Pathfinder Familiar Slots
Familiars Description Source: PRPG Core Rulebook A familiar is an animal chosen by a spellcaster to aid him in his study of magic. It retains the appearance, Hit Dice, base attack bonus, base save bonuses, skills, and feats of the normal animal it once was, but is now a magical beast for the purpose of effects that depend on its type. Also, it seems like Extra Item Slot may be taken by a familiar, but it isn't listed as a feat that may be swapped (like, for example, Spell Sponge and Familiar Focus, among others). Does that mean, despite not being spelling out, that familiars may not take this feat in. Yes in the faq there are now 5 familiars who have normal humanoid magic item slots and can activate magic items. They are all improved familiars. Any others can only wear a neck slot item and armor. @Mahtobedis - i highly suggest getting pages of spell knowledge for your faerie dragon. Makes them incredibly useful. Some familiars are different, usually described in the ability that granted you a familiar; for example, a druid’s leshy familiar is a Tiny plant instead of an animal, formed from a minor nature spirit. Familiars have the minion trait, so during an encounter, they gain 2.
- Pathfinder Familiar Magic Item Slots
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- Pathfinder Familiar Stats
- Pathfinder Familiar Slots Game
- Pathfinder Familiar Sheet
Familiars are mystically bonded creatures tied to your magic. Most familiars were originally animals, though the ritual of becoming a familiar makes them something more. You can choose a Tiny animal you want as your familiar, such as a bat, cat, raven, or snake. Some familiars are different, usually described in the ability that granted you a familiar; for example, a druid’s leshy familiar is a Tiny plant instead of an animal, formed from a minor nature spirit.
Familiars have the minion trait, so during an encounter, they gain 2 actions in a round if you spend an action to command them. If your familiar dies, you can spend a week of downtime to replace it at no cost. You can have only one familiar at a time.
Contents
- Familiar and Master Abilities
- Familiar Abilities
- Master Abilities
Familiar and Master Abilities
Each day, you channel your magic into two abilities, which can be either familiar or master abilities. If your familiar is an animal that naturally has one of these abilities (for instance, an owl has a fly Speed), you must select that ability. Your familiar can’t be an animal that naturally has more familiar abilities than your daily maximum familiar abilities.
Familiars
Familiars are mystically bonded creatures tied to your magic. Most familiars were originally animals, though the ritual of becoming a familiar makes them something more. You can choose a Tiny animal you want as your familiar, such as a bat, cat, raven, or snake. Some familiars are different, usually described in the ability that granted you a familiar; for example, a druid’s leshy familiar is a Tiny plant instead of an animal, formed from a minor nature spirit.
Familiars have the minion trait, so during an encounter, they gain 2 actions in a round if you spend an action to command them. If your familiar dies, you can spend a week of downtime to replace it at no cost. You can have only one familiar at a time.
Modifiers and AC
Your familiar’s save modifiers and AC are equal to yours before applying circumstance or status bonuses or penalties. Its Perception, Acrobatics, and Stealth modifiers are equal to your level plus your spellcasting ability modifier (Charisma if you don’t have one, unless otherwise specified). If it attempts an attack roll or other skill check, it uses your level as its modifier. It doesn’t have or use its own ability modifiers and can never benefit from item bonuses.
Hit Points
Your familiar has 5 Hit Points for each of your levels.
Size
Your familiar is Tiny.
Senses
Your familiar has low-light vision and can gain additional senses from familiar abilities. It can communicate empathically with you as long as it’s within 1 mile of you, sharing emotions. It doesn’t understand or speak languages normally, but it can gain speech from a familiar ability.
Movement
Your familiar has either a Speed of 25 feet or a swim Speed of 25 feet (choose one upon gaining the familiar). It can gain other movement types from familiar abilities.
Familiar and Master Abilities
Each day, you channel your magic into two abilities, which can be either familiar or master abilities. If your familiar is an animal that naturally has one of these abilities (for instance, an owl has a fly Speed), you must select that ability. Your familiar can’t be an animal that naturally has more familiar abilities than your daily maximum familiar abilities.
Familiar Abilities
Accompanist
Source PF2APG
Your familiar helps you perform. Whenever you attempt a Performance check, if your familiar is nearby and can act, it accompanies you with chirps, claps, or its own miniature instrument. This grants you a +1 circumstance bonus, or +2 if you’re a master in Performance.
Amphibious
Source PF2CRB
It gains a swim Speed of 25 feet (or Speed of 25 feet if it already has a swim Speed).
Burrower
Source PF2CRB
It gains a burrow Speed of 5 feet, allowing it to dig Tiny holes.
Climber
Source PF2CRB
It gains a climb Speed of 25 feet.
Damage Avoidance
Source PF2CRB
Choose one type of save. It takes no damage when it succeeds at that type of save; this doesn’t prevent effects other than damage.
