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[Pergentile]

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[Jack Simth]

Casting spells to make your familiar a combat monkey is a really bad idea. See, they've got 1/2 the HP of your squishy d4 Arcanist self, and turning them into combat monkeys makes them targets - they become paper tigers. Oh yes, and Polymorph et all don't change your HP beyond the night's rest healing. Familiars are very poor meatshields, and they reduce your XP when they get killed.

Now, useful senses are handy, and the cheap aid another / skill check re-roll is handy - so at lower levels, a bat familiar or a hawk familiar is great on watch (blindsense-20 and a really high Spot, respectively), and a rat makes a decent scout (hide and move silently). At higher levels, not so much, though.

 

[Dandu]

Some of the improved familiars are very useful, such as the Imp.

 

[Pergentile]

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[airwalkrr]

Using Alter Self to transform your familiar into a formidable-looking foe like a hydra is a terrible idea in my opinion. In the first place, the familiar doesn't advance the same way as a typical creature does. It uses its master's base attack bonus, which is hardly impressive unless you are a mystic theurge casting divine power, at which point you've already sacrificed a lot of familiar abilities. So you are basically attacking with the hydra's Str score plus a little bit more which isn't much, considering the size penalty. Add that to Jack Simth's point about how utterly squishy they are hp-wise and you're just asking for that XP penalty.

Now I have found familiars handy in combat in other ways. The key is to make them just ineffective enough that the bad guys don't pay attention to them. For example I once played a half-orc wizard named Dravus (pure wizard, no fighter levels or anything) who carried around a greataxe and regularly waded into melee. He was pretty good at it too. And always running alongside him was his weasel familiar Bubu. As Dravus would charge into the fray his battle cry was always "Go for the balls, Bubu! I'll take the top!" Many monsters wouldn't waste their attack of opportunity on a little weasel who had to enter their square to attack, but once he was attached, that was 1 hp of damage every round. Enough to possibly make a difference, but not enough to distract attention from the half-orc with the greataxe. And when it came time for it, being attached meant the DM usually allowed an auto-hit on casting touch-range spells through the familiar. Of course I rarely used the latter ability unless I was relatively certain it would take down the monster, as it was a guaranteed to get the monster's attention. Casting shocking grasp through a weasel's teeth tends to hurt quite a lot.

But no, a familiar is never really a tank. Even if you take every familiar feat out there and cast tons of spells on it, it is never really going to be a tank. Nor is it a skill monkey. If you're a sorcerer or a wizard, your skills aren't the type that are generally reserved for the so-called "skill monkey." Your familiar can't disable traps or open locks (unless you somehow also have those skills and even then it depends on the familiar and whether it has opposable digits). It can't negotiate with diplomacy or sense motive any better than your own character. This underlies the fact that the familiar still has the same skill points as you, so it isn't doing anything that you couldn't do already. Even if you transform it into other creatures, it has to stay within 5 feet of you and how many useful abilities can you really get from transmutation that you couldn't get for yourself?

A familiar is generally a useful tool for an arcane spellcaster, most often as a scout or messenger, but not as a fill-in for some other party role. If your DM lets you get away with making a familiar a tank, I'd say you are either incredibly lucky, or your DM doesn't understand the familiar rules too well and is letting you get away with too much.

 

[Dandu]

Alter Self doesn't work that way.

 

[Greenfield]

You could, in theory, use Alter Self to turn a familiar into a Hydra (same type - Magical Beast), but since most Familiars are Tiny to Small in size, and the spell allows an increase of one rank, you'd get a Small to Medium Hydra. Good for a laugh, or the novelty perhaps, but not much else. All you're really doing is making your weak spot a more attractive target.

And, of course, the spell effects would only last as long as the Familiar was within 5 feet of you.

Casting touch spells through your Familiar is neat, but you still have to cast the spell while in melee, and then touch the Familiar in order to "hand it off". The Share Spell feature only works for spells that affect the caster, so it's 5 foot range won't apply.

Now some ideas I've seen in play involve casting Detect Magic, or other concentration spells of a similar nature. The Familiar riding on your shoulder gets it to, since it's power affects the caster, allowing them to see magical effects. The Familiar can continue to concentrate on the spell even after the caster has stopped, so they can warn you of things that you can't see.

 

[Jack Simth]

Besides Constitution being your main stat after Intelligence, there are plenty of polymorph spells that give temporary hit points. Polymorph is a level 4 spell, and so is Trollshape, which gives 30 temporary hit points. Yes, it is better to cast on oneself, but there is no reason a familiar cannot be as good of a tank as the classic fighter.
Not to mention:
"A familiar’s hit points are equal to one-half your normal total, rounded down. If the familiar normally has more hit points than that, it can use the higher number."
Improved Familiar ftw. At later levels there are tonnes of ways of making up the HP difference. We ARE talking about a wizard here.
If you want to discuss this point further, please PM me, as I would prefer this thread stay on track until my questions are answered.

Then you've mostly answered your own question, haven't you? If you're using polymorphic magic to make the familiar's physical stats irrelevant, then the only things that remain of importance are skill ranks, mental stats, and special abilities - with the skill ranks becoming progressively less important as levels increase, as any you don't have as well won't scale up to match increasing challenges. So all that's left are the special abilities - which again become less important as levels increase, as a Wizard can get the useful ones through various spells, and all the special abilities are really saving you are spell slots and possibly spells known.

And, of course, the spell effects would only last as long as the Familiar was within 5 feet of you.

That clause only applies if you're Sharing the spell with your familiar. If you apply the personal-only spell as a touch-range spell to your familiar, it can go wherever it wants.

 

[Pergentile]

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[Dandu]

If you're a Rogue/Wizard, your familiar will have all of your skill ranks. Pretty skillful.