Segev
2020-03-23, 10:12 AM
This started over in this post (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?p=24413525&fireglass_rsn=true#post24413525) in the thread on commonly misunderstood rules, but I think it warrants its own discussion so as not to distract from that one.
Mostly recapping the original post here:
The Variant: Familiars rule sidebars don’t mention Find Familiar at all. Any spellcaster can have one of the sidebarred creatures as a familiar if they meet one and convince it (or it offers) to become their familiar. No Find Familiar spell required.
They’re also universally more powerful than either the spell-granted or the Chainlock-granted familiars. They retain all their own actions, potentially share traits not shared via even the Chainlock’s feature (e.g. the Imp’s magic resistance), and share their senses without action required of the master.
Now, they can quit any time, unlike spell-granted or Chainlock familiars, and you can’t dismiss them even temporarily, nor change their forms for the cost of 10 gp and 70 minutes of ritual casting. But they seem like the kind of thing that will make a caster feel like he’s wasted his resources getting a familiar via spell or Pact if these are an option.
Continuing this train of thought, it seems to me that adding a cranium rat and a crawling claw to the standard list of find familiar options is fine and dandy. Neither is particularly powerful, especially with find familiar's clauses regarding attacking (otherwise, the Crawling Claw would be a rare familiar with a not-utterly-useless attack). The Crawling Claw has Blindsight to 10 ft., but the Bat (already on the list) has it to 60 ft. Sure, the bat loses it in regions of magical silence, but that's...not exactly a common occurrence.
Imps, Quasits, and Pseudodragons are all special perks for the Pact of the Chain as "high powered" familiar options. The only other thing the Pact of the Chain gives (without Invocation investment) is the ability to spend your action to give your familiar an attack. The Variant: Familiar options put it on the creature's side of the field, at least in the Monster Manual for each of these three's listed entries. Also for the Gazer in Volo's Guide (a Tiny Beholder with four eye beams). This does mean the DM is basically going to have to give them, much the way he would an intelligent magic item. This also means that if he does, he's making the choice to pick up find familiar - let alone be a Pact of the Chain Warlock - a bit of a foolish one. (It's like giving out Gauntlets of Ogre Power to a party with an 18-strength barbarian. Now the 14-strength fighter is more likely to get the gauntlets, and be technically stronger than the barbarian, when the barbarian is the one who's worked to get the high strength score.)
There are four sidebars in the MM:
Variant: Quasit Familiar, page 63
Variant: Imp Familiar, page 69
Variant: Pseudodragon Familiar, page 254
Variant: Familiars, page 347
The first three are indeed based on the idea of meeting the creature and convincing it to form a bond with you. The last one, however, is about the find familiar spell.
Which once again shows that 5e has way too many different rules for familiars.
It seems to me that the NPCs sidebar is supposed to be for NPCs only, but that is incredibly frustrating to me because it specifically references find familiar. The fact that variant familiars do things like give freebie access to the familiar's senses (rather than costing an action) and give extra special powers (like the Imp's magic resistance) is just further frustration.
I mean, let's say you let find familiar get not just Crawling Claws or Cranium Rats, but Imps, Quasits, Pseudo-Dragons, Sprites, Gazers, or the like. Why bother being a Chainlock? Tomelocks now get everything the Chainlock does, unless you count Invocations (and with the exception of Voice of the Chain Master, most of those are not particularly thematic to Pact of the Chain, and could easily be rewritten to being available to all Warlocks without any special need; Pact of the Chain is just a "tax" for access, not really a necessity). Moreover, any Sorcerer or Wizard or Magic Initiate or Ritual Caster who picks up find familiar can get the cool familiars.
Seriously, amongst the "normal animal" familiars already there are clear "bests" and "worsts." The frog/toad is useless, not even worth the 10 gp for the ritual summoning. It does nothing that other familiar animals don't do better. The owl is probably the best, with the flyby ability, but at least has competition from the raven's mimicry, the bat's blindsight, and the hawk's sheer speed. The snake could theoretically be milked for venom, though you could do that without a familiar if you wanted. So that's not exactly convincing. I can't really see why ANY of the non-flying choices would be picked. Maybe the rat if you have a particularly good use for one as a spy in an area where birds would draw more attention.
Give base find familiar access to pseudodragon or imp? There's no reason to pick the animals.
