Familiar Power

Its like Wizards realized how shitty familiars used to be, and so is making up for lost time. There's more articles on familiars than most classes.

Oi.

I've really enjoyed 4E's iteration of familiars in that they made them useful and cool. I've also enjoyed that Wizards has taken the time to further integrate them into arcane characters and make it a compelling choice beyond what they already do.

So, good job. ( ^_^)o自自o(^_^ )

Unlike past articles that toss out more familiars and feats to fuck with them, this article mixes things up a bit by providing a bunch of spells that either target your familiar, or get kickers from having your familiar touring about...in addition to giving us more familiars and feats to go with them.

For example, there's a level 1 encounter spell that creates a cold zone that damages enemies that start within it (centered on one such poor bastard), but if your familiar is in the zone then creatures taking damage are also auto-prowned. Huuur.

My favorite one is the level 22 utility spell that makes your familiar get really big and start tossing enemies around automatically. Very cool. Along the same vein is a ritual that turns your familiar into a mount.

The new feats let you add more to your familiar by allowing to swap between passive and active mode for free, or grant it teleport as a movement ability.

A pair of magic items introduces the "familiar slot", which basically translates into, "your familiar can pack one familiar magic item." Not sure if this was something in a previous article, but I dont recall it. ┐('~`;)┌

Last but not least are a pair of elemental familiars, a specter, and a gelatinous cube.

2 comments:

  1. I was VERY glad to see familiars become something other than the complete waste of time they used to be.

    They are not only a viable (and valuable) part of an arcane character, but are USEFUL! Who would've thought :)

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  2. Its gone so far beyond useful at this point. I mean, they were useful when they debuted in Dragon. Now its like...you can hang entire character concepts on them: powers get kickers, you can ride them, fight with them, etc.

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