What you do is use mage's skill ranks, add in the familiar's attribute modifier, add in the familiar's class skills. The total is the die modifier for any skills that your familiar attempts to use.
What you do is use mage's skill ranks, add in the familiar's attribute modifier, add in the familiar's class skills. The total is the die modifier for any skills that your familiar attempts to use.So the familiar itself has no skill ranks at all?
Only what it has in the bestiary.
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Skills: For each skill in which either the master or the familiar has ranks, use either the normal skill ranks for an animal of that type or the master's skill ranks, whichever is better. In either case, the familiar uses its own ability modifiers. Regardless of a familiar's total skill modifiers, some skills may remain beyond the familiar's ability to use. Familiars treat Acrobatics, Climb, Fly, Perception, Stealth, and Swim as class skills.
What does this mean actually? How do i even calculate how many skill points my familiar has?
Look up your familiar in the Beastiary (pp 131-3). The skills shown include adjustments for ability, size, feats, etc. You may have to reverse engineer them to see where the ranks are.
Example: Toad has Perception +5, Stealth +21. He has Wisdom 15, Dex 12, and a racial modifier of +4 Stealth. He is diminitive in size. He has Skill Focus (Perception). So, his skills, reverse engineered, are Perception +5 (+0 rank, +2 Wis, +3 feat); Stealth (+1 rank, +3 class skill, +12 size, +4 racial, +1 Dex)
To calculate the toad's skills, calculate his skills as follows: For Stealth, use the better of his 1 rank or the master's ranks. For all other skills (since toad has no other ranks), use the master's ranks to calculate toad's skills, as if toad had those ranks. It is not clear to me if toad gets +3 class bonus for skills in which master has ranks that are then used for toad's skill calc.
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Familiars don't gain hit dice, so he won't get additional ranks until his Intelligence gets to 10. At which point he has additional ranks to invest in skills
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The toad will have his own list of class skills. It would get a +3 for for any of those skills that also have ranks. Wouldn't have +3's for the master's class list of skills.
Familiars do effectively have the same HD as the master, but they are also gaining the same increases to skill ranks & saves as the master when he/she levels up. Their advancement is tied to the master.
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Dont familiars have the same HD as the caster?
Nope. The passage in question is: "Hit Dice: For the purpose of effects related to number of Hit Dice, use the master's character level or the familiar's normal HD total, whichever is higher." (p. 82)
Let's say the familiar is in the AoE of a sleep spell. Sleep is an effect that is dependent on HD. So, use the master's HD to figure out if the familiar is affected. The familiar does not gain other benefits of HD such as skills, saves, BAB, etc., as these are not effects.
Dont familiars have the same HD as the caster?Nope. The passage in question is: "Hit Dice: For the purpose of effects related to number of Hit Dice, use the master's character level or the familiar's normal HD total, whichever is higher." (p. 82)
Let's say the familiar is in the AoE of a sleep spell. Sleep is an effect that is dependent on HD. So, use the master's HD to figure out if the familiar is affected. The familiar does not gain other benefits of HD such as skills, saves, BAB, etc., as these are not effects.
Abilities like Poison, bonuses gained from the celestial/fiendish template, etc. would also be based on the wizard's level.
It should also be noted that the Half-Orc favored class bonus to add skill points to her familiar is utterly wasted, since she's effectively denying herself a skill point.
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Reverse engineering the breakdown of skills for familiars wasn't as easy as I thought once I tried it. Had to ask people with more rules-fu than me to get it straight.
-Animals get (2 + Int mod) ranks, minimum of 1.
-As long as the skill with a rank is Acrobatics, Climb, Fly, Perception, Stealth, or Swim it will get a +3 class bonus.
-Racial bonus is listed in the stat block.
-Tiny grants size bonus of +4 Fly and +8 Stealth
-Small animals like familiar use dex instead of str for Climb and Swim. (This is tucked into the Bestiary entry for familiars in the blurb at the top.)
-Having a swim speed grants a +8 racial bonus to swim.
