Equipping a Warlock's Familiar

[Sigreid]

Is there anything I haven't found that prevents a warlock from giving his pact familiar magic items and that familiar from attuning them? So far it seems you can and that is kind of...awesome. The idea of giving your imp a girdle of giant strength and such is neat and would increase their value considerably.

[RickAllison]

Is there anything I haven't found that prevents a warlock from giving his pact familiar magic items and that familiar from attuning them? So far it seems you can and that is kind of...awesome. The idea of giving your imp a girdle of giant strength and such is neat and would increase their value considerably.

The only thing preventing any familiar from doing so is a DM deciding whether they can use the item. In a high-magic, high-power game I was in, I had given both my familiar (owl) and Greater Steed (griffon) the Intelligence boosting item and Rings of Spell Storing. The griffon was kindhearted and was kept stocked with healing or protective spells, while the great Knud the Destroyer generally packed Spirit Guardians or other blast spells. No, it wasn't efficient. Yes, it was very fun to RP the tiny owl running around, raining death on mooks.

[Warlush]

Once my 17th lvl warlock's imp had a wand of fire balls. It was pretty handy.

[Sigreid]

Well, this is cool. Chain just got a lot more interesting.

[iTreeby]

The only thing preventing any familiar from doing so is a DM deciding whether they can use the item. In a high-magic, high-power game I was in, I had given both my familiar (owl) and Greater Steed (griffon) the Intelligence boosting item and Rings of Spell Storing. The griffon was kindhearted and was kept stocked with healing or protective spells, while the great Knud the Destroyer generally packed Spirit Guardians or other blast spells. No, it wasn't efficient. Yes, it was very fun to RP the tiny owl running around, raining death on mooks.


well if your dm says that you can have your familiar attune to magic items, and you have a ring of spell storing, you could have your familiar cast find familiar and find greater steed. your familiars familiar would then also be able to use the ring... its not balanced to do this... its really more of a problem with the ring of spell storing very good but even so, its probably best if you share your attunement slots with your summons.

even with that restricition you can do lots of nifty things with magic items on your familiar. i feel like the sprite familiar should be able to use magic items if no other forms can because they have magic bows in their entry.

your millage may very

[Greywander]

IThe idea of giving your imp a girdle of giant strength and such is neat and would increase their value considerably.
I hadn't considered this before. Gauntlets of Ogre Power would give your imp a STR of 19, enough for the to carry 142.5 pounds. It was already a thing that a really light halfling could be carried by an imp, but you had to be almost naked. The Gauntlets gives you a lot more leeway with regard to how much equipment you can carry, and could even let you play as a medium race instead.

I tend to like the idea of allowing familiars to use magic items. My concept of familiars is usually that they're a sort of guardian spirit, or an extension of your own soul. By that definition, one would think that they would share your attunement slots, but I'd probably let Rule of Cool work here.

[BloodSnake'sCha]

well if your dm says that you can have your familiar attune to magic items, and you have a ring of spell storing, you could have your familiar cast find familiar and find greater steed. your familiars familiar would then also be able to use the ring... its not balanced to do this... its really more of a problem with the ring of spell storing very good but even so, its probably best if you share your attunement slots with your summons.

even with that restricition you can do lots of nifty things with magic items on your familiar. i feel like the sprite familiar should be able to use magic items if no other forms can because they have magic bows in their entry.

your millage may very

Mist familiars don't have fingers like the imp and the imp is not a chain warlock.

There is a difference between a devil with a semi humanoid figure and an owl. Unlike the steed from find steed the familiar isn't intelligent from the spell.

[Quietus]

I know that in AL, they do allow you to give magic items to your familiar. However, if those items require attunement, then having your familiar use them costs one of your character's attunement slots.

[MikeRoxTheBoat]

In my Tal'dorei game, our DM had a houserule where the familiar was an individual creature, but formed from your power and essence, so had limited capability to attune itself. Pact of the Chain warlocks could attune items to their familiars, but they only had one attunement slot and had to be of a form that could feasibly fit the familiar (the resizing ability of magic armors and robes were limited to humanoids, so the smallest size something could get was gnome sized).

I thought it was a fair compromise, but it pigeon-holed warlocks into getting the imp familiar, usually. It was fine, though. The game is full of choices between RP fidelity and optimization and this was just another one.