Magical child + mauler archetype familiar

[nennafir]

When I search the forums on this, all I see is a great deal of murkiness. It would be nice if some official Paizo person chimed in to let me know. I have definitely been pleasantly surprised many times in the past when Paizo has chimed in (even if it was to say something that disagreed with me!)

Question: Can a magical child have a familiar with the mauler archetype?

Points against this: The magical child gets improved familiar for free later on, and these give up "speak with animals". Since Mauler also gives this up, this means you can't have the mauler archetype.

Points for this: A careful reading of magical child reveals that they do not get the improved familiar feat per se. Instead, it says:

* "At 3rd level, the magical child's familiar reveals another aspect of its form, and its vigilante identity changes into a creature on the Improved Familiar list that would be available to a 3rd-level spellcaster."

Note: This means that the option to take that creature is open, but nowhere does it say one has to give up all of the things that improved familiar gives up.

* As far as accepting the drawbacks of the improved familiar feat, the only thing I can find in the magical child writeup is: "The Improved Familiar feat's alignment restrictions apply to this ability, but only the magical child's vigilante identity needs to have an alignment that fulfills the alignment requirements of the improved familiar."

Note: In other words, one has to accept the alignment restrictions of the improved familiar feat, but it does not seem to be the case that one has to give up "speak with animals of its own kind."

From this, it seems that by a strict RAW analysis, a magical child in PFS can have an improved familiar with a Mauler archetype.

Agree, disagree, want more dev input? Then please chime in on this thread. The more input (even if you disagree with me) the better, as far as I am concerned...

[Gary Bush]

I think this is a perfect candidate for the FAQ button!

[nennafir]

Thanks for the FAQ votes everyone!

Lacking any more detail/guidance, I think I will just cautiously go ahead with my character...

[Weirdo]

Interesting.

As you say, the RAW doesn't say that you give up 'speak with kind,' and it also doesn't seem overpowered to me. Magical Child is not an overly powerful class archetype to begin with - even with a Mauler Improved Familiar I doubt they'd overshadow a summoner with eidolon.

[Johnny_Devo]

In my mind, this seems to work fine.

The familiar's base form is a regular familiar, and it turns into an improved familiar in vigilante identity. Improved familiar's general rules only say "improved familiars do not gain the ability to speak with other creatures of their kind". Note that it doesn't say that they lose it if they have it.

So to me, it seems like it should work because it's happening in the reverse order.

For most improved familiars, it doesn't work because archetype tries to replace speak with animals of its own kind, but magical child has just a regular familiar that happens to be a mauler and then turns into an improved familiar.

I don't know if this is intended, but that's how it seems to hash out.

[CBDunkerson]

My take has always been that each of the different forms of the magical child's animal guide is 'separate' and thus they can have different familiar archetypes as appropriate for their form.

So... the original animal form could be a Mauler familiar, another form could be a Sage, and another could be a 'normal' familiar w/o an archetype.

Given that each form can have different stats, different creature type, different alignment, et cetera there is no reason that they must all have the same archetype.