Familiars, Useful?

[Ace]

Familiars(especially parrots and ravens which can talk) are decent for a Gish, a Battle Sorcerer or the like with a decent Con otherwise I never use them.

 

[Timeboxer]

In our game, we stole a concept off of His Dark Materials and said that familiars are actually a manifestation of a part of the arcane caster's soul given physical form. This tends to make the idea of losing a familiar seem much less trivial than it actually is -- plus it gives the familiar some personality.

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

The share spells ability can be a godsend/decent powerup, however. Take polymorph. I change into a Treant and share the spell with my familiar who turns into a treant right next to me. We both proceed to pummel the heck out of the target. Probably works even better with recent spells like 'trollform' etc. As long as you stay within 5ft of one another, the share spells works wonderfully.

Heh, there's my tactic. Dual Cave Troll Attack FTW! Another fun one is to just turn your familar into the big, bad bruier, swift action a bloodwind spell, let it maul the enemy from afar, and still be able to standard action your own spell. Of course, my DM agreed the polymorph subschool rules are dumb and nerf the core spells too much, so I can take part in the bloodwind-ing as well. (Except maybe Shapechange and Poly any Object, which he considers broken. Took a lot of begging to let him agree to me taking them when I'm high enough level, the gist of which was "Well, I can always dispel it until you run out of uses...")

Other important point: familiar hit points and base attack/saves are based on yours, so for certain classes, like Hexblade, this can be a large boon.

 

[Deekin]

I don't know about familers, but my psion's pet rock has been used to some effect in our game.

Uses include:

Scouting
Universal Translator
Radio
Spy-eye
Bait for a trap.
Holding psionic focus
Concentrating on powers
Spotting in darkness
Standing guard over camp.
Delivering touch powers.
Impromptu ranged weapon.
Aiding another on Knowledge Rolls


Well worth the feat I spent

 

[arawn]

Without Imbue Familar With Spell Ability a familar is pretty much flavor but that spell turns it into juggernaut.
Load it up with support spell, battle field control, and panic buttons like web, haste, improved invisibilty, Black tentacles, telekinesis, wall of force, that cannot immediately be traced to the familiar and you virtually double your power, not just because you increased output but because it's mobility gives you more options. Just having the familiar moving in and dimension-dooring a stunned, grappled beat-up character is worth the price of admission. Manyjaws is good if you want increased firepower and familar pocket allows it use many of these tricks even if your DM is out to get it.
And we still haven't gotten to the real ultimate power that is magic jar... Now your familar can use the most reckless spell while tanking for you.


That aside the fact that the familiar have all your skill-ranks(and can aid your checks or make another try) is very useful especially if your character is a skill-monkey of some kind.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Ravens are great familiars since they can talk to everyone and are excellent message transmitters.

Trushes (DMG) do as well. In a Ptolus game I'm playing, my illusionist's thrush was able to tail an NPC high-tailing it through the city when my little legs couldn't keep up and has been able to do a whole Lassie thing with finding help when my illusionist has been in trouble.

Flight + speech = potent

EDIT: Or, what my DM says:

The gnome illusionist has used his song thrush famillair to frighteningly good use. Granted, it's a cops and robbers campaign heavy on investigation but at first level he's; used the familliar to track an escaping suspect after they got away, used it to distract a gunman shooting at the party from a moving carriage, and used it to deliver messages to other PC's all the way across the city and get help when he got kidnapped by bad guys.

So, at the least, bird familliars can be very useful.

 

[Mr Samedi]

There's a book out in the encyclopedia arcane series (Mongoose I think) called Familiars that expands on the feature and makes them a hell of a lot more useful.

In my game I have a wizard who has an elf fighter as a familir. She happens to be one of the party's most powerful combatants.

 

[Slife]

Keep them in your pocket, use them for aid another and alertness. Otherwise they're too much of a liability to use.

 

[taliesin15]

Personally, I feel their main benefit is adding personality and flavor to the campaign.