For a standard familiar, you get to pick the details of the form. If you choose to, you can permanently pick one of their abilities to be something like 'flier' in order to represent a shape for your familiar that always flies.
So yes, if you want a raven as your familiar, you are going to need to permanently assign 'flier' to one of the two familiar slots that you have and you can only choose something different each day for the other one.
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For a special familiar (one that you cash in some of your familiar ability slots to pay for the upgrade to), then its form is picked for you and any abilities that it lists in its description you get in addition to however many choosable abilities you have left for your familiar.
So for example, if you have the feat that gives your familiar 4 abilities instead of 2 and you upgrade to a familiar that costs 3 abilities to buy, then you will get the abilities that the familiar lists that it has and will be able to choose one ability each day.
The part about not being able to change out innate abilities is for those specified abilities listed for the familiar. Sometimes those are unique abilities defined along with the familiar. Sometimes those are standard abilities such as 'speech'. But no matter which it is, you can't trade those out and choose new ones each day. You are stuck with the abilities that the familiar has innately.
The question is does this count towards the two abilities or is this in addition to the two abilities.
Flight would use up one of those abilities.
As another example, a bat (excluding fruit bats) innately has both flight and echolocation so both standard abilities would be permanently used up if you chose a bat as your familiar.
In that case you'd need to get grant your familiar more more abilities through feats like Enhanced Familiar if you wanted to add options like Manual Dexterity.
Thanks guys that explains everything I was looking at the familiars on Pathbuilder and some of them have three or four abilities which surprised me.
I guess you have to take enhanced familiar right away.
Keep in mind, those are specific familiars. If you just get a cat or something, then you have two freely chosen abilities every day from the menu. You just don't get to say, "Oh, they're a cat, they should have a good sense of smell" if you didn't take Scent that day.
But yes, there are only one or two specific familiars you can get without additional feats or features.
I don't know anything about Pathbuilder, but as far as I know there aren't any ways to get four abilities at level 1.
Witch familiars do start with three abilities as do familiars for Wizards with the Improved Familiar Attunement thesis. A few other options get you a specific bonus ability. The Alchemist's Alchemical Familiar feat, for example, gets you a familiar with the Construct ability in addition to the standard two abilities.
I haven't updated it in a while, but you might find my Guide to Acquiring Familiars useful for seeing some ways to get and enhance familiars.
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If you have taken a feat that gives you a familiar, then you have a standard familiar. Those get two abilities chosen per day, but have none listed as being granted.
That is the first case that I mentioned. If you choose to, you can choose a shape for your familiar that needs a particular familiar ability by constantly picking that ability. Such as flier for a raven familiar, or speech for a snarky sidekick.
You can also just choose a basic shape, like a dog or frog, and freely choose both of your abilities each day.
Thanks guys that explains everything I was looking at the familiars on Pathbuilder and some of them have three or four abilities which surprised me.
I guess you have to take enhanced familiar right away.
Those are the specific familiars that I mentioned. They list out abilities that they have that are granted for free, but they also list out an ability cost to buy.
For example, an Elemental Wisp. All of them have accompanist, elemental, and speech abilities. They also get one more standard familiar ability depending on element, such as flier for air wisps. And they also get a custom ability, resonance, which is defined in the elemental wisp familiar stat block. That is a total of 5 familiar abilities that are listed out.
However, the Elemental Wisp lists that it costs 3 for its Required Number of Abilities.
So, if you only have the basic familiar feat and only have 2 familiar abilities each day, then you can't buy the Elemental Wisp familiar. You only have 2 and it costs 3. You need to either increase your number of abilities by taking the Enhanced Familiar feat or by being a Witch or other class that gains additional familiar abilities, or by taking the Improved Familiar feat to reduce the cost of the upgraded familiar by two points - reducing the cost from 3 to 1.
In either case, after taking one of those feats in addition to the feat that gave you the familiar ability in the first place, you can afford the cost for the Elemental Wisp familiar. In both cases you will have 1 familiar ability left afterwards . After the upgrade, you still have the 1 ability that you can choose each day, and you get all 5 of the Elemental Wisp's granted abilities for free.
So you can still have your Elemental Wisp familiar be a snarky sidekick at that point, since they get the speech ability granted automatically. You could also have them be an extra tough familiar, but only by constantly choosing the Tough ability each day.