Buffing Underwhelming Familiar Choices

[Segev]

Not all Familiars are created equal. I'm not even talking about the Variant Familiars that can self-bond with anybody they want (but prefer spellcasters), nor the Pact of the Chain special familiars (though those, too, are not created equal; the pseudodragon is very sadly just not on par with the others...and the fact that you could theoretically get a normal familiar with it is even weirder of a potential choice).

But the basic set that a wizard, sorcerer, ritual caster, or magic intiate might get have some on the list that are almost no-brainers to pick, and others that are definitely no-brainers to pass.

Even in an aquatic campaign, for instance, there is never a reason to pick the seahorse. It's unusual enough to draw attention, has horrible stats, and no useful special abilities. The quipper has more going for it! But the quipper is also almost entirely overshadowed by the octopus.

Out of the water, the hands-down most likely to be useful the most often is the owl. Between flyby attack, 120 ft. darkvision, and both stealth and perception skill, it's just plain amazing. The hawk has one more point in perception, worse keen senses, and no darkvision or stealth, and isn't any faster. And has no flyby. So almost entirely overshadowed by the owl.

The other two flying familiars are the bat and the raven, and they each at least have a quirk going for them that is unique enough to consider: bats have an amazing 60 ft. of blindsense, which no other familiar can match; while ravens have mimicry. Mimicry has a low DC to see through, but with a permissive DM, reasonable sound effects won't be an issue, and you can always have your familiar act like a recorder to bring back sounds and even words. Or serve as a low-budget sound system for your images made by minor illusion.

Owls still have better flight and longer-range darkvision.

Cats, weirdly, have better stealth than owls, and comparable senses (keen smell instead of sight and hearing, though). Climb isn't as good as fly, and no ability to move in and out without provoking OAs, but still versatile.

But crabs...entirely overshadowed by bats in terms of blindsense, and their amphibious nature is rarely going to be useful while their slow speed is a killer. Frogs have a leap...but it's only 10 feet, which doesn't get them very far.

Snakes are good if you want to milk poison, but otherwise...eh. Spiders might seem the same, until you really stop and ask yourself: just what kind of spider are we talking about, here?

Spiders are Tiny, and there's no smaller category. And spiders can come as small as less than an inch across. At that size, sure, they "only" have +4 stealth, but they're so small that they may never need to roll it unless somebody's actively looking for them. (I also recently read a cool idea about using the assumption that they can spin webs to have them make their own as an early-alert system. A cheap alarm spell. If somebody walks through their webs, they know it and alert their master.

Lizards and weasels aren't totally worthless, but again are completely overshadowed by other familiars.

Rats only have commonality going for them, and that's not much.


So, what might we do about this?
The thread title is about buffing things. I propose that weaker familiar choices get...perks.

What if the seahorse, for example, knew the shape water cantrip? Not the master, the familiar. It's not going to make it able to jet around the room, but it could drag a bubble of water around to swim in, and maybe make it useful.

What if the crab could turn into a rock as an action, suitable for use as a skipping stone, a sling stone, or ammo for the catapult spell, and was indestructible while in that form? (Turns back as a bonus action.)

Maybe the frog has a tongue that can make attacks with 10 ft. reach when using its reaction to deliver touch spells. This actually is superior to the owl's flyby for this purpose because it the owl can't use its flyby as part of a reaction.

Let the hawk carry and manipulate objects as if it were a mage hand without the range limits. (Not cast mage hand, mind; effectively be one.)

Give the cat Devil Sight. Maybe only to 60 ft.

Let the lizard be a mythical chameleon and turn Invisible when it doesn't move.

Not sure about others. And these aren't great ideas, necessarily, just kind-of brainstorming here to see what sticks.



It also really bugs me that the Tressym is so much better a choice than any others. Sure, the owl still has 120 ft. darkvision and flyby and a faster fly speed, but the intelligence and the ability to see invisible creatures is over the top good for a familiar. And it completely overshadows the cat, and thus anything the cat overshadows.

Meanwhile, the Almiraj and the Flying Monkey (two other "with DM permission, find familiar can conjure these" animals) are...no better than the rat and the hawk, really. Especially with no ability to attack.

