Familiar pros: it's like playing a second character who's only good for using SLAs, skills, and magic items.
Familiar cons: it's obnoxious. If you don't make an effort to wring max utility out of them, they will sit in your pocket giving you some +init or something and nothing else. Can die.
Item pros: +1 spell/day.
Item cons: If you ever lose your item, you are completely wrecked.
Just imagine you have the choice to play a secondary character who gets his own actions, has halfway acceptable hp, and no innate mechanical goodness. Is the marginal utility greater than the effort spent squeezing out some usefulness from those actions? If yes, take it. If not, take the item. Or just pick an arch that swaps out arcane bond.
Although, with all the familiar archetypes, you can build them for more specific uses.
I like mauler for instance. While most familiars will not get use of the combat boosts (there is a wizard archetype that can give the familiar full BAB, but it doesn't do much to beyond make a basic beat stick with that), the interesting thing is that you can make all the regular familiar animals into medium size with at least some strength. How about an intelligent flying mount at level 3 for your halfling wizard?
Figment is neat, since it removes the 'can die' con- they have 1/4 health, but they are imaginary, and as such you can respawn them when you refill spells. They also get evo points and access to some low level eidolon evos (skilled for an instant +8 to perception seems nice)
Sage is just there for knowledge checks. That is its main gimmick. That, and it can be nice RP wise since they are the snooty side kick. Zazu (the little blue bird) from the lion king, basically.
Valet- it helps with item creation, it removes the need to get prestidigitation, maybe some aid and teamwork stuff.
School familiar- a lot of abilities, hard to summarize concisely.
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Familiar:
Pros +
Action Economy. This is a big thing, allowing you to potentially have a familiar that holds onto a wand and either buffs you and the party or zaps an enemy.
Scout. Depending on the familiar, you could have it fly around and report back to some extent. Or if it's just sneaky, run ahead and do the same. Some even come with invisibility which helps this further.
Bonuses. The initial familiar list gives bonuses to you if they're within reach of you. Different familiar's give different bonuses, some even give you +4 initiative.
RP Value. You have a pet / animal comrade. Easily gives you something to dote on or argue with in character if you wish.
Touch Spells. I forget which level this happens, but you can eventually send touch spells through a familiar, booping your enemy with magic through them.
Cons -
Can easily be killed. Even if your DM isn't the type to outright have an enemy target, other things such as area of effect and traps could lead to its down fall.
Red flag of potential caster. Smart enemies might recognize the animal as a potential familiar and thus target you first because of it. Not a big deal and this shouldn't happen often.
Bonded Item:
Pros +
Extra Spell of your highest known. This is HUGE IMO, especially for prepared casters. Need a spell you didn't prepare for the day but would be perfect for the situation? BAM! You have that spell.
Usually easy to hide. Especially with the ring, you can hide half of these behind clothing, making it harder to get rid of.
Craft Feat for your item. If you have the ring, you eventually get Craft Rings for your ring specifically. Making it a sort of partial free feat, which is nice.
Cons -
If you lose it, you're close to crippled. The worst part in comparison to a familiar. If you lose your familiar, you can eventually get a new one. If you lose your bonded item... well... you better go get it or else you're going to have a hard time casting anything.
Your extra spell is only once per day. One use, so you have to use it well.
No extra action economy. Doesn't do much outside of the one spell thing.
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Anyways, that's what I can think of. Hope it helps. Remember that if your DM is willing to go out of their way to take your bonded item, then odds are they'd do the same for the familiar and vice versa. Careful of said DMs though.
It is also worth mentioning that you can easily upgrade a bonded item without the item creation feat, which could give you access to some nice things....
...but that is somewhat balanced with the idea that you could consider a familiar as a magic item on its own (gives stat bonuses, can act like a mage hand and steal keys when you get caught, etc.)
A bonded item can also be enchanted without taking the necessary feat for it. Of course that's useless if you can't do crafting or you intended to take magical crafting feats anyway.
