Wizard Familiar Abilities

Pathfinder Nexus & Character Tools
1

Good Morning,

I believe I found a slight coding error within the Wizard generation process.
I am sorry for the lengthy post, I felt the information pertinent to the discussion.
I hope the troubleshooting helps and that this error can be resolved fairly easily.

As per Player Core page 195, the Improved Familiar Attunement option under Arcane Thesis provides the character the Familiar Wizard Feat and an extra ability for the familiar at levels 1, 6, 12 and 18.

The Wizard Familiar feat, Player Core page 201, states that the character gains a Familiar as per page 212 of the Player Core.

The Player Core page 212, Selecting Familiar and Master Abilities, states that the character can choose two abilities for the Familiar.

The same paragraph also indicates you cannot swap out abilities that are innate to your familiar. Meaning I could not take away the Flier or Echolocation abilities of the Bat.

Due to the aforementioned rules, a level 1 Wizard with Improved Familiar Attunement will gain a familiar with 3 abilities. Additionally when the Wizard reaches level 2, if they take the Enhanced Familiar feat, the familiar will then have 5 abilities. Finally upon reaching level 6 Improved Familiar Attunement will provide its second increase and the familiar will have 6 abilities.

All of this works, if you select follow the above guide and select Improved Familiar Attunement, then Enhanced Familiar, and so on…

Unfortunately, if you choose the Witch dedication the Familiar’s ability values no longer behave correctly.

For Example:

Creating a level 1 Elf Wizard with the Ancient Elf heritage allows you to select Witch Dedication. Upon doing so the character gains a Familiar with only 1 ability. Whereas the Player Core page 222 states the familiar “…gains the normal number of abilities for a familiar…” “…(See page 212 for more on familiars.)”

As previously discussed page 212 of the Player Core indicates Familiars gain two abilities.

Now when you then select Improved Familiar Attunement, the system does add one to the Familiar abilities for a total of 2. So that portion of the coding seems fine.

Additionally, when the character reaches level 2, should they select Enhanced Familiar without having Improved Familiar Attunement the Familiar’s abilities increase from 1 to 3. So at first glance Enhanced Familiar seems to be working.

However, when you select Improved Familiar Attunement the Familiar’s abilities raise from 3 to 4. The issue here is that Enhanced Familiar is not taking into account its own rule which indicates the Familiar’s ability base value will increase to 4 when the character also has Improved Familiar Attunement.

In short the two things I think need to be reviewed are as follows:

  1. When taking Witch Dedication, the character should receive a Familiar with a base of 2 abilities

  2. When a Wizard takes the Enhanced Familiar feat the system needs to check to see if the Wizard has Improved Familiar Attunement regardless of whether or not they have Witch Dedication. Then of course increase the base ability value to 4 as per its own rule.

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Thanks for the report! We’ll dig into this interaction a little deeper. :smiling_face:

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Thank you @MellieDM sorry if I am making more work for everyone. I hope it is an easy fix and not to much of a headache. :slightly_smiling_face:

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Thanks for the great reproduction steps in your post! I’ve found the issue, and should be able to sneak the fix into tomorrow’s patch update.

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That’s awesome!

I am glad to have been of use. As an excel junkie and programing enthusiast might I ask what the issue was.

No trade secrets, just a high level explanation. Curiosity killed the… and all that jazz. :blush:

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It was all in the Witch dedication! We had an errant -1 being applied, which got in the way of the whole thing.

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Ah, that’ll do it! lol

Sometimes the smallest things I tell ya. Again I am glad I was able to catch it.

While I have you could I ask / suggest one other small post pin?

In the Off Topic channel, though it appears it is rarely used, I noticed something.

The Original “About the Off Topic Category” post set down good ground rules for such a channel.

But it seems it was closed on October 19, 2021 then Unpinned on the same day.

May I suggest reposting the contents as a new post, locking the post, and pinning it to the channel.

Then perhaps deleting the original?

Would help keep a good guideline fresh at the top of the channel without any odd looking “Pin, Unpin, Pin Again” history on the post.

Again, I know it seems to be a very little used channel, which is good in my opinion, but may be a good CYA sort of thing.

Hope I am not over stepping my bounds with so many suggestions.

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Always happy to hear suggestions! I’ll look into it. :blue_heart:

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I am glad, but if I ever do start flooding the team please feel free to tell me to take a breath. I get impassioned when I find something that clicks with me on such a significant level.

I definitely do not want to wear out my welcome

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