[Tokuhara]

It also really bugs me that the Tressym is so much better a choice than any others. Sure, the owl still has 120 ft. darkvision and flyby and a faster fly speed, but the intelligence and the ability to see invisible creatures is over the top good for a familiar. And it completely overshadows the cat, and thus anything the cat overshadows.

Meanwhile, the Almiraj and the Flying Monkey (two other "with DM permission, find familiar can conjure these" animals) are...no better than the rat and the hawk, really. Especially with no ability to attack.

Tressym is good. Cannot argue there.

Almiraj I'll agree is underwhelming, but you don't take it for power. You take it for flavor and flex points.

As for Flying Monkey (my favorite Familiar, mind you) is much better than you're giving it credit for. Is it a combat monster? Absolutely not. But how many familiars can you name offhand that can open potion bottle and administer it? How many familiars can you use to carry items and hand over specialty items when necessary? How many familiars look amazing in a fez? Only the flying monkey, my friend. And just imagine the undiluted need of fresh underwear if you choose Flying Monkey for the Flock of Familiars spell.

[Segev]

Tressym is good. Cannot argue there.

Almiraj I'll agree is underwhelming, but you don't take it for power. You take it for flavor and flex points.

As for Flying Monkey (my favorite Familiar, mind you) is much better than you're giving it credit for. Is it a combat monster? Absolutely not. But how many familiars can you name offhand that can open potion bottle and administer it? How many familiars can you use to carry items and hand over specialty items when necessary? How many familiars look amazing in a fez? Only the flying monkey, my friend. And just imagine the undiluted need of fresh underwear if you choose Flying Monkey for the Flock of Familiars spell.

How does an Almiraj give "flex points?"


And those are good points on the Flying Monkey. It's important to note that I didn't value any of these on combat, though; no familiar conjured by the eponymous spell is a combat monster because it's not allowed to be. (Dragon's breath aside.)

[Tokuhara]

There's just a style to Almiraj. It's not a good familiar by any measure, but the sheer style is excellent

[LudicSavant]

Wait, you're telling me that there are familiars other than owls in 5e? I wish.

[Dr. Cliché]

I do like the idea of Familiars knowing a bit of magic in the form of a Cantrip or Invocation. Makes them feel a bit more magical and gives them some extra utility.

[stoutstien]

I've seen way more of the underwhelming choices than the better ones at my tables. The clear winners is rat(squirrel) and cat.

[Segev]

I've seen way more of the underwhelming choices than the better ones at my tables. The clear winners is rat(squirrel) and cat.

That's interesting. Do you have any idea why that is? Are there any interesting uses they've been put to, particularly that more optimal familiars might not have been able to accomplish?

I will say that the cat at least has one of the higher stealth scores, and the squirrel is more likely to be ignored than an owl.


I do like the idea of Familiars knowing a bit of magic in the form of a Cantrip or Invocation. Makes them feel a bit more magical and gives them some extra utility.

It's a delicate thing if we go that route. The seahorse is SO useless that it probably isn't going to break anything, but "I can cast this ritual spell to add a Cantrip known that I don't even have to use my action to cast" is potentially too much.

But I agree, it's potentially very thematic.

[Luccan]

Kinda makes me want to go back to the very old Find Familiar spell of 1e, when you would roll to see what creature responded to your summons. This would preclude the need for buffing; you'd see a variety of familiars used because the summoner wouldn't have a choice. Maybe, in the more forgiving 5e, the caster rolls twice: standard form (either aquatic or not, depending on campaign) and alternate form (the one you didn't just roll). When you cast the spell, your familiar shows up as one of those teo and only one of those two (which you can still fluff to be different animals, if you like). You could put the special familiars back in the options, but you still only get one if you roll it. Let Chainlocks keep the spell the way it works now.

[IsaacsAlterEgo]

Kinda makes me want to go back to the very old Find Familiar spell of 1e, when you would roll to see what creature responded to your summons. This would preclude the need for buffing; you'd see a variety of familiars used because the summoner wouldn't have a choice. Maybe, in the more forgiving 5e, the caster rolls twice: standard form (either aquatic or not, depending on campaign) and alternate form (the one you didn't just roll). When you cast the spell, your familiar shows up as one of those teo and only one of those two (which you can still fluff to be different animals, if you like). You could put the special familiars back in the options, but you still only get one if you roll it. Let Chainlocks keep the spell the way it works now.

