What happens to abadoned familiars?

[Yqatuba]

Do they just go back to being normal animals?

[Valandil Ancalime]

There have been abandoned familiars in a few AP/modules. Most are improved familiars. Can anyone remember a regular familiar that was abandoned?

[Carrauntoohil]

I'm going to end up being that dude who won't drop the PF Tales line, but in at least one PF Tales novel (Liar's Island) they go mad if away from their master for too long and become dangerously aggressive. In that case, it was homunculi and mandragoras who were deliberately sealed away to defend a place in the specific knowledge that this would happen.

[Ryze Kuja]

Familiars are completely mundane creatures that become magically enhanced through a special magical bond with their master, granting them all the ability score bonuses and special abilities we've all come to know and love. So familiars are very much magically-enhanced creatures, and that magic never ends even if the master dies; for example, if a Wizard dies and the familiar survives, the familiar still retains all of its magically enhanced ability scores and languages known.

So, if you abandon a familiar for a new one, that familiar would retain all of its magical enhancements like increased Int, any known spoken languages or sign languages, HD, HP, Saves, Skills, Improved Evasion, Spell Resistance, but it would lose the ones that directly include/require the Master, such as Empathetic Link, Deliver Touch Spells, etc..

This is actually a really good idea for a story hook tbh... PC's meet an abandoned, distraught familiar and the ex-familiar wants.... vengeance? to re-unite? find a new master?

[Unbegreiflich]

they are delicious

[VoodistMonk]

Unbegreiflich wrote:

they are delicious

This made me laugh until I stopped.

[Mark Hoover 330]

Ryze Kuja wrote:

Familiars are completely mundane creatures that become magically enhanced through a special magical bond with their master, granting them all the ability score bonuses and special abilities we've all come to know and love. So familiars are very much magically-enhanced creatures, and that magic never ends even if the master dies; for example, if a Wizard dies and the familiar survives, the familiar still retains all of its magically enhanced ability scores and languages known.

So, if you abandon a familiar for a new one, that familiar would retain all of its magical enhancements like increased Int, any known spoken languages or sign languages, HD, HP, Saves, Skills, Improved Evasion, Spell Resistance, but it would lose the ones that directly include/require the Master, such as Empathetic Link, Deliver Touch Spells, etc..

This is actually a really good idea for a story hook tbh... PC's meet an abandoned, distraught familiar and the ex-familiar wants.... vengeance? to re-unite? find a new master?

Most familiars, outside the Sage archetype, only ever achieve between a 6-15 Int. Many of the mundane, animal types however have decent Wis, say around a 13. Take a magical beast with JUST enough Int to be sentient but a decent Wis, make them upset, feel rejected... now add Evil Outsiders that might be able to give powers to their faithful, based around Wisdom as the primary casting stat.

I think it would be great, and tragic, and flavorful to have an embittered, evil cleric or shaman in the form of a Tiny sized animal like a raven. A shaman would be so delicious, so the former Familiar has it's own bonded servant. "This is my rat, Mrs Frisbee. SHE'LL never leave me... never abandon me for some sickly sweet Outsider just because it's got Fast Healing..."

Or you could go another route, still just as dark. The familiar takes levels in Druid, but as part of its exile from its master the creature was abandoned in a city, had to survive on garbage. Now as a Swarm Monger Druid the creature has bonded with a spirit of entropy and decay, looking to infect everything with rot. They have a vermin familiar, can speak to things like cockroaches and flies, and they will have their REVENGE!

[VoodistMonk]

Somewhere in Reign of Winter there is an EX-Familiar, and way back when in 3.0(?) Tome of Blood, there was something about EX-Familiars being treated as their Master's level minus 2.

[Melkiador]

There is an ex-familiar in the module Fangwood Keep. But again that's an improved familiar.

[VoodistMonk]

There's a lot of different eoutes available...

They could go back to their kind, and just be exceptional animals... rule their little part of the animal kingdom with their new knowledge and abilities.

They could be bitter, sure. There is literally a magical connection with their Master... to be abandoned... losing a literal piece of you like that. The very thing that made you special, your god, has forsaken you.

They could be happy to be free. Master was just keeping me down... glad to be rid of their Master. Tired of doing other peoples' work.

They could easily take class levels, and qualify for most a lot of feats... the fact that there are not more Ex-Familiar NPC's is a complete wasted opportunity. As in, they should be given class levels, and feats, and a rich backstory, and goals of their own design. It's a freaking animal that has done and seen things that few others have... remember that time my Master had me deliver that spell to save his friend? Meh, screw that guy, who needs him anyways... says the drunk Hedgehog sitting on the bar. Like, holy $#!+, that's a talking Hedgehog! And, it's drunk. Lol. I want to talk to the drunk Hedgehog sitting on the bar, I roll a 16 Diplomacy to engage with the intoxicated creature...

