Find Familiar in Dungeons and Dragons 5e

in a world we must defend don't forget about your furry and feathered friends or the flying ones the swimming ones the scaly ones and the slimy ones all the magical creatures that you can summon up with the fine familiar spell in dungeons of dragons fifth edition one of the most powerful and versatile spells in the entire game and we're gonna talk about why my name is Monte Martin and I'm Kelley McLaughlin and we are the dungeon dudes welcome to our show where we discuss everything Dungeons & Dragons including advice for players and guides for Dungeon Master's we release new videos every Thursday so please subscribe so that you never miss an episode today we are taking an in-depth look at the fine familiar spell in D&D Fivey everybody knows that the spell allows you to have an animal companion but a lot of people don't realize the potential that their smell carries in combat exploration and role-playing so we're gonna share tips and tricks on how to best use the fine familiar spell there is so much to discuss so let's get rolling so let's dive into the spell itself and talk about how you can gain a familiar now fine familiar is the spell that we're gonna be using to gain the services of a familiar there are some variants that are discussed in the Monster Manual that allow a creature to serve as your familiar but these are optional rules that are at the dungeon master sole discretion whereas the fine familiar spell allows you to gain the services of a familiar yourself fine familiar is a first level conjuration ritual spell that on paper is available exclusively to wizards but there are a huge number of ways for other classes and characters to gain access to the fine familiar spell and thereby get a familiar for their very own if your game includes the use of feats there's options for any character to gain a familiar by taking the magic initiate feet or the ritual caster feet both of these feats allow you to select either a first level spell or start learning rituals in both cases find familiar is an eligible option as long as you associate your rich Castro feat or magic initiate feat with the wizard class that does lock in the other options you're gonna be able to take with those feats but it does give you access to the fine familiar spell one thing to be aware of is that if you choose magic initiate as your way of gaining the fine familiar spell you're gonna get some extra can trips but you're only gonna be able to cast fine familiar once per day using the magic initiate feat whereas if you gain it as a ritual caster you'll be able to cast find familiar multiple times throughout the day but only as a ritual there are some key differences between this that are really important for the versatility of the fun familiar spell which we're going to discuss shortly on top of that if you are playing a fighter you can choose to play an Eldridge Knight which would give you access to the wizard spell list also if you're playing a rogue you can take the arcane trickster path and that will give you access to that spell as well once again arcane tricksters and eldritch nights are not ritual casters so they can't cast find familiar as a ritual but they can use their spell slots to cast it on top of all this warlocks actually have two options to gain the fine familiar spell one of which is quite obvious the other of which not so much and we're going to start by looking at the pact of the chain option if you choose the pact of the chain at the third level as a warlock you immediately learn the find familiar spell as a gift from your patron you can cast it as a ritual and when you do you're familiar can take on four different forms that are not available to others that cast the fine familiar spell including the IMP the pseudo dragon the sprite and the Croisette warlocks do have another kind of secret way of getting the fine familiar spell and this is through pact of the tome warlocks who take the book of ancient secrets invocation which allows them to start learning ritual spells they immediately get to pick two first level rituals one of which could be fine familiar warlocks that do gain the pact of the tome and thus take the find familiar feet get the expanded options for familiars that pact of the chain warlocks do but they can have a familiar as well taking the invocations or feats to gain familiars are really compelling reasons to take ritual castor book of ancient secrets and magic initiate that are well worth considering for almost any character that can meet the prerequisites but also with this amazing list of options for how to get a familiar it means almost any character in the game if they want to has an option to obtain a familiar finally I will mention that it is possible for the dungeon master to grant a player character a familiar using the variant rules found in the monster manual for creatures such as pseudo dragons and imps characters who gain the services of a true pseudo dragon or imp familiar gain a magic resistance trait but this is only granted to player characters that gain this from the dungeon master a warlock that gets an imp form for their familiar doesn't get the magic resistant trait so now that we've gone over how to obtain your familiar let's talk about what this spell actually does when you cast the fine familiar spell you gain the services of an arcane spirit that takes the form of a beast but is actually a fey fiend or celestial creature the fine familiar spell does take one hour to cast and if you can cast it as a ritual it takes an hour in 10 minutes to cast it requires a bit of charcoal chalk or arcane herbs burned in a brazier and those herbs have to have a value of 10 gold pieces but you can use a portable brazier to do this this is very important because you may be casting and recasting find familiar several times throughout an adventure for many different reasons so having a couple extra arcane herbs or components to burn in a small portable brazier is really really handy if you know the spell and the deeper you go into an adventure 10 gold isn't actually that high of a cost to change the form of your familiar every time you want to cast it it is a specific component and casting fine familiar