Sorry if this has been brought up before.
Currently running a Legacy of Fire campaign with Pathfinder rules. We have a sorcerer with the Arcane bloodline, so he has a familiar. Question came up is what stats do you use for normal and improved familiars, the ones RIGHT from the creatures specific page in either bestiary books, or do you roll/use point buy then add the "racial modifiers"(As in you look at the beast's sheet, set stats to 10, then use the difference of what the stats are in the book). Just need a clarification on the rules here. He insists on the second option, the rest of us believe you use the ones right from the book. A good solid answer would be appreciated, maybe even from a paizo person themselves. :) Thanks!
Hoping to get an answer before next game. Would greatly appreciate any help! :)
Yup - the first one, though I might give the poor scrawny little thing its full first HD instead of the printed average if my player asked nicely.
what stats do you use for normal and improved familiars
Their ability scores are the same as the animal.
Familiar Basics: Use the basic statistics for a creature of the familiar's kind, but with the following changes. (HD, HP, Attacks, Saves, Skills)
So a Cat familiar has the statblock of the Cat Familiar but a few things change based on the bonded caster.
For effects relating to Hit Dice, use the Master's character level (Not class level!) since the Cat normally has 1 HD.
The Cat has half the Master's Hit Points, rounded down.
For attacks with natural weapons, use the Masters BAB and the Cat's Dex.
For Saving Throws, use whichever BASE save is higher, the Cat or the Master, then apply the Cat's ability score modifier.
For Skills, use the ranks of Master or Cat, whichever is higher, modified by the Cat's ability score modifiers.
Yup - the first one, though I might give the poor scrawny little thing its full first HD instead of the printed average if my player asked nicely.
You won't need to.
As Grick pointed out, remember that familiars have half the hitpoints of their owner.
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It would make sense that your druid, ranger, wizard, etc is going to intentionally pick a superior example of the species.
I use the Boon concept from the NPC guide to have certain NPC animal trainers or naturalists be sources that a ranger / cavalier / druid / wizard / whatever can go to to secure an 'above-average' specimen of whatever animal type that NPC specializes in to bond as a familiar or companion or mount.
Go to Dunstable Mews, in eastern Taldor, and you can purchase a hawk or owl with a +1 to its Dex score *or* a +1 to its Con score, to bond as your familiar or companion. They don't sell to just anyone (and do so at anywhere from two to five, or more!, the normal going rate, depending on how much, or little, they like you), and you might have to do something for them in return.
PC gets his slightly better than average bird. DM gets to control how and if, and build it into an adventure hook, if he wants. (Go fetch us eggs or chicks from the cliff-dwelling sun hawks, whose brilliant grey and golden plumage is all the range among the Taldan upper-crust falconing societies, this season!)
The same sorts of deal can be done for expert NPC Shoanti seller of horses, providing the finest ashen-colored 'cinderhoof' plains stallions from the Storval plateau, or a Chelish 'helltamer' Ranger who mixes the blood of fierce fighting dogs with summoned hellhounds, to sire pups with coal-black hides, red eyes, a +1 to Strength over the normal 'riding dog' and a foul disposition. (And the 'helltamers' train them in Infernal, so the purchaser might want to pick up a few words of that language, if he wants to most effectively command his new companion...)
No reason to just give the above-average animal companion / familiar / mount away, when you can work it into the setting and / or campaign. If a PC wants to blow a feat on a personal ability to select only the best animals for their class ability, that's cool, too, but if they don't want to spend a feat, then it's extra time and money, and perhaps a minor side-trek, to earn the favor of the provider of these superior hawks, hounds, horses, etc.
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since the Bestiary says pretty much any creature gets a 13 stat, paying five times the price to have someone give me a bird with a +1 con seems a bit harsh. And I believe most druids aren't going to a bird seller or mount seller, they tend to grab their beasts from the wild.
It would probably be quicker to pay the extra 25 to 500 or so gold for a better-than-average specimen than catching and releasing a dozen hawks, until you get the one that has a better stat in the category you are looking for... (Although that could also be an option. Allow the Druid/Ranger/Wizard to summon day after day, for X number of days, perhaps using a Handle Animal or Knowledge - Arcana check with a certain difficulty DC to determine when / if a superior specimen arrives. This will be *ridiculously* expensive for a wizard, and time consuming for any character, since it might take a week or more before they make the DC check required, with Druids perhaps just saying 'heck with it' and 'taking 20' on the check and summoning for 20 days straight until they get the perfect beast.)
Really, the amount of cash we're talking about is pretty much chump change to an adventurer, who has to shell out ten times that much to give himself a +2 enhancement bonus to an attribute via magical gear.
And, as I mentioned, this doesn't have to be a financial transaction. That's for someone who walks in off the street.
If the PC is willing to do a little something for the animal trainer, he can get the better-than-average specimen as a Boon. The option of what sort of animals are available remain in the GM's hands, and the option of whether he just wants to hand-wave it and get it over with (pay the man twice the going rate for a guard dog, done, let's get back to the adventure), or integrate it into the storyline or set it up as a side-adventure, is, again, completely up to the GM.
My goal with using the Boon mechanic is to save the necessity of the PC having to buy a feat (or use Eye for Talent, which requires losing a feat anyway, and being human), and to keep the option firmly in the GM's hands, so that the player can't arbitrarily call up 'better than average' familiars or companions, 'just because.' If they could, then, logically, *every* Wizard, Druid, Ranger, Cavalier, etc. would do this, and there would be no such thing as an 'average' familiar or companion...
Game wise the only thing that makes the familiar or companion "better" than stated out, is you (with few exceptions, the feat has already been pointed out). The familiar/companion is exactly that generic ball of fur you see in the book and gains appropriate abilities once the bond is created that moves it into the "exceptional" ball of fur category. It becomes more intelligent, learns more tricks, gains hp/hd and various other abilities the run of the mill animals don't have as you level. Once the bond is broken, it goes back to being number 3573547840925 of the generic animals in the world.
If your DM wants to house rule using the elite array, or rolling stats or any other option that is them being nice, but by the book (as we are in the rules forum), generic critters are what you get to choose from.
Most of the posts seem to favor that your companion is a carbon copy of the animal entry in the Bestiary,
`Favor` being `exactly what the rules say`, sure.
yet the bestiary itself suggests that NPCs are allowed to assign the standard array, and that the entries are what the animal would have with straight 10s. That would mean that one of the animals stats should be +3, one is +2, one is +1, one is -1, and one is -2. That appears to be the rules straight from the book, 6, bottom left corner
And how does this apply to the Familiar Class Ability, which directly tells you to use the Bestiary stats?
Further, using this approach would logically apply to EVERY creature encountered, as they are all `NPCs`.Familiars have the least grounds to be based on `NPC rules`, because they are a CLASS FEATURE,
and scale their abilities directly based on their owner`s Class Level, i.e. over-riding the normal ability scores.