[3.5] Shadowcaster wants two familiars

[Scorpions__]

A player of mine recently had her Halfling Shadowcaster 6 take the Shadow Familiar feat from Tome of Magic. Now she wants to know how she might get a second familiar. Right now she has a Dark Owl, and she wants a Toad as well.

Getting this as early in the level progression would be preferable, but any advice is welcome.

Leadership?






DM[F]R

[arguskos]

Permit the Obtain Familiar (Complete Arcane) feat to give you an extra familiar. Bam, done.

[Da Beast]

Why not just give it to her? Shadowcaster isn't exactly great to begin with.

More seriously, there is an obtain familiar feat. I believe it's in Complete Arcane and gives a familiar with your arcane caster level as your effective wizard level. I believe it also requires arcane caster level 1, but I'm pretty sure shadow caster levels can be used in place of arcane caster levels for feat/PrC requirements.

[Zaq]

If you're the GM, I'd just allow it, probably at the cost of a feat. There's not terribly much that a Shadowcaster can do to abuse having two familiars. Just about the only thing that I'd be worried about would be if they tried to have two UMD-bots in addition to their normal actions, but from what you've said, I don't think that something of that nature is too likely to be an issue.

If you want to stick to RAW, then I'd say that Wild Cohort is as close as you're likely to get. It's not quite a familiar (it's not smart, for one), but it's an unambiguous way of getting another pet.

A tangent:
If you go into the Master of Shadows prestige class, your shadow familiar (which is a prereq for getting into the class) "permanently transforms into a Medium shadow elemental. It loses all familiar traits. . ." (em. added) This could be read to imply that it is no longer a familiar, or at least that it no longer counts against the only-one-familiar-from-any-source rule. Now, since Shadow Familiar doesn't say that it can be taken more than once, you can't take it again and get a replacement familiar . . . but what if you took a level of sorcerer or wizard, getting a normal familiar that way? Ah, but Zaq, you say, that would make you lose a caster level—or would it? Using the "A Creeping Darkness" rules on p. 115 would let you trade out that level of sorcerer or wizard for another one of shadowcaster (once you level up again and take another level of shadowcaster, of course). It says that doing this would make you lose any bonus feats and spells you get, but it does not say that you would lose your familiar. Thus, you could have a pet shadow elemental and a normal familiar (who may or may not have the Dark template, depending on how you interpret "an alternative familiar") without running afoul of the "one familiar at a time" rule or losing a caster level (besides the one you lost entering Master of Shadows, of course). This doesn't help you get the dark owl and toad that you wanted, of course, but it's an interesting way of getting multiple pets.