-Having a climb speed grants a +8 racial bonus to climb.
-Having a Fly speed grants a bonus or penalty based on maneuverability.
Clumsy -8
Poor -4
Average +0
Good +4
Perfect +8
That ought to help you figure out where the ranks are and how to break it down.
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Are you using the 3.5 srd? Because in Pathfinder they do not have a racial bonus to fly. Look here on the prd which is the only official online reference:
http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/monsters/familiar.html#familiar
EDIT: I see where you are getting it. The d20pfsrd lists it as having that racial bonus, but it is incorrect. Turns out they never had a racial bonus to fly in 3.5 either. You should double check mechanics things with the official prd. I like and use the d20pfsrd too, but it does have little mistakes here and there.
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It is a fan maintained site. Very useful, and mostly correct. It also contains much more material than Paizo's prd- including fan generated content.
Paizo's prd is only the Core book, APG, & parts of the GMG, but what it has is the correct and current (errata updated) versions of those books.
If you search for prd rather than srd it is the first thing that comes up.
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Agreed. The pdpfsrd is nicer to look at and easier to use. 98% of the time it has correct info. If something looks strange to you, now you have another place to check.
One other thing you should know. d20pfsrd has incorporated some statements of intent on how the rules should work from designers' forum posts here into the rules over there.
An example-
Under Handle Animal the Combat Training section says this:
Combat Training (DC 20): An animal trained to bear a rider into combat knows the tricks attack, come, defend, down, guard, and heel. Training an animal for combat riding takes 6 weeks. You may also “upgrade” an animal trained for riding to one trained for combat by spending 3 weeks and making a successful DC 20 Handle Animal check. The new general purpose and tricks completely replace the animal's previous purpose and any tricks it once knew. Many horses and riding dogs are trained in this way.
Whereas the d20pfsrd says this:
An animal trained to bear a rider into combat knows the tricks attack, come, defend, down, guard, and heel. Training an animal for combat riding takes 6 weeks. You may also “upgrade” an animal trained for riding to one trained for combat by spending 3 weeks and making a successful DC 20 Handle Animal check. The new general purpose and tricks completely replace the animal’s previous purpose and any tricks it once knew. Many horses and riding dogs are trained in this way. (An animal trained in this way counts as trained for war, and becomes proficient with all forms or armor. See FAQs and Animal Type.)
They were a bit overzealous in inserting the text at the end there and it actually directly contradicts the current Paizo FAQ which says you have to spend mount feats to get armor proficiencies.
Anyway- you get the idea. I'll stop derailing the thread now. :P
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Whereas the d20pfsrd says this:
An animal trained to bear a rider into combat knows the tricks attack, come, defend, down, guard, and heel. Training an animal for combat riding takes 6 weeks. You may also “upgrade” an animal trained for riding to one trained for combat by spending 3 weeks and making a successful DC 20 Handle Animal check. The new general purpose and tricks completely replace the animal’s previous purpose and any tricks it once knew. Many horses and riding dogs are trained in this way. (An animal trained in this way counts as trained for war, and becomes proficient with all forms or armor. See FAQs and Animal Type.)They were a bit overzealous in inserting the text at the end there and it actually directly contradicts the current Paizo FAQ which says you have to spend mount feats to get armor proficiencies.
The additional sentence has been removed. Occasionally we attempt to clarify things based on input from the Paizo folks on the boards, which changes from day to day. One day something works one day and the next another way. Normally we try to wait until something is officially incorporated into an errata or FAQ but sometimes we get ahead of ourselves. In any event, Handle Animal has been corrected. The FAQ information remains "in-line" in the skill however, for ease of reference.
I am investigating the matter of the bat now.
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The official SRD has god awful formatting though. For example if i wanted to look at the witch spell list, i couldnt just go to "witch spell list". I have to go to the witch class entry and then look at :It is a fan maintained site. Very useful, and mostly correct. It also contains much more material than Paizo's prd- including fan generated content.
Paizo's prd is only the Core book, APG, & parts of the GMG, but what it has is the correct and current (errata updated) versions of those books.
