Pathfinder: Familiar Folio

One advantage to working at a big library is being able to check out gaming books. Today I checked out Pathfinder Player Companion: Familiar Folio.

The Basics: The Familiar Folio is a full-color 32 page Pathfinder book. The retail price is 12.99. The book is a player focused looked at familiars.

The Good: The book has familiar granting archetypes for the paladin, bard, fighter, druid, magus, alchemist, witch, and several for the wizard. The paladin archetype, The Chosen One, is my favorite. The Chosen One isn't trained by a temple, but rather has humble origins and is guided by a familiar sent by the gods. The familiar has knowledge of religion, can use the paladin's lay on hands ability, and eventually reveals itself to be an outsider (essentially granting the player an outsider improved familiar). Oh and it eventually is able to act as a conduit for the paladin's smite. The drawback is that the paladin's divine grace and smite evil are gained just a bit later. My other favorite part of the book is the familiar archetype section. Much like class archetypes, the familiar loses its standard progression but gains new abilities. They archetypes are all really cool. MY favorites are the Emissary, Mascot, and Sage. There's a new poison/drug statted, catnip. I laughed a lot about that. Finally the Ioun Wyrd is a really cool looking and useful construct familiar. My next wizard may have one.

The Bad: I want to like familiars, but in general I find them to be a tacked on thing with most wizards. Unless the player really roleplays the relationship, they're just an often neglected pet that occasionally does something useful. This book helps with that a bit, but a lot of the stuff just seems meh.

Final Thoughts: Unless you really like familiars, I'd probably pass on this one. It has some cool things, but 6 pages of really cool stuff probably isn't worth 13 bucks.