Cohort + Familiar

[Gallifrey]

I have a player who is going to be taking Leadership. The player already has an improved familiar(imp). In order to keep the board less clustered we decided that his imp could be his cohort and would gain some class levels... however as he is nearing the level he is going to take Leadership I figured it would be wise to ask for some advice.

Has anyone else done this before or have any advice on the mechanics of it all?

[Captain Xenon]

dont nerf the ability. either let him have it, or disallow it. the alternative your thinking of has many unintended consequences.

a wizard has four ways to directly affect the action economy- spells(summoning and haste), familiar, cohort[feat], and the true name discovery[feat]. a good wizard will always have the option of cluttering the board.

your player will be spending 2 of his feats, which could be used for other things, to get better support on the battlefield. if you give the levels to the IMP of all creatures... that would be bad. the imp can be invisible, teleport, and so on all on its own. imagine stacking that with a spellcaster class (like cleric of an evil god). suddenly you have an invisible teleporter who can drop spells and negative channeling. or what if the imp takes levels in rogue, and sneak attacks from invisibility? or levels in wizard- imagine the familiar studying the masters spellbook, and effectively doubling most his spells while still sharing spells. the result would be downright nasty- and he could then dismiss the imp (which remains his cohort), and then summon a NEW imp familiar. which then clutters the field more on top of the issue of an imp with class levels.

also, as an imp is cr2 without levels, you would either be shorting him on cohort level, or else making the imp too powerful by far.

[I Hate Nickelback]

Do it, do it, do it!!! :D

Just kidding, don't. As the last post illustrated, it would be broken.

[Gallifrey]

The player isn't a wizard, he is a cleric. the imp would be taking levels in bard because the party is lacking knowledge skills. I also would not allow him to simply dismiss his familiar and gain a secondary imp... it just would make no sense from a story stand point.

Yes an Imp is a CR 2, a 7th level player is CR 7... which means my initial idea was to have the imp gain 3 levels of Bard with Leadership, making it CR 5.

So yeah, I really don't see how allowing there to be CR 5 creature is going to make things more hectic than a CR 5 and a CR 2.