Would you allow a familiar to gain class levels if the wizard took leadership and named their familiar their cohort?

[Senko]

I'm curious would ypu allow (house rule obviously) a wizard (or other class with familiar/animal companion) to take leadership and make their familiar their cohort giving it levels as per the leadership feat.

Assume a game where your allowing/giving everyone leadership and that the cohorts will be played by you the gm not the player. Inproved familiars count hd towards level total e.g. faerie dragon (3d12) is cohort level -3 in cpass levels.

[EldonGuyre]

No.

[Senko]

You'd rather they just took a cohort they controlled then?

[zza ni]

as npc's? go bananas!
just remember to keep track of their attitude toward the players. anything too nasty and they might shift from helpful\friendly to worse case hostile.

[Senko]

zza ni wrote:

as npc's? go bananas!

just remember to keep track of their attitude toward the players. anything too nasty and they might shift from helpful\friendly to worse case hostile.

On they'd function as you'd normally expect them too abuse and mistreat your cohort/familiar and they're quite capable of leaving you looking for a new one (with a bad rep). They are now a being in their own right as played by the DM and under leadership rules (for levelling and gear).

[Anarchy_Kanya]

Yes, but then it would stop being a familiar.

[Meirril]

The relationship between a player and a cohort is different than a familiar, and that is different than an animal companion.

Familiars are the tightest of these 3 bonds. The familiar and wizard are bonded together. The familiar gets a lot of magical abilities from the wizard just for being in a bond. The familiar is basically an extension of the wizard, going so far as to have their hp linked.

Animal companions are also 'connected' to their player companion, but not as tightly. While the animal companion is loyal, and the connection is magical or spiritual in some way, its not nearly as literal of a connection.

Cohorts are just like a loyal human follower. You treat them well and they will do anything within their alignment for you. But its not like you can concentrate and magically be connected to them like you can with a familiar. Also cohorts listen to rumors about you. If you have a reputation for walking cohorts into rooms to set off traps and driving them to an early grave...it will lower the quality of future cohorts. That doesn't happen with familiars or animal companions.

All that said there is a way to turn an animal companion into a monstrous cohort which is an alternative to Leadership. But that doesn't apply to familiars.

[Mark Hoover 330]

Aren't there feats that allow you to turn another person into a familiar, with spell sharing, though not with the level-based bonuses? If the familiar removed all of it's familiar-based bonuses, went back to the base creature, then the PC took those feats, then yes; I'd allow a PC to have their "familiar" as their cohort.

[Lady Asharah]

My DM allowed me to turn my familiar into a cohort. It is now a creature with 3 racial HD (Azata Lyrakien) and rest is levels in Bard.

It has mostly been an experiment so instead of saying whether I'd allow it or not, I'd rather share observations.

1. Familiars always have half master's HP, this overrides their racial HD or any other hit points they might earn. This means as they gain levels in a class, their HP don't grow nearly as fast as they should. This will make for a very fragile cohort.

2. Fragile, but with incredible saves. Familiars use the better of their own or their master's saves. It's very possible to pick a class for your cohort/familiar that has good saves where yours are bad, which will result in a character with all good saves. Plus Evasion. Just keep in mind the silly low amount of HP. One good hit can spell doom for your cohort.

3. Skills. A hell to manage, but an amazing amount of them. Familiars inherit master's skill ranks, so all the skill points earned from their class can be placed into skills that the master doesn't use. You just have to figure out a way of keeping track of which skill points came from where.

Overall, if I were to have a familiar and the leadership feat in the future, I wouldn't do it again. Having a familiar in addition to a cohort is better in every aspect, except for a few strictly story related reasons.

[Melkiador]

Having one creature that’s both your familiar and cohort is weaker than having both a familiar and a cohort. So, I don’t see a problem with letting you combine them into one. It’d be a house rule though.

[Dragonchess Player]

For this sort of house rule, I'd probably allow it with the following requirements:

1) The wizard must have already taken the Improved Familiar feat (or otherwise gained an Improved Familiar).

2) I'd make a special variant leadership feat that allows the familiar to gain levels as a cohort, but the wizard would not gain any followers.

3) The familiar would no longer have 1/2 the wizard's hp; it would be calculated as normal from racial HD and class levels.

4) The familiar would calculate its own saving throws and skills (instead of using the wizard's skill ranks); I would allow a +2 bonus on skills that the wizard also has, however.

5) The familiar would not be able to have racial HD + class levels more than the wizard's level -3.

[Senko]

I think normal leadership would make it hard without sacrificing a lot to get a familiar more than wizard level -3. Especially if you treat racial HD as counting towards its level total.

[Slim Jim]

Melkiador wrote:

Having one creature that’s both your familiar and cohort is weaker than having both a familiar and a cohort. So, I don’t see a problem with letting you combine them into one. It’d be a house rule though.

It doesn't seem that it would be that difficult to adapt Monstrous Companion into also working with familiars.

[CBDunkerson]

Melkiador wrote:

Having one creature that’s both your familiar and cohort is weaker than having both a familiar and a cohort.

Not always true.

Players generally have complete control over familiars, but limited control / GM veto with cohorts.

Likewise, your PC has connections with the familiar (share spells, deliver touch effects, scrying, etc) that become more useful as the familiar becomes more powerful.

It also depends on what rules are made up for the 'leveled familiar'. Does it get all of its class level skill ranks PLUS all of your PCs class level skill ranks? Best of all saves from the two classes? Higher of 1/2 your HP vs its class HPs? Better of two BABs? Etc? Some of those could create a character which breaks the normal limits in significant ways.

[Melkiador]

I assumed we were using the guidelines from Monster Cohorts. Most cohort creatures that can also qualify to become familiars rate as level 6 before applying class levels. Honestly, this seems to seriously overvalue the power of CR 2 to 3 creatures. I'm guessing it's a bit of an opportunity tax, but may be a good fit for allowing familiar-cohorts.

http://legacy.aonprd.com/bestiary/monsterCohorts.html