks.

[jerc]

Me on Discord:

Huge unwritten benefit of the little dudes - mobs never search for the hidden warlock. (no nerf pls)

I specifically requested no nerfs! /s

The familiar hiding with the warlock sounds like the right approach to me. There have been plenty of times where I've actually wished that was the way it behaved, like when I'm skulking around with no intention of actually fighting anything, but mobs continually take shots at the poor lil guy and drain his energy with all of the avoiding he does.

I'll be sad that life will get a little harder, but this is definitely the right call

[Rias]

P.S. We're also planning to have shaol-levitated items behave similarly, where they become hidden if their master is hidden, and are discovered if their master is discovered rather than being individually search-able. So these updates should help the stealthers with familiars or floating items remain stealthy, and not have those awkward situations such as your floating backpack giving you away when you try to sneak in and eavesdrop on a conversation, or questions like "why aren't the Liberi reacting to the fact that a barrel is just floating around on its own through the streets of Valeria?"

[Maina]

Hiding along with their other half, only discoverable when their other half is, makes a lot of sense to me and seems totally fair.

I would just request that they are and remain able to intercept attacks while hidden.

I haven't really done the stealth attack thing, as I am kind of sick of playing stealth archers/spellslingers after The Other Game, but it was always amusing hiding to heal and watching the familiar just infinitely tank blows.

[nobody]

P.S. We're also planning to have shaol-levitated items behave similarly, where they become hidden if their master is hidden, and are discovered if their master is discovered rather than being individually search-able. So these updates should help the stealthers with familiars or floating items remain stealthy, and not have those awkward situations such as your floating backpack giving you away when you try to sneak in and eavesdrop on a conversation, or questions like "why aren't the Liberi reacting to the fact that a barrel is just floating around on its own through the streets of Valeria?"

I will miss some of the shaol silliness, but that is overall very welcome