Sorcerous Origin
Note from the Palm: Before you read too far, just know that we’re doing this because we thought that meow was the right time fur a bloodline based on cats. We figured that we had so many sorcerer options, including the ability to be a chicken-mancer, the we were doing our furry-little friends a disservice, and we wanted to correct that right meow.
Neko-mancer
While it doesn’t happen often, occasionally a humanoid’s blood will be spliced magically with a cat, usually after a night of heavy drinking and several lost bets. We don’t know, we don’t want to know, but it does tend to give them some powers unique to their situation.
Pile of Cats
At 1st level, when you choose this origin, you learn the find familiar spell, which doesn’t count against your total number of spells known, and you can cast it without expending a spell slot. When cast in this way, you can only use it to summon a number of cats up to your proficiency bonus; you can not have more cat familiars than this at one time. While you have any number of cats as familiars, Charisma (Persuasion) checks you make suffer a penalty equal to the number of cats you have summoned.
Cat Ears
Starting from 1st level, you have a pair of furry cat ears instead of the normal ears for your race. You can speak with and understand cats of all types, including cat-like or partially-cat creatures such as gryphons, manticores and sphinxes. You can add double your proficiency bonus to any Charisma check you make with such creatures.
Furocious
Starting at 6th level, you gain a number of feline traits:
- Your hands and feet grow sets of sharp, retractable claws. Your unarmed strikes deal 1d4 slashing damage, and as long as your feet and hands are not covered and are otherwise free you have a 20 foot-climb speed.
- Your eyes change to look like those of a cat. You gain darkvision out to 60 feet, or your darkvision distance doubles if you had it already.
- Whenever you fall, you can spend a sorcery point as a reaction to cast feather fall, targeting only yourself.
- You grow a feline tail, which grants you advantage on Dexterity (Acrobatics) checks made to maintain your balance.
Feline Frenzy
Starting at 14th level, you can command your cats to swarm a foe in a veritable tornado of fur, claws, and spite. As an action, designate a target within 30 feet of you. Each of your cat familiars can move up to their movement speed towards that enemy. If any of your cats end their movement adjacent to the designated creature, that creature takes 1d8 slashing damage per cat and must make a Strength saving throw with a DC equal to your spellcasting DC. On a failure, both that creature and any cats adjacent to it are restrained until the end of your next turn.
Nine Lives
Beginning at 18th level, you become exceptionally hard to kill, much like your fully feline brethren. Whenever you are required to make death saving throws, you do not die until you fail 9 rolls (you still stabilize upon succeeding on three rolls).
I love this subclass conceptually. Mechanically I feel…
Pile of cats feels like it’s at its biggest impact at level 1
Because advantage for 2 buds? Very rad until the enemy shoots down the 2 hp cats riding your friends’ shoulders, but hey that’s 2 attacks not hitting your level 1 behind.
More cats as you level yes, but it becomes easier and easier to wipe them out practically by accident if you dare bring them into a combat, and you still have to pay the 10 gp per cast of the spell, forcing it into more of a utility and out of combat ability that you need to take a second to dismiss whenever you’re about to face. Chump change but it’ll add up if you’re trying to keep them constantly up against enemies intelligent enough to AoE them and the buddies they’re riding.
Unclear rulings on how some abilities of find familiar work with multiple familiars as well; does delivering spells through familiars require picking one, or can all of them deliver the same spell (presumably as long as you have enough targets)? Can you see through the eyes of all of the cats at once? Do you have to dismiss them one at a time, can you dismiss them all at once? Can you dismiss them one at a time?
Feline Frenzy feels like a very feast or famine ability; either your opponent is not hitting your familiars making it a better cantrip with free damage and potential to restrain, or they’re shooting familiars or AoEing enough that this ability is blank unless you are fighting completely unintelligent enemies.
Nine lives is frankly a ribbon, you’re level 18 and wish is on your spell list, death is only a concept you care about if they soul trap you and the time and/or resources it takes to teleport back to the fight unless you are deliberately choosing to ignore that option. Possibly even a detriment if you are very capable of returning to the fight fast upon death and now you need to wait possibly 3 times as long to manually fail.