Homonculus vs Clockwork familiar

[SOLDIER-1st]

Pretty much as the title queries. What are some pros and cons of each familiar? I want to have a construct that I crafted be my familiar, and to the best of my knowledge these are my two options (if there are others please let me know).

(If it matters, I'm playing a possessed shaman of lore and the possessor, a cabal devil, wants a body of her own to inhabit, rather than riding in the shaman or the current owl familiar. I have Craft Construct and Improved Familiar, just need to decide which construct to use.)

[Coidzor]

You can create a Homunculus with an unknown number of additional HD as determined by your GM(IIRC there's been no clarification at least), and then use HD Modification after it is created to add on even more HD.

A Clockwork Familiar can only be modified to have up to 4 HD of its own.

So if you've got the cash to burn and want your familiar to have a lot of feats or ranks in various skills of its own(or if you make it with more HD than you have, more ranks in skills you have than you do on its own), then a Homunculus has a lot more potential than a Clockwork Familiar.

[SOLDIER-1st]

Coidzor wrote:

You can create a Homunculus with an unknown number of additional HD as determined by your GM(IIRC there's been no clarification at least), and then use HD Modification after it is created to add on even more HD.

Where do you get that from?

[Dr Styx]

The Ioun Wyrd is a Familiar you can get at 1st Level.

[Dr Styx]

Homunculus wrote:

A Homunculus with more than 2 Hit Dice can be created, but each additional Hit Die adds +2,000 gp to the cost to create.

[SOLDIER-1st]

Dr Styx wrote:

The Ioun Wyrd is a Familiar you can get at 1st Level.

Cool, but not quite what I'm looking for.

Dr Styx wrote:

Homunculus wrote:

A Homunculus with more than 2 Hit Dice can be created, but each additional Hit Die adds +2,000 gp to the cost to create.

Nice! Homonculus is looking good then.

[Coidzor]

Homunculi can get a bit crazy if you go whole hog on it.

SOLDIER-1st wrote:

Coidzor wrote:

You can create a Homunculus with an unknown number of additional HD as determined by your GM(IIRC there's been no clarification at least), and then use HD Modification after it is created to add on even more HD.

Where do you get that from?

As mentioned by Dr Styx, the Homunculus entry itself covers the cost to make one with more HD, and HD Modification is from Building and Modifying Constructs, which IIRC originally appeared in Ultimate Magic as far as printed sourcebooks.

As I interpret it, the Homunculus entry covers building it with additional HD as part of the initial construction, then the HD Modification rules look at whatever that number of HD is and place the cap at 1.5 times that initial number of HD.

The main gray area is how many HD you can make a Homunculus with in the first place. Is it uncapped due to not being specified? Is it the general usual maximum for a Tiny Construct per general monster rules and CR guidelines?

Do the HD Modification rules retroactively break and screw over Homunculi so that the best you can do is make one with 3 HD initially and then add another HD to it after creation giving it only 2 HD that it could possibly have over the baseline model?

All of that is up to the individual GM at this time, with nothing really to go on for making a ruling beyond personal preference.

[Poppet]

Poppet Familiars are the best!