# Forum > Gaming > Roleplaying Games > D&D 3e/3.5e/d20 >  [3.5] Optimizing around a Familiar

## A.A.King

On a wizard or sorcerer basis, how well could optimize your Familiar?

It doesn't have to be wizard/sorcerer 20 and the familiar can come from "obtain familiar" and/or "Improved Familiar". It can even rely on daily buff (like "Augment Familiar").  Pretty much everything goes as long as it's not cheesy and the arcane casting stays to Wizard/Sorcerer + PrC

I'm wondering if a familiar, with a high enough feat and spell investment, can be a similar combat powerhouse as the druid's animal companion maybe even good to the point that it can be considered *the* secondary combatant


*Important though:* No Polymorph like spells, don't change your familiar into a combat monster, make sure it is one.

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## Fouredged Sword

I like a changling Wizard 5 (morphic familiar racial sub) / Druid 3 / Arcane Herophant X

Your familiar can change into any animal on the druid animal companion list.  Buff it up with druid and wizard buffs and let it maul people.

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## Snowbluff

Bamboo Spiritfolk Wizard (Animal Companion ACF)/Cleric/Arcane Heirophant.

Use DIVINE POWER so your BAB for you and your familiar is full.  :Small Smile: 

I like Draconic Familiar.

If Dragon Mag is allowed, take Theurgic Bond.

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## A.A.King

Though technically what I asked for, making an existing Animal Companion a familiar isn't quite the same as being a wizard whose familiar is as good as combat as a regular Animal Companion

So I'd rather avoid Arcane Heirophant

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## Fouredged Sword

Wizard 20 with the changling ACF.

Get improved familiar and other familiar feats.

Your familiar can change between tons of forms as much as it wants.  Buff it with wizard casting, maybe Wyrm wizard for divine power.

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## A.A.King

> Wizard 20 with the changling ACF.
> 
> Get improved familiar and other familiar feats.
> 
> Your familiar can change between tons of forms as much as it wants.  Buff it with wizard casting, maybe Wyrm wizard for divine power.


This is a bit too broad to be helpfull. Which other feats (other then Improved Familiar) and which spells are mandatory? Which Improved Familiar would be best for combat?

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## gorfnab

This may be of some use: Familiar Handbook

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## Kraken

Cutting and pasting everything that involved my familiar from a wizard strategy post I made a bit ago.  

For skills, I put one rank in craft (paint), maxed spellcraft, spot, listen, concentration, search, and spread the remaining skill points around knowledge, favoring arcana, and grabbing 5 in architecture and engineering for the +2 search bonus. Listen, spot, and search being cross-class hurts, but elves get +2 to each of those, alertness is another +2 to listen and spot, and search is int based and has the synergy bonus. All told, my listen and spot modifiers are +12, and my search is +17, or +19 when looking for hidden doors or compartments. Not great, but not poor either. And don't forget that your raven shares your skill ranks, and with its +2 wisdom mod, at this point gets +8 on listen and spot, and +6 on search. For active searching, don't forget that your familiar can aid you for a +2 bonus (total of +21 for secret doors and compartments, +19 everything else). 

I make liberal use of share spells with my familiar, especially with polymorph. We recently went into combat with a dragon, and had an opportunity to buff beforehand. I needed potions for greater magic fang and heroism, but everything else I cast on myself came off my own list. Per Skip Williams, your HP does go up or down if your con score changes when you polymorph (see examples, here, see thoughts on this at the bottom of my post). Don't forget this will also affect your familiar's HP. Combine this with stoneskin, shield, mage armor, and other defensive buffs on top of a polymorph form with lots of natural armor, and you'll be a force to be reckoned with. Good forms to consider are hydras, behirs, and bulettes. Against the dragon we fought, my familiar and I turned into 12 headed hydras, and I summoned a bralani eladrin before going in to heal us during combat. Or if you want to go a different route, the strength draining attack of ropers is pretty darned nice too.

Something to keep in mind when with polymorph is that you keep your class abilities, and that means all those enhancements to your familiar are still there. While it had lower HP, it actually had higher AC and faired better against breath weapon attacks, due to familiars receiving a natural armor increase and improved evasion. The speak with master ability also allows you to communicate with one another in what is essentially gibberish, basically as long as your current forms have mouths. Even if you don't currently have mouths, empathic link is sufficient if you need to communicate something very basic, such as fleeing. Also, at level 11 it got spell resistance, though this is rarely going to be relevant.

