Rogue with Familiar in combat

[Anqied]

Can a rogue who has a Find Familiar familiar:

1. Carry their familiar into combat without movement penalties?

2. If they were a small race?

3. Have the carried familiar take the Help action and give them advantage on attacks?

4. Disengage and retreat without an enemy taking AoO on the familiar?

5. Retreat without disengaging while still not giving an enemy a chance to AoO the familiar? i.e. take the AoO themselves

6. Grant the rogue sneak attack while in the same space?

[Malifice]

Can a rogue who has a Find Familiar familiar:

1. Carry their familiar into combat without movement penalties?

2. If they were a small race?

3. Have the carried familiar take the Help action and give them advantage on attacks?

4. Disengage and retreat without an enemy taking AoO on the familiar?

5. Retreat without disengaging while still not giving an enemy a chance to AoO the familiar? i.e. take the AoO themselves

6. Grant the rogue sneak attack while in the same space?

'Yes' to every question. Caveat being the Help action only assists with one attack.

[Anqied]

That seems really overpowered.

[lperkins2]

That seems really overpowered.

Against mindless enemies that would be fairly trivially beaten anyway? Yes. Against anything else? Not so much.

First, if the rogue gets caught in a non-cantrip AoE, the familiar dies (reflex half is still likely to be more than 5 damage).

Second, the familiar will have AC maybe 13, so one attack will probably banish it. Which denies the rogue its utility until the summoning ritual can be completed again (complete with gold cost and ingredient availability).

Third, to take the help action, the familiar must be able to render assistance. This has implications for the form the familiar can take. If it's a mouse, or a snail, or something similarly small and hard to spot, it won't be able to Help. That means it's got to be something obvious, like an owl, or a cat, or a monkey. This ties into the second point, where one of the kobolds or whatever the enemies are will just take the action to kill the bird.

[kamap]

Remember that an owl has flyby and doesn't trigger AoO and has a fly speed of 60.
So you can have your owl swoop in do the help action to give you advantage and therefore sneak attack then go into full cover behind a tree, any furniture that might be there or if all the enemies are in front of you even behind your back. The enemy can then still hold their action till the owl appears again but there is less chance for that owl to get killed.

[Contrast]

'Yes' to every question. Caveat being the Help action only assists with one attack.

I would also include the caveat that your DM gets to choose what situations are sufficiently problematic to cause disadvantage. I wouldn't be surprised if a DM decided carrying a familiar who was taking actions was sufficient to hinder your own efforts to attack freely and made it impose disadvantage, cancelling out the advantage and resulting in a regular attack.

The counter argument to this would be pointing out to the DM that grappling someone doesn't impose disadvantage on attacks against other people but at the end of the day its gonna be your DMs call.


Plus as has been mentioned, expect your familiar to get killed a lot. Mechanically this isn't in itself a bad thing because an attack hitting your fam isn't hitting you/your teammates but there are roleplay issues with constantly getting your soul buddy murdered :smalltongue:

[Anqied]

Remember that an owl has flyby and doesn't trigger AoO and has a fly speed of 60.
So you can have your owl swoop in do the help action to give you advantage and therefore sneak attack then go into full cover behind a tree, any furniture that might be there or if all the enemies are in front of you even behind your back. The enemy can then still hold their action till the owl appears again but there is less chance for that owl to get killed.

I was planning on making my familiar a Tressym, since my DM is allowing that. The Tressym doesn't have Flyby though, so I'm trying to figure out how best to keep it safe.

[Camman1984]

I had an owl familiar for my rogue briefly but my DM let me swap my magic initiate spell back out as although it was powerful it felt so mechanical and didn't have any flavour. if I was a ranger style rogue maybe but for my character it seemed like a skill for the sake of power and nothing more

[BaconAwesome]

A rogue's familiar is great for scouting, filching small objects, etc., to the point where losing one in combat hurts. (I suppose if you had ritual caster and a good supply of coal and herbs, you could repeatedly summon a new one mid-adventure, although that might feel cheesy.)

With flyby, an owl feels almost broken in combat, although enemies can save reactions to try to deal with it.

[clash]

It is working as intended I would think. Rogue are balanced around getting sneak attack every turn and have ways of getting advantage consistently that are harder to prevent (hide as bonus action as an example) If a creature gets fed up with it he can just kill the bird. Otherwise the rogue isnt gaining anything he couldn't get regardless. It is just one tactical approach to the same question of how to get sneak attack every turn.

[lperkins2]

A rogue's familiar is great for scouting, filching small objects, etc., to the point where losing one in combat hurts. (I suppose if you had ritual caster and a good supply of coal and herbs, you could repeatedly summon a new one mid-adventure, although that might feel cheesy.)

With flyby, an owl feels almost broken in combat, although enemies can save reactions to try to deal with it.

