On the familiar ritual: If my mage character hadn't had his familiar before he came to Amia, I believe I would have RPed it here. In his story, the creature that is now his familiar actually followed him for a good while without actually being attached to him. And since he is a sorcerer, when he performed the ritual, he wasn't especially certain of what he was doing, other than it felt right. For him, it consisted of spending a day "thinking" at the creature until it eventually "thought" back. Or at least, it "felt" back. As a sorcerer, I RP his link as a lot more emphatic, than explicitly telepathic, though after being at someone's side for 100+ years, I imagine there's not much difference in the end game. They're to a point now where to anger one is to anger the other. And even more interesting, their emotions sometimes seek through the other, the familiar betraying feelings that the master might be masking and the master subtly getting feedback upon the familiar's contentment near or far. He may even use it as an emotional reservoir at time. If he's in a situation that he can't afford to be angry in, he briefly shunts a bit of that emotion over to his familiar, though he doesn't often do this, because as the two are one, it eventually comes back to him in one form or another anyway.
On the death of a familiar: I actually RP the familiar's body staying a lot of the time. If the master wants him to teleport away before he gets killed, he usually unsummons him manually. Beyond the initial pain(magical damage), I don't RP any extra penalties. On an emotional level, if the familiar dies, my mage feels a brief emptiness or loss of a subset of his consciousness. But after that, nothing. And that nothing is actually the sensation that lets him know the thing has been killed, as he's used to getting constant feedback. Like feeling the clothes on your body, you feel them throughout the day to the point where it kind of falls to the background of your senses, but if your shirt were to suddenly disappear you'd become well aware that you didn't have one on very quickly.
Telepathy: Again, my mage does not usually consciously communicate with the familiar on a telepathic basis. Instead, he subtly experiences what it does, is doing, and what is being done to it when in proximity. However, he does possess it quite often. And the familiar sometimes gives him an emotional "heads up" to let his master know that "There's something you'd probably like to see now" or "there's something I can't understand/confused/help me." If he wants the familiar to do something on its own, he communicates it by simply the emotion or feeling itself. Instead of "pick up that box, familiar" like telepathy would have, he creates the sensation in his head of picking up the box as his familiar. And this intent of will alone is enough to let the familiar know what is request of it.
Possessing: When possessing it, he fully sees, experiences, and feels the familiar's body. And he can still feel his to a certain extent, though his body now feels like the familiar's body usually feels, distant and only subtly. He could be alerted to come back to his body by pain, his name called or a good shove, but by no means would he have to. It kind of sucks that NWN mechanics make you auto-un-possess on being damaged, because my mage actually uses his familiar tactically, and sometimes taking the brunt of the enemy's blows while possessing his familiar to carry out an intricate action is part of the plan. I'd at least wish there was a concentration check and just an alert that you were damaged.
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