I'm going to be playing an Eldritch Guardian in Zeitgeist and wanted to play a technology focused fighter, grabbing a Clockwork Familiar or Inevitable Arbiter with Improved Familiar later on. These can fight decently with having Regen or DR + half fighters HP over half Wizards HP.
Is there any way to fight with a familiar before then? I was planning on getting an Ioun Wyrd, but any familiar before 7th is going to have trouble with its size. I can't grab mauler if I want the Improved Familiar later and it seems a waste for 6 levels to have a familiar with all my combat feats sitting around doing nothing.
Is there any way for the Ioun Wyrd to be a decent fighter before 7th?
Figment is probably the best bet. You can use the evo point from 3rd th gain reach. Also it does not matter if it dies. You could use a mauler uniting 7th. Mainly talk with your GM.
There are non-ioun wyrd familiars which are small size or which can enter an opponent's square without AoOs.
This is also asking a little bit about post 7th too, since the clockwork familiar only has natural attacks, and I wanted to grab sage.
Sage sounds like a weird archetype for an eldritch guardian to be using, but OK. You could just try to make it easy for the familiar to move in - feats like snake style or the panther style line might help.
@avr The ioun wyrd is set in. I'm looking for move of a "I've totally built this" familiar than a normal familiar. The sage is to help the fighters lack of skills. This is a pretty RP/skills heavy adventure path.
I'll look at the style feats. That is what I was looking for.
@Firebug the d20pfsrd says you can't take reach or pounce with evolved familiar. I'll have to look up the ruling about it
Evolved companion has that limit, not evolved familiar. Forgot they were two separate feats.
If sage is already locked in, then I'd really suggest adding figment to it until you get Improved Familiar. At this point, the Ioun Wyrd would just be the "manifested dreams of self-build familiars to come", or some-such.
Because if you fight with it, it is going to die, a lot, and a figment is at least easy to replace.
I'd prefer sage (the only thing locked in are familiar choice and not going Mauler) but willing to drop it if there is something else other than figment that help from replacing familiars every other combat.
Sage and figment are compatible. You can take both archetypes on the same familiar.
Another idea would be to specialise in ranged combat and to try to persuade your GM that an ioun wyrd could throw alchemical weapons. It's not clear to me exactly how a 'floating swarm of gemstones surrounding a larger stone' interacts with the world but it might be possible.