Familiars and Fiendish / Celestial template


Rules Questions


So, I'm trying to figure out if a familiar's celestial and/or fiendish templates would advance as it's master levels up. The Familiar data says that the familiar uses 'the base creature's HD or the master's HD, whichever is higher,' which would indicate that, at a certain point, it would upgrade with the familiar's master.

Shadow Lodge

It stands to reason


I think it ought to, because the templated improved familiars are really wimpy compared to the others otherwise, but Creative Director James Jacobs, whose opinion is not definitive, disagrees.

James Jacobs wrote:
Benchak the Nightstalker wrote:
James Jacobs wrote:

The rules say: "For the purpose of effects related to number of Hit Dice, use the master's character level or the familiar's normal HD total, whichever is higher."

This means that effects that target HD, such as cloudkill or circle of death or sleep, target your familiar as if it has your level in HD or its racial HD, whichever is higher. It's ACTUAL racial HD do not change at all, and thus it doesn't gain ability score boosts or new feats, nor does the DC associated with its special abilities increase.

To increase those, the familiar's actual HD need to go up. There's not really a way in game at this point to really do this, but that might change at some point.

That would mean that Celestial familiars don't get any of the increased HD bonuses from the Celestial template (higher energy resistances, DR/Evil), right?

Correct.

Familiars aren't really meant to be combat buddies. They're not supposed to be things you want to be doing things in combat. Improved Familiars are a little better at it... but they also have access to abilities that help them get away from a fight as well.


Well, Fuzzy, Creative Director James Jacobs needs to take a good, hard look at the Mauler archetype. Because my Mauler fiendish fox has been pretty effective at acting as a distraction while I throw around magic. :P


Heh. I suppose I should have noted that the quote is from April 2011, but I wasn't thinking about Maulers... I doubt his other thoughts, on what "effects related to number of Hit Dice" means, have changed because of that, anyway.


Fair enough, I suppose.

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