His FAMILIAR cast that spell?!

[Xarlen]

There's a thread in the general forum about Awakened familiars. But here's my question.

Can an Imp, Pseudo-dragon, or Mephit, claimed as a familiar via the Improved Familiar feat, take levels?

 

[Mr Fidgit]

according to the MM, those creatures can only increase through hit die advancement

that is - they can only 'get better' through creature advancement and not by gaining levels

 

[Crothian]

If you do give them levels it's might not be worth it. They get a lot of things from the wizard instead of their own, so many of the things they will increaese with level won't matter because what they get from the Wizard will be better.

 

[Xarlen]

according to the MM, those creatures can only increase through hit die advancement

that is - they can only 'get better' through creature advancement and not by gaining levels

What are 'Those Creatures'?

Familiars? Monsters?

I've never seen anything that would suggest an Imp COULDN'T get a class level. In Enemies and Allies, there's a Pseudodragon Sorceror.

And, what I'm asking is can they get levels AND stuff from the familiar abilities?

 

[Dr. Zoom]

according to the MM, those creatures can only increase through hit die advancement

that is - they can only 'get better' through creature advancement and not by gaining levels

But according to MM, page 12, Advancement, these are not absolutes, but exceptions are extremely rare. So a creature may have some class levels even if the advancement line only says +HD, but usually it's just more HD.

 

[hammymchamham]

pg 14 MM

Creatures with Class Levels. At the end it says 'Additional Hit Dice from a character class never affect a creature's size' which would mean even though an Aboleth has an advancement based on size (not class level), an Aboleth could take levels in any charecter class.

EDIT: But as Dr. Zoom says, this would be extremly rare

 

[Kyramus]

If this shoudl ever come up in my game.

I might allow familiars to get levels BUT
it would be under the following rules.

The familiar needs to gain abilities and such from their master. Hence if the master is level 10, I'd allow that if he has enough experience to gain level 11, he may opt to put it to the familiar instead, loosing all those exp to the bottom of 10 again while the familiar gains that 1 level.

The familiar can never gain more levels than 1/4 of the wizard. IE, level 20 wizard could have at the most a level 5 familiar in addition to all the other powers the familiar already has.

 

[Plane Sailing]

An alternative might be to require the wizard to take the leadership feat and use the familiar as cohort as well as familiar?

At any rate, if the familiar has class levels it would have to count as a party member and be counted for a share of experience, rather than just a class feature... reducing everyone elses xps too...

 

[Zhure]

Awaken has a target of "Animal or tree touched." Familiars are treated as magical beasts and can't be awakened anyway.
Greg

 

[Dr. Zoom]

Standing Stone spoiler

Standing Stone spoiler. Read at your own risk.

An alternative might be to require the wizard to take the leadership feat and use the familiar as cohort as well as familiar?

A similar thing was done in The Standing Stone adventure path series. The villain sorcerer turned his familiar into a faux human (thanks to a new druid spell) which gained levels and became his cohort when he took the Leadership feat.