For folks with middel to low wizard play skills or with a GM that dosent hint the days challenges in the morning the Bond item allow that extra rabbit in the hat that will often be great. A extra Spell at the highest level and any one from the book is a massive powerboost and it needs nothing to be amazing. A familiar need Care and consideration and some items and pehaps a feat if it is to be better than that. But a familiar can be better.
Building a wizard and have seen the guides that recommend familiar but most players I speak to say bonded item....What are the pros and cons?
Third Mind covered a lot of what the difference between the two are.
I will highlight that the probability of losing your bonded item, unless it's a weapon or staff/wand, are pretty slim; those are most likely to be disarmed/sundered, whereas not many will think to sunder your ring or necklace (which would be pretty damn hard to do without hurting the character, since they're such diminutive-sized items). Even so, if you're facing creatures that Sunder or Disarm, melee-types are just as likely to be targeted, if not moreso, because you can still cast spells without your Bonded Item, but it's just more difficult to do so; the martials will have to go grab their weapon or get a new one, or revert to Unarmed Strikes, which makes them almost as useless as you.
Additionally, if you're having difficulty deciding, I'd consider taking the Eldritch Heritage feat for the Arcane Bloodline, as you get a free Arcane Bond, so whatever choice you make with your class feature, you can make the other with your character. The one from your Eldritch Heritage will be two levels lower than your actual character level, so I would suggest you take the Familiar if you plan on going this route, since the Familiar will scale with your class level, which is more important for determining hit points and such, whereas the Bonded Item isn't that dependant on your level, class, character, or otherwise.
I prefer bonded item, especially for NPCs. That 1/day anything in my spell book can spell the difference between dying and not. Granted, that is dependant on one's spell book's contents. It makes the spell book even more crucial that it already is. On the upside, free wondrous item, weapon or ring customized to your taste. Bonus part: wear the ring *under* gloves or gauntlets. (Cold iron gauntlets are awesome. Cold iron cestus or spiked gauntlets are also awesome. For hiding your ring.) Bad guys can't chain lightning something that they can't target.
I'd base which choice you make on the campaign under consideration. Do you have reason to believe that you will have sufficient down time to fully take advantage of your Wizard's capabilities? Will the group be amenable to a "late night" run of adventuring? Are you grabbing a ring of sustenance and the Fast Study Arcane Discovery ASAP? If so, your Wizard is an excellent force multiplier: 3/day full loadout of spells, for all practical purposes at 5th level. Are you doing the recon or is the group's sneaky character doing it? A familiar can give nice goodies - but it's rather squishy and only marginally harder to blow away than you are. Also, it eats some of your spells and gear if you want to protect the critter.
Most importantly, which would the GM prefer?
Which is great until the bad guys target the obnoxious critter. At low level it's sleep/color spray bait, a single magic missile can put it below 0 hp or any number of other things can happen to it.
Later when the little monster is waving around wands - and any foe with semi-decent Knowledge (arcana) will realize toot sweet - it dies and your sweet bonuses go buh-bye for at least a week. There are entire modules/AP chapters that take less than that to wrap up.
Hmmmm.....the Rhamphorhynchus (it is a tiny pterosaur) is tiny, with 6 str, and it gives +2 to initiative.
Put mauler on that, and you have a medium flying creature with 12 str...which is more than enough to carry a halfling and a wizard's equipment on a light load.
Flying mount, level 3, with still that pinch of initiative.
Also, maulers can actually get about the same hp as their wizards if you take that one feat that gives them an extra +2 per level. So 'who needs the fly spell?'
Animal companions and familiars are not safe in my home game, especially familiars. It's not that the DM targets them with malicious intent, it's that they are just not as hardy as PC's--again especially familiars--and fall victim to circumstances that would not slay their hardier masters such as traps, AOE's, etc.
Casting a spell defensively has a very similar DC to casting without your bonded item IIRC. I'm not sure it's quite as big of a deal as people are making it out to be here although I don't claim to be any sort of mage guru so I could easily be mistaken on that one.
