Enhanced familiar says "You can select four familiar or master abilities each day, instead of two." For witches it then goes on to say "Add the bonus familiar abilities you gain for being a witch to this amount."
So if I'm playing a 6th-level witch, my familiar would have...
2 base abilities that all familiars get
1 patron themed ability
1 bonus ability at 1st
1 bonus ability at 6th
For a total of 5 familiar abilities.
If said witch took Enhanced Familiar, then at 6th level the familiar would have...
2 base abilities that all familiars get
1 patron themed ability
1 bonus ability at 1st
1 bonus ability at 6th
For a total of 10 familiar abilities.
Is that right? Seems like a pretty meager feat if not.
Enhanced familiar says "You can select four familiar or master abilities each day, instead of two."
If said witch took Enhanced Familiar, then at 6th level the familiar would have...
2 base abilities that all familiars get
And where, exactly, does the rules phrase 'instead of two' play into this reasoning?
And disparaging the plain ruling as 'meager' does not mean that it is incorrect.
The feat gives you two familiar abilities more than what you would have if you don't have the feat. Being a Witch doesn't change that.
Then why would it say "Add the bonus familiar abilities you gain for being a witch to this amount."
"This amount" being the extra abilities granted by the feat.
If that wasn't the case then surely there's no point in including the above text in the feat. It goes without saying that a feat that gets you extra familiar abilities isn't going to take away abilities granted by a different source.
Then why would it say "Add the bonus familiar abilities you gain for being a witch to this amount."
"This amount" being the extra abilities granted by the feat.
If that wasn't the case then surely there's no point in including the above text in the feat. It goes without saying that a feat that gets you extra familiar abilities isn't going to take away abilities granted by a different source.
"This amount" refers to the 4 base abilities that you now have.
So 4+three witch bonuses = 7.
I don't see the source of your confusion.
If I have two apples, and Gary is to deliver me 3 apples, and Bill tells me he is going to deliver 2 apples plus an amount equal to that which Gary is delivering, then when all apples are delivered, I should have 10 apples.
2 + 3 + 2 + 3 = 10.
I don't see the source of your confusion.
You do not get to add twice your bonus familiar abilities for being a Witch.
Except the feat clearly states to do exactly that: "Add the bonus familiar abilities you gain for being a witch to this amount."
2 + 3 = 5.
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Here's the full text:
You infuse your familiar with additional primal energy, increasing its abilities. You can select four familiar or master abilities each day, instead of two.
Special [Witch] Add the bonus familiar abilities you gain for being a witch to this amount.
[Wizard] If your arcane thesis is improved familiar attunement, your familiar’s base number of familiar abilities, before adding any extra abilities from the arcane thesis, is four.
The reason it is worded as "add the bonus [...] to this amount" is due to how the base text of the ability does NOT say you "plus 2" to your # o f.abilities in any form.
The dev writing those special lines had to deal with the OG author writing Enhanced Familiar to say you now have a TOTAL of four f.abilities. That was a dumb approach, as it assumes the previous amount is always going to be 2.
Because of that bad OG construction, you need special lines for every case where that assumed total of four is wrong. They even had to take advantage of Wiz's thesis being written correctly as a "+X f.abilities" and wrote that special line backward for max clarity.
_________
In short, Contrarian's reading is erroneous. They have not found a RaI-violating but RaW-yes loophole; trying to add the same bonus f.ability many times is neither RaI nor RaW.
The text of Enhanced Familiar unambiguously states that:
[number of f.abilities] = [4] + [special bonus f.abilities]
The Raven Black had it correct but didn't give a full explanation.
In your original post you said:
So if I'm playing a 6th-level witch, my familiar would have...
2 base abilities that all familiars get
1 patron themed ability
1 bonus ability at 1st
1 bonus ability at 6thFor a total of 5 familiar abilities.
Which is correct without the Enhanced familiar feat.
With the Enhaced familiar feat, the only thing that changes is the base 2 abilities becomes 4. That's it.
So you get 7 abilities (including one specified by your Patron).
Edit: It may also be worth mentioning that the Contrarian is an alias of RavingDork.
Because of that bad OG construction, you need special lines for every case where that assumed total of four is wrong.
Ah, that makes sense.
The current phrasing is not as clear or as obvious as I'd like though.
Even now it reads to me like you add the value of the witch bonus to the bonus value granted by the feat. Kind of like how armor potency runes don't add an item bonus to AC, but rather increase the item bonus granted by armor.
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Because of that bad OG construction, you need special lines for every case where that assumed total of four is wrong.Ah, that makes sense.
The current phrasing is not as clear or as obvious as I'd like though.
Even now it reads to me like you add the value of the witch bonus to the bonus value granted by the feat. Kind of like how armor potency runes don't add an item bonus to AC, but rather increase the item bonus granted by armor.
Yup, which is why that "your total is __" approach is so flawed.
As is, the reader has to do detective work to derive a secondary ~rule from the text, that "+2 to total" ~rule.
Even with special lines, you only provide additional assumed cases, you do not edit the logic into the much more sensible "you +2 to your # of f.abilities" approach.
Thanks for the help! I'll take this back to my table and see what they think. I suspect they will agree with you.