When using the Improved Familiar feat to acquire a celestial/fiendish familiar, does the familiar still grant the character the bonus associated with it's animal type?
The consensus in this previous discussion seems to be "RAW it's ambiguous but it feels like it should." I agree, FWIW.
So hit the FAQ button there and ask your GM for confirmation, I guess.
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The celestial/fiendish/whatever animals are weak enough compared to other creatures you can get with the Feat,
that you probably SHOULD still get the bonus, but by the rules you don't (see above post).
Actually the same rules interactions also prevent Shaman from using Improved Familiar for even celestial/fiendish/whatever...
Or in more concrete terms, no: a standard human is not the same creature type as a vampire/half-dragon/whatever templated human.
Celestial/fiendish although less impressive, are in the exact same boat.
I don't see anything that clearly indicates one way or the other if you get the bonus. It just says add the template which makes me think nothing should be removed as part of that.
I have FAQed the previous discussion that Fuzzy-Wuzzy linked to.
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Thanks for the information and the link.
From a personal stand point, I have never liked the flavor of the Improved Familiar feat giving you a different/more powerful familiar. I wish there were a feat tree (Improved/Greater/Supreme etc.) that improved your existing familiar by adding templates and abilities.
*Note: I guess you can do that to a small degree with the Evolved Familiar feat.
Thanks for the information and the link.
From a personal stand point, I have never liked the flavor of the Improved Familiar feat giving you a different/more powerful familiar. I wish there were a feat tree (Improved/Greater/Supreme etc.) that improved your existing familiar by adding templates and abilities.
*Note: I guess you can do that to a small degree with the Evolved Familiar feat.
Familiar archetypes generally have a feat to improve what they do. Telepathic Link gives you telepathy out to a mile. Wizards can give their familiar the school familiar archetype with School Familiar and take the Greater School Familiar feat to improve it. There's a feat (can't find it right now) that allows a caster to use summoning spells to summon an individual templated improved familiar. Spirit's Gift will give any of a number of boosts to your familiar for a limited time. There are also bloodline and patron familiars that get a little extra.
Thanks for the information and the link.
From a personal stand point, I have never liked the flavor of the Improved Familiar feat giving you a different/more powerful familiar. I wish there were a feat tree (Improved/Greater/Supreme etc.) that improved your existing familiar by adding templates and abilities.
*Note: I guess you can do that to a small degree with the Evolved Familiar feat.
If you qualify as an Aasimar you can use the Celestial Servant feat to add the Celestial template to your existing familiar. In my opinion it should still grant the bonus for its animal type since it is just a buffed-up standard familiar and not actually a creature from another plane.
I see this as different from the Improved Familiar feat which is replacing your familiar with an actual other-planar creature. I agree with Byakko that this new creature wouldn't grant the animal type bonus. (Although I would be very, very happy if the Design Team said that it did.)
Only thing I can add at this point, is that *IF* Paizo wanted to rule that Celestial/Infernal/etc Template animal Familiars still gain the base "auxiliary" bonus (Init etc), that implies that they are the same creature type for this purpose... Which opens the door to Shamans to be able to at least get Celestial/Infernal/etc versions of the Familiar type they chose at 1st level (since they cannot choose other types per details of their class ability).
IMHO the planar template benefits are pretty ho-hum, but one factor in that is that normally the SR is superfluous because base familiars already get it. BUT... if you have a familiar archetype, you can easily have given up the normal familiar SR... So picking up a planar template via Improved Familiar could very well "give you back" SR (on top of what is gained via familiar archetype).
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From a personal stand point, I have never liked the flavor of the Improved Familiar feat giving you a different/more powerful familiar. I wish there were a feat tree (Improved/Greater/Supreme etc.) that improved your existing familiar by adding templates and abilities.
If your GM approves, it's possible to do that in some cases, such as replacing a mundane familiar with a celestial / fiendish template version of that same critter (as the GM can simply say that you are adding a template to your pre-existing critter, rather than dismissing and replacing it with the shiny new model).
In the case of something like an imp (able to turn into a boar, rat, raven or giant spider) or quasit (able to turn into a centipede, bat, toad or wolf), that might be able to shapechange into a specific smaller animal form, the GM might even allow for a normal animal familiar to 'evolve' into an imp or quasit, and retain it's original animal form as one of it's alternate forms.