I am looking at picking up a familiar for my Arcanist next level.
I have two decisions to be made, namely what type and archtype to have, both of which I am looking at two
First is a Winter Hare (Named Harvey): +4 Init is sweet, and having a magical character with a white rabbit amuses me greatly
Second is a Raven (Named Poe): Appraise +3 is okay, not great, but the added flight and (Possibly) spoken language is a great boon (Scouting and such). Also the character (While having great general stats) is going to be based on Int, and the Raven has long been associated with knowledge (Odin's two ravens for instance)
The second Choice is archtype
Mauler: Give up communicating sucks, but the idea of it growing to defend me amuses me greatly. This could be the brawn to my characters smarts
Sage: So it becomes another source of information
Mauler is rough for a "wizardy" class because you have a d6 hit die and familiars have half of your HP and they have your bab so half bab. So you're looking at a d3 creature with low con and half bab. That doesn't sound that impressive of a brawn.
Sage is also not that good for you. How many skills per level are you getting? Yeah that's a lot higher than 2. So unless you're needing your familiar to have different skills than you, sage isn't a good option.
Meaning if you're going to be a knowledge guy then sage will probably make you worse at knowledge than a normal familiar. If you know your INT and wanted to we could math it out to make sure.
Your two animal choices are a hard call to separate init is good, talking scout is handy.
If you go mauler it realy cuts down on the raven's value, but a brawny rabbit pummeling your foes is funny.
A sage raven appeals to me personally, and of you are going to do any item crafting the valet is great as well.
Will look at Valet
Java man, you have the right of it, exactly what I was thinking about on the other issues (Night of the Lupis jokes I was planning)
Good Call Chess PWN
Part of why I like Raven however is the mythological tie with Knowledge
If your Familiar is important to the character's concept, you may wish to consider the Figment archetype. It's not very potent, but there's something to be said for the immortality your Familiar gets.
|
There are better options for combat optimization, but since you seem to want to go more with story...
Figment archetype could go well with the white rabbit.. crossing the 'magician's rabbit out of a hat' bit to Alice in Wonderland and The Matrix psychedelia... the rabbit is all in your mind.
The Raven Sage can be workable if you avoid most knowledge skills yourself and let the familiar specialize in them. With speech and the Sage's Guidance feat it could potentially fly over an enemy and tell the whole party about weaknesses to impart a +2 insight bonus on attacks and skill checks.
While a Mauler would be tough to pull off with a full caster, a Protector familiar might be worthwhile in that it can absorb some of the damage you would otherwise take... thus effectively giving you more HP.
Finally, Mascot familiars can be extremely useful if you have a group with diverse spellcasting and/or skills.
If going Raven for skills I'd have it be normal and have all your knowledge skills pull double duty.
I think I will be going with the Valet Archtype. I have to admit that the Thrush is in almost everyway better than the Raven, except for some thematic things I like...