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So, the witch is a pretty nice class. But it's given GMs a lot of headaches; how to stop Slumber from ruining encounters and suchlike. Of course there are good ways to do so, but they require a lot more skill from the GM than other classes do.
Meanwhile, the witch's familiar seems like a HUGE liability. It's the one thing holding me back from playing a witch; it just feels so vulnerable.
Now here's the idea. Suppose you remove Slumber (and maybe nerf Misfortune a bit..), but you give the witch something back: a familiar that's much harder to kill.
I don't have the specifics yet, but the idea is that the familiar is sufficiently hard to kill that you can actually send it into combat to do stuff. Some ideas;
* give it Regeneration?
* if reduces below 0 hp, let it turn to Gaseous Form like a vampire and heal.
* give it a few evolution points per level, so it slowly gains more nifty abilities.
"Historically", people thought familiars might be spirits masquerading in animal form. PF familiars tend to be very material though. If we use this spirit idea a bit, justifying the hard-to-kill familiar gets easier...
I'd rather just drop the familiar and give the witch a spellbook.
Maybe give it the witch's full hit points instead of half? Would make sense, since it feels like a witch's connection with her familiar is a lot stronger than that of a wizard. It'd hardly fix everything, but might be a start?
Well, like I said, it'd just be a start. I don't think it could hurt. I honestly don't see, adding on top of that, an evolution pool say equal to half the witch's level, would be too powerful or anything. You'd probably want to limit its evolution choices a bit, though I'm not sure exactly how.
I really like the evolution mechanic, actually. I do agree that summoners as a class are a horrid mess. Evolutions are a lot more useful when applied with restrictions to characters, animal companions or familiar, I've found. Maybe 1/2 witch level-sized evo pool, obviously make sure they can't pick the large evolution. I'm not sure if you'd need too many restrictions beyond that, if you were going the evo route. There's an evolution to gain DR, too.
Frankly the witch class doesn't need buffs anymore than any other spellcasting class. The familiar is supposed to be one of the limiting factors of the class.
However, if I were to make their familiar less vulnerable, I'd consider the following: A familiar was commonly referred to as a familiar spirit in many mythologies - a spirit that took corporeal form to serve or instruct the witch. Perhaps, when they are killed, they revert to this form and are unable to assume corporeal form or communicate with the witch for 24 hours, or what have you.
Each time the familiar is killed, there's a chance it loses some random spells.
Hope that helps.
Before I forget, just remove slumber and replace it with a "dazing hex". I did that and it worked out fine. Frankly I got tired of having to give certain enemies immunity to sleep, having no other reason than my witch player just spammed it.