[3.5] Grafted Item Familiars

[Zweisteine]

Item familiars are known to be powerful, with the only balancing mechanism being that they can be taken away, which isn't balancing at all, because it effectively turns any bonus into permanent, irreparable penalties. That being so, anyone with an item familiar should be worried about losing it.

So why not make the familiar something that can't be lost?

If you were to make a graft an item familiar, wouldn't it be trading a small penalty, supposedly balanced by the graft itself, for enormous bonuses?

Say you take the Wakeful Mind construct graft. You now have a potentially intelligent item living inside your head, keeping you awake. Besides the potential for roleplaying and going insane (get it out!), you now have an item familiar that is nigh impossible to remove without killing you. On top of being hard to remove, only the grafter needs to know you have it, and (if you or they are evil) you can kill the grafter.

Of course, as stated in the SRD, item familiars "tend to be a magic weapon, a rod, or a ring." It also says that "the GM may allow for various wondrous items to be item familiars." This makes this strategy of more limited practical use, but does little to impede theoretical optimization, as it (often) inherently assumes that the DM will go along with whatever you do.

So, what do you think? Does this solve (with DM permission) the one major weakness of the Item Familiar?

[unseenmage]

Embedded Warforged Components (ECS) are similarly protected from the rigors of Sundering, theft, and targeting from spells as well.

And one can pay double to embed essentially any unslotted item. Making it a possible additional protection as well as another option.

[bekeleven]

Just item familiar your armor. It can't be sundered or disarmed anyway. Grab Blueshine for 1.5k and it's immune to rust and acid.

[Zweisteine]

But armor can be stolen.

Some warforged components can be remove by force (chop off arm). Others, though...

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

Make it a ring and wear a glove/gauntlet over it. Opponents will never have line of sight/effect to it so they can't target it with attacks or slight of hand, and that blocks it from Detect Magic and similar. Make it small enough that it's impossible to remove via normal methods, and make it a plain-looking personal insignia of nonprecious metal that nobody would even want. The item familiar itself has convinced your character that it's a cursed item, but that you deserve to bear it, which is what you'll tell anyone who realizes it's magic. This won't require a bluff check since your character believes it's true.

Item familiars are intelligent items which are regarded as constructs, and constructs cannot be disabled or destroyed by dispelling or disjoining and they even continue to function in antimagic and dead magic areas. Anyone who tries to take it from your character or destroy it after you've taken the above precautions would only do so due to metagaming on your DM's part. If a DM thinks an item is a problem and you've gone to such lengths to keep it, a good DM would talk to you about it outside of the game, a bad DM who's not worth playing with would remove it via NPC metagaming.

[bekeleven]

But armor can be stolen.

Some warforged components can be remove by force (chop off arm). Others, though...

3200 for Restful Glamered armor. Sleep in it, never take it off, and it's every outfit. Eternal wand of prestidigitation to cover bathing.

[Zweisteine]

But armor is still easier to steal than a graft. They just have to knock you out.