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If I have a Celestial Servant feat, and Vampiric Companion feat, how do they interact?
For reference:
Rather than being a normal animal or beast, your companion or familiar hails from the heavenly realms.
Prerequisites: Aasimar, animal companion, familiar, or mount class feature.
Benefit: Your animal companion, familiar, or mount gains the celestial template and becomes a magical beast, though you may still treat it as an animal when using Handle Animal, wild empathy, or any other spells or class abilities that specifically affect animals.
Just as your undead existence mocks nature, so too are you granted a twisted companion that reflects the vile nature of vampirism.
Prerequisites: Dhampir or vampire, nongood alignment, 10 levels in a class that grants a familiar or animal companion.
Benefit: Your animal companion or familiar’s type changes to “undead.” The creature gains your vampire or dhampir weaknesses and fast healing 5. If you are a vampire, the creature also gains the following abilities, depending on what type of vampire you are.
Jiang-Shi: If the creature is adjacent to you or you are sharing a square, it gains the benefit of your prayer scroll ability. The creature crumbles into dust if destroyed ( just like a jiang-shi), but is not permanently destroyed unless measures are taken that would destroy a jiang-shi.
Moroi: If the creature is adjacent to or in your square when you assume gaseous form, it transforms with you and follows you; its transformation ends when yours does. If reduced to 0 hit points, it is forced into gaseous form and must return to your coffin to reform (or the foot of your coffin if it cannot fit within it).
Nosferatu: If the creature is adjacent to or in your square when you assume swarm form, it transforms with you and follows you; its transformation ends when yours does. The creature can climb as if using spider climb, even if its anatomy is not suitable for climbing (such as a horse).
Vetala: The creature may use malevolence and possession as if it were a vetala, but by touch and only affecting creatures or corpses that are the same type of creature as the animal companion or familiar (such as bear, horse, or snake). If reduced to 0 hit points in combat, the creature is helpless and its fast healing ceases to function for 1 hour (additional damage or desecration has no effect); after 1 hour it regains 1 hit point and is no longer helpless, and its fast healing resumes. It can be permanently destroyed as if it were a vetala.
Special: If your animal companion or familiar is destroyed, dismissed, or lost, you may apply the effects of this feat to the replacement creature. If you are destroyed, the creature retains its undead type but loses all other special abilities from this feat. If you have more than one animal companion or familiar, choose one of them when you select this feat and apply its effects to that creature.
You may select this feat more than once. Each time you select the feat, it applies to a different animal companion or familiar.
Not at all:
Prerequisite for the one: [Aasimir] AND [ Animal companion OR familiar OR mount] class feature
Prerequisite for the other: [Vampire OR Dhampir] AND [Nongood] AND [lvl 10 in a class that grants (familiar OR animal companion)]
As you can't be both [Aasimir] AND [Vampire OR Dhampir] you can't have both feats. You can't be Humanoid/Undead and Outsider/Native at the same time.
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No reason it should not work as far as I see.
I think its final type (undead or magical beast) will depend on when you take each feat.
In all cases, it benefits from Celestial Servant, so Celestial template AND you may still treat it as an animal, as those parts of the feat are in no way affected by Vampiric Companion.
If you try to get the benefits of vampiric companion without the drawback I have to tell you I would not let that fly. Even if you do not have any dhampir drawbacks the heritage allowing you to take the feat has them.
Edit: Besides: If you take the vampiric companion feat your companion doesn't qualify for celestial servant any more.
The feats states: "Your animal companion, familiar, or mount gains the celestial template and becomes a magical beast" but the vampiric companion is a vampiric companion not an animal companion.
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If you try to get the benefits of vampiric companion without the drawback I have to tell you I would not let that fly. Even if you do not have any dhampir drawbacks the heritage allowing you to take the feat has them.
Not every rules question asked, is some sort of munchkiny finagling, digging for shortcuts to put in a powergamers toolbox.
Don't do that. It's insulting flamebait.
Please be respectful.
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How does the order in which the feats are taken effect the final companion?
Way I see it, the "becomes a magical beast" in Celestial Servant has been commonly understood as : Type changes to Magical Beast.
Since Vampiric Companion also has a Type change clause (to Undead), I think that you either go Animal=>Undead=>Magical Beast or Animal=>Magical Beast=>Undead depending on which feat (and thus Type change) comes first.
BBT some things are not in the rules because every possible combination can be thought of so I can not give a rules answer. I can tell you how I would rule it.
I would allow the creature to become undead, but since being undead already gives you all the benefits the creature would have from being a magical beast. That part would not matter, but the AC would still have the smite ability and other benefits of the celestial template. It would also gain the benefits of being undead and drawback of being undead.
If you try to get the benefits of vampiric companion without the drawback I have to tell you I would not let that fly. Even if you do not have any dhampir drawbacks the heritage allowing you to take the feat has them.Not every rules question asked, is some sort of munchkiny finagling, digging for shortcuts to put in a powergamers toolbox.
Don't do that. It's insulting flamebait.
Please be respectful.
Others have tired the racial heritage dhampir to vampiric companion for exactly this reason, arguing that as they do not have any dhampiric vulnerabilities their companion should not get any, too.
That's why I mentioned it. I had no intention to insult you.
Well, you could just dismiss a companion, then gain a new one, with both feats effecting it.
If so, then how would order apply.
There is still no rule for it. That is my point. It is a GM call. The reason why I am saying it is undead is because I don't see a feat bringing something back to life so I am going with being undead trumping the other feat for the purpose of the final creature type. Dismissing the companion is not a factor. Either way the animal has to be your companion before the feats can even affect it so they would work the same way.
