Okay, three suggestions for Familiars to make them more useful. They have good utility, but are seldom used in combat.

First, give them an ability of Autoassist so that if they are in the same room as the conjurer, they will automatically assist the conjurer if he gets in a fight. A toggleable ability. So if he doesn't want the familiar to aid, it won't.

Second, give the conjurer a way to "possess" the familiar (Stole from NWNs, I know). So that the conjurer can take control of the familiar and use it just like himself instead of having to write alias's and triggers to make it easier. Type Fam E, gets annoying, especially down the eastern road.

Third, give the familiars an in combat special attack similar to angels, elementals, and archons. IE, as they fight, they'll have a random chance to do something in combat. This I hope would bring them more likely to be used in ranking, as well as PvP combat.

Suggestions:

Faerie Dragon: Since it already has a stong physical attack, give it a breath attack that causes confusion.

Raven, Owl: Peck attack with chance to blind target.

Quasit, Homonuculus: Mana draining attacks that will slowly drain mana from target and transfer it to conjurer.

Shadow Cat, Coyote: Bite attack with chance of bleeding. Also, maybe give Coyote a scavenge ability that will feed the conjurer.

Monkey and Imp: Little bit confused on these two. Maybe Monkey the facebite ability, and the Imp a disease like attack (Influenza and such).

The attacks might be a bit much, but the first two commands would not really alter balance point of view much at all.