Hey Mr. Jacobs, sorry to necro part of the thread from 8 years ago, but the situation my wizard seems to be rapidly approaching makes the content a bit relevant to where I would love and appreciate your input:
... 1) what happen when the "master" of a familiar or animal companion die?
2) How fast it will happen?1) The familiar or animal companion can no longer advance in power as a familiar or animal companion, but does not lose the bulk of its current powers, although those abilities and features dependent on the master no longer function. A witch's familiar's "expiration date" for spells it knows is an exception, and yes it does seem a bit harsh. My suggestion would be to ignore that rule, honestly. It doesn't really make sense to me, nor is it fair to the witch herself. In any event, the creature does not get to grant its powers or abilities to another person.
2) Immediately.
So my wizard has had 3 close calls with death in the past month, one of which could have brought her 1 point from death. As such I was trying to plan for the seemingly-inevitable fate, when the party's vivisectionist alchemist joked about using his Torturous Transformation feature to put a permanent Anthropomorphic Animal effect on my red panda familiar (Pilferer archetype) and then following up with Awaken, and then I just play my familiar. I'm pretty sure it doesn't work, since the familiar is considered a magical beast (not to mention Int > 2 for Awaken), but it did lead me to a couple questions:
1) I'm assuming yes, but just in case, would the familiar retain its Magical Beast type after the wizard's death? Asking in case of a way to apply Anthropomorphic Animal
2) Given the familiar is intelligent, would it be possible for this familiar to, say, gain class levels over time? Or is there some factor I'm missing for gaining class levels?
3) Would it end up rapidly leveling up by going that route since the familiar is still technically 1HD, or would it be suddenly incredibly compromised since its HP was based on the higher between its base HP or half the (now-dead) wizard's max?
Yes I realize this might result in a knock-off Rocket Raccoon scenario 😅 Thank you for your time!
Edit: Forgot to mention, campaign is 1e