does take one hour so just be aware that these are two things that are required for the spell because they will have an impact on both your finances as a character even a small one and a pretty significant impact on the amount of time you spend over the course of your adventure if you're constantly casting and recasting the spell which is something that you might actually want to do and here's an important reason why when you cast find familiar you get to choose a form for your familiar to take this form could be one of many animals such as bat cat rat frog owl octopus lizard poisonous snake crab fish a hawk a seahorse a raven a spider or a weasel that's a lot of animals it is and within this it's possible to for you to get a little bit creative and I don't see any reason why you couldn't say that you're familiar that's a weasel is actually a tiny bear with a top hat but it uses the statistics of one of the chosen creatures flavor text yeah absolutely I think adding a personal flair to your familiar is a hugely important element giving your familiar a name and a little bit of a personality and deciding what your character is relationship with your familiar is whether they think of it as a pet a companion an extension of their very being actually have read about people who said that their character was actually the familiar and the stats of the player character was the summoned creature that the familiar was conjuring another great inspiration for how your character treats their familiar could be even drawn from villains such as Jafar and Iago or Ursula and her eels or dr. claw and mad cat all of which were kind of trickster like creatures that were sometimes making fun of their bosses but very scared of them at the same time those are very delightful and playful relationships that you could even explore with your character too if you want to go the other way and look for a positive relationship with your familiar you could look for inspiration in things like Merlin and Archimedes Ash and Pikachu or Harry Potter and Hedwig or really any character from the Harry Potter series because most of them have familiars well you can draw a lot of inspiration from the different creatures and masters that you see in fiction find familiar in Dungeons & Dragons fourth edition has a very unique property to it because the familiar is not an animal it's an arcane spirit and as such it can change its shape when you cast the fine familiar spell again while you have a familiar out already that doesn't cause you to gain an additional familiar you can only ever have one instead it allows you to change the form of your familiar from whatever currently is to one of the other available forms this is one of the most useful and versatile parts of the fine familiar spell and why it's so useful to be able to cast it as a ritual regardless of the personality in a relationship that you had with your familiar and it might indeed have a favored form whatever your favorite animal is in the moment you can transform your familiar into whatever creature the situation demands for example if you need a high-flying Scout that can stare across the horizon transform your familiar into an owl with its 120 foot dark vision it's amazing keen hearing and sight and its flying speed so it can fly high and survey the area around you and one of my favorite animals the octopus seems relatively useless in most scenarios but what if there's a treasure you need to grab at the bottom of a deep pool and you don't have the means to swim down there yourself but if you change your familiar into an octopus they have a lot of limbs to pick things up and move them around and carry things out from the bottom of deep water some familiars have other things like climb speeds or are very good at stealth such as the weasel which has a +5 bonus on stealth checks other creatures are just naturally innocuous in many common adventuring environments rats and spiders are pretty much ever we're in most dungeons and wilderness environments and may go unnoticed allowing your familiar to operate as a spy or a scout and there's a really key utility that the fine familiar spell offers that really makes this a powerful ability and that is the telepathic bond that you have with your familiar the ability of the telepathic bond allows you to channel your own senses into the familiar you need to spend an action to do so and it needs to be within a hundred feet of you but now you can see through its eyes and listen through its ears since you're familiar Oh BAE is your commands telepathically you can direct it to move where it needs to go and thus if you're using a flying familiar such as a hawk or an owl you yourself can get that bird's-eye view or if you need to sneak around and explore the next dungeon room transform your familiar into a spider have it creep under the door and start looking around from the corners of the rooms what's really special about this is that when you channel your scent your senses into your familiars you also gain its special senses so you gain your owls dark vision or most notably if your familiar is in the form of a bat you now can benefit from its 60-foot blind sight allowing you to find invisible creatures and objects again it does require an action to channel your senses into your familiar and you are blind and deaf with regards to your own surroundings when you do so but if you are in an emergency and you can't find that invisible object or you can't see in the dark moving your senses into your familiars just for a moment might give you the help that you need in order to find what you're looking for or scout ahead in the wilderness or a dungeon another really useful familiar which often goes unnoticed is the raven with its mimicry ability because it can repeat sounds and words that it's heard other creatures speak your raven could actually fly quite far away from you to relay a message or eavesdrop on a conversation being able to use the special movement modes and senses that you're familiar offers is really something that not a lot of low-level characters have access to being able to change in to a flying or swimming creature can be really beneficial because not many people on the party you're gonna have