Mechanically this might solve some problems, but seems like a bad way to go about doing it. It unnecessarily bars the players who might want to pick their familiar entirely for roleplaying flavor from doing so, and doesn't really do much to stop a powergamer from just using the ritual over and over until they get whatever the optimal familiar is (aside from the 10gp cost, but at a certain point that becomes basically meaningless).

If you want to see more variety, the options are usually to nerf the best thing, or buff the worse things. Personally I think buffing is usually the way to go, but spells (even cantrips) are a bit overboard. Just adding some additional minor abilities or stat increases on the creatures sheets to give them a niche would probably work fine, and would make players that just really love seahorses or crabs or whatever feel a little better about sticking to the flavor they want.

[Zetakya]

I much prefer it when players have familiars that are expressive of their character in some regard. The Familiar is supposed to be a spirit that simply takes on a suitable form, so the form should be something that works for the character.

If you have a problem with a player who is making choices for stat-mechanical reasons in defiance of roleplaying then the problem is with the player, not the spell.

[diplomancer]

I feel in my gut that this project is a mistake. Find Familiar is already probably the most powerful 1st level spell. It doesn't need to be made more powerful by making it more versatile.

If you want players to have meaningful choices, nerf the owl. I also feel in my gut that nerfing is almost always wrong, so I wouldn't do that either. Leave the spell as is, optimizers are gonna optimize, nothing wrong with that.

[elyktsorb]

As a Druid, I took the ritual caster feat and got find familiar, which I used to summon a crab familiar as the druid's whole theme was 'ocean' but the crab was, fairly useful. Crab is at least good in that they are pretty common near most water areas. In terms of doing stuff, the help action, uhhh. Delivering the occasional cure wounds when needed. Scouting water areas. To be fair, the campaign centered around a coastal city, and there were plenty of rivers where we went as well so that helped. If I hadn't been more concerned with a 'theme' I probably would pick Owl everytime.

[Segev]

I much prefer it when players have familiars that are expressive of their character in some regard. The Familiar is supposed to be a spirit that simply takes on a suitable form, so the form should be something that works for the character.

If you have a problem with a player who is making choices for stat-mechanical reasons in defiance of roleplaying then the problem is with the player, not the spell.That's not very fair. If somebody desperately wants a rat familiar for thematic reasons, and they take it, and another player takes an owl, do you assume the owl-taker is a cheesy powergamer? Do you tell the rat-taker to just suck it up; his familiar just isn't as useful, and that's nobody's fault?

Equal-cost options should have comparable rewards for taking them, or you're punishing people for playing "in character" or - worse - demanding people play how you want them to play lest you accuse them of being problem players.
Edit to clarify: There should be opportunity cost to picking any one option over any other. It is often difficult to say, "These two different things are equal value," but you should never be able to say, "If I take option B, I get everything from option C and then some."

The cat is actually a pretty good familiar, statistically, with a climb speed and good spot and stealth. It even has a tiiiiny bit of opportunity cost to ignore it in favor of the owl: no climb speed on the owl is mostly overshadowed by the owl's flight, but there might be niche cases where the climbing is more desirable, and the cat has a slightly better stealth score. It's mostly illusory because of how the things the cat has are so minor in comparison and still overlap heavily, but it's there.

There's literally no reason to take the seahorse over the octopus. There's no reason to take the rat over the cat. There's barely any reason to take the hawk over the owl.

Owl vs. bat? Bats don't have quite so many useful features, but blindsense 60 ft. is absolutely its own thing that is well worth consideration. Is it better than the whole owl package? Is the owl still overall better? Argument could be made either way, which is fine. But the opportunity cost of selecting one over the other is real, here.

And if "refluffing" is on the table, you can make your otherwise-unusual familiar less conspicuous. No cats in the jungle? Make it a monkey (climb, stealth, perception are all fine there).


I feel in my gut that this project is a mistake. Find Familiar is already probably the most powerful 1st level spell. It doesn't need to be made more powerful by making it more versatile.