I resummoned mine mid-adventure several times, while everyone else would take a short rest. Not exactly convenient, but far better than missing out on the 18 passive perception. The hard part is finding a spot to do it safely, but that's a problem with resting mid-dungeon regardless. The last dungeon was spent mostly without the bird, since we were under a severe time constraint and it got fireballed within the first couple minutes.


A rogue's familiar is great for scouting, filching small objects, etc., to the point where losing one in combat hurts. (I suppose if you had ritual caster and a good supply of coal and herbs, you could repeatedly summon a new one mid-adventure, although that might feel cheesy.)

With flyby, an owl feels almost broken in combat, although enemies can save reactions to try to deal with it.

This only works out well if the owl has some way to reliably get ahead of you in the initiative order. There is no 'delay' in 5e. You could go without the bird's help for the first round, but since most fights last 3 rounds or less, that's 1/3 of the fight. If you want to save your action until you get advantage, you burn your reaction to trigger your attack. You also don't have your ally within 5' of the enemy to get your sneak attack damage if your bird doesn't start combat with you.

[Man_Over_Game]

Can a rogue who has a Find Familiar familiar:

1. Carry their familiar into combat without movement penalties?

2. If they were a small race?

3. Have the carried familiar take the Help action and give them advantage on attacks?

4. Disengage and retreat without an enemy taking AoO on the familiar?

5. Retreat without disengaging while still not giving an enemy a chance to AoO the familiar? i.e. take the AoO themselves

6. Grant the rogue sneak attack while in the same space?

It's important to note that not every DM rules the same on this. For example, my current DM says that a unit has to start or end its turn at the space that's eligible for the help action. This means that the Owl does have flyby, but can't use flyby to dash in, help, then dash out. He ruled that the help action is applicable only in situations that make sense, and it doesn't make sense for an Owl to safely distract someone in combat in half a second without risk. I didn't mind, the combination of flyby for a rogue's familiar was too powerful without risk anyway.

As always, Your mileage may vary.

[Vogie]

That seems really overpowered.

Wait until you see the Arcane Trickster's 13th level ability.

An invisible Mage hand giving "the help action", while invisible, up to 35 feet away, that has no HP to lose.

[Man_Over_Game]

Wait until you see the Arcane Trickster's 13th level ability.

An invisible Mage hand giving "the help action", while invisible, up to 35 feet away, that has no HP to lose.

Level 13, 35 feet away.

High level, short range. 35 feet at that level is about as good as 15 feet away. Close enough to give you the sweats.



Find Familiar is a level 1 spell and has no practical range. Obtainable for a feat for any rogue archetype (Ritual caster, which comes with 1 other spell right off the bat, and all future wizard rituals), and provides a stupid number of utility options. If anything, the Mage Hand ability needs to be stronger if the Advantage Owl doesn't get errata'd.


Level 1 Human Variant Rogue will get:


Advantage on every attack (effectively +5 to hit)
Sneak attack damage on every hit (average +3.5 bonus damage)
Has 80 foot range (starter shortbow)
Can send a flying scout to see things that no other level 1 can (look up Clairvoyance, level 3 spell for comparison)
Can cast your second free Ritual Caster spell, Alarm, every rest (no more ambushes while you sleep)
Can learn over 50% of ritual spells in the game. Total rituals: 33. Wizard rituals: 19.



RAW, this is totally completely fine, but your DM may have some strong words for you.

[Anqied]

I resummoned mine mid-adventure several times, while everyone else would take a short rest. Not exactly convenient, but far better than missing out on the 18 passive perception.



How does an owl get you 18 passive perception?

[clash]

Level 13, 35 feet away.
Rogue, level 1, advantage on every attack (effectively +5 to hit), sneak attack damage on every hit (average +3.5 damage), has 80 foot range (shortbow), can send a flying scout to see things that no other level 1 can, can cast alarm every rest (no more ambushes while you sleep), and can learn over 50% of ritual spells in the game. RAW, this is totally completely fine, but your DM may have some strong words for you.

Advantage on one attack per turn so doesnt help with twf or crossbow expert which means the rogue probably has his bonus action to hide and gain advantage anyways, so not really gaining much there that you cant get without the feat. And again sneak attack damage every turn not every hit, and the game assumes rogues are getting that when balancing them. If you are a rogue who isnt getting sneak attack on a given turn, you are probably doing something wrong. The big advantage to familiars that might make them worth the feat is the scouting. The rest is just minor bonuses that the dm can simply choose to get rid of for the rest of the combat at the cost of one enemy action.

[Millstone85]

How does an owl get you 18 passive perception?The owl has passive Perception 13, plus 5 because of the advantage given by Keen Sight.

[Maelynn]

If it's a mouse, or a snail, or something similarly small and hard to spot, it won't be able to Help.

