Polymorphed familiars...

[TheBulletKnight]

So a while back, I was asking questions about a mounted magus. Something that some suggested I do is get the familiar arcana, go to a big city and pay to have my familiar have polymorph any object cast on it to change it from, and this was one of the examples given, 'a lizard to a wyvern.'

If I were to do this, would my now polymorphed familiar still count as a familiar? After some thought, it didn'sound legitimate, but I just wanted to make sure.

Spoiler:

To use your familiar as a mount, you just need to hire a wizard in a large city to cast polymorph any object on your familiar to turn it into your preferred mount. Since your familiar is almost guaranteed to have a higher Int than the other animal (thanks to how the arcane bond class feature works!), and the fact that you are turning an animal into another animal, you are already getting a +7 for the duration of PaO, so all you need to do is pick a familiar that is close the mount you want (Raven or thrush for griffon or roc, Goat for pegasus, lizard for wyvern, etc). The cost of this service is only 1200 gp (CL 15 * 8th level 8 * 10 gp), and will give you a familiar that will have good defenses vs spells thanks to it's SR and evasion, have a decent amount of survivability, especially if you are using mounted combat feats, plus have a lot of skills (because the familiar shares your own skills) and neat abilities.

^The relevant part of the post I talked about. ^

[Mark Hoover]

Your familiar is still your familiar in any form it's polymorphed into. It retains any abilities that don't depend on form, such as Evasion or SU abilities gained from familiar development based on level.

For example if you had an owl you could have it polymorphed into a Giant Owl, giving it certain size bonuses to Str, Con and a size penalty to Dex. It would likely also gain NA which would stack with whatever NA it had from being a familiar.

The huge magical beast before you could now serve as a mount. It would however retain whatever intelligence it got from being a familiar; it would also keep its Evasion, any communication abilities, so on and so forth. Does this make sense?

[TheBulletKnight]

Yeah, I just wasn't sure of its legality, because if done with the right bonuses it would be permanent, and whether it would still be applicable for being a familiar. Thanks for the info.