Item Familiars

[Qwertystop]

Why are they so good? I see some of the benefits, but not how they're "incredibly cheesy".

[Medic!]

Free xp is good (artificer what?), a free spell slot isn't bad either.

My personal most frequent abuse is essentially doubling your skill ranks in chosen skills. With classes like Incantrix (where making a retardedly high spellcraft check can do amazing things) and some of the Diamond Mind maneuvers (make a concentration check, then double it, and use that result for your melee damage, or replacing a save with a concentration check), strange and wonderful things are possible.

This completely leaves out the potential for UMD checks, Diplomacy, or Iajutsu Focus.

Where most skill-related feats net you 5 skill points or a +2 or +3 bonus to a skill, taking the Item Familiar feat can double your skill ranks in 1/3 of your max-ranked class skills. Of course you also can get a ton of other benefits from it, but that's my personal favorite.

Of course there's the potential to lose BIG TIME if your item familiar is ganked/destroyed/what-have-you'd. It would take either a jerk of a DM or a jerk of a player to make that happen/cause a need for it to happen.

[Manateee]

Free experience and bonus skill points and spells/day that are way out of line with a single feat slot.

Then the ability to enchant it without feats (though this is more a perk to work around non-caster's troubles than anything broken).

[Dusk Eclipse]

Besides it is a very ..."binary" feat, either you have your Item familiar and you rock everything or you don't and you lose everything you invested into it. That is not good balance IMO.

[Qwertystop]

Ah. I must have misread it, because as I saw it seemed like you put points/spell slots into it to get the exact same amount out, except you lose the stuff if you lose the item. Seemed to me that it was just accepting a huge risk for the benefit of enchanting an item easily.

Now I know that I must have missed something.

[Medic!]

Assuming you never lose the benefit of your Item Familiar:

Investing a spell slot (your highest level) lets you use that spell slot, and gain a new spell slot 2 lvls lower (later your Item Familiar can gain the ability expend that spell slot as if you had cast the spell, without providing verbal or somatic components and as though it had Eschew Materials...cast dispel magic from inside an area of silence, for instance?)

Investing for xp gets you +10% to your current total xp and all future gained xp

And investing skill points gets you 1 bonus point for every 3 skill points invested, to be assigned to any skill(s) you have ranks in, up to a maximum of the ranks you currently have in that skill.

Of course losing your Item Familiar means that if you invested in xp, you lose all the xp you gained since you invested plus 200xp per character lvl, spell slots means you lose both spell slots, and skills mean you lose not only the bonus points, but the ranks you invested.

Add in enchanting for free, Alertness as a feat for free, and a plethora of other possible benefits including a buddy to chat with and a contingent/free action cantrip-machine or a full blown intelligent item, and that's one hell of a 3rd lvl feat!

[HunterOfJello]

The Exp boost is always a bit wishy-washy to me. However, in a game where exp penalties are enforced, this could be a nice way to remove that penalty from multiclassing.

The increase in skill points can be very heavy if you happen to be in a class that gets lots of skill points per level. It's also a great way to get a particular skill a very high boost. Use Magic Device and Diplomancy are popular candidates.

Free spell slots are always nice. Even a level 20 wizard is never going to reject having a bonus 7th level spell to cast per day.

All of the special powers are pretty awesome in general.

~

This is definitely one of the best feats in the game and its existence in an official d&d book is only justified since it appears in Unearthed Arcana, which is all optional material subject to DM bribing and sacrificial worship.