Do you like having a familiar in D&D? Find Familiar, as a spell, is basically a spell that lets you have a pet, which can be a really fun bit of characterization and an opportunity to add a beloved mascot to your adventuring party. And while it's a little expensive to keep summoning them back, it's also a spell that lets you avoid the anxiety real-world pet owners have because your familiar can never permanently die.
But given that, do you wish that they could be more central to how your character plays? Well, Arcana Unleashed really leans into this with a number of feats that support a Familiar-focused playstyle.
To start, we have the Origin Feat, Familiar Friend. This comes with the Familiar Trainer background, a background that grants Con, Int, and Wis as its ability score increases, well-suited for Wizards, Artificers, (Psions eventually,) Druids, and Clerics.
The feat gives you the Find Familiar spell as an always-prepared spell, and lets you cast it once per long rest for free and without material components. So, already, this is going to make things a little more convenient.
Next, your familiar will have higher HP, getting higher current and max HP equal to twice your character level. Given that most familiar stat blocks have 1 HP, that's going to mean tripling it even at level 1, and while it'll take a while before it can truly take a hit, even by level 5 or so, it should be able to survive incidental scratch damage.
Finally, the feat will allow the familiar to grant you advantage on any ability check using a skill you have proficiency with if they're within 5 feet of you, no action required on their part, though they can do this only PB times per long rest.
This last one is kind of interesting, as in the 5.0 rules, you could give the help action on any check, as could a familiar. To avoid just having all checks get advantage, I instituted a house rule that you have to be proficient in the skill they're using to help, which they then made official in 5.5. Familiars rarely have a whole lot of proficiencies (though they might have Stealth and/or Perception,) meaning their previous role of giving advantage outside of combat isn't really what it used to be. This feat restores some of that functionality, albeit in a limited way.
Now, though, let's talk General Feats. As with all General Feats, you can increase an ability score by 1, to a max of 20. It seems for these it allows any ability. However, these feats do require that you have the Familiar Friend feat, so it's kind of a feat path.
Elemental Familiar lets you imbue your familiar with elemental power when you summon them by casting Find Familiar. You pick Acid, Cold, Fire, Lightning, or Thunder. The familiar gets resistance to the chosen damage type.
Then, as a bonus action, you can command the familiar to use a reaction to burst forth with its elemental energy, forcing all creatures in a 5-foot emanation to make a Dex save, taking 2d4 of that damage type on a failure and getting knocked prone.
So... this is not great. It's a pretty tiny amount of damage that doesn't scale and is a save for half. That being said, to its credit, you're probably there more for the ability to knock foes prone, and actually, now that I've said that, I think this might not be so bad after all. It's especially powerful if you can get your familiar up to a flying creature. The timing, however, is tricky: technically the familiar is supposed to go on its own initiative, so getting them into place and then having them wait there (fully open to attack) until your turn so you can use your bonus action is... a bit rough. Even if you house-rule that familiars go immediately after the controller's turn, it's still a bit awkward. The only way this really works smoothly is if you let the turns happen simultaneously, which stretches the rules a bit, though I think is within reason.
Otherworldly Familiar lets you imbue the familiar with otherworldly energies, picking between Necrotic, Poison, Psychic, Radiant, or Thunder (huh, Thunder can be from both!)
Like the prior feat, this gives resistance to the chosen damage type. Then, your familiar can move through other creatures and objects as if they were difficult terrain, and if they end a turn inside an object, they're shunted to the last unoccupied space they were in.
Obviously, this is less of a combat-oriented feat. But if you like to use a familiar as a scout, this is going to make it a lot easier for them to get into places. I'm not convinced this is worth spending a whole feat on. Actually, I think it's not. But if you're really leaning into the theme here, and your DM doesn't have NPCs and monsters instantly kill a tiny spider if it starts walking around their lair, this could be pretty cool.
Soothing Familiar causes your familiar to create a soothing aura in a 5-foot emanation around them. When you or an ally rolls a die to determine the number of hit points restored to a healer, you treat rolls of 1 or 2 as 3s.
Generally, I don't think these "replace 1s and 2s with 3s" features are good. Now, this will work on any healing, whether it be from spells, potions, or even just spending hit dice on a short rest. This will turn the average roll of a d4 from 2.5 to 3.25, a d6 from 3.5 to 4, and a d8 from 4.5 to 4.875 (are there healing spells that use d10s or d12s? Maybe Conjure Celestial?) Anyway, at best, this is increasing the dice healing of a Healing Word by 30%, though it's really less than that because it does nothing to the flat modifier. Again, I'm just not convinced this is worth a General Feat.
Warlike Familiar gives you the Battle Familiar spell, making it always prepared, and lets you cast it once for free per long rest. Also, while a creature within 5 feet of your familiar is hit with an attack, the familiar cna take a reaction to add a bonus to that creature's AC against the attack equal to your PB.
So, this is interesting. I did a post about Battle Familiar yesterday, and it's a pretty solid spell, and especially if you're a Cleric, Artificer, or Psion who can' t normally get it, this could be nice. The reaction is also pretty good, though again limited to just one hit per turn. But it could come in clutch, and there's no limit on uses.
Overall thoughts?
Well, in terms of power, I really think probably Warlike Familiar is the only general feat amongst these worth taking, and even then, it's mainly adding just a little functionality to a spell that you might be able to get anyway.
There are for sure some very powerful feats in this book, but I'm inclined to think that this stuff is more about building a character around a fun and silly theme than being the most powerful adventurer you could be. It could be very fun to play with these, and again, there are situations where these feats could actually prove really useful. But again, I'm not inclined to think that these are parts of the next big brokenly powerful build.
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