Familiar Bloodsmith

"My familiar is more than an extension of my will—it is my own flesh and blood."

Prerequisite: Artificer, familiar

You are a master tinker and can create construct familiars of such perfection that they are scarcely distinguishable from living creatures. Essentially homunculi, your familiars incorporate a tiny portion of your own life energy, distilled into a drop of your blood. This life link allows you to feel your familiar’s pain and drives you to keep it safe and make it stronger. Others might think you strange because you spend so much time with your creations, but they don’t understand: These are your children. Your path features all relate to your familiar, and your powers work only if your familiar is in active mode. Since it’s important that your familiar stick around if you want to make full use of it, take some familiar feats to increase its defenses and to gain other benefits.

FAMILIAR BLOODSMITH PATH FEATURES

    Bloodsmith Action (11th level): When you spend an action point to make an arcane attack and your familiar is in active mode, you can make the attack originate from your familiar’s space.
    Familiar Blood Bond (11th level): Your blood connection with your familiar gives you strengthening feedback while it is near. When you spend a healing surge while your familiar is in its passive state, you regain additional hit points equal to your Constitution modifier.
    Second Familiar (16th level): You can have two familiars at once, such as a cat and an owl. One of your familiars must be heroic tier, but the other can be any sort that you are eligible to choose. You gain the constant benefits of only one familiar at a time and can switch as a minor action. If you retrain the Arcane Familiar feat to replace a familiar, you can replace both.

Familiar Bloodsmith Attack 11Bloodbond Rebuke

You scream in outrage at the foe that dares harm your familiar, driving it back.

Encounter        Arcane, Implement, Psychic
Immediate Interrupt      Melee 1

Special: The origin square of the attack is your familiar’s square.

Trigger: An enemy adjacent to your familiar makes an attack that includes it as a target

Target: The triggering enemy

Attack: Intelligence vs. Will

Hit: 1d8 + Intelligence modifier + Constitution modifier psychic damage, and you push the target 2 squares.

Familiar Bloodsmith Utility 12Rescue Familiar

As the attack slams into your familiar, you call it to your side.

Daily        Arcane, Teleportation
Immediate Interrupt      Personal

Target: An attack reduces your familiar to 0 hit points or fewer

Effect: Your familiar teleports to your square and enters passive mode.

Familiar Bloodsmith Attack 20Bloodbond Swarm

Through your bond, you divide your familiar into a swarm of smaller servants that overwhelm your foes.

Daily        Arcane, Conjuration, Implement, Zone
Standard Action      Area burst 1 within 20 centered on your familiar’s square

Requirement: Your familiar must be in active mode

Target: Each enemy in the burst

Attack: Intelligence vs. Fortitude

Hit: 3d8 + Intelligence modifier damage

Effect: Your familiar is destroyed, and the burst creates a zone of minute copies of the familiar that lasts until the end of your next turn. Each enemy that enters or starts its turn in the zone takes 15 damage and is slowed until the start of its next turn. An enemy can take this damage only once per turn. As a move action, you can move the zone 2 squares. As a minor action, you can end the zone. When the zone ends, your familiar appears in a square of the zone.

Sustain Minor: The zone persists.

Update (2/17/2012)
Changed in December 2011 updates.

Published in Dragon Magazine 377, page(s) 36.