Whether that be from gaining a level in wizard after two levels in fighter, or it be from being a magus and taking familiar arcana at level 3, or even any high charisma character taking eldritch heritage(arcane), I'm not sure how to handle this.
Does the familiar just kinda... poof as your familiar? I doubt this is the thematic answer, but it almost seems as if it's the mechanical answer.
By rules of what happens when you must replace a familiar, you must spend money and preform an 8 hour ritual to replace the familiar, but i don't think this is the case either. The first familiar never costs anything for a level 1 wizard, so why should my first familiar cost anything here?
However, I can't find any relevant information, and my google-fu has failed me. Am I missing anything obvious?
So why do I need the 8 hour ritual to bond with the replacement familiar if I don't need it to bond with my first familiar? How does this random intelligent fox suddenly become attuned to me, gain a whole bunch of HP, etc etc?
If answer really is that the familiar is instantly treated as your familiar, it just seems a little... wrong to me.
I suppose it's meant to prevent familiar replacement abuse. The first time you get a familiar, you have to take a feat or class level, which amounts to you leveling up. Replacing a familiar can happen anytime, not just when you level. Somebody somewhere has probably thought of some weird money-hax cheese that lets you exploit the repeated deaths of a familiar or something.
Also, the 8 hours and 200 gold/level is a sort of punishment for losing the familiar.
Hey! My tyranno saurus ranch is a perfectly legitimate business. I bond with each and every one of them through the ancient druid rituals to call animal companions before I send them off to the slaughterhouse.
My ranch creates jobs for this community- do you know how many people it takes to dismantle an adult t-rex?