Familiar Feats
Hello everyone. In honor of our recent product, Advanced Arcana (on sale now, at a website near you!), which provides, in addition to over three-score brand new spells, all kinds of extras, including (among other things) about half-a-dozen new familiars, I’ve decided to devote today’s From the Workshop to improved familiars.
What? No, not that kind of Improved Familiars! You won’t find any imps, quasits, or even mephits here. Instead, today’s article will provide a number of feats (one for each of a variety of familiars), which improves the bond between you and your familiar. In a way, it’s sort of the opposite of the Improved Familiar feat, as it gives you an improved bonus from an existing familiar, rather than a new and more powerful familiar which gives you no bonus at all.
Now that that’s out of the way, let’s get down to the feats, shall we?
Improved Bat Familiar
Your bond with your bat familiar strengthens, granting you new abilities.
Prerequisite: Bat familiar
Benefit: You gain blindsight to a range of 60 ft. If you already possess blindsight, your existing blindsight increases by 60 ft.
Improved Cat Familiar
Your bond with your cat familiar strengthens, granting you new abilities.
Prerequisite: Cat familiar
Benefit: Whenever you take damage from falling, you take half that damage instead. Additionally, falling never causes you to become prone, as you always land on your feet.
Improved Hawk Familiar
Your bond with your hawk familiar strengthens, granting you new abilities.
Prerequisite: Hawk familiar
Benefit: You reduce any miss chance caused by concealment or total concealment by 20%, to a minimum of 0%. This applies only to miss chances that come from difficulty seeing the target, not from the target being only partially present, such as blink or similar spells.
Improved Lizard Familiar
Your bond with your lizard familiar strengthens, granting you new abilities.
Prerequisite: Lizard familiar
Benefit: Once per day, as a full-round action, you can enter a state of rapid healing. This is a supernatural ability. For one minute, you gain fast healing equal to ¼ your class level (whichever class is granting you the familiar). Additionally, during this period, you can reattach a severed limb as though with the spell regenerate.
Improved Monkey Familiar
Your bond with your monkey familiar strengthens, granting you new abilities.
Prerequisite: Monkey familiar
Benefit: You can use the Acrobatics skill in place of the Climb skill while climbing. Additionally, Acrobatics counts as a class skill for you.
Improved Owl Familiar
Your bond with your owl familiar strengthens, granting you new abilities.
Prerequisite: Owl familiar
Benefit: You gain darkvision to a range of 60 ft. If you already possess darkvision, your existing darkvision extends an additional 60 ft. Finally, you gain a +2 bonus to all Perception checks.
Improved Rat Familiar
Your bond with your rat familiar strengthens, granting you new abilities.
Prerequisite: Rat familiar
Benefit: Choose a number of diseases equal to your class level (whichever class is granting you the familiar). You are immune to those diseases. Each time you gain a new level in that class, you may choose a new disease to gain immunity to.
Improved Raven Familiar
Your bond with your raven familiar strengthens, granting you new abilities.
Prerequisite: Raven familiar
Benefit: As a standard action, you can view the world through your raven familiar’s eyes. While doing so, you no longer see through your own eyes, and are considered blind for that purpose. You can maintain this effect indefinitely, and can end it at any time as a move action.
Improved Toad Familiar
Your bond with your toad familiar strengthens, granting you new abilities.
Prerequisite: Toad familiar
Benefit: You can breathe water as easily as air. If you normally breathe water, you can instead breathe air as easily as you breathe water.
Improved Viper Familiar
Your bond with your viper familiar strengthens, granting you new abilities.
Prerequisite: Viper familiar
Benefit: You gain a +2 bonus on initiative checks, which stacks with any other bonuses to initiative you possess. Additionally, during a surprise round, you can take a full round’s worth of actions, rather than only being able to take a single move or standard action.
Improved Weasel Familiar
Your bond with your weasel familiar strengthens, granting you new abilities.
Prerequisite: Weasel familiar
Benefit: You gain a +4 bonus on Escape Artist checks. Additionally, Escape Artist counts as a class skill for you.
And now that the basic familiars are out of the way, I thought I’d provide a little bit extra for those of you who picked up Advanced Arcana, so, here’s a set of Improved Familiar feats for the familiars of Advanced Arcana.
Improved Animated Object Familiar
Your bond with your animated object familiar strengthens, granting you new abilities.
Prerequisite: Animated Object familiar
Benefit: You gain an amount of damage reduction equal to 1/6th your class level (whichever class is granting you the familiar), minimum 1. This damage reduction is overcome by adamantium.
Improved Bonsai Tree Familiar
Your bond with your bonsai tree familiar strengthens, granting you new abilities.
Prerequisite: Bonsai Tree familiar
Benefit: Once per day, by spending 10 minutes in intense meditation, you can exchange any number of spells you have prepared for another spell of the same level which you could cast. If you replace an expended spell, the newly prepared spell is considered expended as well. You cannot use this ability to prepare a spell from one of your opposed schools.
Improved Hedgehog Familiar
Your bond with your hedgehog familiar strengthens, granting you new abilities.
Prerequisite: Hedgehog familiar
Benefit: You are treated as one size category larger for the purposes of the damage dealt by any natural attacks you may possess. This stacks with any effect which increases your size.
Improved Newt Familiar
Your bond with your newt familiar strengthens, granting you new abilities.
Prerequisite: Newt familiar
Benefit: Once per day, before making a Reflex save, you may choose to treat your result as though you had rolled a 20 instead of actually rolling. This is not treated as a “natural 20,” and so is not considered an automatic success, but if the result is enough to exceed the DC, you succeed on your Reflex save.
Improved Poison Frog Familiar
Your bond with your poison frog familiar strengthens, granting you new abilities.
Prerequisite: Poison Frog familiar
Benefit: You are immune to all poisons.
Improved Rabbit Familiar
Your bond with your rabbit familiar strengthens, granting you new abilities.
Prerequisite: Rabbit familiar
Benefit: Your base land speed increases by 10 feet.
Improved Skeleton Familiar
Your bond with your skeleton familiar strengthens, granting you new abilities.
Prerequisite: Skeleton familiar
Benefit: When calculating the total number of hit dice of undead you can command, add your class level (whichever classis granting you the familiar) to the total.
Improved Turtle Familiar
Your bond with your turtle familiar strengthens, granting you new abilities.
Prerequisite: Turtle familiar
Benefit: You gain a +2 natural armor bonus to AC.