My wizard has a raven familiar I don't want to lose. Or rather I want to upgrade it rather than replace it, is that possible.
Edit: I just noticed that imps can transform into ravens.
Now I just need to find some flavourful reason for why my familiar suddenly is an imp (when I take improved familiar).
The feat evolved familiar can boost the familiar.
As for some flavorful reason, just pretend your imp was cursed to stay in the raven shape and lose his powers, and you made a deal with him to remove the curse as soon as you are able to (remove curse is a 4th level spell)
Now I just need to find some flavourful reason for why my familiar suddenly is an imp (when I take improved familiar).
It always was. It just chose not to use its Imply powers nor reveal itself until the "proper time" when its master was "worthy", which just happens to coincide with when your character took Improved Familiar.
My witch is doing this with her cat/silvanshee.
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Improved Familiar allows you to apply a Celestial/Entropic/Fiendish/Resolute template to any of the animal familiars. It doesn't precisely say that it's the old familiar with planar sauce on it, but you could agree on that with the GM.
Those templates do a lot, actually:
* grant DR/opposite alignment from level 5+
* grant 2-3 resistances from the beginning, which slowly climb. Probably enough to protect your familiar from dying to a single area attack in that element.
* grant miniscule SR. Don't even bother.
* grant Darkvision (which ravens don't have by default)
* smite opposite alignment, giving bonus dice equal to HD. With the Reach evolution (see below), this becomes semi-practical.
I'm probably going to do that with my own magpie (raven stats) familiar, since I've grown fond of it.
Note that your familiar's HD are equal to your own, so after level 5 your familiar would actually gain DR that way, and increasing energy resistance.
The other way is to select the Evolved Familiar feat, allowing you to select a 1pt Eidolon Evolution. Most of those aren't relevant, but a few are:
* Reach, gives a tiny animal 5ft reach so it can deliver Touch spells without eating an AoO
* Skilled, +8 to a skill is a big bonus. Maybe Perception or Stealth?
* Resistance: fill in the Resistance you didn't get from the planar template from Improved Familiar.
* Improved Natural Armor: if you really have to. I recommend just casting Mage Armor and sometimes Shield on your familiar instead.
* Scent: bypasses Invisibility, and allows tracking by scent, which has quite low DCs. Could be useful.
---
Other ways to improve your familiar:
* equipment; raven could probably wear rings and an amulet
* skill ranks: the familiar has all your skill ranks, and Stealth (with +8 for being tiny!), Perception (don't forget to roll for your familiar every time YOU make a Perception check!) and Acrobatics (with 3 ranks its Full Defense gets pretty good) and Climb (...) and Swim (...)
* your familiar has ALL the skill ranks you have, so he also gets to roll Knowledge checks and learn languages from your Linguistics. And it can talk to share the results with you; effectively you're making two checks.
* Your familiar can use Aid Another on many of your skill checks
* You can cast a lot of spells on your familiar because of Share Spells: Alter Self (stat boost, extra person for charades), Beast Shape (turn into small eagle to boost Reach) or even Enlarge Person (Share Spells also ignores creature type restrictions). Also, Shield and Shadow Projection (!).
blackbloodtroll: Elf. Neutral good. (so I'll have to go true neutral to get the imp)
Ascalaphus: Some interesting stuff you've got there I see. Problem is that this GM does not permit material outside of the core rulebook and APG.
It seems like I'm going to go with improved familiar and imp after all.
|
|
Ganryu: the only thing I listed that's not in Core+APG is Evolved Familiar.
Adding a Celestial/Fiendish template with Improved Familiar is in APG listed under that feat.
Entropic and Resolute template were added in Bestiary 2 as the Chaotic and Lawful counterparts to the Good/Evil templates.
Tricks with a familiar's skill ranks are core book, because that's just how the familiar ability works; it gets all your skill ranks if they're better than it's own ranks.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I wish that you'd either take a celestial raven or adapt Highglander's suggestion for a pseudodragon. (Though it can change in extraordinary circumstances, I prefer for a character's morality to take precedence whenever possible.) So, here's how you could do it: all this time, your familiar was a cursed pseudodragon that couldn't tell you -- but he could strongly hint, once you neared the ability to do something about it...
You're sitting by a campfire, looking up at the stars, when your raven familiar suddenly speaks up out of nowhere. "Oh by the way, master, an interesting-yet-totally-irrelevant factoid is that creatures who are cursed are often forbidden from being able to reveal it. You know. Just sayin'." After a few seconds, the crickets resume their concert, ending the meaningful silence after your old friend's bizarrely out-of-context comment. You commit those words to memory, thinking on them in odd moments.
Months later, your skill finally advances enough for you to learn remove curse. You approach Quoth with excitement and trepidation. "Okay, so this spell is totally harmless, it'll just remove any curses that you might have. Not that I have any reason to think that you have any, you know. Just sayin'." Your hands move in precise gestures as you speak arcane words, and then you touch a shaking finger to the beloved black bird...
blackbloodtroll:
It's mainly because we only have 4 books available when we play, core rulebook, apg and bestiary 1 & 2. The other players are also new to the game so he wants to keep it as simple as possible. But I could probably convince him to allow some material as long as it's not third party.
Ascalaphus:
Those tricks are REALLY nice. There's more to familiars than I realized.
Fredrik:
Hah. I like that one. I'll see about it, though for some flavour reason I'm not really a fan of pseudodragons. I'll have to think about it.
Ravingdork:
Alignment problem there. My wizard is NG and will at worst become TN. He wouldn't kill his familiar. It's an interesting way to handle it, though.
There are a few of familiars with a simple beast shape polymorph ability, Nosoi psychopomp fits the bill and you can even be nuetral good.
Explain it away by saying that they were always a whatever, you just never asked.
Some might argue the Nosoi can even use wands and scrolls based on the description.
Consider buffs and permenancy
|
|
I do think the Improved Familiars are awefully nice and bring really interesting powers to the table. Still, I'm glad IF can also be used to enhance a normal animal familiar, because in the low-ish magic campaign I play, that will be a lot more palatable to the DM. I think it's a case of game design gone right.
"Boss," said the raven familiar, "I feel I should come straight with you. I'm actually an imp. Have been all along. Hope this doesn't make things weird."
|
Familiars are already magical creatures. When I play wizards with familiars and they take Improved Familiar, I consider it a transformation for the familiar.
The personality remains the same, the habits, the essence is all there. Just the form changes.
One example is my fire school wizard, who started out with a raven. At 5th level with Improved Familiar, the raven burst into flames and became/evolved/ascended/etc a small fire elemental. Same familiar, different form.
Depending on what level of power is available to you, using a Wish spell to cast awaken on it despite it not being an animal or plant could be a useful way to improve a familiar.