Do familiars always need to roll for spell attacks?

[poolio]

Say i have a mouse, it crawls up under bad guys armor, mouse is now clinging to bad guy, would i still have to roll to hit with something like shocking grasp even though my mouse is already touching the baddie?

[Millstone85]

"crawls up under bad guys armor" isn't really covered by combat rules.
Maybe a successful attack roll would represent the mouse getting there, or staying there as the enemy tries to get it out.

[Aembrosia]

Rolling dice to determine the success of an action is the game mechanic involved in resolving a mouse successfully climbing into someones armor and touching them.

You cant have a mouse climb onto a Bullete and automatically hit for the same reason you cant have a human climb onto a terrasque and automatically hit.

Okay maybe not the exact same reason.

The dice give legitimacy to the imagery. You dont get to automatically succeed. This isnt pathfinder.

[Addaran]

I wouldn't let it automatically succeed in that situation but the question could be relevant in some other situation.

You ask the guard to hold your pet mouse while you go take a leak. Then you cast when hidden. Is the touch automatic?
1) Yes
2) No and it represent some visual effect happening before the spell take effect and the guard letting go of the mouse in time.

An octopus is grappling your cat with one tentacle, is the touch automatic?
1)Yes
2)No...but i really have no idea how to explain it if the octopus wants to keep the grapple...


For the enemy in combat and the mouse climbing on him. I'd probably say either the attack roll to represent climbing, a grapple first or a climb check vs his AC.

edit: I guess you could say it's not just "spell X happen to anything the familiar touch" but like when the wizard cast a spell it most come from somewhere. Shocking grasp won't suddenly come out of the wizard's foot. For the animal it could be the paw, it's mouth, peck, tail,etc. but usually the same.