So I think I know the answer to this question, but I wanted clarification so I don't steer others wrong.

Say someone wants a cat pet that could cast magic. I'm assuming the sub for such a creature would be a Hell Cat rather than Big Cat or regular Cat, since it is the only one that explicitly states the ability to cast magic. Likewise, if there's some form of magic casting version of an animal similar in appearance to what we're looking for, we should always use that variant as a substitution. With that in mind, my questions are thus:

1. Is my reasoning correct for the cases stated above(Hell Cat for a magic casting cat, etc.)?
2. What would someone do in the case that they wanted a magic casting variant of an animal in the shop but didn't have something obvious like a Hell Cat for felines to substitute with?

My suggestion, if there is not an obvious substitution, would be to buy the animal that you wanted to be a "magic-using" animal, and also buy a version of each spell that you want the animal to be able to cast from the shops (for instance, if you wanted your animal to be able to cast "Bless," but your character also is able to cast "Bless," you would want to own TWO of the item "Bless").

Is that helpful?

Why two Bless? I thought spells were able to be cast by any pet or companion that could cast magic so long as you had one copy? It's owning knowledge rather than owning an object, the way I see it.

I guess my thought behind owning two would be that the item itself would substitute for magical ability in the pet since the pet is not actually able to cast.  I'm gonna grab Moliira or Luthene to help clarify… incoming.

Even though spells aren't like objects, you still have to give your pet that knowledge. It's a balance thing; if you and your cat wanted wield a rapier in a fight (wearing awesome boots, I might add), you'd both need rapiers. Similarly, if you're both casting Bless, both you and Kitty need individual copies of the spell. Things would get really skewed if one copy of a spell was all you'd need, especially with NPC Mage companions and similar NPCs.

That's unfortunate, because I have been operating under the assumption that things were similar to DL and buying multiple spells was considered redundant. This does lead me to have two more questions.

1. For "pets" that are special cases like my custom K.A.T. where they are parasitic in nature and are capable of sharing knowledge with their host without the need of outside implements, do I still need to get a second spell? In this case, K.A.T. learns anything that Natsumi does, but can only cast the defensive spells.

2. What about pets that have natural abilities similar to spells? Consider dragons. Am I going to have to buy two ice breath spells if Natsumi can cast ice breath but her dragon is an ice dragon with that natural ability?

In response…

1.  Since this involves a custom item, I will let Moliira or Luthene respond to that one.

2.  Unless the pet is specifically listed as being able to perform magic/a specific spell, you need to have a separate spell for that dragon to cast.

So I was reading over this and there were just a few questions I had regarding it.  I’ve looked through the NPC stuff that we have on here, and I think it seems a little more…I can’t think of the right word, basically it seems like there are some unfair advantages for this.  For example, in Military Units they can come with weapons and even some spells.  Which makes sense, but then there’s not really a limit on how many units you can have: you could potentially have 1,000 people casting lightning in a field which is a huge advantage against another player.  In fact I find it strange that the Mage NPC is not allotted any spells at all when it seems that they especially should have some.  And yet pets don’t come with a certain amount of spell eithers.  So do you think this should all be looked at again? 

I’m not saying go nuts, but maybe make it something along the lines of: if a pet has the ability to cast then they can share 3 spells with their owner.  Something along the lines of that.  Or even the possibility of a new spell that perhaps “binds” the magick knowledge of a character with their pet that way they can choose a pet for it to work with and assign whatever predetermined number of spells to that pet.  It’d need kinks worked out, but it seems like this could help smooth out this otherwise gray area.  And it would save people silver too.  

For instance, this character and one of my other accounts (Hiromi), have in their plot that they share a body with another soul.  That soul is like a twin and they both share the same spells and whatnot.  For this reason I’ve had to buy NPCs to represent them.  Now, I don’t use them that often, or I try not to as much as I can (the NPCs for them I mean), but they are there.  So in my predicament I would essentially need to buy two of EVERY SPELL for them….that seems a bit drastic.  I’m of course willing to do what I need to do, but this type of thing just seems to present a bunch of nitpicky issues that could be confusing.  

If there was another spell that allowed the caster to bind their magick to their pet/NPC for a certain amount of spells, then I think it could be much easier on peoples’ wallets so to speak.  If the spell allowed you to bond 3 spells then that would cut down the amount of spells needing to be bought by a HUGE amount.  It’s basically the difference of buying 5 spells so that each can have the same 15 spells, instead of 30 spells so that each can have 15.  

In most cases it’s probably just a back up, for instance, I know that I’d want it as a ‘just in case’ because of the item rule.  If I was going to be using the NPC that much that I’d need to use every single spell my character had on a regular basis, well then I’d just create another account for them lol  I know it seems all jumbled and weird and there’d need work done to it, but I think it’s at least something to possibly look into.

I meant to reply to this awhile ago, sorry! 

@Natsumi, for your custom item, because of its nature, I am fine with it sharing spell knowledge with your character.  In regards to dragons, I am going to edit the pet to allow it to have one natural breath weapon of your choice. 

@Naota, one of the aspects of the military units is they are a bit more expensive, plus they decay after awhile.  So they do need to be replaced.  It's a system we're still working a bit to balance, so there might still be changes.  In your example, the mage companion does come with spells, it's the same as the basic starting package.  I will go through and edit those descriptions later to give more detail.

I do like the idea of the spell to share knowledge between the character and their pet, I will float it to the item group.

You just saved me several thousand silver, Cello, and I love you for that. T_T