Familiars: skill ranks and handle animal

I have been trying to make a Witch for an upcoming game and have run into two problems.

1) How do I factor skill ranks for my familiar. I know I get the same ranks as my master gets in skill he puts a rank into. I also get skills as the base creature (owl). As I level up, does my familiar gain skill ranks as they gain hit dice and intelligence?

2) Familiars start at intelligence 6. What does this mean for how you control them using handle animal? Does it just mean I get more tricks, or does it make it easier for me to handle them. Handle animal is not a class skill for a Witch so I am not sure I could effectively use handle animal on my Familiar. Also at 5th level Familiars can talk to their masters. Does this make it easier to control them?

Thanks, any help would be great.
Nathan

1) How do I factor skill ranks for my familiar. I know I get the same ranks as my master gets in skill he puts a rank into. I also get skills as the base creature (owl). As I level up, does my familiar gain skill ranks as they gain hit dice and intelligence?

He continues to use your skill ranks (which do go up), but the familiars HD are not changing (only matching yours for the purpose of effects), so he isn't getting more ranks of other skills.

As his intelligence goes up he would get more skill ranks to distribute. But the amount would be based on his own HD, not yours (which doesn't go up).

2) Familiars start at intelligence 6. What does this mean for how you control them using handle animal?

It means that you would use diplomacy if it isn't something the familiar would just do for his witch (and in most cases it would).

Sean

Thanks, so I can use Diplomacy to make my Familiar deliver touch spells say (though I hope to avoid this) and I don't need to have my Familiar have have that trick.

Nathan

Yeah, no need to worry about tricks or handle animal for the familiar.

Really, you shouldn't have to worry too much about it with doing their normal thing (delivering touch attacks) either... at least not until it gets smacked around a few times for trying to do so then says it has had enough and doesn't want to do it anymore.

Actually, I would recommend highly that as a witch you do not use your familiar to deliver touch attacks.

The owl is a tiny animal, which means it has a 0 ft threat range. It has to enter the enemies square to deliver a touch attack and doing so provokes an attack of opportunity. While they do get your HP, they aren't REAL tough... and since they are you walking (flying?) spellbook you REALLY don't want him to die. Best to keep him out of melee combat.

Sean

Remember you can also have your familiar deliver beneficial touch spells, and if you have the Healing hex, IIRC you can have it deliver that as well.

Remember you can also have your familiar deliver beneficial touch spells, and if you have the Healing hex, IIRC you can have it deliver that as well.

But why would you want to hit an enemy with those?!?! ;-P

Benchak the Nightstalker wrote:

Remember you can also have your familiar deliver beneficial touch spells, and if you have the Healing hex, IIRC you can have it deliver that as well.

But why would you want to hit an enemy with those?!?! ;-P

Pathfinder: Hard Mode!