swim speeds or fly speeds and again you're not doing it directly but you are able to do this through a surrogate character in the form of your familiar your familiar is a pretty vulnerable creature though and it often only has a single hitpoint fortunately if it is destroyed while scouting head it disappears leaving behind no remains and you do have a couple really good options for getting you familiar out of there if it's trapped or captured because you can dismiss your familiar at any time as an action regardless of where it is if your familiar is in danger or you get separated from it and it's lost and you have no way of recalling it back you can just dismiss it into a pocket dimension and then recall it 30 feet away from you this is quite interesting and potent because dismissing your familiar can be done at any range the familiar doesn't have to be adjacent to you it could be miles away in fact at least according to what's written in the rules for you to do this you don't need to be able to see it when you re summon your familiar it appears within an unoccupied space within 30 feet of you know summoning it inside someone's chest cavity and also the spell doesn't specify that you need line-of-sight to re-summon your familiar this means that you might be able to resub in it on the other side of doors or on the outside of a locked cell or various other things that could be extremely helpful this is pretty potent because if you are trapped somewhere and need to get help you could send your familiar out just transform it into a raven relay a message that it can then fly off and mimic to someone else what your help message is alternatively if you do have a familiar that is able to manipulate objects in interesting ways maybe it's enough for your familiar to appear outside the cell and pick up the set of keys and let you out when you do dismiss your familiar whether or not it actually keeps the objects that it is carrying or wearing is really up to the DMS discretion I personally ruled it know when a familiar is dismissed any objects that's wearing or carrying just are dropped this seems to me to be the best ruling that prevents some really egregious actions from occurring such as a familiar grabbing an object that is important to a quest and disappearing indefinitely into a pocket dimension where no one can ever find it again or a familiar heading ahead to scout through a dungeon stealing an object and simply teleporting back thus negating the entire adventure I think it is the best way to handle it although if a familiar has its own cosmetic things like if you want to say that your weasel familiar has a top hat or your cat has a collar I think that that's fine that's part of the familiars essence but anything that it picks up in the world that then just does not disappear with it if any DM takes away my weasels top hat I'm walking out of that game although I do like the idea of if your weasel get getting slain its top hat dropping down and just kind of spinning around there until it disappears too and then reappears on the weasel that actually could be fun way of reef Laver get is that maybe you're familiar comes out of a hat and the hat is the brazier instead of anything else so you have to sprinkle the herbs and tap it with your wand and then your you pull your familiar out of the Hat and put the hat on it that being said why is there no bunny familiar there isn't there isn't a rabbit familiar how are you gonna pull a rabbit out of your hat if there's no rabbit familiar wizards D&D rules you got me again your familiar is pretty much capable of doing anything it can't attack but it can take any other action and interact with the world as appropriate for a creature of its type now not all familiars have hands but if you are a warlock there are some options for you that will give you hands which might be really useful for manipulating certain objects most familiars also only have an intelligent score two or three and pretty low strength scores as well but this might not limit them as much as you think it does because there are fantastic examples of well trained animals performing some really amazing tasks a lot of people look at those intelligence scores and immediately write off these animals of being able to perform complex tasks but if you look at videos of any trained rescue dog or even some of the things that birds or other animals can do inventing and using sticks as tools or things like that it's really quite incredible for these low intelligence creatures and indeed small mammals like weasels and rats can manipulate things quite a lot with their claws and Eagles and owls have very powerful talons which they can use to grasp and pick up objects another benefit is that you're familiar does have a telepathic connection with you and it does obey your commands so it's not unreasonable to assume that you can instruct your familiar in a very intimate way on what it's supposed to do as long as it's within a hundred feet of you that said you're familiar does have a pretty limited carrying capacity normally creatures can carry 15 pounds per point of strength but almost all familiars are tiny creatures which have this number meaning they can carry about seven to eight pounds per point of strength now this is still around 15 to 20 pounds for most tiny creatures that they can lift up this means that they could lift up weapons potions books they can't make a tax but they can still carry them from point A to point B it is worth bearing in mind that familiars aren't proficient with advanced tools like thieves tools or healers kits some players have suggested to me in the past can I have my familiar pick locks or use a healers kit to stabilize a dying creature that seems to me like something that would require the familiar to be able to gain proficiency in one of those tools to be able to do and it doesn't seem like familiars can gain proficiency in these tools in combat your familiar is its own creature it rolls for initiative and has it's own separate turn from yourself this means that you can't interrupt your turn to have your familiar act and then continue your turn afterwards now myself as a dungeon master I often rule that familiars animal companions and other