Red Panda familiar

[Adoril Recond]

I have a player who wants to have a red panda familiar. For stats I was just going to use the raccoon statistics with something else to replace sleight of hand, maybe acrobatics. But I have no idea what the master bonus should be, the player suggested +2 Fort although not sure whether that makes sense. Any ideas?

[Lou Diamond]

Panda stats are in the animal archive. A must have book for those of us who like our furry buddies.

[Adoril Recond]

I already checked, Red Pandas are significantly different from the Giant Panda.
Red Panda: http://images.nationalgeographic.com/wpf/media-live/graphic/size-redpanda-1 60-2856-cb1273165637.gif

Giant Panda: http://www.chinahighlights.com/image/giant-panda/panda-size.JPG

[boring7]

Recent phylogenetic research places the Red Panda closer to the weasel family than the raccoon family. On the flip side they eat Bamboo and aren't quite long'n'skinny enough physically.

Personally I'd go with Climb, since that's the first thing I think of after, "+5 adorable."

[avr]

They're not incredibly fast moving or likely to be associated with any skill other than climbing, so a fort save bonus makes as much sense as anything (assuming you don't want to really annoy your player by giving their character a climb skill bonus). If you need a justification their home environment can be pretty harsh, hence they have endurance which they can share with their masters.

Raccoons seem a reasonable model for stats.

[Adoril Recond]

Thought about you adorable comment, raccoons have 5 Cha so should I change it.

[Glutton]

Actually, pretty much all the animals have low charisma. Theres a flying lizard with 11, squirrel with 8, then all the rest around the 3-5 mark.

[Adoril Recond]

Why does the lizard have 11 cha
http://www.greenvillezoo.com/assets/img/Adopt/RedPanda.png
=5 Cha?

[boring7]

Flying lizard was an in-joke referring to the band, The Flying Lizards, and a certain person's love for them.

No, I just made that up.

Remember charisma isn't just looks, it's force of personality. Which on a trainable and easily-dominated animal is going to be low.

Also charisma and stats in general have severe limitations in how much sense they actually make, but we roll with it because the alternatives usually end up being worse.

[Adoril Recond]

Thanks for the insight, but still the lizard.

[scootalol]

Adoril Recond wrote:

Thanks for the insight, but still the lizard.

He's Jim Morrison.

[Adoril Recond]

raptors have 14 charisma

[Luthorne]

Could give its master a +3 bonus to Diplomacy for being cute, if you like. Alternative notions could be a +3 bonus to Survival for being a forager, or a +3 to Climb due to being an excellent climber...

[graystone]

+5 bonus to Diplomacy with those who find you familiar cute.