timppu: Thanks for that, because for some odd reason I didn't see that item listed in the Baldur's Gate 2 cheats/items lists I googled. Seems those items lists are way incomplete.
I first thought I had written the "create item" cheat command wrong because I didn't get any feedback whether it was successful or not, but they worked, so suddenly I had ten manuals of bodily health in the inventory. Used one of them on my mage, threw rest to ground, and continued with the game. All is well now, my mage's constitution is back to 16 now.
I guess I will not use the "find familiar" spell anymore, unless I find a very good reason to do so. Yeah you get extra HP as long as your familiar doesn't die, but I simply hate the idea of having to pamper it just so that I don't get permanent negative traits to my character. Just not worth it.
Glad to help. Re the item list, the Manual is actually a BG1 item, but all of the BG1 items can be spawned in BG2 as well.
As for the familiar, I'm of two minds. On the one hand, there are one or two that can give your character some okay benefits, but on the other, the only safe place for him is in your backpack, which takes an inventory slot. So it's kind of a toss up on whether or not to bother with it.
Anyway, enjoy the game. :)