FAQ Request / Confirmation : Familiar or Celestial servant change the type to magical beast

[Vrischika111]

FAQ question : does being a Familiar or applying the feat Celestial servant change the type to magical beast if you're not an animal (as per the improved familiar rule)

FAQ on Celestial Servant
: the affected creature becomes of the magical beast type

Wizard / Familiar
: ... only normal animal can become familiar ... but is now a magical beast for the purpose of effects that depend on its type

now, we can have "basic familiars" with type other than animals:
* Ioun wyrd (construct)
* petrifern, Leshy (plant)
* leopard slug, crimson spider, greensting scorpion (vermin)

in the book familiar folio, there's a chapter about approximating familiar (p12), but nothing about their type.

a sidebar on unusual familiar (p31) says
: Construct, plant, and vermin familiars gain an Intelligence score, and they lose the mindless trait if they had it
this could imply that type does not change, otherwise this sentence would be useless - magical beast are not mindless.

[Ascalaphus]

There's no rule magical beasts can't be mindless, nor is there a rule saying constructs have to be mindless.

[Vrischika111]

creatures types (from PRD)
under Vermin:
Traits: Vermin possess the following traits (unless otherwise noted in a creature's entry).
* Mindless

construct/plant :
* some plants / most constructs are mindless

magical beast : no mention at all about mindless

so while the rules agree that some plant/construct could be 'not-mindless'
it seems to default to : vermin ARE and magical beast AREN'T

and while we can imagine a mindless magical beast, I don't see the relevance here.

[Ascalaphus]

The sentence is there to say that your familiar is never mindless. Even when your familiar is sort of turning into a magical beast, it doesn't automatically gain every MB property, they spell out precisely and exhaustively what happens to a creature because it becomes a familiar.

So the sentence doesn't really say anything in particular about your familiar's possible new type. I would imagine that type only changes for animals however because the animal type seems intended for "natural" animals. When an animal is "uplifted" it tends to become a magical beast (familiar, Awaken spell). An Awakened plant doesn't become a different type however, it stays a plant.

[CraziFuzzy]

This does still need to be answered, because it will continue to come up. Simple things like healing magic are a common question with Ioun Wyrds.

[KingOfAnything]

Animals change to magical beast type, everything else keeps its type.

What would be the point of having a type otherwise?

[oneyou]

In the vermin type (from prd) we have:
"A vermin-like creature with an Intelligence score is usually either an animal or a magical beast, depending on its other abilities."
Which would indicate that the vermin should become magical beasts.

There is at least one case where a familiar loses its type when it becomes a familiar.
If it does not gain the magical beast typing, then I guess it is typeless.
(Hand's Detachment from Haunted heroes handbook: "Use the statistics for a crawling hand... save that the hand is not undead")

[CBDunkerson]

oneyou wrote:

There is at least one case where a familiar loses its type when it becomes a familiar.

If it does not gain the magical beast typing, then I guess it is typeless.
(Hand's Detachment from Haunted heroes handbook: "Use the statistics for a crawling hand... save that the hand is not undead")

I don't think that is a matter of 'losing its type' so much as they just used statistics for a very similar 'creature' rather than creating an entirely separate set for the living version of the same thing. That said, I'm not sure if a crawling hand should be considered a 'magical beast', 'outsider' (due to the spirit), or part of a humanoid which just happens to be separated from the rest... or how that would work. For example, could you cast 'Hold Person' on the hand and affect both it and the person it is usually attached to, or would they have to be targeted separately?

For the rest, construct and plant familiars should definitely remain unchanged. Vermin should become magical beasts. Tumor and eyeball familiars are similar to the crawling hand in that they are part of a humanoid.

[CraziFuzzy]

To be clear, Familiars do not 'lose their type'... Nothing ever says they cease to be an animal - but it does state that they are now "a magical beast for the purpose of effects that depend on its type." So they don't lose their type-based traits... Ioun Wyrd familiars still lack a con score, still have the special immunities; Plant familiars retain their special immunities; etc. The issue is that Magical Beasts CAN be healed via curative spells, so are they considered magical beasts for the purpose of [cure light wounds] effects?

[CraziFuzzy]

Part of the issue is that most the 'unusual' familiars are from splat books, which don't have FAQ's or ERRATA - but they COULD FAQ or even errata the Familiar text in the CRB to clarify that Animal based familiars are considered magical beasts. This fix would then handle the vermin, plant, and construct type familiars.

[Vrischika111]

exactly.
there's a FAQ saying that cure (positive energy healing) does not work on construct.
but as they are considered magical beasts for effect... do healing work ?