Witch-->Souleater: Does she lose her spells?

[drbrain]

In our weekly Pathfinder game, we're doing Way of the Wicked, and one our players is a witch that wants to take Souleater as a prestige class. Here's where we're scratching our heads:

Whenever you take that first level of Souleater, your new cacodaemon familiar devours your old familiar. However, since a witch's familiar is effectively her spellbook, does she then have to spend time and money teaching the daemon her spells? Or, does the line about "not penalizing the caster" also mean that the cacodaemon "absorbs" all the old familiar's spells?
Cacodaemon Familiar
I think our DM's going to rule that since:
a)Cacodaemons eat souls
and
b)The Horseman she's intending to choose has a similar portfolio to her Witch Patron
That her new familiar will absorb the old, but a little more clarification would be helpful in the decision.

[MrSin]

Well, if you decide to go the other way and have it eat your friends familiar and not give the spells, you'll have to get rid of basically her entire spell book and give her the time and money to get it all back. Or for sanity's sake just give her the old spells. Regardless of RAW the idea of entering a PRC and losing all your spells is pretty painful.

Edit: It says you aren't penalized for the lost familiar.

[drbrain]

Yeah our DM was going to rule in favor of keeping her spells anyway, I think, but I was just digging for clarification on just how much that "the souleater is not penalized for the lost familiar" line covered here.

[The Crusader]

To "teach/scribe" a familiar new spells, don't you have to feed them to it anyway?

PRD wrote:

A witch can use a scroll to teach her familiar a new spell. This process takes 1 hour per level of the spell to be learned, during which time the scroll is burned and its ashes used to create a special brew or powder that is consumed by the familiar. This process destroys the scroll. At the end of this time, the witch must make a Spellcraft check (DC 15 + spell level).

Just add some Spellcraft checks!

[qutoes]

Get her a stone familiar

[drbrain]

qutoes wrote:

Get her a stone familiar

The rules of the Prestige Class say the new familiar's a cacodaemon, no ifs/ands/buts.

However, the Spellcraft checks solution above is a rather ingenious one if we were going to make her work for it (ie treating it as if the new minion is just eating a big pile of scrolls)

[El Baron de los Banditos]

He means the item, to use as a medium between the two (which seems like the best way by RAW to handle it.) Otherwise, I'd handwave it, saying that eating the old familiar who previously ate scrolls to learn magic being eaten means the new one learns the old spells by transitive property.

[MrSin]

Take 10... auto success? rather than make 100 rolls.