Find Familiar - limited restricted

[Hilary]

So, using a ring of spell storing, a wizard could give people their own familiars - without limit.

I think this is breaky.

To stop this, and similar spells, I would suggest making these spells require a recasting, similar to how animal dead requires a recasting every 24 hours.

The recasting would not require any material components - to keep it from becoming prohibitively expensive. And maybe on this reinforced recasting you could change your familiar type.

...

[Anymage]

Familiars are cool and all, but they break too easily to be a useful combat resource. Other spellcasters might like the expansion of touch range, but otherwise familiars are basically pets that can do a bit of scouting. And if one character (the wizard) has one, more are of diminishing utility.

I wouldn't mind if more spells were tagged as exclusive class features. Eldritch Blast being the archetypal example. But I don't think that Find Familiar breaks all that much if spread around to be worth specifically houseruling around. Especially not when you remember that losing at least one hour per day (Find Familiar's casting time) is going to get annoying in its own right quickly.

[Zhorn]

While I agree that having a familiar is a very powerful asset, there is also the considerations that:
they are not 'free' (10 gp a pop, outside of fringe cases)
and are very fragile due to low AC and minimal HP (to the point is doesn't matter how much damage a hit deals, any hit will eliminate them).

Usually to get the most benefit out of them, the controlling player will be putting the familiar in some sort of risk. Scouting a dangerous area as to not risk the party, or having them assist in combat through the help action or delivering proximity spell effects while the caster stays at a safe distance. Once they are hit, they will require a fresh casting to summon a replacement, being an additional 10 gp and swapping the ring about. Time and resources.

At higher levels where such expenditures are negligible, there are usually options available that are far more powerful available to the players that I don't think fussing over Find Familiar is worth much effort.

If it's a case of you as a DM having issues with large scale familiar usage, you can either ban the spell, or have an in-game reason why creatures would be knowledgeable enough on familiars to emphasize and target the weakness of relying on familiars. Doesn't need to be every combatant, nor even every fight. Just one tactically aware opponent once in a while that knows to eliminate the familiar quickly before engaging more resistant targets, or aiming to 'clip' them with cleaves/AoE when the opportunity presents itself.

I did this recently with hobgoblins with my current party. The goblins and bugbears don't pay much attention to familiars unless they've actively shown themselves to be threatening targets, but hobgoblins are smart enough and tactically aware enough to try and swing the action economy in their favour as early in the encounter as possible.

[Lunali]

If the party isn't using their familiars for anything dangerous, I don't really see the problem in everyone having one. It can give them a focus for role play interactions when they aren't in combat or around NPCs. If the party is using them for dangerous tasks, most of them are going to die on a daily basis anyway, if they don't, that's really more on the DM.