Would a leshy familiar need to have his first familiar ability set to land speed? The leshies I looked at in the bestiary all have a land speed, and the familiar rules seems to indicate that he needs to have one as well.
Unless there is something in Leshy Familiar that overrides the general familiar rules regarding Movement, then the familiar should already have a land speed (or a swim speed if that was chosen instead - but that would be a strange choice).
That makes some sense, but I'm not sure how it fits in with "If your familiar is an animal that naturally has one of these abilities (for instance, an owl has a fly Speed), you must select that ability." from the Familiar and Master abilities on that same page. Herolab online seems to think you have to select "Land Speed" as one of the familiar's abilities, since if you create a familiar in HLO it has no movement speed at all until you do. HLO could be wrong, but...
That makes some sense, but I'm not sure how it fits in with "If your familiar is an animal that naturally has one of these abilities (for instance, an owl has a fly Speed), you must select that ability." from the Familiar and Master abilities on that same page. Herolab online seems to think you have to select "Land Speed" as one of the familiar's abilities, since if you create a familiar in HLO it has no movement speed at all until you do. HLO could be wrong, but...
It is wrong.
Source Core Rulebook pg. 218 3.0
“Your familiar has either a Speed of 25 feet or a swim Speed of 25 feet (choose one upon gaining the familiar). It can gain other movement types from familiar abilities.”
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I've never used HeroLab. But I do know that Pathbuilder is pretty bad at representing familiar rules accurately.
Looking at the Druid's Leshy Familiar feat, a Leshy familiar just uses the standard familiar rules. So it would have a land speed already.
The rule about a familiar's shape requiring picking a particular ability permanenty is to avoid people trying to get abilities for free by choosing a particular shape for their familiar. For the most part I ignore it and just also ignore any rules text for the animal that the player chooses.
'Oh, you picked a bird for a familiar. Cool. No, it doesn't fly unless you pick an ability that gives it a fly speed. But have fun with your chicken familiar.'
At this point I would prefer not to apply house rules to this situation.
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I guess the houserule would be allowing a bird that doesn't fly as a familiar. I'm not quite sure that I would call that a houserule though.
But RAW, if you have a general familiar, if the animal chosen has a feature or ability that would qualify as a familiar ability - such as scent, a fly speed, a burrow speed, darkvision, or something like that, then the player would have to permanently pick that ability each day.
Specific familiars don't have that rule. But they also don't allow picking any animal from the book for their shape. The specific familiar lists out what abilities that the familiar has automatically and how many general ability slots have to be sacrificed in order to get the familiar.
I was referring to your comment about ignoring things in the rules.
<sigh> I'll submit a bug report to Wolflair and see what they say.
I did a bit of testing in Herolab. If I create a druid, his leshy familiar has no land movement speed unless I give him one through familiar abilities. But the Ancestry page for the familiar has a tab at the bottom that says "familiar movement" and then "(0 of 0)". If I try to enter a movement speed there, I get an error.
Create a witch instead, that "familiar movement" tab says "(0 of 1)" and giving *this* leshy a land speed is fine, no problem.
Bug report submitted.
I've never used HeroLab. But I do know that Pathbuilder is pretty bad at representing familiar rules accurately.
Pathbuilder represents the familiar rules exactly as intended by its developer, whose interpretation of said rules just so happens to differ greatly from your typical roleplayer...
I've submitted bug reports and had discussions with him on the matter, but he just won't budge.
It will probably take a Paizo developer to change his mind.
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Herolab online seems to think you have to select "Land Speed" as one of the familiar's abilities, since if you create a familiar in HLO it has no movement speed at all until you do. HLO could be wrong, but...So they officially think that the base familiar is a pet stone :-D
Also, I'd point out that there is no familiar ability 'Land speed' at all, as you can youself see in books or on AoN: Familiars
It doesn't exist. The closest you can get is Amphibious in case a familiar already has swim speed. But it then has swim speed from the start, for free.
There ARE some familiars that start with no movement: baba yaga and star orb familiars. So it's not unheard of.
"The object familiar has no Speeds and must select a Speed familiar ability before it can move, coming to life in a way appropriate to the chosen Speed and using the statistics of a normal familiar for that day."
"The familiar has no Speeds and must select a Speed familiar ability before it can move, animating in a way appropriate to the chosen Speed and using the statistics of a normal familiar for that day; when it‘s an immobile stone, it can't select any familiar or master abilities that require it to move."
Herolab folks said basically "That's interesting", showed me how to give them a token by which they could access the character in question, and said they'll look into it.
In more fooling around with it, it appears that only the leaf druid has this problem with his familiar.
Herolab decided it's a bug and fixed it, so now all familiars get to choose a land speed or a swim speed separately from their two or more familiar abilities.