The Homunculous seems to occupy an odd grey space in the rules. It is a construct, with specific rules in the Bestiary on the requirements to create them (including the Create Construct feat), yet they also occupy a slot in the Improved Familiar feat.
Can you create and use a Homunculous without the Improved Familiar feat? I see nothing in RAW that requires it, but it seems to be an implied requirement.
If the Improved Familiar feat is required, why is that the case? If a wizard enchants a Shield Guardian, no one expects him to take Leadership and make it his cohort, so why insist on the Improved Familiar feat for a homunculous?
But if the Improved Familiar feat is not required, why would anyone *ever* take the feat for a Homunculous. The Homunculous (and master) gain nothing significant enough from the pairing that makes it worth sacrificing the ability to have a different familiar *in addition* to a garden variety homunculous.
Any thoughts? How do you run it in your games (assuming it ever came up), and what drove the decision?
With the Craft Construct feat, you can make a homunculus that is not a familiar.
If you take the Improved Familiar feat, I would assume that the character was able to make ONE homunculus, but can't make anymore.
Everytime I've played an arcane caster (in PFRPG and 3.5) I end up taking Craft Construct; at that point homunculi are cheap to create and worth the effort. If I lose a familiar and I've got Craft Construct, I always grab Improved Familiar as soon as I can and bind one of the homunculi. Why? Construct-type, Darkvision, immune to mental attacks, disease, and necro effects in addition spell resistance, natural armor...well you get the idea. Definitely worth it IMO...that is until an acid fog eats all six of your homunculi (including familiar) within a few rounds and you take almost 50 damage from their death throes... Although, that can be attributed to bad rolls and poor strategy.
In games I've ran, I limit the number of homunculi per caster to their HD.
I believe the overall effect of the Improved Familiar feat with the homunculous is just to give you the benefits of both a familiar and a homunculous. Any caster may choose to make a homunculous without the Improved Familiar feat, but never gets the benefits of it acting as his familiar as well.
I think that manufacturing a homunculus familiar would be an excellent 6th level discovery for alchemists. They're 7th level as Improved Familiars for wizards, but I figure that alchemists are better at making such things than anyone else. (Plus, they shouldn't need to take an Extra Discovery feat to get one at 7th.)