Improved Familiar Feat (PEACH)

[Saelethil]

Thoughts on ballance? should this be a half feat?


Improved Familiar
Prerequisite: You must know the find familiar spell.
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Increase your intelligence score by 1. You have learned how to summon a more powerful familiar. When you cast the find familiar spell and you double the cost of the material components your new familiar can gains these benefits.

- You can choose any beast of CR 1/8 of medium size or smaller.

- As a bonus action you can command your familiar to attack.

- Your familiar's HP is now your Intelligence modifier + your Proficiency Bonus if it would normally be less.

[BenevolentEvil]

It's definitely a pretty strong feat. It's a half-feat, so it already doesn't need to do much to be worth it compared to full feats like Great Weapon Master or Spell Sniper. With that said, we can do some math on the expected extra damage from the feat. A 1/8th CR monster does on average 2-3 damage each round with just a +3 to attack. As an at-will bonus action, that's a pretty dang potent addition to the DPR that a caster can deal every round.

For more detail, the low accuracy makes it a little weaker than it appears at first. Most notably, though, the accuracy doesn't scale with the caster's level, so it's still just a +3 to hit whether its a level 1 wizard's familiar or a level 20's. That makes the feat waaaaaaaay stronger at early levels than it is at high levels. At early levels it can really tip the balance of a fight, but at higher levels it's basically inconsequential. I'd recommend looking into a way to scale the familiar's attack bonus with levels, perhaps by letting the familiar use the caster's proficiency bonus instead of its own. I'd also recommend some way to reduce the bonus damage offered by the familiar at lower levels, perhaps by limiting the bonus action usage and increasing the usage as the caster levels.

As a half-feat, I think the additional hit points is entirely unnecessary at lower levels (and probably puts the feat out of scope of balance) and yet probably needed at higher levels. Perhaps the bonus hit points should also scale with level more directly than with proficiency bonus.

I really like the idea of the feat, though! With a little tweaking it would be a great addition to 5e!

One last note: You should probably restrict the feat's summoning of beasts with special movement, especially flying speeds, since Medium beasts can be ridden as a mount by Small PCs such as halflings or gnomes. Specifically, you need to watch out for Vultures, which are only CR 0 but as a Medium beast with a 50 foot flying speed would enable halflings and gnomes to fly at-will, which is almost certainly way more power than you intended for the feat. But even ground-based beasts at CR 1/8 can move much, much faster than a regular PC, such as a 50ft-speed Hyena. That's not much more powerful than buying a Riding Horse, but its definitely worth considering when evaluating the low-level power of the feat.

[Saelethil]

Thanks for the feedback! what do you think about this?
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- You can choose any beast of CR 1/8 of up to medium size (small if it has a fly speed).

- As a bonus action you can command your familiar to attack. If you do not take this action it can only take the original familiar options on its turn.

- Your familiar's HP is now 2 times your Proficiency Bonus if it would normally be less. (or your character level?)

- Your familiar's proficiency Bonus Increases to match yours.

It probably is too much for a half-feat.

I'm not as concerned with increasing ground speed as giving more familiar options. I agree that flight is really powerful so requiring flying familiars to be small or smaller seems like a good fix.

Changing the familiar's HP to double proficiency instead of proficiency + Int. keeps the HP low (but generally an improvement) in the early game but helps it increase more steadily. It is also less punishing for non-wizard characters who have sunk 2 feats into getting an Improved Familiar. If I go with character level instead of double proficiency it would be an overall improvement but would it be too much?

Having the familiar's PB match yours doesn't change anything in the early game but will help keep it helpful much later into the game.