Darkvision
Source PF2CRB
It gains darkvision.
Fast Movement
Source PF2CRB
Increase one of the familiar’s Speeds from 25 feet to 40 feet.
Flier
Source PF2CRB
It gains a fly Speed of 25 feet.
Focused Rejuvenation
Source PF2APG
When you Refocus, you generate magical energy that heals your familiar. Your familiar regains 1 Hit Point per level whenever you Refocus.
Independent
Source PF2APG
In an encounter, if you don’t Command your familiar, it still gains 1 action each round. Typically, you still decide how it spends that action, but, the GM might determine that your familiar chooses its own tactics rather than performing your preferred action.
Kinspeech
Source PF2CRB
It can understand and speak with animals of the same species. To select this, your familiar must be an animal, it must have the speech ability, and you must be at least 6th level.
Lab Assistant
Source PF2CRB
It can use your Quick Alchemy action. You must have Quick Alchemy, and your familiar must be in your space. This has the same cost and requirement as if you used it. It must have the manual dexterity ability to select this.
Manual Dexterity
Source PF2CRB
It can use up to two of its limbs as if they were hands to use manipulate actions.
Master’s Form
Source PF2APG
Your familiar can change shape as a single action, transforming into a humanoid of your ancestry with the same age, gender, and build of its true form, though it always maintains a clearly unnatural remnant of its nature, such as a cat’s eyes or a serpent’s tongue. This form is always the same each time it uses this ability. This otherwise uses the effects of humanoid form, except the change is purely cosmetic. It only appears humanoid and gains no new capabilities. Your familiar must have the manual dexterity and speech abilities to select this.
Partner in Crime
Source PF2APG
Your familiar is your criminal associate. Despite being a minion, your familiar gains 1 reaction at the start of its turns, which it can use only to Aid you on a Deception or Thievery skill check (it still has to prepare to help you as normal for the Aid reaction). It automatically succeeds at its check to Aid you with those skills or automatically critically succeeds if you’re a master of the skill in question.
Plant Form
Source PF2APG
Your plant familiar can change shape as a single action, transforming into a Tiny plant of a type roughly similar to the familiar’s nature. This otherwise uses the effects of tree shape. You must have a familiar with the plant trait, such as a leshy, to select this ability.
Poison Reservoir
Source PF2APG
Your homunculus familiar has a reservoir for poison, allowing it to apply an injury poison to an adjacent ally’s exposed weapon with a single Interact action. You must supply the poison and instill it into this reservoir using two consecutive Interact actions. You must have a homunculus familiar to select this ability.
Resistance
Source PF2APG
Choose two of the following: acid, cold, electricity, fire, poison, or sonic. Your familiar gains resistance equal to half your level against the chosen damage types.
Scent
Source PF2CRB
It gains scent (imprecise, 30 feet).
Skilled
Source PF2APG
Choose a skill other than Acrobatics or Stealth. Your familiar’s modifier for that skill is equal to your level plus your key spellcasting ability modifier, rather than just your level. You can select this ability repeatedly, choosing a different skill each time.
Speech
Source PF2CRB
It understands and speaks a language you know.
Spellcasting
Source PF2APG
Choose a spell in your repertoire or that you prepared today that is at least 5 levels lower than your highest-level spell slot. Your familiar can Cast that Spell once per day using your magical tradition, spell attack modifier, and spell DC. If the spell has a drawback that affects the caster, both you and your familiar are affected. You must be able to cast 6th-level spells using spell slots to select this ability.
Toolbearer
Source PF2APG
Your familiar can carry a set of tools of up to light Bulk. So long as your familiar is adjacent to you, you can draw and replace the tools as part of the action that uses them as if you were wearing them. Your familiar must have the manual dexterity ability to select this.
Touch Telepathy
Source PF2APG
Your familiar can telepathically communicate with you via touch. If it also has the speech ability, it can telepathically communicate via touch with any creature if they share a language.
Tough
Source PF2APG
Pathfinder Familiar Magic Item Slots
Your familiar’s maximum Hit Points increase by 2 per level.
Valet
Source PF2APG
You can command your familiar to deliver you items more efficiently. Your familiar doesn’t use its 2 actions immediately upon your command. Instead, up to twice before the end of your turn, you can have your familiar Interact to retrieve an item of light or negligible Bulk you are wearing and place it into one of your free hands. The familiar can’t use this ability to retrieve stowed items. If the familiar has a different number of actions, it can retrieve one item for each action it has when commanded this way.
Master Abilities
Cantrip Connection
Source PF2CRB
You can prepare an additional cantrip, or if you have a repertoire, instead designate a cantrip to add to your repertoire every time you select this ability; you can retrain it but can’t otherwise change it. You must be able to prepare cantrips or add them to your repertoire to select this.
