People that focus on combat only totally fail to understand the idea of a SPY.  Familiars are spies.  That is their main function.  Yes, they can help you deliver spells and grant you advantage.

But they are first and foremost a spy. 

Among other things, you do realize that the familiar you think is worthless can quite literally appear anywhere within 30 ft?   "As an action while it is temporarily dismissed, you can cause it to reappear in any unoccupied space within 30 feet of you."

Note, it does NOT say 'that you can see'.  Which means you can go up to that big fancy vault door, summon your familiar 5 ft on the other side of the door, and look through it's eyes.  Quasits and Imps are tiny with darkvision.  They can tell you if there is treasure or a vampire behind the door.  Or in the safe.  

Combat is combat, but INFORMATION is what determines if you win the battle or leave the ring of wishes in the safe cause you did not think it was worth it.

So even after reading all the pros of Chain, why would you ever take Chain over Tome+ book of ancients?

In what kind of build/scenario is Chain better than; 3 cantrips, + find familure, + any other lv 1 ritual, + ritual casting, +ritual book?

Look at the benefit of having just Guidance and Find Familiar alone.  
(For combat having an owl with fly-by giving the help action.)
Plus any 2 other cantrips and any other ritual spell.

Being able to get  impactful things like message or having a damage cantrip that doesn't get disadvantage in melee range is nice.

Ritual casting giving you a few options without burning slots can help a ton.  Pulling out a detect magic or an unseen servant can be incredibly useful.  Warlocks might not have access to many rituals in their spell book but with the number of spells you can know vs the number of spells you can cast, taking rituals can be more useful than taking spells you will never cast because you have 2 slots for 10 levels and 1 of them is always being spent on Hex.

Themes and playstyles.

You can have the Find Familiar spell if your a Tomelock, but you have Non of the Invocations, so its actually worse.

Extra cantrips are always good, but once again it depends on the playstyle and the situations.

Quote from Bodanger >>

So even after reading all the pros of Chain, why would you ever take Chain over Tome+ book of ancients?
...

 
Heh.  Almost lit off into a bit of a rant, but I noticed this was your first post on the forum.  So hey.  How's it going?

Pact of the Tome with Book of Ancient Secrets makes for a very potent warlock, and can be really damn good.  People see the fact that BoAS lets you pick up Familiar and ask why Pact of the Chain even exists.  The answer is that no Tomelock will ever have a flying invisible familiar with hands and 14 Intelligence.  Pact of the Chain allows you to have a vastly more capable familiar than the basic spell itself does, especially when you remember that many DMs (myself included) feel like the "Owl-with-Flyby 'giving the Help Action'" is the absolute pinnacle of munchkin cheese and will either disallow it outright or find ways to make you pay for it.

One must also remember that Pact of the Chain gets Chain-specific Invocations.  Tomelock gets no rituals without Book of Ancient Secrets, so a Chainlock, to be fair, gets to have either Voice of the Chain Master or Gift of the Ever-Living Ones.  One allows you unlimited effective communications range with your familiar - as well as the ability to speak through your familiar, which can be used either to convey information to allies or to intimidate enemies.  Alternatively, Gift of the Ever-Living Ones allows you to maximize all healing you receive while your familiar is alive and within a hundred feet of you.  If you're a Celestial warlock especially, this makes you much tougher to put down and allows you to stay in the fight for longer or make much better use of healing consumables or Hit Dice.

As broadly useful as Book of Ancient Secrets?  Perhaps not - but a clever Chain warlock can make very effective use of their super-familiar.  Especially if/when the Class Feature Variants options go live and we gain access to those incredible new Chain invocations.  A Chain warlock whose Sprite familiar can use your spell DC on their sleep arrow attack becomes a much more effective infiltrator, and your familiar attacking with your bonus action ties right into that.  Very Invocation-intensive, but hey - if you're gonna do it, do it to the nines.

Quote from Yurei1453 >>

many DMs (myself included) feel like the "Owl-with-Flyby 'giving the Help Action'" is the absolute pinnacle of munchkin cheese and will either disallow it outright or find ways to make you pay for it.

How do you disallow it? Forbid "owl" as a valid familiar choice? Remove the Flyby trait? Forbid familiars from using the Help action?

Do you really find Advantage on a single attack per Turn, at most, to be that overpowered?  Do you allow Barbarians at your table?  Rogues?  Do you "find ways to make [them] pay it", too?

'The Help Action' is supposed to represent the creature which is offering the help doing something which makes it easier for the creature receiving the help to accomplish its goal.  It is not a video game "click to receive buff effect" thing; players who treat 'The Help Action' as a video game buff are one of my biggest pet peeves in the game.