If you want players to have meaningful choices, nerf the owl. I also feel in my gut that nerfing is almost always wrong, so I wouldn't do that either. Leave the spell as is, optimizers are gonna optimize, nothing wrong with that.Thing is, to carry this out to an extent that is sufficient to make all choices meaningful, you'd have to make them all largely meaningless by nerfing everything to be equivalent to a seahorse. That would mean the only meaningful choice is "aquatic" or "land" and that no flying familiars could exist and they all have no special senses and none can be amphibious nor have useful skill numbers.

Is find familiar the most powerful first level spell no matter which familiar you take? If you can name a familiar that is right about the level of a first level spell, you can try to nerf the better ones and buff the worse ones to hit that sweet spot.


As a Druid, I took the ritual caster feat and got find familiar, which I used to summon a crab familiar as the druid's whole theme was 'ocean' but the crab was, fairly useful. Crab is at least good in that they are pretty common near most water areas. In terms of doing stuff, the help action, uhhh. Delivering the occasional cure wounds when needed. Scouting water areas. To be fair, the campaign centered around a coastal city, and there were plenty of rivers where we went as well so that helped. If I hadn't been more concerned with a 'theme' I probably would pick Owl everytime.

That's neat! Glad to hear the crab can be useful. I imagine being near the coast made the amphibious nature more attractive than having to summon it in a new form when switching between aquatic and land-based campaigns.

[Monster Manuel]

Something that's key to the question of re-balancing the familiars is that the ability to change the form of the familiar is built into the spell. "If you cast this spell while you already have a familiar, you instead cause it to adopt a new form".

You don't need to re-balance the spell because, with an hour of prep time and 10 gp (which, as was said, becomes a trivial amount of money very quickly), you can just change the form based on what's optimal for the situation you are in. Crab is probably better than Owl in an underwater adventure. The rat may be perfect for moving around unnoticed in an urban adventure, but sucks in other respects. It's OK that the forms are not equivalent in power level, because you're not stuck with the first one you choose; they are interchangeable.

*edit* Not for nothing, I think buffing some of the more useless or boring choices for the familiar is a great idea, setting aside my initial contention that it's not necessary. I'd love to see the Seahorse able to do something cool, to give a caster the incentive to swap out their Owl for one. I'd like to see the rat get some kind of perk that the cat doesn't, but it's OK if it's not on-par with the Owl or Bat. Extra tricks that make the weak familiars is a good idea, but don't worry about the power levels of those ideas. They can be something trivial, but neat, they don't HAVE to be balanced, is all I'm saying.

[Segev]

Something that's key to the question of re-balancing the familiars is that the ability to change the form of the familiar is built into the spell. "If you cast this spell while you already have a familiar, you instead cause it to adopt a new form".

You don't need to re-balance the spell because, with an hour of prep time and 10 gp (which, as was said, becomes a trivial amount of money very quickly), you can just change the form based on what's optimal for the situation you are in. Crab is probably better than Owl in an underwater adventure. The rat may be perfect for moving around unnoticed in an urban adventure, but sucks in other respects. It's OK that the forms are not equivalent in power level, because you're not stuck with the first one you choose; they are interchangeable.

It'll be rare that any wild animal (above water) is more optimal than the owl. But using this metric, you still have really only the bat, cat, octopus, owl, quipper, and spider as real choices. There's no situation where the seahorse is better than the octopus, and even the quipper is only marginally better in that you can more reasonably refluff it as any sort of fish (and octopi are a little unusual). I can't think of any situation where a rat is going to be better than a cat, even for "blending in," and everything else is overshadowed in one way or the other.

MAYBE the crab's blindsense underwater will actually be important enough to make it better than the octopus, so I should include it as well just on the basis that at least it's SOMETHING unique (the combination of being able to operate underwater and having blindsense).

That still leaves rats, weasels, lizards, and seahorses (assuming I haven't forgotten any) as next to useless.

And this still isn't even including cranium rats, flying monkeys, and tressym as possibilities. Tressym lose to cats only in the possibility that they might be recognized as not-cat (and thus unusual) with their wings folded. Not that cranium rats have much to recommend them over regular rats (and lose out in the "look natural" department entirely). I suppose shedding light is nice, even if it's only in a 5 ft. radius. Not sure if the familiar being immune to divination is in any way helpful.

