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Message: <blockquote data-quote="JoeGKushner" data-source="post: 2011438" data-attributes="member: 1129">Note, this isn’t a full review of the book. As this is an Ennies book, I’m not under any obligation to review it. However, as I write this, I’ve just finished the Farseer trilogy by Robin Hobb. The main character, Fitz, has an ability known as the Wit. It allows him to bond with dogs at first, and then eventually, his wolf, Bright Eyes. He’s defiantly not a mage or a sorcerer. The creature he bonds with isn’t an animal companion that needs to be taught tricks, but much like a full familiar. The Book of Familiars by Troll Lords gives you numerous options to add familiar like creatures to any class, in addition to numerous other options.Now the book has the standard issues in editing. You look at the Paladin’s special mount table (8-1) and notice that instead of Paladin Level, it has Barbarian Level. You look at the section on Totem Familiars for barbarians on page 32, and you note that the scroll border on the right side of the page, cuts into the text on the left. Thankfully its still readable as only the last character or two is cut off, but it’s still annoying.There are some space issues as well. When art is repeated in a book, like the picture on page 61 and 126 is, you know there are problems. Some of the art is there just to take up space and not all of the art is quality. That’s not to say all of the art is bad by any means The duplicated picture for instance, is by one of my favorite artists, Scott Purdy and some of the reprinted art from earlier Troll Lords products, is top-notch stuff.Most of these are minor issues. They detract a bit from the value of the book, but don’t render the game mechanics in error in most places. Indeed, the book moves through those issues and provides the reader with numerous options to bring to every core class character. These go beyond the feats you can take to augment a familiar. I’m not too crazy about such feats. I’ve seen a few ways that companies try to augment familiars before, ranging from an experience point sacrifice in Fantasy Flight’s magic book, to Kingdoms of Kalamar and their familiar augmenting feats. No, these feats while useful in setting up the rest of the book, pale in comparison to the ideas for providing the non-spellcasting classes with familiars.Like what for example? Well, one of my player’s has the Item Familiar feat from Unearthed Arcana. Another one is a Spell Scion with a two-handed dragon blade. The point is that each is taking game mechanics to customize a weapon. In this book, fighters can have a Hero’s Weapon. This allows a weapon, that can be magical, but must not be intelligent, to become personalized. This weapon gains hardness, intelligence, wisdom and charisma, in addition to special powers, as the user goes up in levels. The blade can simulate feats, gain various enhancements and is bonded to the user and doesn’t have an ego or struggle against the master.For rogues who don’t take the front lines though, what good is that? How about having your own shadow act as your familiar through the Shadow Pact? The character performs a ritual and binds his shadow as a familiar. Fancy stuff. For barbarians, not only do you have the option to get a familiar, you also have the option to get a special mount. It doesn’t stop there, as you can take the Craft Nature Fetish feat and create minor magical items for yourself. As one of my friends tells me, he likes relying on his own character and finds that feats that let him be more self-sufficient are worth taking. Overall it’s the classes that have no animal companions or familiars that bear the most interesting options. The bard and the five songs that are hidden lore, is one of the most interesting things I’ve seen done with the bard in 3.5. Want a companion? Use the Song of Companions. How about a Fey ally or perhaps even give life to your Muse? Rules are included for each option along with others.This isn’t to say that the options for sorcerers and wizards are boring. Sorcerers have numerous options to pursue because they have five different options, fetish, automation, mercurial, wyrm and animistic. Each one with different abilities and role playing potential. Woe to the foolish sorcerer who picks the wyrm familiar and doesn’t have one that follows his own plans and ideas for that creature resides in the caster and takes control when the caster loses control over his own body like say through a charm spell or the simple act of falling asleep.It’s little things like this that make the book a treasure trove of ideas. Despite the white space issues, they weren’t lazy about individualizing the familiars. Almost every class has familiar abilities based on that class. A sorcerer’s familiar and a druid’s familiar will have very little in common. They put in numerous options to allow you to have familiars of various power, ranging from standard familiars to greater and supreme.The supreme familiars are powerful. However, you have to have Summon Greater Familiar, which means you have to have the ability to Summon a Familiar, either through a class ability or the Summon Familiar feat, and the level requirements for some of these creatures is high. So three feats and a high level. Is it too powerful? Your mileage may vary.  So what types are there? Most of these creatures are neutral and none of them lawful good. Bad work on the Trolls for not making an even distribution of creatures. Having said that, we have most dire animals and several magical creatures like Pegasus and unicorns. The levels range from 5th for a giant owl, to 15th for a very young dragon.In addition to tons of variant familiars and mounts, the book provides statistics for many new animals. These seem to follow the 3.5 conventions in that it includes speed in standard number of feet with number of squares, a break down of the armor class, bab/grapple, attack and full attack information. However, they don’t break down the initiative bonuses and just list a blank space and the section isn’t illustrated. Still, I don’t think I’ll lose any sleep over not seeing the giant crab not illustrated. Other appendices round out different aspects of familiars. New spells can help your familiar survive like Guardian Cloak, that provides soft cover to your familiar or Teeth of Ice, Claws of Fire, where your familiar can now inflict one type of elemental damage with its natural attacks. Those looking for other ways to augment their familiars have new magic items like Collars of Protection and Amulets of the Familiar, that raise the caster’s effective level only for purposes of determining his familiar’s strengths.I was a little surprised at the PrCs. They could’ve went straight for mage based ones that were masters of the familiar, but they did some different stuff, based on the material in the book. The Animus Gemini is a monk based PrC that specializes in man and familiar fighting as one. The Faunsilva bonds with a fey, forsaking it’s other companions and familiars even as the archetype, the familiar master, can summon numerous familiars and empower them with new feats from this book.  Other classes, like the Night Lord, follow the path of an animal, in this case, the bat, while others, like the Umbral Stalker, rely on the character having a familiar but use their own shadow to perform murder. This isn’t to say that everything here is about the mechanics. Almost every class has a lot of background information on why they would seek out a familiar and what the quest involved in that seeking would be. Advice for GMs on insuring that they remember to target familiars in combat and not feel bad about it, as well as advice for the players to remember that they actually have familiars, is provided. Some of the options for reminding the player about which persona he’s in, the character or the familiar, should be put to good use right away. I know that in almost all of my games, the players with familiars rarely mention what those companions are doing.Despite the errors in layout and the white space issues, the book has a lot of great ideas and concepts to it. Some books, like the Aerial Adventure Guide, suggest that all players start off with their equivalent of Regional Feats. If I wanted to run something where the characters had the Wit about them, or had some type of strong animal bond, I would have no problem giving all the players a feat or two from this book for background purposes only.</blockquote>

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