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Thanks all for the input and clarification!

On the sidebar for Aasimar it states that a "small" aasimar, such as a Halfling, can be Small but purely for cosmetic purposes. This sounds like a contradiction. If it's purely for cosmetic purposes then why even mention it. If instead it gets Small properties, bonus size AC, chance to hit, 20ft speed, etc. then it's not "purely for cosmetic purposes". Can someone clarify please what the intent is?

I like that idea blackbloodtroll. I have been trying to encourage them to act a bit more "heroic" anyway so getting them to help the innocents by ambushing a nearby encampment or such will work well. Thanks.

P.S. Claxon, at least our group is not having trouble with fights at all, I am having to ramp up the fights to even make them challenging.

The Campaign is Reign of Winter, a published Paizo campaign, not one of my own. I get the feeling the developers did not want 1/2 of book 2 eliminated by 1 spell.

Well, perhaps it's the campaign we are in, but a lot of it is based around depriving the players from normal survival. It is a barren wasteland and stealing food from camp or other things to cause survival issues is common. This is extremely hard to do if they are actively watching for it and therefore their "reward" is a campaign that doesn't effectively challenge them.

I realize it doesn't "negate" ambushes, but it effectively simply makes them fights. If an entire party can actively watch the surrounding area it's unlikely anything will catch them off-guard. And yes the spell has to be cast again after the fight, but once the caster is high enough he probably doesn't care that he burnt a couple 1st level spells. So how do I prevent a player from abusing this?

How does Keep Watch Spell actually work? It seems like a level 1 spell that can completely eliminate the need for sleep and allow the party to ALWAYS put their best guard on watch every night without the need to make shift changes and have possible ambushes throughout the night.

Awesome help everyone. Thanks to all. I talked over a few of the suggestions here with the player and I think he is happy with a few choices given here. Yes, I realize this is not what RAW states as Quandry pointed out, but I believe a good GM cares more about creating a fun game rather than sticking exclusively to rules and making players unhappy. The changes will definitely make the skunk a bit more offensive than a normal familiar but that is offset by me warning the player that the more of a threat the familiar becomes, the more likely I will target it to neutralize the threat. End result...player is happy, and GM is free to modify combat to make a fun game for all.

Again, thanks for everyone's suggestions.

Well, one of the things the player mentioned was maybe having the skunk's spray DC increase so it is more useful. Or maybe using the advanced template. The problem with both these though is they seem to start improving a familiar to animal companion class and I want to avoid this. He did pick a sorc after all, not a ranger. He did not seem very happy with using a feat for just the Celestial/Infernal/etc template, however.

I am GM'ing a game where a sorcerer has a skunk for a familiar. He wants to take Improved Familiar at level 3 but he wants to keep his skunk rather than simply changing to a new familiar off the new table. I considered using a Celestial/Infernal template. However, I am having trouble finding a good upgrade to make it both worth it to spend a feat on and not overpowered for a familiar. Any suggestions on how to improve it?