That said! Given this metric (which I thank you for, Monster Manuel), that means really only rats, weasels, lizards, and seahorses (unless I've forgotten any) need some sort of buffing. Something to make them stand out and be unique enough to be worth picking rather than any of the others that totally overshadow them.

Edit:

*edit* Not for nothing, I think buffing some of the more useless or boring choices for the familiar is a great idea, setting aside my initial contention that it's not necessary. I'd love to see the Seahorse able to do something cool, to give a caster the incentive to swap out their Owl for one. I'd like to see the rat get some kind of perk that the cat doesn't, but it's OK if it's not on-par with the Owl or Bat. Extra tricks that make the weak familiars is a good idea, but don't worry about the power levels of those ideas. They can be something trivial, but neat, they don't HAVE to be balanced, is all I'm saying.I think we're in agreement on this.

So far, the only idea I have is giving the seahorse shape water, which would allow it a very slow ability to travel on land. But is of questionable utility underwater. ...though I suppose being able to freeze blocks and shapes of ice is not nothing. And controling some flow might be useful.

[47Ace]

If you have a problem with a player who is making choices for stat-mechanical reasons in defiance of roleplaying then the problem is with the player, not the spell.

No having mechanical consequences for roleplaying choices* is a problem with the spell. The spelling giving the option between the clearly best options and worse but possibly more thematic option is just bad spell design. For example some one who considers playing a spear throwing skirmisher fighter but decided not to because that is very ineffective is not a bad player. The game rule are a fault for kind of implying that you could play that sort of character but not actually supporting. The player who is not massively nurfing themselves, negatively affecting the other players, and reducing the DMs ability to run pre-written adventures is not in the wrong.

*Letting some go who you should have killed or killing someone who could of helped you for rp reasons is different. I am more talking about character creation level choices here.

[Zetakya]

What Rat and Cat have over Owl in the climb department is that they are both very good at squeezing through narrow openings, tunnels, pipes and that sort of thing. The Rat will be better at that than the Cat, although not by much.

[Segev]

Was thinking about the rat familiar and what to give it while getting lunch. Two ideas (not meant to be both together):

Nimble Escape. The rat can take the Disengage or Hide action as a bonus action on each of its turns.
This one is stolen from the goblin, straight up.

Scurry. As a reaction, or when it takes a reaction, the rat may move up to its speed. The distance moved counts against the distance allowed by its speed on its next turn.



What Rat and Cat have over Owl in the climb department is that they are both very good at squeezing through narrow openings, tunnels, pipes and that sort of thing. The Rat will be better at that than the Cat, although not by much.

This, however, gave me another idea. Which, as I think on it, might work better for the weasel.

Burrow Haunter. The long, narrow body of the weasel allows it to move at full speed through narrow confines. As long as the space is at least four inches in diameter, the weasel can squeeze through it with no extra movement cost.

[Evaar]

When I talked this over with my DM, it was my goal to give each familiar type one cool unique thing.

I think the best approach would be to create groups of creature types, give a neat quirk to that creature type, and let the players decide what animal it is.

So you could have a predatory bird type that comes with flyby.

You could have a scavenger type with opposable thumbs that has a bonus to discovering traps and/or secret doors. This could be a raccoon or ferret or rat.

Maybe there's a bioluminescent type with the ability to shed light akin to a single Dancing Lights orb, like a firefly.

And brainstorm from there. Songbirds, fish, venomous reptiles, adaptive reptiles, amphibians, mockingbirds, small cats, and others can all have a neat trick. Mockingbirds obviously would be the sound duplication, venomous reptiles would be access to poisons, songbirds could give you a Performance and Persuasion bonus, perhaps a fish could give you a higher swim speed, an amphibian could give you limited water breathing, an adaptive reptile could let you attempt to hide in plain sight once per short/long rest. Just throwing out ideas.

As noted in the OP, no clear effort was made to balance the different familiar options. There's a clear best choice in the Owl. Everything else is, at best, situational. At least in this concept you have predatory birds being the "combat" option but everything else offers a piece of utility that would make a player think it could come in handy.

But, on the other hand, it would end up being an extremely bloated spell. So maybe the imbalance was determined to be the lesser of the two evils.