Familiars

It is a pretty commonly accepted fact that the familiar background is horrible, pretty cool but outright worthless. In the past we have sort of house ruled this without making it official. I happen to be a pretty big fan of the familiar background, magical animals are critical to epic fantasy in my mind so most my characters have one. Three of the last four I think, all at varying levels of power. For the most part my familiars have simply been worked out with the storyteller to be a little more cool, and much more useful than the average familiar in the book. These have included an Simhatta immune to my dragon-blooded anima affects, an owl that can turn into an infallible messenger and store spell casts (like a scroll or potion), and a monkey that can turn into a war form (similar stats to a blood-ape). I think these are appropriate levels of coolness and power for a background of that level, I'd still say Celestial Battle Armor is better than a blood-ape but its not about making it equally powerful, just equally cool.

Check out these 2 links to find some good systems for revising the familiar system. I still think this should sort of be a case by case basis, but these are both pretty equal and good sources of information.

Thank you to BogMod and Telgar for providing these suggestions and thank you to the exalted wiki for provided him a place to post them.