The Shadow Familiar has a requirement of 7 abilities, but grants 9. Which do I use to determine how many abilities I can add?
Also: does the Improved Familiar feat lower the abilities for the purpose of adding extras, or just for accessing the specific familiar?
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The Shadow Familiar has a requirement of 7 abilities, but grants 9. Which do I use to determine how many abilities I can add?
You use the requirement number. So in this case if you can grant 8 abilities you would spend 7 to get the familiar and you would have 1 more that you could add.
Also: does the Improved Familiar feat lower the abilities for the purpose of adding extras, or just for accessing the specific familiar?
Effectively both. In the example above you can add 8 abilities but spending 7 to get the familiar leaves you with one. If you used Improved Familiar you would only need to spend 5 abilities to get the familiar so you would have 3 left to spend.
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Awesome thanks.
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You're welcome. The "bonus abilities" that most specific familiars have can be confusing. I think of them as balancing out the flexibility that you give up by being locked into the required abilities.