If you search for prd rather than srd it is the first thing that comes up.
Actually, you would just click the Spell Lists link right there on the main page and you get nicely formatted lists of the spell lists per class, per level. Very nice and actually.
I think you are selling the official Paizo PRD pretty short in fact. I agree it has some bugs still (which they quickly fix when we bring issues to their attention) but for the most part it is a pretty great resource. Plus you are guaranteed that the info is correct and up to date with errata etc.
I always go to the official Paizo PRD first. If I can't find something, I certainly will then check out the fan site as well.
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I think you are selling the official Paizo PRD pretty short in fact. I agree it has some bugs still (which they quickly fix when we bring issues to their attention) but for the most part it is a pretty great resource. Plus you are garunteed that the info is correct and up to date with errata etc.
I always go there first. If I can't find something, I certainly will then check out the fan site as well.
Clearly it is awesome that the APG content is in the PRD, and that the PRD is available at all. There is no disputing that.
However, I would suggest that having the spell lists merged (ie, core+apg), instead of separated, is a substantial convenience. Specifically, having the core bard spells and the apg bard spells merged into one table (as shown here) and then including the spells from other Paizo sources, and indicating the source with link to the purchase location for that product, I think is a very convenient function.
I am still investigating the matter of the Bats fly modifier. If it matters any, that info was added there by a former top 8 RPG Superstar back in March, so I'm hesitant to change it until I find out more. RPG Superstars usually know more than me :)
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Ctrl+f "Witch" on that page, get nothing ;_;The official SRD has god awful formatting though. For example if i wanted to look at the witch spell list, i couldnt just go to "witch spell list". I have to go to the witch class entry and then look at :It is a fan maintained site. Very useful, and mostly correct. It also contains much more material than Paizo's prd- including fan generated content.
Paizo's prd is only the Core book, APG, & parts of the GMG, but what it has is the correct and current (errata updated) versions of those books.
If you search for prd rather than srd it is the first thing that comes up.
Actually, you would just click the Spell Lists link right there on the main page and you get nicely formatted lists of the spell lists per class, per level. Very nice and actually.
I think you are selling the official Paizo PRD pretty short in fact. I agree it has some bugs still (which they quickly fix when we bring issues to their attention) but for the most part it is a pretty great resource. Plus you are guaranteed that the info is correct and up to date with errata etc.
I always go to the official Paizo PRD first. If I can't find something, I certainly will then check out the fan site as well.
My mistake! Since the witch is in the APG, click on the Advanced Spell Lists link instead. Just scroll down :)
Also, don't forget the official PRD has an excellent search function - the serach box is in the upper right of the PRD window. Try it - it's very good!
We're generally pretty responsive over here at pfsrd, so as jreyst said, please report errors if you see them, we would love to have everything as correct as possible.
On the note of the fly skill, there was a racial modifier erroneously listed, but the final values were calculated correctly.
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How come pfsrd seems to have lesser magic items listed? For example paizo SRD has the rod of persistent metamagic.
Ah, I had misread your question initially. We do not have it listed simply because our workload has not allowed us to add the APG magic items yet, though that is coming soon.
Right now we're getting ready to release all Bestiary 2 critters in a few days.
Contributor, RPG Superstar 2010 Top 8
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My mistake! Since the witch is in the APG, click on the Advanced Spell Lists link instead. Just scroll down :)
Also, don't forget the official PRD has an excellent search function - the serach box is in the upper right of the PRD window. Try it - it's very good!
The problem is, the "Advanced Spell Lists" section doesn't actually contain the spell lists for the APG classes. All it does is list the new spells each class gets in the APG.
Check out Witch 1st level spells, there's only four of them! - LINK
What people are complaining about is there's no unified spell list in the 'Spell List' page style on the PRD, combining both the Core Rulebook and the APG.
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What people are complaining about is there's no unified spell list in the 'Spell List' page style on the PRD, combining both the Core Rulebook and the APG.
...which is where we come in... :)