In the case of a familiar, I would simply rule that the familiar has to distract its target or otherwise interfere with the target in order for a creature to receive the benefit of "The Help Action"; the familiar has to actually help, not just Press-X-For-Advantage.  When it does so, it makes itself a target.  If an owl continually flies around going for the eyes to give PCs advantage on their everything, eventually that familiar is going to be attacked.  An archer will take a shot, a caster will include the familiar in an AoE spell's area, or the like.  Heh, to say nothing of the fact that my BBEGs or similar characters are not idiots.  

My play group loves familiars in general; a couple of players enjoy breaking the hell out of the things in as many ways as they can manage.  If a group that's thorning the sides of a BBEG is constantly employing their familiars to excellent effect, there will be familiar hunters in relatively short order.  Falconers come to mind; when your cronies and facilities are constantly being poked and scouted out by familiars and they're constantly providing valuable services, you'd start investing in countermeasures.  A single hawkmaster enemy can make any familiar abuse disappear in a single encounter as players realize their critters are not, in fact, sacrosanct.

My rule as a DM is simple - if it rolls to attack my stuff, it's fair game for counterattack.  "The Help Action" counts.  

Don't get me wrong, I love familiars.  I really enjoy the tandem character concept, a pair of entities working closely together as a coordinated team.  But if you're going to treat your familiar as a flapping buff dispensary and not a cherished partner, then I'm gonna take steps to make you adjust your thinking.  Or at least be more strategical in your decision-making.

Do you also throw rust monsters to eat the Fighter's sword and armor if they're not treating them like you think sword and armor should be treated?  Or, more generally speaking, do you punish players for playing differently than you would like them to, even if they're staying within the rules, having fun, trying to get the most out of their characters' abilities, etc.?  I get that you don't like Warlocks (or Wizards, I would guess, too?) getting Advantage on one attack per Turn (unless, I guess, they also spend time talking to their familiars?), I get that you want players to roleplay the heck of our their relationships with their familiars... but not everybody wants that, not everybody is into that, and punishing players for wanting something else just ruins their fun.

Counterpoint: why should the familiar be a free, invulnerable source of advantage on everything for anyone who wants it?  An actual PC using "The Help Action" has to tell the DM how they're helping, and then they have to eat whatever comes their way as a consequence of said help.  "The Help action" requires something to actually help, and if you're aiding someone's enemy in a battle, you are yourself an enemy of that someone.

I have absolutely thrown [Tooltip Not Found] at my party.  The Forge cleric lost two points of AC until he used his Channel Divinity to restore his armor using armor salvaged from the duergar he was hunting.  Had they not handled business and gotten rid of that ooze post-haste, somebody would've ended up nekkid.  That's the point of that monster's existence, after all.  Similarly, if the PCs will immediately target and destroy the Evil Wizard's familiar to deny him what that familiar can do, the Evil Wizard is certainly going to instruct his minions to return the favor.  After all, he knows exactly what that spell can do.

I totally agree about fly-by needing to be countered if abused.  If you just kept doing it some enemy is going to at least hold an action and smack it next time it come in range.  And realistically, after you see that you are getting shot at every time the owl shows up, it would probably just cue you to take cover and give the attack disadvantage unless the enemy is incredibly stupid. 

I'm not saying that chain is terrible or anything, I just don't see how it stacks up to Tome+BoAS

Yes, the chain familiars are better than normal, and and there isn't a replacement for invisibility,  but consider a few things.

Guidance incredibly powerful on it's own and it's interaction with familiars is too.  It's a touch spell which means you can have your familiar cast it on its self, over and over. For exploration, that means all stealth, all perception rolls get +1d4.  Or put the familiar in the rogues pocket and keep spamming it that way.

If you take Message, then you can cast it on anything your familiar sees.  This more or less is the same thing as Voice of the Chain Master in a 120ft range.

So taking Guidance, Messaging, Find Fam, and any other cantrip and ritual you want, while getting ritual casting.  

I know comparing chain+something vs tome+BoAS is apples and oranges but it really seems like one is clearly better overall.   I'd be willing to admit that this might just be personal preference due to the fact I really like to have a bunch of cantrips/rituals as a warlock to help offset the low spell slots but it does seem like one is somehow objectively better/more versatile. 

hey would it not be neat to have infusions for pact of the chain that lets an warlock have their familiar take the shape of an steed like that of the find steed and find greater steed spells from the paladin list, just as a little perk that gives the pact just a little more utility and a few more tricks up its sleeve, as well as maybe an additional infusion that lets any warlock spell that affects you and only you also target your familiar if it is within 120 feet of you.