Even if you don't have time to buff beforehand, quickened shield followed by polymorph (with mage armor active beforehand due to its hours/level duration) is potent. Always bear in mind that your new form might not be capable of casting spells, so if you're going to commit to tearing it up in melee, there's no going back. 

Note that "Additionally, the master may cast a spell with a target of "You" on his familiar (as a touch range spell) instead of on himself." Therefore, your familiar functionally allows you to have a second contingency, though its usefulness is limited by the fact that it needs to target the familiar. I have obscuring mist set to go off when I or my familiar make a particular tongue motion. It makes for a decent panic button that doesn't require you to flee the scene.

Further notes for familiars: I haven't come upon one in this campaign, but rings of spell storing (or other no-UMD-required spell firing items) are a great way to use your familiar to gain actions. Harkening back to illusions, one of the simplest things you can have your familiar do is cast silent image with its action, and put you and it in an illusory stone box (or something similar). Because a "figment or phantasm remains as a translucent outline" to someone who knows it to be unreal, you're able to see out of your box and cast through it just fine (just don't, say, shoot an arrow, ray, or similar thing through the illusion, otherwise you'll likely spoil it), whereas anyone that doesn't interact with it or disbelieve it somehow can't target you inside it. Even if your DM wants to rule they can shoot at it, you can 5' move to a different square each round, and if they pick the wrong square then their attack doesn't matter.

While rings of spell storing are great for their versatility, in general, think of your familiar as a source of extra magic item body slots, which is great for items such as hand of the mage. With the hand (which I also wish I had for this character), as a standard action your familiar can cast mage hand, and as a move action direct it in the same turn, excellent for creating distractions, and tons of other things (in combat uses for mage hand could have its own thread). Also, if you choose to multiclass into loremaster to pick up UMD as a class skill, because ravens can speak, arguably they can use wands.

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## A.A.King

@ gorfnab: The Familiar Handbook, though nice, seems to lack the willingness to improve the familiar the the cost of almighty wizard powers. It doesn't mention for example PrC classes which a wizard could enter which would benefit the familiar (from a simple increase in HD for example). 

@ Kraken: Though a powerful combo,  I explicitly stated I didn't want Polymorph like effects (which includes polymorph) and your build doesn't seem to support combat for your familiar outside of polymorph. It is definitely not the focus of it.

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## Snowbluff

> It doesn't mention for example PrC classes which a wizard could enter which would benefit the familiar (from a simple increase in HD for example).


There are none. It's true. Familiar PrCs suck. The best way would be to increase your BAB.

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## A.A.King

> There are none. It's true. Familiar PrCs suck. The best way would be to increase your BAB.


I don't know of any. Do they suck because they don't succeed in their goal, which is to empower the familiar or do they suck like Spellsword up to 10 sucks, because you're better of not losing casterlevels?

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## Snowbluff

> I don't know of any. Do they suck because they don't succeed in their goal, which is to empower the familiar or do they suck like Spellsword up to 10 sucks, because you're better of not losing casterlevels?


C) All of the above. 

For example, Alienist: gives your familiar a crappy pseudonatural template. Bad.

A good combat familiar PrC is something like Abjurant Champion or Swiftblade.

Hexblades, Warlocks, Bards, and Duskblades all qualify for Obtain Familiar, and they have 3/4 or full BAB. This makes taking strong Improved Familiars easier to qualify for. 

Rangers get Urban Familiar as an ACF, which is a familiar, but 3/4 of the rangers health and all of his full BAB. It's better than the default AnC, in my opinion.

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## Hand_of_Vecna

> There are none. It's true. Familiar PrCs suck. The best way would be to increase your BAB.


As silly as it will feel, you'll probably want to trade away your familiar then take the Obtain Familiar feat. That will let you have the familiar of a straight Wizard 20 while taking all the PrCs you like.

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## Snowbluff

> As silly as it will feel, you'll probably want to trade away your familiar then take the Obtain Familiar feat. That will let you have the familiar of a straight Wizard 20 while taking all the PrCs you like.