At any rate, I am using a bonded item on the wizard I'm currently playing. The extra spell per day has definitely been useful on several occasions. Like save the entire party by teleporting us to safety when we are all out of resources in the middle of a deadly dungeon crawl sort of useful so well worth it in my mind.
Later when the little monster is waving around wands - and any foe with semi-decent Knowledge (arcana) will realize toot sweet - it dies and your sweet bonuses go buh-bye for at least a week.Care to explain how it dies? By this logic, every wizard dies quick. Why would they even bother targeting the familiar when there's a wizard around casting spells? Just don't send the familiar to the front line. Valet familiar archtype and a fly speed helps a lot in that regard.
Incidental damage for the most part, thus the reason the standard familiar gets evasion. Chain lightnings pack more secondary bolts that the bad guy can shake a stick at. A hostile foe (familiar) doing stuff is surely fair game for one of those. Breath weapons and other AoE - did the Wizard slather on the protection items and spells that he/she has up and running? No? Then it has much weaker save bonuses and, depending on archetype, half the wizard's hp - which wizards don't typically have in abundance in the first place. If the player was absentminded about this, he weathers the fireball fine, but his compy gets incinerated because it has a +5 bonus to the Wizard's +10 or whatever.
Familiars can be awesome, no doubt ... and they are resource sinks the same way that animal companions and cohorts are. Some foes are wantonly cruel - recognizing a familiar for what it is and that wasting it can cause at least a week's suffering is sometimes all it takes for motivating the bad guy to target it, whether primarily or more carefully aimed incidental damage.
That's the main twitch with familiars - you have to invest a healthy proportion of your swag into it just to keep its chances of survival at least on par with your own, making both weaker. Protecting a bonded ring only requires a glove or gauntlet.
Wizards customarily have several spells and magic items to make them unattractive targets: Mage Armor, Mirror Image, whatever enchantments they want to throw on to a masterwork t-shirt. Familiars have half the hp and a small scaling NA bonus and whatever the Wizard wants to cast. Improved Evasion helps, but it only goes so far.
If you want to kill a familiar, use an arrow, not a fireball.
That's the main twitch with familiars - you have to invest a healthy proportion of your swag into it just to keep its chances of survival at least on par with your own, making both weaker. Protecting a bonded ring only requires a glove or gauntlet.The familiar satchel costs 25gp, I think most people will be able to afford it.
If your familiar is safely tucked away in a satchel then it's not using a wand or doing (m)any of the cool things people recommend as reason to take an improved familiar.
Wizards customarily have several spells and magic items to make them unattractive targets: Mage Armor, Mirror Image, whatever enchantments they want to throw on to a masterwork t-shirt. Familiars have half the hp and a small scaling NA bonus and whatever the Wizard wants to cast. Improved Evasion helps, but it only goes so far.
If you want to kill a familiar, use an arrow, not a fireball.
Not necessarily. Familiars get natural armor (not sure if it is small- it goes to +10), AND they can wear actual armor as well (well, barding). The wizard faces penalties if they wear armor- the familiar just lacks proficiency (which is not much of a thing with light armor). Plus, they may be tiny with good dex, which further adds to it. So their AC can be fairly good.
And there is a feat- spirit's gift, that gives your familiar or animal companion the same bonuses as a shaman's familiar. You can even change the bonus every day.
So that means constant blurr or DR 5/adamantine. That can make the familiar down right tanky.
As has been pointed out, each has its pros and cons. *Shrugs*
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A lot of these posts seem to think the GM is going to be actively trying to kill the Familiar, or sunder the Bonded Item. A GM's job isn't to make life hard for the players, it's to make it fun.
I probably wouldn't even take into account which one is most likely to be lost, as that shouldn't be something that happens in a well run game.
The GM might choose to sunder your Bonded Item, or Incapacitate your familiar for story reasons, but if it's important to the story, it's not going to matter which one you choose, you're gonna lose it anyway.