Also true polymorph is available as an mystic arcanum, so you could permanently transform your familiar into a human if your really wanted to

Quote from ArtificeMeal >>

hey would it not be neat to have infusions for pact of the chain that lets an warlock have their familiar take the shape of an steed like that of the find steed and find greater steed spells from the paladin list, just as a little perk that gives the pact just a little more utility and a few more tricks up its sleeve, as well as maybe an additional infusion that lets any warlock spell that affects you and only you also target your familiar if it is within 120 feet of you.

Also true polymorph is available as an mystic arcanum, so you could permanently transform your familiar into a human if your really wanted to

No soap on the polymorph. That requires concentration and while useful, would gimp such a high level warlock who likely needs the polymorph for the big bad. Further, since the familiar is a spirit that takes the form of an animal, I'd make the argument that it's a de facto shapeshifter, and therefore, not possible to polymorph. 

Quote from Halavor_TheWeird >>

Quote from ArtificeMeal >>

hey would it not be neat to have infusions for pact of the chain that lets an warlock have their familiar take the shape of an steed like that of the find steed and find greater steed spells from the paladin list, just as a little perk that gives the pact just a little more utility and a few more tricks up its sleeve, as well as maybe an additional infusion that lets any warlock spell that affects you and only you also target your familiar if it is within 120 feet of you.

Also true polymorph is available as an mystic arcanum, so you could permanently transform your familiar into a human if your really wanted to

No soap on the polymorph. That requires concentration and while useful, would gimp such a high level warlock who likely needs the polymorph for the big bad. Further, since the familiar is a spirit that takes the form of an animal, I'd make the argument that it's a de facto shapeshifter, and therefore, not possible to polymorph. 

 true polymorph, if concentrated on for its full 1 hour duration, will last until dispelled, no concentration required. You can cast the spell during your downtime to have a humanoid who follows your commands and acts like an personal slave, and then also use the spell later in an actual session to completely eliminate the big bad by permanently turning him into a rock and chucking that rock into the ocean where it will never be found (assuming they fail their save, dont have legendary resistance and you do not loose concentration), and also you can use it to permanently create random creatures if you wanna make constructs you normally cannot make you can, it is simply great for that reason, it one of the few permanent spells in the game

also to even change their form, the familiar requires the aid of an spell caster, and many creatures are able to change their shape via magic (for instance many dragons) without being considered shapechangers, i think the rule is that shapechangers can change their shape at will without the need for magic

Quote from Yurei1453 >>

Counterpoint: why should the familiar be a free, invulnerable source of advantage on everything for anyone who wants it?  An actual PC using "The Help Action" has to tell the DM how they're helping, and then they have to eat whatever comes their way as a consequence of said help.  "The Help action" requires something to actually help, and if you're aiding someone's enemy in a battle, you are yourself an enemy of that someone.

I have absolutely thrown [Tooltip Not Found] at my party.  The Forge cleric lost two points of AC until he used his Channel Divinity to restore his armor using armor salvaged from the duergar he was hunting.  Had they not handled business and gotten rid of that ooze post-haste, somebody would've ended up nekkid.  That's the point of that monster's existence, after all.  Similarly, if the PCs will immediately target and destroy the Evil Wizard's familiar to deny him what that familiar can do, the Evil Wizard is certainly going to instruct his minions to return the favor.  After all, he knows exactly what that spell can do.

Nobody is saying familiars should be "free" Advantage.  First off, hardly free: requires casting a 1hr spell, plus 10g materials.  Second, the familiar should naturally be in jeopardy at times, same as the PCs are.  Regarding telling the DM how, exactly, they're helping... well, on the one hand, sure, I can always say "the owl flaps in the bad guy's face, distracting them for a second", but on the other hand, why require exact descriptions for Help, and not for Dodge, or Attack?  Do you also require players to describe exactly how they're attacking, or how they're dodging?  If so, then certainly require them to describe how they're helping.  If not, why the special case for Help?

I'm not saying familiars should be immune to being targeted by the enemies, I'm saying targeting them as punishment for a perceived imbalance is needlessly antagonistic.  The player already "paid" for their Advantage-once-per-round: they picked Find Familiar instead of another spell (opportunity cost), they spent an hour and 10g casting the spell, they're forgoing using their familiar for something else that turn, and they're risking their familiar being hurt (i.e. killed, since they have 1hp).  Going out of your way to smack 'em down is like sending only flying monsters against the party because one Barbarian decided to specialize in melee combat at the expense of ranged.  Let players have fun using the abilities they picked for their characters, jeez.

