Improved familiar intelligence

[Quill99]

So...This is a very old and classic question. Will the improved familiar become dumber than its non-familiar kind? I have gone through a lot of posts. And I have never find an official answer to that. If any dev sees this by accident, please tell me the exact answer for this question. It would be much appreciated.

[Name Violation]

You use with the creatures normal int or the value listed for familiar, whichever is higher.

[wraithstrike]

Quill99 wrote:

So...This is a very old and classic question. Will the improved familiar become dumber than its non-familiar kind? I have gone through a lot of posts. And I have never find an official answer to that. If any dev sees this by accident, please tell me the exact answer for this question. It would be much appreciated.

There is no official answer, and they're not going to answer it, just like they left a lot of other easy PF1 questions unanswered.

As a GM I'd go with the higher score. It doesn't make sense for an improved familiar to have it's intelligence reduced.

If a GM were to rule that improved familiars were dumber I'd likely wait until they could have their regular intelligence before accepting them.

[Chell Raighn]

It is very clear by RAW that the improved familiar is no more or less intelligent than a standard familiar for your level.

“Improved familiars otherwise use the rules for regular familiars, with two exceptions: if the creature's type is something other than animal, its type does not change; and improved familiars do not gain the ability to speak with other creatures of their kind (although many of them already have the ability to communicate).”

There are two and only two exceptions to the normal familiar rules that apply to improved familiars.
1) their creature type is unchanged from the base creature.
2) they do not gain the Speak With Other Creatures of Their Kind ability.
That is all that changes. Everything else is EXACTLY as written in the normal familiar rules. There is no grey area, there is no rules inconsistency, there is no room for question. The rules on this are quite clear, that is why there has never been an official weigh in, there doesn’t need to be one. It is very clearly spelled out in the rules. They follow familiar rules with TWO very clear exceptions.

[Diego Rossi]

RAW, Chell is right. But I think wort GM will go with Name Violation and wraithstrike and use the highest value between the creature base intelligence and what it gets from being a familiar. For sure I would use that.

[Azothath]

The Familiar Ability Description section states, "The abilities are cumulative." before the Table.
Reading pedantically, the familiar's INT score starts at 6 and rises. The higher numbers in the chart replace the previous numbers as they are in fact not adding (the simple meaning of (ac)cumulative). Thus cumulative must be about the entirety of the chart(not individual values) and mean in a manner like bonuses or class abilities at a given level, where the greatest of the given values becomes the actual value. Thus if the familiars INT is 10, 10>6, and the creature would start with 10 (and not improve INT until the ability score in the chart reached 11).

The analogy is if a creature has a BAB of 2 and gains 3 BAB from levels in a class, its BAB is 5 and not 3. In this case we have INT scores to compare. If a class granted an INT score, the creatures natural INT would only improve and not drop to the listed value.

A couple of extra words would have cleared it up but the writer's also knew how 3.5 processes were being practiced in the game at the time of rewriting and thought it was well understood thus you got 3.5 text with a grammatical case change. You can't ignore 3.0 or 3.5 practice as PF is derivative of that product. It is a game and a work of art, not a technical manual.