summon and controlled creatures act either immediately before or immediately after their controllers that's a house rule of mine because honestly I lose track when there are a lot of extra creatures in the battle that are controlled by players and I like to keep all of the players actions to their our own turn as an organizational thing this does make the familiar a little bit more useful and allows players to coordinate a little bit more but I am pretty strict about players breaking up their turns with the turns of the creatures that they are controlling if you want to do that you need to ready actions as appropriate to make sure that you're in the right place I've adopted this rule at my table too just because of how easy it makes it instead of having to monitor 20 creatures at the table you might just only have to monitor 10 because everybody has a companion but still they need to go before or after the players turn not during in combat a familiar cannot attack but it can take other actions as normal we should specify that attack does also mean that it cannot grapple shove or take any improvised action that requires an attack role so this doesn't just mean that the familiar can't take the attack action it can't do any tasks that might require it to make an attack role as a really good example of this if you want your familiar to fly up to a creature and grab an object off of it if you as a character we're trying to do that that's something that I the DM would probably ask you to make an attack role and opposed ability check to do so and so I feel that that's out of balance for what a familiar can do I personally might allow this at my table but it depends on the situation if the familiar is hidden to the enemy and is trying to sneak up to grab keys off of their belt while they're engaged in combat with the player I might allow something like a sleight-of-hand check to be able to sneakily grab the item off of them that being said and aren't very good at sleight of hand and they might get noticed and get killed the idea of having a familiar or a mage hand grab something on a creatures body pull a cloak over its head tie its boots together in the middle of battle or unhook its belt these are really really popular ideas and if you're going to allow familiars to do these things they should not succeed at them automatically they should always need to make some kind of a tack role or ability check using the familiars modifiers this means that it becomes possible for familiars to do creative things like this but it does mean it's going to be a gamble and it might not always succeed demanding that familiars can do things like this with automatic successes is really granting them a little bit too much power in my mind that being said one of the most useful options for a familiar is to take the help action on its turn this will grant another creature advantage on an attack role made against a creature adjacent to that familiar I find that this is one of the most effective ways to represent a familiar doing something disruptive to another creature so while a familiar might not be able to drop in other creatures pants or tie it shoes together it can absolutely fly in front of someone's face or cause a distraction of some kind in order to perform the help action to me the help action almost makes up for the attack action I pictured the owl in the enemy's face clawing at them not doing really any damage but that has the enemy flailing around well somebody else hits them with a sword or a spell now many people will note know correctly that this what you're familiar in some pretty immediate danger and I really think that that's actually to your benefit if a monster or a foe decides to spend their attacks to take out your familiar that's an attack that now isn't hitting one of your party members and given how easy it is to summon one of your familiars 10 gold pieces is far less than the 50 gold pieces of a healing potion what are the other really interesting ways that you can use a familiar in combat is that your familiar can deliver a touch spell for you when you cast a spell that has a range of you can instead have it be delivered through their familiar by spending your familiars reaction as long as they're within a hundred feet of you what most people think of is being able to deliver something like shocking grasp to an enemy that's actually quite far away from you but once again this does put your familiar in harm's way another great idea is using this to apply buffs or healing to other party members it's much less risky than flying you're familiar into enemy territory this does allow your familiar to perform some awesome battlefield tactics in the midst of combat if you have access to a spell like cure wounds or fly both of which are spells that require you to touch the target you can just have your familiar perks on the shoulder of one of your party members and then they can deliver the spell that way that's a pretty effective means of letting your character feel like they're in two places at once in the middle of a battle this also means that your wizard gets to stay on the back lines but deliver touch spells to the players on the frontlines if they are engaged in combat or anything like that you get to stay nice and safely away from danger it is also pretty useful if you combine the fine familiar spell with other spells like mage hand or unseen servant and you can really have quite the menagerie happening in the middle of battle which can be really useful if you're in a tense combat situation where you're trying to manipulate the environment or use other objects well you're familiar can't attack it could absolutely pull levers or switches that activate traps manipulate the environment and interesting and creative ways perhaps even drop objects or you're feeling really generous administer healing potions to falling allies speaking of delivering healing potions this brings up our next point which is that familiars can actually use magic items well they can't attack their ability to take other actions as normal means that familiars can use and manipulate magic items provided they meet the prerequisites for doing so this means that a familiar such as an imp or a sprite