Of course there's a small chance that there'll be the occasional accident: - An enemy gets lucky with a crit, and the familiar gets killed - The wizard gets disarmed and their staff falls into a volcano ... These are exceptions to the norm, and great opportunities for role-playing. Remember that scene in the LoTR movies when Gandalf and the balrog are fighting? Gandalf dropped his magic sword and had to catch the thing while falling in order to battle the Balrog. Yeah you remember it, coz it was awesome! Diving into the volcano to catch your bonded Item so you can teleport out before you hit the lava sounds like a pretty memorable scene to me. And a Familiar's death scene can give a character motivation to strive for revenge or repentance.
To me, the bonuses you get from the items are more important than how likely it is to be lost. And even more important is how it relates to your character (Eg, I'm much more likely to choose one because it fits the theme I'm going for). Right now, I'm making an Arcane Trickster, and a bonded weapon seems to fit the theme. Firstly because it's something my character will use all the time, and secondly because having a dagger/rapier that provides magic to my character is the reason he decided multi-class in the first place.
If your group loves playing really hardcore games where death is always a possibility, I'm probably in the Familiar camp. Sure, it's probably more likely to be lost than a bonded amulet, but as Lincoln Hills said: "[they can] act on their own volition when the caster's been incapacitated." This means that if your squishy wizard gets taken out, the player doesn't have to just sit around twiddling their thumbs.
The main thing with a bonded item is only ever take a amulet or ring.
Wizards who select a bonded object begin play with one at no cost. Objects that are the subject of an arcane bond must fall into one of the following categories: amulet, ring, staff, wand, or weapon.
The others need to held in hand. And if you aren't wearing the item or holding it in hand you can't cast spells very well. It is very easy to need two hands do something, and a bonded item that needs to be held in hand can inhibit that quite a bit. Meaning ring and amulet are the only really reasonable choices.
The main thing with a bonded item is only ever take a amulet or ring.
Wizards who select a bonded object begin play with one at no cost. Objects that are the subject of an arcane bond must fall into one of the following categories: amulet, ring, staff, wand, or weapon.The others need to held in hand. And if you aren't wearing the item or holding it in hand you can't cast spells very well. It is very easy to need two hands do something, and a bonded item that needs to be held in hand can inhibit that quite a bit. Meaning ring and amulet are the only really reasonable choices.
Not to mention that if you want to use a metamagic rod you need 1 hand on the rod and 1 hand casting.
Held bonded items lock you out of rods unless you feel like a concentration check every time you use one.
My eldritch knight used his longsword as his bonded item. Free masterwork weapon at 1st level. It paired nicely with Hand of the Apprentice. Got a lot of use out of the free spell throughout his career. It was stolen once, leading to a side quest to get it back. (If it was a familiar, it would've been kidnapped---these things happen).
I'd focus on how your PC would benefit from either choice and build on that. None of the cons are really deal breakers
I'm playing an 11th level wizard in PFS and I love my bonded ring. A great big spellbook with a spell for every occasion makes it a "get out of jail free" card once per day.
Party getting stomped by an efreeti with Scorching Ray and Quickened Scorching Ray every round? TPK? No! Communal resist fire! Damage just went from 24d6 a round to *nothing*.
Giant with barbarian levels just teleported in and full attacked you? Dead? No! Emergency Force Sphere!
Suddenly there are vampires dominating everyone? TPK? No! Magic Circle Against Evil! Everyone who failed gets a new save and everyone is flat immune to new uses.
The enemy all have hardness 10 in a tier 1-5? Heart of the Metal! We all have adamantine weapons!
Need to bust an NPC out of jail for information? Dimension door!
Can't talk to that vital NPC water elemental who only speaks Aquan? Elemental Speech!
Those are all situations which literally came up in games and went from disaster to trivial thanks to the bonded item. It's a huge boon, your whole spellbook becomes a bag of tricks. TPKs don't come from only having a +5 initiative instead of a +9, they come from weird conditions and powers no one is equipped to deal with. Darkness, incorporeal enemies, flight, invisibility, unbreakable DR, etc... You can't predict and prepare for all of them, and with a bonded item you don't need to.