And that still leaves the "magic item from the DM" version of a familiar as far more powerful overall, with little rhyme or reason other than some RP and a DM wanting to be generous. Which is a problem because, again, it makes the choice to pick up the spell or the Pact a bad one, unless the DM only gives the variant familiar to the one PC who picked that up. Or otherwise restricts it.
I mean, you can say it'd be bad DMing all you want, but imagine a DM who has a Pact of the Chain Warlock in his game, and wants to give out a variant familiar. If he gives it to anybody but the Warlock (which, for RP reasons, could be valid as a choice - the bard or eldritch knight might have hit it off with that Pseudodragon, for instance), the Warlock now has an inferior familiar but invested one of his big choices for the build into it, while the other character didn't invest anything other than "getting a cool intelligent magic item." (I know it's not really a magic item, but characterizing it that way helps qualify the nature of the reward.)
Even if he gives every primary caster in the party a Variant Familiar - maybe the Chainlock hits it off with a Gazer, the Wizard learns the true name of an Imp and coaxes it into his service, and the Bard gets that pseudodragon - the Bard is getting something he couldn't otherwise have gotten at all, the Wizard is getting a massive upgrade over what the spell he put in his spellbook could get him (but still has now wasted money or free spell selection on a spell compared to the Bard who didn't take the spell), and the Chainlock, while getting a cooler familiar than he otherwise could (at the very least, the shared senses thing is better, and the Gazer doesn't require the Warlock's action to use its eye beams), is also the only one who invested a major build option and isn't really getting anything more out of it than the Bard.
Or, if the DM wants to give a Warlock or other caster Variant Familiars as rewards, and he has a Warlock who took a different Pact (Blade is especially egregious since it can't get find familiar at all), he's basically giving them a whole Pact they didn't pick as a "magic item" type reward. Maybe you could argue giving a magic sword to a Bladepact Warlock is similar, but the Bladepact at least has rules for bonding to that magic item and letting the warlock summon it at will (maybe even banish it; I'd have to look that up), leaving at least some unique prowess over that weapon. Plus, they can become proficient with literally any weird magic weapon handed out by bonding it.
I feel like those with find familiar should be able to get more out of a Variant Familiar that befriends them, and those with Pact of the Chain should be able to get still more. This would enable DMs to hand out variant familiars as rewards without making him have to ask himself if he's stepping on hypothetical (or worse, real) ground that invalidates his players' build choices.
Mostly recapping the original post here:
The Variant: Familiars rule sidebars don’t mention Find Familiar at all. Any spellcaster can have one of the sidebarred creatures as a familiar if they meet one and convince it (or it offers) to become their familiar. No Find Familiar spell required.
They’re also universally more powerful than either the spell-granted or the Chainlock-granted familiars. They retain all their own actions, potentially share traits not shared via even the Chainlock’s feature (e.g. the Imp’s magic resistance), and share their senses without action required of the master.
Now, they can quit any time, unlike spell-granted or Chainlock familiars, and you can’t dismiss them even temporarily, nor change their forms for the cost of 10 gp and 70 minutes of ritual casting. But they seem like the kind of thing that will make a caster feel like he’s wasted his resources getting a familiar via spell or Pact if these are an option.
Continuing this train of thought, it seems to me that adding a cranium rat and a crawling claw to the standard list of find familiar options is fine and dandy. Neither is particularly powerful, especially with find familiar's clauses regarding attacking (otherwise, the Crawling Claw would be a rare familiar with a not-utterly-useless attack). The Crawling Claw has Blindsight to 10 ft., but the Bat (already on the list) has it to 60 ft. Sure, the bat loses it in regions of magical silence, but that's...not exactly a common occurrence.
Imps, Quasits, and Pseudodragons are all special perks for the Pact of the Chain as "high powered" familiar options. The only other thing the Pact of the Chain gives (without Invocation investment) is the ability to spend your action to give your familiar an attack. The Variant: Familiar options put it on the creature's side of the field, at least in the Monster Manual for each of these three's listed entries. Also for the Gazer in Volo's Guide (a Tiny Beholder with four eye beams). This does mean the DM is basically going to have to give them, much the way he would an intelligent magic item. This also means that if he does, he's making the choice to pick up find familiar - let alone be a Pact of the Chain Warlock - a bit of a foolish one. (It's like giving out Gauntlets of Ogre Power to a party with an 18-strength barbarian. Now the 14-strength fighter is more likely to get the gauntlets, and be technically stronger than the barbarian, when the barbarian is the one who's worked to get the high strength score.)