that has hands could totally manipulate a healing potion and feed that to another person a wand of magic missiles can be used by anybody not just a spell caster magic missiles technically don't make any attack rolls kind of familiar use a wand of magic missiles what do you think Kelly I mean I love the visual idea of a bird flying around blasting people but at the same time it seems a little too powerful I also I I don't know there's certain magic items that can do quite a bit and to put them in the hands of a familiar basically giving you a way broader option for how to use that magic item it could be a little game breaking it really could be in fact it gets even worse if you start thinking about can familiars attune to magic items because now we could do something like give your familiar a ring of spell storing that you've put a really powerful concentration spell into as a great example of this you could have your familiar with a ring of spells storing that has a wall of force in it and you're familiar drops the wall of force and now you're familiar is the one concentrating on that spell not you and then you can now combine that with another concentration effect to gain the ability to concentrate on two spells at once within the control of your character to me this seems very very powerful and getting outside the boundaries of what fine familiar is meant to be able to do I think that if your group wants this to work at your table the dungeon master the players need to have a really frank conversation because this drastically increases the power level of familiars me personally I would rule this a familiar is an extension of its master therefore a familiar can't concentrate on spells on its own because that actually pulls away the Masters own concentration furthermore a familiar can use in a magic item but that counts against the attune magic items of its master this is a little bit of meeting things halfway and I think it still might even be pretty generous as well but it makes it much more fair than having six or two new magic items and two concentration spells coming from your wizard which literally goes far and above of what the games designed to allow yeah and I think that it's a perfectly reasonable explanation of the telepathic and spiritual arcane link between master and familiar making it so that the familiar really is relying on your arcane power to do what it's doing and so having it double up on your attunement and concentration is really siphoning off your own ability to do that as a spellcaster again the rules don't say that that's just our interpretation but that is the thing that comes up a lot in conversations about familiars I do think that allowing familiars to do things like this takes the spell over the edge of what's acceptable for most games as an aside let's talk about one of the best classes to have a familiar in the game which is the pact of the chain warlock pact of the chain warlocks can transform their familiars into closets imps sudo dragons and sprites all of which are forms that are much more powerful and intelligent than the base forms available to other spell casters using the fine familiar spell not only do these familiars often have hands in the case of the amp'd sprites and closets but also a lot of them have some unique abilities that the other options just don't have the IMP itself can turn invisible and then also take the form of a rat a raven or a spider giving it a lot of versatility in addition to its own flying form this means that your imp can act as an invisible scout for you and it's increased intelligence and ability to speak means that it is capable of much more complex tasks another example would be the closets scare ability this isn't an attack but it can frighten other creatures around it so technically you could use that the sprites Hart sight ability allows it to read the emotional and mental state of other creatures as well as detect their alignment a really unique ability which is rare in Dungeons and Dragons 5th edition these additional forms can also make some pretty potent attacks if your pact of the chain war because you can take the attack action and then allow your familiar to attack as part of that letting you deliver the potent stings and poisons that these familiar forms are capable of dealing with this means that the pact of the chain warlock can benefit from so many of these other options when using a familiar unlike many of the other classes who are limited in what they can do with the familiar giving you access to unique abilities attacks and just really cool creatures that you don't usually have on your list whether you're a warlock a wizard or a member of one of the other classes gaining a familiar from the other sneaky ways we discussed earlier a familiar bring so many options to you in combat exploration and social interaction in addition to bringing an awesome new quirk to roleplay your character with so this has been a look at the fine familiar spell in Dungeons & Dragons 5th edition if you have any awesome stories about your familiar or some of the cool tricks they've pulled off tell us about them in the comments below if you're enjoying the show and are curious about how you can support the channel consider checking us out on patreon you can follow the links in the description below to learn how you can contribute to our work and if you want to check out our live play dungeons of dragon high made airs Tuesday nights at 6 p.m. Eastern Time on Twitch you can also find all the previous episodes right up over here we've also got a great playlist where we talk more about the cool spells in Dungeons & Dragons 5th edition please subscribe to our channel so that you never miss an episode thank you so much for watching and we'll see you next time in the dungeon

Channel: Dungeon Dudes

Views: 459,052

Rating: 4.9296679 out of 5

Keywords: dungeons, dragons, tabletop, gaming, roleplaying, games, accessories, rules, rule, gameplay, play, game, rpg, d20, player, character, D&D, 5e, DM, PC, tips, advice, guide, guides, review, dice, books, book, familiar, pact of the chain, warlock, wizard

Id: yzn3gHF0Lf0

Length: 32min 49sec (1969 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 28 2019