In addition, for players like myself who kind of suck at predicting what spells to prep that day, it's a nice safety net.
Another consideration is if you are multiclassing (for instance, Wizard is just the base spellcasting class for Arcane Trickster)
A Bonded Item doesn't scale much no matter whether you are single-classed or multi-classed, but that extra 1 spell/day scales with caster level, so you aren't losing anything when you multiclass as long as you don't lose arcane caster levels.
A Familiar scales quite a bit with your Wizard levels, but doesn't scale at all with your non-Wizard levels, and Boon Companion only offsets 4 lost Familiar progression levels, which means a Familiar is still good if you're just dipping in other classes, but gets really hurt if you are going for the full span of a prestige class (unless it progresses your Familiar -- only one I can think of that would do this for a Wizard is Evangelist; Winter Witch also works this way, but only for the Winter Witch base class, not Wizard, unless you can figure out a way to get the Ice Magic class feature on a Wizard). If it weren't for this problem, a Familiar with the Mauler archetype would actually be pretty good for an Arcane Trickster, to provide flanking.
Edit: If you are building to become a Hellknight Signifer, a Familiar still has the same problem, but you have the option to convert a Bonded Item into your Hellknight Signifer Mask. This can be sundered, but if an enemy is trying to sunder something on your face, you have worse things to worry about than whether your mask happens to be your bonded item.
@Kestral1287, You seem to have missed the point of my post.
Aside from the (very) occasional accident, you're not going to get that badly nerfed unless it's intentional. But if the time comes when the GM wants to nerf you, nothing you do to prepare is going to matter.
And when the GM decides to knock out your bonded item or familiar for story reasons, losing one of these leaves you with a combat-effective Wizard and one does not.
If you're that worried, take an amulet or a ring as your bonded Item, it's way harder to target than a weapon or a Familiar. As a side note, Killing a Familiar means you lose it for a week, while sundering an item only loses it for a day or so. To lose it for a week it has to be "lost or destroyed". If it's just damaged, it gets repaired when you next prepare spells.
The sword is actually not key to Gandalf's power; it was a shiny magic item and that's about it. His staff is a much bigger deal; the sword just happened to be at hand.
The staff wasn't the key to Gandalf's power either. Gandalf is older than the universe. All of creation was brought into being by song, Gandalf's power comes from words (the staff just helped). We could go into a huge discussion about the lore of middle earth (which I love by the way, words there don't just have power, they ARE power, it's so Flippin' rad!) but really that's a whole other thread, so let's just let that one lie (or if you wanna contradict me one more time that's fine, coz I love this stuff, but I'll leave it there so we can get back to the post at hand).
You can probably build just about any character to use either one, frankly.
Absolutely true, you could build either way. That's what I was trying to say, but I get rambl-ey sometimes, sorry about that.
If you spec your familiar to be tough to kill (which requires exactly one feat), it'll outlast the bonded amulet. And the party.
You seem to be agreeing with me there, so ... go team =)
Pretty much my point can be summed up with "Go with the one that fits your character".
In terms of the benefits they bring, I think an extra spontaneous spell per day from the Bonded Item trumps the random passive buff given by the familiar. Having a masterwork item or an animal companion is mostly just fluff.
If you're going to invest feats in your familiar, it's almost certainly going to end up more powerful, but if not, either one is good.
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I prefer the Familiar personally. If your willing to spend a feat in getting an improved familiar their in/out of combat versatility goes through the roof.
I've been in two parties so far with improved familiars, one had a fAiry dragon and the other had something which had access to invisibility at will.
The Fairy Dragon is a huge boost to the person using it, constantly using wands/spells to increase action economy.
The other one was our party scout and was an absolute boss at the job. He also provided amazing crafting buffs to his master.
If all you want is a regular familiar then I'd say a bonded ring is probably worth it, but if your willing to spend the feat I'd totally go with the familiar.
I think that they are all good, but some are better.