There are four sidebars in the MM:
Variant: Quasit Familiar, page 63
Variant: Imp Familiar, page 69
Variant: Pseudodragon Familiar, page 254
Variant: Familiars, page 347
The first three are indeed based on the idea of meeting the creature and convincing it to form a bond with you. The last one, however, is about the find familiar spell.
Which once again shows that 5e has way too many different rules for familiars.
It seems to me that the NPCs sidebar is supposed to be for NPCs only, but that is incredibly frustrating to me because it specifically references find familiar. The fact that variant familiars do things like give freebie access to the familiar's senses (rather than costing an action) and give extra special powers (like the Imp's magic resistance) is just further frustration.
I mean, let's say you let find familiar get not just Crawling Claws or Cranium Rats, but Imps, Quasits, Pseudo-Dragons, Sprites, Gazers, or the like. Why bother being a Chainlock? Tomelocks now get everything the Chainlock does, unless you count Invocations (and with the exception of Voice of the Chain Master, most of those are not particularly thematic to Pact of the Chain, and could easily be rewritten to being available to all Warlocks without any special need; Pact of the Chain is just a "tax" for access, not really a necessity). Moreover, any Sorcerer or Wizard or Magic Initiate or Ritual Caster who picks up find familiar can get the cool familiars.
Seriously, amongst the "normal animal" familiars already there are clear "bests" and "worsts." The frog/toad is useless, not even worth the 10 gp for the ritual summoning. It does nothing that other familiar animals don't do better. The owl is probably the best, with the flyby ability, but at least has competition from the raven's mimicry, the bat's blindsight, and the hawk's sheer speed. The snake could theoretically be milked for venom, though you could do that without a familiar if you wanted. So that's not exactly convincing. I can't really see why ANY of the non-flying choices would be picked. Maybe the rat if you have a particularly good use for one as a spy in an area where birds would draw more attention.
Give base find familiar access to pseudodragon or imp? There's no reason to pick the animals.
And that still leaves the "magic item from the DM" version of a familiar as far more powerful overall, with little rhyme or reason other than some RP and a DM wanting to be generous. Which is a problem because, again, it makes the choice to pick up the spell or the Pact a bad one, unless the DM only gives the variant familiar to the one PC who picked that up. Or otherwise restricts it.
I mean, you can say it'd be bad DMing all you want, but imagine a DM who has a Pact of the Chain Warlock in his game, and wants to give out a variant familiar. If he gives it to anybody but the Warlock (which, for RP reasons, could be valid as a choice - the bard or eldritch knight might have hit it off with that Pseudodragon, for instance), the Warlock now has an inferior familiar but invested one of his big choices for the build into it, while the other character didn't invest anything other than "getting a cool intelligent magic item." (I know it's not really a magic item, but characterizing it that way helps qualify the nature of the reward.)
Even if he gives every primary caster in the party a Variant Familiar - maybe the Chainlock hits it off with a Gazer, the Wizard learns the true name of an Imp and coaxes it into his service, and the Bard gets that pseudodragon - the Bard is getting something he couldn't otherwise have gotten at all, the Wizard is getting a massive upgrade over what the spell he put in his spellbook could get him (but still has now wasted money or free spell selection on a spell compared to the Bard who didn't take the spell), and the Chainlock, while getting a cooler familiar than he otherwise could (at the very least, the shared senses thing is better, and the Gazer doesn't require the Warlock's action to use its eye beams), is also the only one who invested a major build option and isn't really getting anything more out of it than the Bard.
Or, if the DM wants to give a Warlock or other caster Variant Familiars as rewards, and he has a Warlock who took a different Pact (Blade is especially egregious since it can't get find familiar at all), he's basically giving them a whole Pact they didn't pick as a "magic item" type reward. Maybe you could argue giving a magic sword to a Bladepact Warlock is similar, but the Bladepact at least has rules for bonding to that magic item and letting the warlock summon it at will (maybe even banish it; I'd have to look that up), leaving at least some unique prowess over that weapon. Plus, they can become proficient with literally any weird magic weapon handed out by bonding it.
I feel like those with find familiar should be able to get more out of a Variant Familiar that befriends them, and those with Pact of the Chain should be able to get still more. This would enable DMs to hand out variant familiars as rewards without making him have to ask himself if he's stepping on hypothetical (or worse, real) ground that invalidates his players' build choices.