They could also seek out other Ex-Familiars... start a club or a guild... like Ex-Familiars Anonymous. Or an entire race, not unlike the Wyrwood.

[Java Man]

This idea has been with Pathfinder from the very beginning. Book one of Rise of the Runelords has an orphaned familiar (with class levels added just for VoodistMonk).

[Diego Rossi]

There is a familiar that houses his master soul in Fire legacy.

Witch familiars forget the spells they have learned 24 hours after the witch's death (taken RAW, that can be very rough for the witch if she isn't raised within the time limit), but there is nothing about them losing the other powers.

Maybe I am missing something, but from what I see neither Animal Companions nor Familiars lose their enhanced stats and hp/HD when separated from their master, they only stop growing them.
Considering how some druid seems to like changing their animal companion when changing location, something that is perfectly coherent with the "revere nature" theme of the class (bringing a lion to an arctic forest isn't respecting the environment, nor the lion's nature) that could mean leaving a significant number of animal companions behind in a character life.
For even more fun, the druid can even Awaken his ex-AC before leaving. A bit less "respect for the environment and nature", but a way better chance for the animal to live for a long time.

Between that and VoodistMonk idea, we could make some interesting tales.

[VoodistMonk]

There's a talking horse in Kingmaker that is an Awakened Animal Companion.

[Kasoh]

There's a rat familiar in War for the Crown whose master died and it became a wizard afterwards. A crazy wizard, mind you, but still.

[Melkiador]

Kasoh wrote:

There's a rat familiar in War for the Crown whose master died and it became a wizard afterwards. A crazy wizard, mind you, but still.

I always wondered what was up with that rat.

[Anguish]

I'd think that an abandoned familiar might might take it personally and try hire someone to help it hunt down their negligent "master".

[Mark Hoover 330]

Do you wanna get Squirrel Girl? B/c this is how you get Squirrel Girl.

Also, I like to make plots around a big evil vs a big evil, w/the PCs in the middle being manipulated like pawns. I did it once using an Imp former familiar with class levels in Sorcerer (Infernal Bloodline) vs its former master, now a lich.

The Imp was charged with concluding the lich's contract and collecting its soul. Somehow though in the final days of his transformation, the lich had excluded the Imp from his mind and dismissed it as a familiar so while the Imp knew what the phylactery was, it had no idea where it was hidden.

For decades the Imp, in Raven form, would appear to adventurers using Diplomacy, Bluff, or straight up charming them to coerce these NPCs to try and find the phylactery. To protect himself the lich unleashed terrible evils upon the world. This arms race led to all sorts of half-truths, myths and rumors about the region and its dangers, attracting even more adventurers.

Unfortunately the campaign imploded at 3rd level but it was going to be the Imp as a Raven, guiding the PCs to the first few quests while learning about them and gaining their trust. After this, the imp would begin actively manipulating the party, directing them straight at the lich's minions. Meanwhile the imp, as a devil, would be negotiating contracts with former NPC minions to help them gain power and goading them to do terrible things, all so that the damned souls could be collected by the imp to pad it's prestige for when it finally returned to the greater devils it served.

[Set]

I ran a Freeport game set in Greyhawk where a 'quest-giver' NPC was a mysterious figure that the party never saw, but who would drop messages to them, or speak from shadow rafters above them that led to various shenanigans going on in town. The NPC was the raven familiar of a wizard who'd been petrified (so no question of what happened when the wizard died, since, technically, he never did), and had a ring of invisibility (worn on one leg) and diligently avoided combat (or even turning visible where anyone could see him), despite having quite a few more hit points than the average raven.

Thanks to invisibility, the raven could go all over town and learn all sorts of cool stuff, and was on good terms with all sorts of local beggars and scoundrels, none of whom knew their mysterious benefactor with his treasure trove of secrets about the inner workings of the city was a talking bird.

Officially, IMO, what 'happens' to ex-familiars is whatever is best for the story. Maybe this one lies down and dies with their master, while this other one loses their magical nature and goes back to being a normal animal and lives the rest of its life completely normally, while a third retains some magical traits and passes them on to the next generation, leading to a town having a strange case of smarter-and-tougher-than-expected cats who take no guff from the local dog population they've cowed into submission.

[Mark Hoover 330]

This owl is smart enough to write it's own name, and this black cat can spit gobbets of fire... but for now, they live a life of solitude, left behind by those they were originally bound to. Hi, I'm Lady Sara of MacLaughlynn, and for just 1 SP a month, you can help these former Familiars find a home...

In the arms of the angels my friends, in the arms of the angels...