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forsaken1111 wrote:

So it turns out the skull is from some sort of demon (I forget the name) which has two heads and uses some sort of barbed tongue from each head to tear people apart and eat them.

Somewhere, there's a demon that wants its second head back. A smell a hook.

Keenath wrote:

Well, since it's a flaming skull that you literally put on ice, it'd make sense that you could permanently nullify the fire and now it's just a skull. As in a Skull Familiar. And then when you hit epic, you've grown in power enough to control its full potential, and you unbind it and it becomes a Blazing Skull familiar.

Of course, the utility of a Skull familiar depends on whether you have at least one Fear power available! You could multiclass and do an encounter power exchange for it; maybe some other people will have suggestions on what would be the best power to exchange. (If not, then there ARE a few sorc spells with fear keyword, but it looks like they're all epic tier.)

Glancing over the list, it looks like there's quite a few Invoker fear powers, but you'd still have to be invested two feats to get one (because none of the at-wills are). AP and the dragon article have given several new fear powers to the Star Pact Warlock, but same costs, and you'd get the annoyingly second-rate Eldritch Blast power. (It would be better if you weren't already a sorcerer, obviously...)

Well seeing as the fear effect only kicks in at epic, I'm not terribly worries. Utility wasn't my first though in picking the familiar up, I just wanted a cool flaming skull. I will look into getting a fear power or two before epic, or maybe my DM would allow it to effect intimidate checks? Either way, we just hit level 2 so it will be a while before I have to worry.

Keenath wrote:

What? The skull familiar (not flaming) is a basic familiar type and has the fear kicker.

If it's of any interest, though, there's always the Student of Malediction warlock multiclass feat (Arcane Power), which would open up a number of encounter-based fear effects.

Sorry I was talking about my proposed flaming skull progression which only gets the fear kicker at epic. I'll consider switching over to an ordinary skull familiar at heroic, I'd have to look at the examples again.

As for the student of malediction, I'll see if I can work that in. I was looking at feat progression today. Not sure where/when I'd stick it in but I'll have a look. Good suggestion.