I entirely agree with this. Many of the alternate options that a Wizard can trade a Familiar for are awesome. This includes Abrupt Jaunt, for example. Your familiar will always be scaling without you taking levels of wizard, and it already scales with skills, HP, and BAB.

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## (Un)Inspired

As others have said, becoming a gish is one of the best ways to improve your familiar. The table I play at essential bans polymorph spells so I'm very partial to draconic familiar and celestial familiar.

Having a gold or red (the best kind) of dragon gives you a fair number of feats to organize on your familair because of their large amount of hd. Their medium size also helps for sending them into melee (as does their awesome number of natural attacks).

If you get your UMD to a righteous enough level having an eladrin holding onto a couple wants or even a staff can essentially double your actions in combat. Plus they make amazing scouts.

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## A.A.King

I was rather looking forward to the image of the squishy caster standing behind his mighty familiar (a more magical image of the Ubermount idea "I'm with him"), but I guess summons exist for that idea.

I do however very much like gishes (more so then full casters) so it's not entirely bad. I have one more question though: Can you take Improved Familiar before you can get the familiar you want? I know you can get "Obtain Familiar" and not obtain one but "Improved Familiar" has the requirements for the familiar in it's prerequisites, making it seem like you have to get the familiar when you get the feat.

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## sneerglaw

> On a wizard or sorcerer basis, how well could optimize your Familiar?
> 
> It doesn't have to be wizard/sorcerer 20 and the familiar can come from "obtain familiar" and/or "Improved Familiar". It can even rely on daily buff (like "Augment Familiar").  Pretty much everything goes as long as it's not cheesy and the arcane casting stays to Wizard/Sorcerer + PrC
> 
> I'm wondering if a familiar, with a high enough feat and spell investment, can be a similar combat powerhouse as the druid's animal companion maybe even good to the point that it can be considered *the* secondary combatant
> 
> 
> *Important though:* No Polymorph like spells, don't change your familiar into a combat monster, make sure it is one.


I have been messing around with familiar based builds and there are a few very strong combos to consider. going for something like a DMM persist cleric with lvls in mystic wanderer later on allow you to share very strong buffs with your familiar that you gain from mystic wanderer, potentially making  it very strong in melee (there are lots of familiars to take with improved familiar that have power attack). Also with the use of pearl of speach, or by selecting a familiar that can speak you can have your familiar use wands and scrolls with UMD checks. finally there are a good number of attacking spells that you can share with your familiar via share spell. Polymorph has been mentioned here but also consider things like dragons breath, cloud of knives, investiture of the spined devil etc. 
The second build i have been considering is a wiz/sorc build that would focus on feats like 'extra familiar' and 'enspell familiar' to try to amass extra familiars to eek out even more value from spells like light of lunia, spider form lesser early on and move on to things like dragon's breath later.

I have been running the cleric familiar build in a high lvl 3.5 campaign where i have selected an earth mephit as my companion. With buffs like divine power and true strike plus its power attack feat the mephit is a much better melee fighter than I am lol.

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## noob

Solution: pick a raven familiar and have it be a full caster through wblmancy.

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## Thurbane

I like using a class that gets a decent array of skills, including UMD (so Bard, Beguiler etc.), then grabbing an (improved) familiar so it can use your skill ranks.

I really want to play a Beguiler with an Imp familiar at some point.

Another one I wanted to try was an Arcane Hierophant with a Baboon familiar/companion, since baboons are roughly the same size and shape as a human(oid). Weirdly, despite being medium, they are listed as being 2-4 feet "long"? I feel like they probably should have been small.

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## Rebel7284

> I was rather looking forward to the image of the squishy caster standing behind his mighty familiar (a more magical image of the Ubermount idea "I'm with him"), but I guess summons exist for that idea.
> 
> I do however very much like gishes (more so then full casters) so it's not entirely bad. I have one more question though: Can you take Improved Familiar before you can get the familiar you want? I know you can get "Obtain Familiar" and not obtain one but "Improved Familiar" has the requirements for the familiar in it's prerequisites, making it seem like you have to get the familiar when you get the feat.


I see you are familiar with Ubermount builds, and many of those are certainly familiars++, so I am unclear about what exactly the difference is here, are you trying to see what you can accomplish with a familiar alone without ALSO making it an animal companion and/or mount?

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## truemane

*Metamagic Mod*: Thread Necromancers need familiars too.

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