Extra Reagents
Source PF2CRB
Your familiar grows extra infused reagents on or in its body. You gain an additional batch of infused reagents. You must have the infused reagents ability to select this ability.
Raven Familiar Pathfinder
Familiar Focus
Source PF2CRB
Once per day, your familiar can use 2 actions with the concentrate trait to regain 1 Focus Point, up to your usual maximum. You must have a focus pool to select this.
Innate Surge
Source PF2APG
Once per day, you can draw upon your familiar’s innate magic to replenish your own. You can cast one innate spell gained from an ancestry feat that you have already cast today. You must still Cast the Spell and meet the spell’s other requirements.
Lifelink
Source PF2CRB
If your familiar would be reduced to 0 HP by damage, as a reaction with the concentrate trait, you can take the damage. If you do, you take all the damage and your familiar takes none. However, if special effects when a hit damages your familiar (such as snake venom) still apply to your familiar.
Share Senses
Source PF2APG
Pathfinder Familiar Stats
Once every 10 minutes, you can use a single action with the concentrate trait to project your senses into your familiar. When you do, you lose all sensory information from your own body, but can sense through your familiar’s body for up to 1 minute. You can Dismiss this effect.
Spell Battery
Source PF2CRB
You gain one additional spell slot at least 3 levels lower than your highest-level spell slot; you must be able to cast 4th-level spells using spell slots to select this master ability.
Spell Delivery
Source PF2CRB
If your familiar is in your space, you can cast a spell with a range of touch, transfer its power to your familiar, and command the familiar to deliver the spell. If you do, the familiar uses its 2 actions for the round to move to a target of your choice and touch that target. If it doesn’t reach the target to touch it this turn, the spell has no effect.
Not too long ago, Pathfinder Society released an update to the organized play campaign’s animal companion and familiar guidance and rules. That has recently made it onto the FAQ page. The Pathfinder Design Team also recently released–and then revised–an FAQ on calculating costs and multipliers for armor. This FAQ doesn’t mention animal companions, but they are the feature most immediately impacted by the changes as the base prices for large suits of mithral armor have increased drastically.
We haven’t dug into these rulings in detail until now for two reasons. In the case of the PFS rules, they were actively being clarified and updated over the course of a week, and in fact we are still awaiting word on how to interpret certain aspects of the new rules. For the Pathfinder FAQ, it was not immediately clear that the new rules would be final. Given the revision to the FAQ and the posting of the animal companion rules to the PFS FAQ page, now is as good a time as any to talk about the implications we know about, so let’s unpack them.
Oh, and one more thing–for those of you who try to stay up-to-date on Paizo’s FAQ releases, FAQ Friday has been moved to Tuesday. From here on out, all Pathfinder FAQs should be Tuesday releases. Since the materials pricing FAQ was a relatively major change (compared to the typical low impact of most FAQs), and as the design team was able to respond relatively quickly to the concerns instead of letting them simmer in the forums all weekend, it seems to have been a good decision.
Weapon and Armor Costs
Let’s start with the easy one: as of July 19th (although the date claims the 18th) we have a final decision on how to calculate weapon and armor costs.
What’s the question?
As anyone who remembers their middle-school math (and order of operations) knows, if you are going to both add and multiply in the same calculation, it matters which order you do it in. In Pathfinder, this comes into play when you are looking at cost multipliers for weapons and armor. The most common cost multipliers are for size, for unusual shape (in the case of armor; this usually refers to barding), and for cold iron (which doubles the cost). The most common cost additives are for masterwork quality (+150 for armor; +300 for weapons) and for many special materials like mithril, adamantine, and the like.
The rules don’t specify what order you should perform these operations in. Existing items published by Paizo have multiplied the base price first, and then added all the additives later, and most Pathfinder Society players (and many, if not most Pathfinder players) have used this calculation until now. So mithral chain-shirt barding for a large quadruped would be calculated like this:
(100 [base armor cost] x 2 [size] x 2 [shape]) + 1,000 [material] = 1,400 gp
What Changed?
The FAQ is half a clarification and half a change in the rules–it’s not exactly either, because we had a pretty good idea of what the rule was, even if the rulebook never precisely defined it. The new rule specifies that you determine the base price of the item first, including special materials. You then apply multipliers, and finally, the cost of making the item masterwork. The new calculation for mithral chain-shirt barding for a large quadruped looks like this:
(100 [base armor cost] + 1,000 [material]) x 2 [size] x 2 [shape] = 4,400 gp
Why was the FAQ revised?
The FAQ originally included the masterwork quality cost in with the materials cost, before the multiplier. We can’t say exactly why the design team changed their minds on that, but the arguments against the FAQ centered on that point:
- Cold iron doubles the cost, and this makes masterwork cold iron gear more expensive
- We have prices for cold iron weapons that do not conform to this (the original) FAQ
- The rules for calculating weapons do specify in a few places that masterwork costs are not doubled
What are the outstanding questions about this FAQ?
