Approximating Familiars (AA)

Source AA

As a player, you may desire a special familiar—either real, unique to your campaign world, or wholly imagined—that hasn’t yet been presented with specific stats. With your Gamemaster’s approval, however, it’s easy to “re-skin” an existing familiar stat block to create the exact familiar you want.

The easiest way is to examine the Familiars and Special Abilities table and try to find the animal most similar to the one in your imagination, then use the source listed in the Statistics column to find its full stat block. For many animals, you’ll be able to simply use that stat block for your familiar, in the same way that a parrot uses the same stats as a raven, and change only the flavor and descriptions. This way, you don’t have to worry about tweaking the creature’s mechanics, and your GM can rest easy knowing that the familiar is still balanced.

Sometimes, however, you may want an animal radically different from any on this list. In these cases, your best bet is to look at existing creatures until you find something similar to what you’re looking for—preferably of a low Challenge Rating. From there, you can change the skills and feats, add or subtract attacks, and otherwise sculpt the creature until it matches the picture in your imagination. Bear in mind that monster design is a complicated process. You’ll need to be familiar with the rules if you want your creature to be balanced, and even if you do the math perfectly, your GM may still decide the creature is too powerful. After all, familiars are intended to be relatively weak, and even a baby mastodon is going to be hard to reduce to an appropriate CR without designing a totally new monster, at which point you might as well just grab the pig familiar stats and add fur. The young template is also extremely useful in reducing creatures’ CRs. Once you’ve got the stats worked out, use the examples above to decide what ability your familiar grants its new master. And don’t forget to get your GM’s approval!

For example, let’s say you want to create a cardinal, because you think he’d go well with your fire wizard who only wears red. Since they’re both small birds, it’s easy enough to take the raven stat block above and simply remove the ability to talk. If you want a lobster, you can use the king crab, perhaps reversing its land and swim speeds to represent its quick movement underwater. A rat makes a fine guinea pig, and a weasel makes a great stoat or ermine. If you want to tinker further, remember that the further you range from an existing stat block—especially if it’s to add extra attacks or otherwise improve a creature—the more likely your GM is to reject it as being unbalanced. The rules try to balance familiars so that none are obviously better than the others; if yours is clearly better, it’s probably too powerful, and per