I disagree. The Help action can be as small (ha!) as something that distracts the opponent. If the Rogue has a mouse on his shoulder that stands on its hind legs and starts waving at the opponent, I'm sure it'll distract them enough for the Rogue to land a sneak attack.

Maybe give the mouse a little vest to wear. A tiny flag to hold. A tiny sign that says "you stink worse than Munster cheese!".

[Crgaston]

This only works out well if the owl has some way to reliably get ahead of you in the initiative order. There is no 'delay' in 5e. You could go without the bird's help for the first round, but since most fights last 3 rounds or less, that's 1/3 of the fight. If you want to save your action until you get advantage, you burn your reaction to trigger your attack. You also don't have your ally within 5' of the enemy to get your sneak attack damage if your bird doesn't start combat with you.

The way we run it is that the next attack on the harassed creature gets advantage. So it might not be YOU that benefits specifically, but SOMEONE in the party will. You get to select which enemy the familiar targets on its turn, which gives you some agency without reducing it to a simple “I get advantage on my next attack.” So, for instance, if one of your buddies is struggling or if you want to incentivize your allies to attack a particular target, you can have the owl harass that creature. This goes a long way towards making it feel less like cheese and more like “the owl buddy is helping as best he can.” And the other party members really appreciate it when they are the ones getting advantage.

It’s even better when you can use Cunning Action to hide for your own Advantage and the owl to give it to someone else.

I believe there is a Crawford tweet about the whole flyby/help interaction, but since I don’t have an instatwit account, I’m not the person to help find a link. But basically, since turns in a round are just a way of managing a whole lot of simultaneous actions discreetly, it works.

Edit:

And you get SA if you have advantage regardless of whether or not there’s an ally within 5 feet.

[Malifice]

It all works well and good until the Familiar is killed, at which point the Rogue needs 1 hour and 10 gp to regain the familiar.

If you're on any sort of time pressure or cant take ah hour to sit around spamming a ritual (i.e. you're in a dungeon) this can be problematic or downright impossible.

Seeing as a Rogue can simply Hide most turns to gain advantage in any event, this is really only an action economy boost (it frees up his bonus action to withdraw via cunning action). The 'aways on' melee sneak attack is a slight buff, but in my experience this only opens up more potential targets for sneak attack (rogues are balanced around getting SA every round, which they tend to do in any event).

There is nothing game breaking about it.

[Anqied]

It is still a first level spell that gives you advantage on all melee attacks until the familiar gets killed, along with out-of-combat benefits.

[Galadhrim]

It is still a first level spell that gives you advantage on all melee attacks until the familiar gets killed, along with out-of-combat benefits.

No it isn't, it's a first level spell that gives you advantage on one melee attack per round until the familiar gets killed. And...It is very easy to kill, which is how it gets balanced.

There is a first level spell that gives advantage on all attacks (on multiple enemies no less), which is called fairie fire.

[NorthernPhoenix]

The only thing I'd probably take a dim view on is the flyby owl help stuff. Everything else the familiars can do isn't too egregious.

[Anqied]

No it isn't, it's a first level spell that gives you advantage on one melee attack per round until the familiar gets killed. And...It is very easy to kill, which is how it gets balanced.

There is a first level spell that gives advantage on all attacks (on multiple enemies no less), which is called fairie fire.

That's true, I wrote the wrong thing.

I hadn't thought about the comparison to faerie fire, but it does seem kind of comparable.

Faerie fire can effect more targets and grants advantage for all attacks. However, it can be saved against, only lasts for 1 minute, is concentration, and costs a spell slot each time.

A familiar grants advantage for only one attack against only one target once per round. However, it can't be saved against, and can happen indefinitely as long as the familiar stays alive.

Faerie fire being concentration and a familiar being very squishy are comparable. The lack of a save I think makes the familiar only slightly worse than faerie fire. How strong the familiar is, then, depends on how often it gets killed. If it gets killed after one battle it is absolutely worse than faerie fire. If it never gets killed, it would be stronger. If it dies once a day, I would still say it is worse. You lose a first level spell slot each day (unless you're a wizard/took the ritual caster feat). But the biggest downside, especially at lower levels, is the 10 gold price tag.

[Malifice]

It is still a first level spell that gives you advantage on all melee attacks until the familiar gets killed, along with out-of-combat benefits.

And a readied action from a Mook kills the familiar in turn 1, as does an AoE, a single magic missile or ranged attack etc.

Familiars have an AC of what.. around 11? And a single HP or two?

If you really want to get nasty, impose a HR (I use this in my campaigns) that if a Familiar dies, the caster loses a level of Exhaustion.

There used to be a penalty for familiar death in older editions. I find this to be thematic, and fits with this old school feel or Wizards protecting familiars, and not just marching them to their deaths.