Regarding rust monsters, I didn't ask whether you'd put them there for your party to fight, I asked whether you'd done so as punishment for the fighter not treating their weapons and armor "properly".  There's a difference between "ooh, it'll be fun to pit the party against a bunch of rust monsters and see how they do!" and "hrmph, Sir Minmaxalot never says he's rubbing down his sword with oil, and hardly ever goes on and on about how he's polishing his armor, I'll send some nasty rust monsters to eat 'em, that'll show him!".

Sure, kill the familiar if it make sense given the situation... having NPCs ignore familiars might not make a lot of sense.  But having enemies going out of their way to target familiars might make even less sense: why focus on a CR 0 owl, when there are a bunch of actual threats attacking?

Quote from Bodanger >>

I totally agree about fly-by needing to be countered if abused.  If you just kept doing it some enemy is going to at least hold an action and smack it next time it come in range.  And realistically, after you see that you are getting shot at every time the owl shows up, it would probably just cue you to take cover and give the attack disadvantage unless the enemy is incredibly stupid. 

Define "abused", though.  Is a Barbarian "abusing" Reckless Attack if they use it every single time they attack?  Is a Fighter "abusing" Extra Attack if they attack multiple times every turn?  Is a Cleric "abusing" Spellcasting if they cast spells every turn?  Familiars don't have many combat options; using the Help action every round is often the only thing keeping them from being useless during combat.  Readying an action to attack the familiar might make sense, but it might not, since it represents one turn of not attacking the players to that enemy.  If your player was being attacked by a high level caster with a familiar, would they "waste" a turn attacking the familiar, or focus on the caster?  (I'm not implying the answer should be obvious, I'm saying it depends on the situation.)  Now, taking cover to cancel out the Advantage is certainly a much more reasonable course of action!

Uh, if using an owl familiar to repeatedly do the Help action is abuse, then what about having an invisible sprite or imp do the same thing? It doesn't break invisibility and you must be able to see something to use an opportunity attack on it. That's another reason to swear a pact of the chain.

 

 true polymorph, if concentrated on for its full 1 hour duration, will last until dispelled, no concentration required. You can cast the spell during your downtime to have a humanoid who follows your commands and acts like an personal slave, and then also use the spell later in an actual session to completely eliminate the big bad by permanently turning him into a rock and chucking that rock into the ocean where it will never be found (assuming they fail their save, dont have legendary resistance and you do not loose concentration), and also you can use it to permanently create random creatures if you wanna make constructs you normally cannot make you can, it is simply great for that reason, it one of the few permanent spells in the game

also to even change their form, the familiar requires the aid of an spell caster, and many creatures are able to change their shape via magic (for instance many dragons) without being considered shapechangers, i think the rule is that shapechangers can change their shape at will without the need for magic

 If that's the case, I withdraw my argument. I would actually want someone from D&D to make an official ruling, just because it's an incredibly interesting corner case about permanently altering familiars and something I hadn't considered.

Le sigh.

As a DM, I dislike "The Help Action" in general.  Not because I dislike my players working together or dislike people gaining advantage from inventive sources, but because "The Help Action" as it's set out and described in the book is a stupid over-gamerfication.  'Dodge' is a self-evident function easily described within that one single word.  'Attack' is the same.  'Use an Object' is easy; any given object either describes out it's used or its use is self-evident.

A guy who picks up Magic Initiate specifically to get a familiar so they can then command that familiar to "use The Help Action" on everything they can is being a cheddarburger and we all know it.  Consider the following exchange:

Fighter w/Familiar: "I'm going to try to roll the huge boulder out of the way to unblock the mouth of the cave."
Rei: "Sure.  Athletics check, fairly stiff DC.  It's a big heavy rock and it's wedged in there pretty good, but you're a pretty strong guy.  There's a chance."
F w/F: "Okay.  My owl uses Help; I get advantage on the check."
Rei: "...riiight.  Okay.  Mind explaining to me how a two pound bird of prey with no hands and a Strength score of 3 is going to offer meaningful assistance in levering a two-ton stone out of the way of your group?"
F w/F: "Uhh...does it matter?  The rules say a familiar can take the Help action, so my familiar is helping me with this check."
Rei: "Yeeaaah...the rules can say what they like.  Until you tell me how an owl can offer meaningful assistance in moving that rock, no advantage."

Now.  Am I being a tyrant and a terrible DM by Denying FwF his character features?  Or am I enforcing the verisimilitude of the game and asking my fighter to play a role during our roleplaying game session and describe his actions, rather than simply cite rules at me?

