Improved Familiars don't give you a skill or save bonus like (most) regular familiars do.
Why would you spend the feat? Because Improved Familiars can do useful stuff (e.g. an air mephit can cast Blur and Gust of Wind -- I'd like to see a feat do that!).
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Your DM is correct. By the rules there is no bonus.
Improved familiars are generally useful combat additions and can still do all the normal familiar shtick. Definitely worth a feat (in this case you get blindsense and telepathy and flight - a perfect scout familiar).
In the past I have given bonuses in high-powered campaigns. In that particular case it was a pseudodragon; if I recall it shared its +2 racial bonus against poison.
Benefits of an improved familiar:
-Useful abilities, like burn (fire elementals), breath weapons (mephits), spell-like abilities (mephits), debilitating poisons (pseudodragons)
-Additional modes of movement that are usually superior to standard familiars, like burrow (earth elemental) or swim speeds
-Improved familiars are usually sturdier
-Most can speak (like a raven) and have something else working for them. Psuedodragons have telepathy.
-Many have the ability to manipulate magic items, like monkeys
If those reasons aren't worth more than half of a skill focus feat to you, I don't think you're utilizing your familiar properly.
Perhaps I'm greedy, but why is this?
You are probably the best person here to answer that question.
I find it all to be, at best, ambiguous.
At worst, an oversight from WOTC (hopefully to be rectified by Paizo)
It's not ambiguous.
The Improved Familiars you're talking about don't grant skill bonuses. Nor Smite Evil, nor Sneak Attack...You might think they SHOULD, but they don't. Many posters here think the rules SHOULD work a certain way, but that doesn't make it an "oversight" or "error", it means the game designer has a different opinion than you do.
The multiple reasons mentioned by Sean (above) would give me plenty of reason to take the Improved Familiar Feat. If you're playing a Full Arcane Caster and are worrying about minor Skill Bumps vs. a high-INT, high-mobility Supernatural Companion able to UMD, etc, I think you're missing something.
I have been a big proponent of the Familiar should do something useful for the wizard other than be an expendable scout. The most useful thing suggested on these boards is make the familiar a UMD junky and pass him wands.
I think that familiars should help a wizard with research and spell casting. Looking back at all the Fantasy books I have read it is the mage who never leaves the tower that normally has a familiar. I have never read a book where the familiar was a scout or fire support. They should be there to remind you to close the magic circle or tell you that you need eye of newt to make that wand.
I suggested that familiars should give a +2 to all knowledges, spell craft and concentration rolls. Then improved familiars would bump that to +4.
They get the same 'familiar bonuses', sure. But a Psuedodragon or Imp is still, at it's core, miles beyond better at everything than a Raven.Again, please quantify this with rules.
I was also mentioning the above comment that empowereds were "sturdier"
Thank you.
Well, "sturdier" can mean a lot of things. A quasit that can go invisible at will is fairly sturdy in that it can avoid combat much better than, say, a little dog can. There's also damage reduction, which no base familiar has. Many improved familiars have fast healing, which can greatly increase their survivability.
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Actually,
I looked into it, and I have to agree.
Take a Bat over a Psuedodragon.
At 7th level wizard.
The 7th level wizard will have about 6 + (6d6) hps. If we give him a +1 con bonus, that's 35 hps. So both the bat and the Pseudodragon will have 17hps (that's only 2 more than the base pseudodragon from the bestiary! Despite a 5hit die improvement). The killer is the language under familiars that says 'The familiar uses 1/2 the masters hitpoints, regardless of it's hit dice'. So a d12 Improved Familiar Pseudodragon still only get's 1/4 of it's normal hit points. The text really should be '1/2 the owners hitpoints, or the creatures natural hitpoints, which ever is higher'.
The AC between the pseudodragon and bat are the same, they both get blindsense (the pseudodragon get's beter range and darkvision, granted). The DC 14 poison doesn't seem to scale up, and the psuedodragon doesn't seem to get anything for the extra 5 hitdice except a +1 to one of it's stats and another two feats? But the bat gets that as well.
If the psueodragon could take levels in a class for it's hit dice, like a cohort, or could at least use it's own hit dice, then it would be worth a feat, but... it's really not worth it. For 5 hit dice it get's exactly 2 hps on average. That's pathetic.
Edit : Yep, not forgetting the darkvision and telepathy to 60 ft. But, again, while it's nifty, the familiar already get's that equivalent (the telepathy) with it's owner. So... really can't see boosting a feat for this. I'd probably instead take the pseuododragon as a Cohort at 7th level, you'd get way more bang for your buck that way.
The DC 14 poison doesn't seem to scale up,
I think that the poison DC of the Pseudodragon is tied to HD. DC is 14 and Con based: so 10 +1 for 13 Con +2 for racial. The last +1 would be from half of HD. Furthermore, from the PRD
Each additional dose extends the total duration of the poison (as noted under frequency) by half its total duration. In addition, each dose of poison increases the DC to resist the poison by +2. This increase is cumulative.
So, at least in the pseudodragon example, i think it would be a great Improved Familiar.