The FAQ appears to have been “finalized,” but there are a few outstanding questions for Pathfinder Society players. The first is over the use of the “Fitting” armor enhancement. The FAQ specifies a cost decrease for certain tiny armors, and for the moment it’s possible to use the fitting enhancement to make some types of armor cheaper than before, for medium and larger humanoid creatures. John Compton has stated that he is examining the future of fitting in PFS; although it may serve a purpose for some animal companions (for example, the mammoths that a mammoth rider rides) it is likely that fitting will be severely restricted if not outright banned. You should probably avoid its use until John has a chance to make a decision.
What about those new weapon and armor mods?
Adventurer’s Armory 2 included weapon and armor mods–modifications you can make to your weapons and armor that add a flat cost and a drawback in exchange for a benefit. Although as of this writing (July 2017) they are not legal in PFS, they are explicitly designed to be added after a weapon or armor has been created. As a result, their costs should clearly not be multiplied.
What do I need to do?
Your masterwork cold iron weapons are safe, but if you have a familiar, mount, animal companion, or other ally who wears armor, you should double check the calculated prices to see if you need to make any changes. John and the PFS team haven’t chimed in with any exceptions to the rebuild rules yet; those rules include selling back the item at full price. If you want, and can afford to, you can then purchase the same item (or a different one) at the new price with whatever money the character has, including the money from selling back the affected item. Large animal companion barding will undoubtedly cost more, as a result of this change; armor for tiny or smaller familiars will probably be cheaper.
Animal Companion and Familiar Rules
The new PFS FAQ on animal companions and familiars is also out. There are a lot of changes here, so make sure you read this thoroughly if you have an animal companion or familiar; the broad rules have not changed, but some of the edge cases have. There are also some unanswered questions. There are also a number of clarifications to the FAQ in the comment section of the associated blog post.
What’s the question?
Simply put, many of the rules for animal companions and familiars were written in forum posts. They are sometimes contradictory. The lists, both of what item slots were available and what familiars could activate magic items using Use Magic Device, were static lists that were not updated to account for new options.
What Changed?
The biggest changes include:
- The list of animal companions able to use wands has changed.
- Animal companions and familiars (especially familiars) that come with Weapon Finesse as a bonus feat no longer lose their ability to use dexterity to make attacks while tiny or smaller, if Weapon Finesse is traded out for another familiar feat. Normally, tiny creatures use Dexterity instead of Strength for melee attack rolls, Climb skill checks, and Swim skill checks. According to an older Mike Brock ruling, even though the Weapon Finesse feat was redundant to a tiny creature, it would use strength instead of dexterity on melee attack rolls if it had the feat by default and traded it out.
- Familiars do not get neck, belt, shoulders, or any other slots open by default. This includes improved familiars, which used to have all slots open and available by default.
- Familiars cannot use weapons unless they are on a specific list.
- Specific familiars, even those representing NPCs from specific scenarios, can still be “rebuilt”–for example, exchanging starting feats for familiar-specific feats. (Previously, it was understood that specific familiars came “as-is” and could not be rebuilt in any way.)
- You can use prestige to retrain other familiar and animal companion feats. (This is not necessarily a change, but is good to know whenever the slots available to a companion or familiar are changing.)
What don’t we know?
At the moment, the combination of the FAQs and clarifications suggests that creatures whose body type lists an armor slot may wear nonmagical armor. However, they cannot wear magical armor unless they have the feat opening up the slot. This seems very strange, and there may be a clarification to this later.
Pathfinder Familiar Slots Game
Another possible point of confusion is the ruling that no creature can wear a saddle unless it has a saddle slot. Exotic saddles are designed for creatures with unusual body types, and this ruling would seem to make exotic saddles useless. This aspect may be an unintentional consequence of the FAQ, but nobody knows for sure right now.
You can still ride a mount without a saddle, but with some not-insignificant penalties–a strange situation when there are some classes and archetypes (for example, the First Mother’s Fang nagaji cavalier archetype) that specifically provide a character with a mount that does not include a belt [saddle] slot. As with the mundane/magical slot discrepancy, there may be a clarification later.
What do I need to do?
First, read the FAQ. Second, review your characters with companions to see what you need to do. Linda has stated that as a result of this ruling, you can freely rebuild your companions and familiars–for example, to add the extra item slot feat.
Pathfinder Familiar Sheet
If you currently have a mount with an exotic saddle and the mount does not have a belt [saddle] slot in the new list, you may be able to keep using it while the PFS team sorts out the FAQ. We recommend briefly explaining the situation to your GM, however, instead of assuming that your snake, trilobite, or turtle mount can freely wear their saddle.