Familiars page 287 of the playtest Rulebook.

[Ezzard]

page 287

"Familiars are mystically bonded creatures tied to your
magic. Most familiars were originally animals, though
the ritual of becoming a familiar makes them something
more. You can choose a Tiny animal you want as your
familiar, such as a bat, cat, frog, lizard, raven, or snake.
Familiars have the minion trait (see page 416), and so
they gain 2 actions each round during an encounter, and
you need to spend 1 action each round to command them.
If your familiar dies, you can spend a week of downtime to
replace it at no cost. You can’t have more than one familiar"

"Each day, you can channel your magic into two abilities
chosen from familiar abilities, which affect your familiar,
and master abilities, which affect you.
If your familiar is an animal that naturally must have
one of these familiar abilities (for instance, an ---->owl<--- has a fly
Speed), you must select that ability, and your familiar can’t
be an animal that naturally has more familiar abilities than
your daily maximum familiar abilities."

Right off the bat the example in the second part gives an animal option not present in the first list. Even worse I can't find any of those animal names listed in the bestiary. Or anywhere else for that matter. So that means that we have to decide what familiar abilities each of them might have.

So let's try the raven.

Can see in the Dark, Can be taught to speak, Can Fly.

Well that's three options so I guess we just pick two- oh wait.
"your familiar can’t be an animal that naturally has more familiar abilities than your daily maximum familiar abilities."

So I guess Raven is out. Let's try Cat and snake. Oh bonus they even have stat blocks under the ranger pet section, guess there are some examples in this book, let's check those out.

Welp sad news they also have more than three.

So far out of the presented options Frog is the only one that seems to fit, with dark vision and a swim speed.

I noticed there is a feat called <enhanced familiar> which allows you to infuse your familiar with additional magical energy. Letting you select four familiar or master options each day, instead of two.

This would allow most animals on the list to be valid options but at the same time opens a new can of worms. The way it's worded on page 287 you can take 2 familiar abilities and 2 master abilities. The feat mentioned above suggest that it's either one or the other. More confusing that that is there are only 3 master abilities listed.

In conclusion the rules for familiars are not clear at best not finished at worse. One of the best parts of playing a Wizard is having a familiar, at least in my experience. Paizo please look into this matter before the release of the final product.

Additionally on page 137 there is a typo in the General Feats Section. It reads:

General Feats *2nd*
At 3rd level and every 4 levels thereafter, you gain a
general feat. General feats are listed in Chapter 5.

The typo is with the bracket the text seems to read correctly, however this (like the familiar ability selection in place) could lead to arguments across the table. Such arguments will only prevent DMs and Players from having a truly fun experience.

The errors are small but I have faith that you can fix them.

P.S.

I love what you did with Necromancers. The ability that lets you heal when casting a Necromancy spell is great. I would like to see Class labels in the spell descriptions, it would make it easier to not get excited about spells only occult bards can know.

[Bardarok]

All familiars have low-light vision naturally so I am not seeing your resoning. Also the rangers animal companioons are much larger versions of the creatues.

Fly+Language = Raven (low-light vision is standard)

Not sure why you need three abilities for a cat all I can think of is scent ability.

You can't reporoduce the rangers super snake with scent, climb, and swim with a lvl one familiar but you can still have a snake just choose one or two movement speeds probably land and climb not all snakes swim anyways.

EDIT: Clarification in case you are coming from 5r or similar. In Pathfinder Low-light visiin is the ability to see in very low light it's what cats and owls and most animals would naturally have. Darkvision is a supernatural ability to see with no light. You would not expect a cat or Raven to have darkvision. In 5e they combined the two into a single ability.

[Ezzard]

Bardarok wrote:

All familiars have low-light vision naturally so I am not seeing your resoning. Also the rangers animal companioons are much larger versions of the creatues.

Fly+Language = Raven (low-light vision is standard)

Not sure why you need three abilities for a cat all I can think of is scent ability.

You can't reporoduce the rangers super snake with scent, climb, and swim with a lvl one familiar but you can still have a snake just choose one or two movement speeds probably land and climb not all snakes swim anyways.

This is the issue. There is no stat block to determine what any of the listed options may or may not have. You might say the snake can't swim, or the cat can only climb and see in the dark (familiar trait darkvision separate from the low-light standard) but doens't have the scent ability.

The problem is what an animal should "naturally" have can not be left up for debate. There must be clearly defined rules.

To clarify I was not attempting to recreate the ranger pets, I simply looked at there stat blocks to see what abilities they had and attempted to match them to the list on page 287.

[Bardarok]

I think it is designed so mechanically it doesn't matter what your animal is. You can pick whatever you want for flavor you just can't justify getting more than two abilities by saying your animal should have more abilities. But I see your point a hard ass GM might try and severley restrict animal choices if they could find a way to justify it.

[Cantriped]

All of the example familiars from the rulebook can be written using actual familiar rules. Ravens get low-light for free, and only have to take flight, leaving a slot free. Bats trade precise sight for Echolocation (it is in the rules for senses that creatures can do so if appropriate), and have to take flight, again one free slot.

A poison option for the snake, frog, or lizard would be very nice though. As would an ability to grant familiars in general with a trained attack.

[Ezzard]

So I forgot to bring this up before but the listed animals for familiar options cannot be found in the bestiary. At least I can't find them, it would make this whole issue go away if they were.

If anyone knows where they might be found in the bestiary please let me know.