And then, a dragon is so much cool than a bat :PEDIT
Poison (Ex or Su) A creature with this ability can poison those it attacks. The effects of the poison, including its save, frequency, and cure, are included in the creature's description. The saving throw to resist a poison is usually a Fort save (DC 10 + 1/2 poisoning creature's racial HD + creature's Con modifier; the exact DC is given in the creature's descriptive text).
So yes, poison scale with HD :)
As ZRobs GM... I would just like to put in that perhaps this was a question best asked before taking the feat and playing with it for months now. I will counter with the obvious question in my mind which is why you took a feat you did not want? I am not a min/max or munchkin DM, I award more XP for character development and story then combat overall and LOVE to see my players take feats and skills because they want it to be part of their history (as I assumed was the case with zrob) or because it fits their character concept. I know I would feel cooler walking around the local wizard clubhouse with a psudodragon on my shoulder instead of a bad hovering about me. I believe there are MANY rules in D&D and now Pathfinder that don't completely make sense... but that doesn't mean everyone's goal has to be to eek out the last little dregs of bonuses. Improved familiar is there for the people who want it, which obviously some of you do. Plus I would argue that having spent a feat on that familiar means that you are going to damn well use it, care for it and not tend to forget its around... so you will overall see a bigger benefit anyway. That's my more then 2 cents.
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Actually, I looked into it, and I have to agree.
Interesting; I don't. :)
The poison doesn't scale up because the PD (pseudodragon) isn't earning the HD, he's inheriting them from his master. However, every time a creature is inflicted with a poison, the DC increases by +2. While this doesn't make the PD a damage dealer, it's certainly better than a wimpy little bat. ;)
The darkvision and telepathy has been used to great effect by the wizard in my party. It's to the point that I'm thinking telepathy should allow a Will save by the creature that the PD is trying to talk to. Otherwise the PD becomes a super-sleuth and has a built in "detect creatures" spell going 100% of the time. :( I'm also thinking about some kind of line of effect requirement as well.
The ability to fly has been useful as well, but of course the bat has that innate ability as well.
If asked whether the feat was worth it, I think this player would definitely say "yes".
We haven't gotten to the question yet of whether the familiar counts as a creature for the purposes of a teleport spell, or whether the familiar has to roll its own Reflex save for area effect spells like fireball. >D
The question wasn't 'Is this cooler'. Of course the pseudodragon is 'cooler'. And, I'll give that the Poison DC goes up, the pseudodragon is a 7 hit die creature (I missed that under poison).
I just don't think it's mechanically worth the feat, honestly. The big killer for me is the hitpoints. A 7 hit die pseudodragon should have way more than 15 to 20 hitpoints. Most of the improved familiars suffer the same radical hitpoint reduction.
As to telepathy...
Uhm... you do realize that the telepathy only allows you to talk to other people right? It gives no truth sense ability, no way to know if they are lying or not? It's basically, per the RAW, the ability to talk to people without making noise. You even have problems with multiple conversations at once, just like if you were trying to talk to 5 people in one room at the same time on different subjects.
It is not the ability to read someone else's mind, and they have to talk back to you with the telepathy, if they don't want to, they don't.
Improved familiars are supposed to be their own bonus. They come with generally better abilities (poisons, resistances, languages, spell-like abilities). Many of them have melee reach which makes them better at delivering touch spells. Imps and Quasits can cast Commune.
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I think that familiars should help a wizard with research and spell casting. Looking back at all the Fantasy books I have read it is the mage who never leaves the tower that normally has a familiar. I have never read a book where the familiar was a scout or fire support.
Read some of Steven Brust's books sometime.
I suggested that familiars should give a +2 to all knowledges, spell craft and concentration rolls. Then improved familiars would bump that to +4.
Familiars have the same skills at the same ranks as the master. They therefore can serve as a second (or second chance) roll for knowledge skills, or a constant +2 Aid Another bonus for ALL the master's skills.
Actually,
I looked into it, and I have to agree.Take a Bat over a Psuedodragon.
At 7th level wizard.
You also should look at a celestial familiar. This will give your familiar resist acid, cold and electricity 10, DR 5/evil, Darkvision, SR 12 and a smite evil.
Now, if you have a celestial monkey, can it talk due to it's heightened intelligence and/or linguistics skill?
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I think the improved familiar also grants you Alertness by the rules.
As a min/max kind of guy, I think getting an imp familiar at 7th is a terrific bargain compared with my current rat familiar.
Commune 1/week is something the cleric can't even do yet, along with a suggestion with a decent DC, invisibility along with good stealth and scouting skills and detect good/magic at will (lets me prep some different cantrips), a 50ft perfect fly speed, weapon finesse for a +8 attack, and the ability to change into combat forms? And unlike a raven or monkey, there doesn't seem to be much ambiguity over whether an imp can UMD if you have ranks in it.
The pseudodragon is a weak choice - it's better to judge the feat on the best things you can get (air elemental, earth elemental, imp, quasit), than the worst stuff.
Plus, my wizard is a Chelish summoner who worships Asmodeus, so having his own imp is pretty much a requirement just for style points :D