Sha'ir Occultist: Protecting Familiars that aren't Familiars


Advice


The Sha'ir archetype for the Occultist, although kind of underpowered, is a really appealing flavour to spin a character around and eliminates the need to (possibly literally, in some cases) juggle items in order to cast your spells. But I have a bigger problem in planning a Sha'ir than having fewer Resonant Powers and strangely staggered spell access: making sure your little Jin buddies aren't easily killed.

The Jin aren't familiars, so they don't have some of the built-in defenses of the traditional Wizardly/Witchy/etc. pals like Improved Evasion or, later, Spell Resistance. Sure, they use your base saves if better than their own (thankfully, Occultist has 2 good saves, Fort and Will, and the Jin other than Earth have good Reflex) and have half your hit points (so picking up Toughness and improving your own Con will technically give them a bit more). Being Elementals, they're immune to precision damage and several nasty afflictions, but AoE damage is their real problem, like most companions.
The Air Elemental Jin has a 100 foot, perfect maneuverability fly speed, so it will fare a bit better than the others by flying in the air, and the Fire Jin has a fast land speed, but the Earth Jin's burrow speed may not work in all terrain and the poor Water Jin is stuck with its measly 20 foot speed unless you're underwater. Furthermore, regardless of which you pick, they can't be more than 30 feet from you if you want to have access to your spells, Resonant Powers, and Focus Powers (and you can't put them in an extradimensional space because that would mean they're on a different plane from you).
The most troubling non-combat issues are that Fire Elementals cannot enter any non-flammable liquid, such as water, and that commoners may freak out a bit when someone walks through a little farming hamlet with multiple Tiny Outsiders in tow.
The most obvious solution is a Familiar Satchel:

Familiar Satchel wrote:
This armored case provides total cover to any Tiny or smaller creature contained within it. It includes air holes (which can be plugged with cork stoppers if you need to go underwater) and two receptacles for food and water.

It weighs 6 pounds, only costs 25gp, and does not specify that the creature needs to be a Familiar, though it doesn't say what material it's made of. A Jin, being a Small Elemental with the Young template (and therefore Tiny-sized), would fit in the satchel, though you get an additional Jin at 6th level and 14th level. I'm also unsure if a Fire Jin would burn the satchel if placed inside (maybe if you lined it with something non-flammable?).

So, any other ideas?

On a related note: does anyone know how the HP works when you use Augment Jin?


Did I really think of everything...?


Hosteling Armor is an option as well.


I had looked into that, actually, and Hosteling Armour unfortunately specifies the creature types it works with. The entire entry consistently uses "animal" until the very end where it states "This armor special ability still works on bonded magical beasts that were once animals, but not outsiders, oozes, or other exotic companion creatures." Jin are Outsiders. Hell, even the Metagame Artifact Figurine of the Concealed Companion specifies certain class features the creature needs to be acquired from.
Even if it did allow your Jin to be stored, it states that the stored creature provides no benefit, such as the passive bonus Familiars give, so that would likely include providing the Implement component for Focus Powers and spells.

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