For the sake of argument, if the magical beast feat won then the other feat would not take affect.
PS: Many times when you bring options from various books together it defaults to "GM call". :)
If you are the GM it is up to you. If you are not the GM, then show him my post to see if he agrees with my ruling. :)
Knowing your hatred of dhampir, the fact that you came off as insulting anyway does not surprise me.
As for how I see the feat, the text does not contradict itself except on what type of creature the companion ends up being.
If you try to get the benefits of vampiric companion without the drawback I have to tell you I would not let that fly. Even if you do not have any dhampir drawbacks the heritage allowing you to take the feat has them.
Edit: Besides: If you take the vampiric companion feat your companion doesn't qualify for celestial servant any more.
The feats states: "Your animal companion, familiar, or mount gains the celestial template and becomes a magical beast" but the vampiric companion is a vampiric companion not an animal companion.
An animal companion does not have to be an animal if a rules allow him to not have an animal. As an example he can have a scorpion animal companion by the rules. Animal companion is just the name of the class feature. He still has the animal companion class feature so it qualifies.
An animal companion does not have to be an animal if a rules allow him to not have an animal. As an example he can have a scorpion animal companion by the rules. Animal companion is just the name of the class feature. He still has the animal companion class feature so it qualifies.
Edit: Besides: If you take the vampiric companion feat your companion doesn't qualify for celestial servant any more.
The feats states: "Your animal companion, familiar, or mount gains the celestial template and becomes a magical beast" but the vampiric companion is a vampiric companion not an animal companion.
It's not that it is not an animal anymore but that the feat turns the ability called animal companion into an ability called vampiric companion. And the celestial servant specifically calls out needing an animal companion.
In other words it boils down to: Is the vampiric companion still an animal companion. You say yes, I say I'm not sure about it.
Indeed.
Determining what the final companion is, seems to be the question.
I dont think it will affect balance either way, but if he rules the magical beast takes precedence I would ask to undo the undead feat, and get another feat instead.
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In other words it boils down to: Is the vampiric companion still an animal companion. You say yes, I say I'm not sure about it.
Yes.
Nothing changes the class feature, into not being the class feature.
Just as the Versatile Channeler feat does not make a Cleric's Channel, stop being the Channel class feature, neither of the listed feats stop an animal companion, from being an animal companion.
It's current type is irrelevant to it counting as the class feature it is.
An animal companion does not have to be an animal if a rules allow him to not have an animal. As an example he can have a scorpion animal companion by the rules. Animal companion is just the name of the class feature. He still has the animal companion class feature so it qualifies.
Edit: Besides: If you take the vampiric companion feat your companion doesn't qualify for celestial servant any more.
The feats states: "Your animal companion, familiar, or mount gains the celestial template and becomes a magical beast" but the vampiric companion is a vampiric companion not an animal companion.It's not that it is not an animal anymore but that the feat turns the ability called animal companion into an ability called vampiric companion. And the celestial servant specifically calls out needing an animal companion.
In other words it boils down to: Is the vampiric companion still an animal companion. You say yes, I say I'm not sure about it.
Vampiric companion is the name of the feat. It never says the class ability name changes. Taking selective channel does not change the name of channel energy, and the same applies to other feats that alter class abilities.
As for final type, I'd go with the 3.X type hierarchy/pyramid:
1. Construct, Outsider, Undead
2. Elemental, Ooze, Plant
3. Aberration
4. Dragon, Shapechanger
5. Fey, Giant
6. Magical Beast, Monstrous Humanoid
7. Animal, Humanoid, Vermin
(of course, some of these either aren't types anymore, or are simply subtypes and should thus be ignored; it was written in the almost-but-not-quite-3.5 Savage Species)
The ones on the top (Construct, Outsider, Undead) can't become anything else, while anything lesser will be overridden by whatever is above them. For instance, adding an Aberration-template to a Dragon will have "Aberration" as the result. Conversely, adding a Dragon-template to an Aberration wouldn't change the type, as Aberration is above Dragon.
This gives a neat rule-of-thumb, at least, even though exceptions could certainly exist.
So, in this case, the celestial vampiric animal companion should be an Undead.
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Well, you could just dismiss a companion, then gain a new one, with both feats effecting it.
If so, then how would order apply.
Actually, if we go by the strictest RAW, Celestial Servant would not affect it, as the feat does not specify that "If your animal companion or familiar is destroyed, dismissed, or lost, you may apply the effects of this feat to the replacement creature".
Note that Vampiric Companion does specify this ;-)
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Well, you could just dismiss a companion, then gain a new one, with both feats effecting it.
If so, then how would order apply.
Actually, if we go by the strictest RAW, Celestial Servant would not affect it, as the feat does not specify that "If your animal companion or familiar is destroyed, dismissed, or lost, you may apply the effects of this feat to the replacement creature".
Note that Vampiric Companion does specify this ;-)
Not exactly.
There is nothing to suggest that the effect of the feat does not apply to a new animal companion.
Things like feats, and ability score increases etc., are retroactive in how they effect you in Pathfinder.
This sets a precedent, and as such, disproves your RAW assumption.
Any other feat that affects companions/familiars DOES mention it. Also any magic that affects retroactive stats (Int, Con) it is stated that it can grant aditional skills (or like in case of the headband it is mentioned that the increase is done on a specific skill) or HP. That leads to a conclusion: if it is not mentioned it implies it does not carry over to a new familiar/companion.