When to take Item Familiar

[carrdrivesyou]

So I'm planning out my character a bit, and since I'm going to be using UMD a lot for wands down the road, I was planning on taking this feat. The downside is, I'm not sure when I should take it...

It's a minimum of 3rd level to get it, but WBL barely supports the concept, meaning I would have to save and spend more than 2/3rds of my WBL to that point to obtain an item that would qualify, assuming of course I don't find one (unlikely).

That being said, when would be the optimal point to take this feat? I would argue that WBL supports it by 5th, but 6th is the next feat...

Context: I'm playing a Dragonfire Adept with 12 CHA. I'm the team's resident arcanist (feel free to have a laugh at that lol), so wands and scrolls will likely be heading my way, assuming our Cleric of Lathander (looking to go radiant servant) doesn't need them. Other party members are ranger and fighter.


EDIT: The DM has a homebrew rule that means that Wands require DC 15 + Spell Level instead of the standard DC20 to activate.

[Anthrowhale]

Is there anything wrong with ASAP?

[carrdrivesyou]

Well, aside from it being a dead feat for a few levels until I get an item that meets the requirements, not really. I'm just looking at this from an optimization standpoint. Should I go ahead and grab a different feat I can use now or should I take it and be patient?

[Zombulian]

Well the Skill Bonus version of Item Familiar explicitly gains power as you add skill ranks to it, so every level that you don’t have one is just that much more wasted potential. This isn’t a huge problem if you only plan to use the item for UMD, but if you really want to squeeze as much as you can out of the feat it may be worth picking up early and banking hard on getting an item.

[pabelfly]

I'd take it at third level, with the understanding you need to save 2K gold before you reach level 4 to get the most out of it.

Item Familiar is a very powerful feat, but the more you invest in it, the more crippled you become if you lose the item or have it stolen/broken. I wouldn't take it unless you absolutely need the skill bonuses (such as for a Truenamer build) and even then I would think twice about it.

[bekeleven]

What items, that you can pick up relatively early, would make the safest familiars? Do any items, or types of items, make themselves more or less likely to be lost?

I'd start with something that can't be sleight-of-handed, and ideally something that's on you when you sleep, but do you have any specific thoughts?

One of the best items to familiar from an optimization standpoint is Dukar Hand Coral (CoV), which is implanted subdermally, but you'd need to pull at least one shenanigan since it's 1.6k GP natively.

[redking]

The best way is to inherit the item familiar previously belonging to someone else. Then it has all the juicy abilities (including invested skill points) that you get for free.

[St Fan]

What items, that you can pick up relatively early, would make the safest familiars? Do any items, or types of items, make themselves more or less likely to be lost?

I'd start with something that can't be sleight-of-handed, and ideally something that's on you when you sleep, but do you have any specific thoughts?


I have a pair of character concepts planning to use item familiars, so I can give you my musings about it.

If loss of the item is of primary concern, you can take model on my martial artist, who plans on obtaining a Monk Tattoo to boost his 2-level dip in Monk and makes it his item familiar. Losing this one would be very difficult. The downside is that this item is extremely overpriced; I would advise haggling with the DM to have its price cut in half (which still make the tattoo overpriced compared to a Monk's Belt).

Otherwise, you have my spellcaster character, who's planning on creating a Ring of Sustenance as her item familiar. For protection, among other things:
- Forging the ring out of riverine (indestructible except for magic that would destroy anything else).
- Also, casting a permanent invisibility spell on it as soon as possible (and later, at higher level, a sequester spell every two weeks or so), while wearing on the same hand another ostentatious ring to distract wannabe thieves.
- More importantly, keeping the ring's existence a complete secret. Only herself and her familiar may be aware of its importance, and she might go as far as casting forbidden speech on herself and her familiar to make interrogation or reading thoughts about it pointless.
- Note that an item familiar must be "in your possession" to benefit of it, not necessarily worn in the appropriate place. If she's ever in a position to be thoroughly searched for dispossession of items, she plans on swallowing it. A small ring is handier for that.
- Even if other people know about the ring, a Ring of Sustenance being only usable by the wearer unless attuned for a week gives a good pretext to never borrow it.
- Also, takes note of the dragoneye rune spell, which allows the caster to always know the direction and distance of a marked item.

Another advantage of a ring as item familiar is that you can start adding new powers to it way earlier than 12th spellcaster level, which is otherwise the minimum for the Forge Ring feat.

For that matter, you could be interested by the Bonded Magic Items rules from Dungeon's Master Guide II. They allow for any character (of at least 3rd level) to create a magic item through a ritual even without the proper feat or spells, thus reducing cost by virtue of creating the item yourself rather than having to buy it. You also gain a perk depending on the type of ritual. The downside is that the item will only work for its creator, which is hardly a problem for a future item familiar.

[Telonius]

Clear it with the DM first. Item Familiar is one of the most powerful feats in the game (on the level of Leadership), particularly if you take it before 6th level:


A character of 6th level or lower may invest a portion of his life force into his item familiar, receiving bonus XP in return. These XP are actually part of the item, however, so if the item is lost or destroyed, the character loses not only the bonus but a quantity of his existing XP as well.

When a character chooses to invest his life energy into his item familiar, his current XP total and all future XP awards increase by 10%. However, if the character loses the item, he loses all bonus XP gained, plus an additional 200 XP per character level.

The feat messes with three of the basic assumptions of the game: how fast you get XP, how high your skill bonuses can get, and action economy (when it gets its intelligence). And the earlier you take it, the more powerful it is.

[carrdrivesyou]

DM is fine with it. We use milestones, so the bonus XP bit doesn't even factor in. I'm not super sure about how the loot distro is gonna go, as it's my first campaign with this group. We're aiming for somewhere short of cheese builds but keeping SOME optimization. Basically, whatever shenanigans we use, the DM is gonna be throwing right back at us. So using this to make wand whipping a reliable skill is about the long and short of my goal here.