+4 init familiars are Improved Initiative (virtual and stacks) and Alertness in a bag. This is the most powerful in my opinion, but the least wow factor. Bonuses to things you roll multiple times every game session are really useful if dull.
Bonded ring, amulet or weapon comes next because they either don't take up your hand or take it up with a weapon so you threaten. You can use the hand holding your bonded object to cast, so the weapon will be good for some while the ring/amulet will be better for others. The real draw is the floating spell, this is what you really miss having a familiar.
Other familiars like archetyped ones or improved ones come next. These guys are cool and useful, but probably not as useful as a floating spell. Definitely the most room for tricks and wow factor here.
The worst are bonded wands and staves because they practically beg to be sundered or disarmed and they don't offer much over the other item types. Note that even the "worst" option here is still a really good and cool option.
The worst are bonded wands and staves because they practically beg to be sundered or disarmed and they don't offer much over the other item types. Note that even the "worst" option here is still a really good and cool option.
I think I agree with you in terms of game mechanics, but giving a wizard a staff just seems right, you know?
Indeed. My wizard's bonded item is his staff, he's made a career out of not being involved in melee... that's what the fighters are for!The worst are bonded wands and staves because they practically beg to be sundered or disarmed and they don't offer much over the other item types. Note that even the "worst" option here is still a really good and cool option.I think I agree with you in terms of game mechanics, but giving a wizard a staff just seems right, you know?
I'd probably let wizards in my party use their staves as quarterstaves or something. Maybe make them take a feat to do it? or maybe they can't be enchanted for melee, but I feel like you could hit someone over the head with one (maybe it just counts as a club?).
Actually that club idea seems so reasonable it's probably somewhere in the rules. I'd at least let them ignore an Improvised Weapon penalty for using their own bonded item (if that's a thing), that's just me though.(heh, masterwork improvised weapon)
Item pros: +1 spell/day.
Item cons: If you ever lose your item, you are completely wrecked.You're hampered, not completely wrecked. It means you need to make concentration checks to get your spells off, something that becomes easier to do as you level.
It's an option that gets more powerful the fatter your spellbook gets. It becomes something that you will be grateful for when you need that spell you did not prepare and you don't have 10 minutes to dork around studying your spellbook to prepare one of your empty slots, assuming you have any.
At low levels it's pretty devastating. Even if you have 20 Int (the highest possible for anything close to a core race) a level 1 wizard still has a 70% chance to fail when casting cantrips.
If you're level 10 though, you likely have at least a +15 to your roll (hopefully more), so even if you take 10 on your roll you should be able to cast all your spells.(I'm not sure you can take 10 on this, but I don't remember seeing anything that says you can't, so unless there's something threatening you it shouldn't be a problem ... or unless I just totally forgot)
Building a wizard and have seen the guides that recommend familiar but most players I speak to say bonded item....What are the pros and cons?
I feel that the Bonded Item is generally superior - IF you don't go in for the wand-wielding familiar cheese. If you do, then that would seem to be the clear choice.
Item pros: +1 spell/day.
Item cons: If you ever lose your item, you are completely wrecked.You're hampered, not completely wrecked. It means you need to make concentration checks to get your spells off, something that becomes easier to do as you level.
It's an option that gets more powerful the fatter your spellbook gets. It becomes something that you will be grateful for when you need that spell you did not prepare and you don't have 10 minutes to dork around studying your spellbook to prepare one of your empty slots, assuming you have any.
As noted above, it's not a concentration check, because you can give yourself bonuses to conc checks. At level 1, you're looking DC 21 on a roll of 1d20+1. That's completely wrecked. If you're level 10, you're looking at DC 25 with 1d20+10. That's still failing 70% of your spells if you're casting on level. Even level 1 spells are failing half the time. Sure, at 20, you can auto succeed first level spells, and cast your highest level spells on a 9, but I'd say having a ~50% chance of wasting a turn and losing a spell qualifies as completely wrecked.
Caster level bonuses apply, naturally.