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Combat Familiar Hit Points?

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Is there any way for a wizard's familiar to escape the limitation that its hit points are half its master's hit points?

Mauler's endurance helps if you have a mauler familiar. Otherwise SoL, raise your con.

You can cast False Life on it, which helps.

Unless the DM actively wants to kill your familiar, the most danger they're in is from Area of Effect spells and breath weapons, so it's important to make sure your familiar is included in the Resist/Prot Energy spells that get passed around. (Being a wizard yourself makes this easier since you'll be providing some of them.) In addition, equipment that increases their saves and dexterity will improve their reflex saves. They get Improved Evasion, which is -almost- like getting full hps vs the things they're most likely to suffer from.

When those AoE Fort-save spells come by... well... that's gonna cost you gold to bring them back.

If your DM is actively targeting your familiar, either you deserve it -- I had Perlivash in kingmaker and a faerie dragon can be a very helpful member of the party -- or your DM is being a jerk. Share-spells Mirror Images can help absorb attacks for them just as it can for you. If you've got a wand-wielding improved familiar then they NEED a wand of MI.

HP are stuck, but you can use a variety of other things to avoid getting hit in the first place. Mirror Image, Invisibility, Blink, Displacement, etc. are all good options.
Scarab Sages
Tarondor wrote:
Is there any way for a wizard's familiar to escape the limitation that its hit points are half its master's hit points?

Mostly no.

If you had the Toughness feat, it would apply, but there's very few ways to give feats to the familiar.

That Mauler archetype has a feat option that grants bonus HP.

There's also the figment archetype which escapes the half HP of the master limitation by instead having a quarter the master's HP...

Beyond that, There are temporary HP for various sources which could increase your HP.

Could also look into redirecting the damage that the familiar takes to another source. The In Harm's Way feat, for example.
Sczarni

Retraining can be used on Familiars (even in PFS!), so you can add +1 hp up to its max.

Granted that won't be more than 4-14 hp, depending on racial hit die.

Temporary Hit Points can be pretty useful.

Nefreet, could you link on the retraining? I know retraining the master's hit points will affect the familiar's hit points, but I never read that you could retrain the familiar HP directly. I would really like this to be so for a couple characters I have in the works.
Scarab Sages
Nefreet wrote:

Retraining can be used on Familiars (even in PFS!), so you can add +1 hp up to its max.

Granted that won't be more than 4-14 hp, depending on racial hit die.

Are you forgetting how familiar HP is calculated? They ignore their con mod and racial HD, and instead have exactly half their master's HP.

Sczarni

Now that you mention it, those are good points. I mentioned it off the cuff because a player in my region had done it. I'll have to mention it to him.

Retraining is allowed for Familiars, but perhaps Retraining HP for them is off the table.

Oh well, I can say that retraining HP an animal companion, if allowed, is just a very good idea.

A figment familiar doesn't need to worry much about hit points.

I'm currently playing a wizard with a goat mauler familiar, and spirit's gift (stone) for DR 5/adamantine has proved useful a time or two. The wizard has toughness as well, though not mauler's endurance.

Is it the nerfed into "probably not a good option" version that was to balance it against Animal Companions or the good original?
Azten wrote:
Is it the nerfed into "probably not a good option" version that was to balance it against Animal Companions or the good original?

The former. In Kingmaker so 1/day makes it acceptable if not great, but I expect to retrain it eventually.

Would've been nice if it wasn't ever an option for Animal Companions since only one Shaman Spirit gets one.
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