That's why I dislike "The Help Action".  That's why I hate "The Help Action" on most familiars, and why my own familiar even as a Chainlock does not assist me in combat via "The Help Action".  Unless I can explain to my DM what action my familiar is taking to assist me and how that assistance is meaningful, I get no free advantage.  Nor do any of my players when I'm behind the screen.

Quote from Tonio >>

Quote from Yurei1453 >>

Counterpoint: why should the familiar be a free, invulnerable source of advantage on everything for anyone who wants it?  An actual PC using "The Help Action" has to tell the DM how they're helping, and then they have to eat whatever comes their way as a consequence of said help.  "The Help action" requires something to actually help, and if you're aiding someone's enemy in a battle, you are yourself an enemy of that someone.

I have absolutely thrown [Tooltip Not Found] at my party.  The Forge cleric lost two points of AC until he used his Channel Divinity to restore his armor using armor salvaged from the duergar he was hunting.  Had they not handled business and gotten rid of that ooze post-haste, somebody would've ended up nekkid.  That's the point of that monster's existence, after all.  Similarly, if the PCs will immediately target and destroy the Evil Wizard's familiar to deny him what that familiar can do, the Evil Wizard is certainly going to instruct his minions to return the favor.  After all, he knows exactly what that spell can do.

 

Nobody is saying familiars should be "free" Advantage.  First off, hardly free: requires casting a 1hr spell, plus 10g materials.  Second, the familiar should naturally be in jeopardy at times, same as the PCs are.  Regarding telling the DM how, exactly, they're helping... well, on the one hand, sure, I can always say "the owl flaps in the bad guy's face, distracting them for a second", but on the other hand, why require exact descriptions for Help, and not for Dodge, or Attack?  Do you also require players to describe exactly how they're attacking, or how they're dodging?  If so, then certainly require them to describe how they're helping.  If not, why the special case for Help?

I'm not saying familiars should be immune to being targeted by the enemies, I'm saying targeting them as punishment for a perceived imbalance is needlessly antagonistic.  The player already "paid" for their Advantage-once-per-round: they picked Find Familiar instead of another spell (opportunity cost), they spent an hour and 10g casting the spell, they're forgoing using their familiar for something else that turn, and they're risking their familiar being hurt (i.e. killed, since they have 1hp).  Going out of your way to smack 'em down is like sending only flying monsters against the party because one Barbarian decided to specialize in melee combat at the expense of ranged.  Let players have fun using the abilities they picked for their characters, jeez.

Regarding rust monsters, I didn't ask whether you'd put them there for your party to fight, I asked whether you'd done so as punishment for the fighter not treating their weapons and armor "properly".  There's a difference between "ooh, it'll be fun to pit the party against a bunch of rust monsters and see how they do!" and "hrmph, Sir Minmaxalot never says he's rubbing down his sword with oil, and hardly ever goes on and on about how he's polishing his armor, I'll send some nasty rust monsters to eat 'em, that'll show him!".

 

Sure, kill the familiar if it make sense given the situation... having NPCs ignore familiars might not make a lot of sense.  But having enemies going out of their way to target familiars might make even less sense: why focus on a CR 0 owl, when there are a bunch of actual threats attacking?

 

Quote from Bodanger >>

I totally agree about fly-by needing to be countered if abused.  If you just kept doing it some enemy is going to at least hold an action and smack it next time it come in range.  And realistically, after you see that you are getting shot at every time the owl shows up, it would probably just cue you to take cover and give the attack disadvantage unless the enemy is incredibly stupid. 

 

Define "abused", though.  Is a Barbarian "abusing" Reckless Attack if they use it every single time they attack?  Is a Fighter "abusing" Extra Attack if they attack multiple times every turn?  Is a Cleric "abusing" Spellcasting if they cast spells every turn?  Familiars don't have many combat options; using the Help action every round is often the only thing keeping them from being useless during combat.  Readying an action to attack the familiar might make sense, but it might not, since it represents one turn of not attacking the players to that enemy.  If your player was being attacked by a high level caster with a familiar, would they "waste" a turn attacking the familiar, or focus on the caster?  (I'm not implying the answer should be obvious, I'm saying it depends on the situation.)  Now, taking cover to cancel out the Advantage is certainly a much more reasonable course of action!

 You know, you may have a point. 
I was looking at this from the perspective of a level 3-4 warlock, and having advantage on every eldrich blast.  Once you get to the point where you have multiple rolls for multiple blast hits at 5th level and above, the advantage on 1 attack from help drops off and keeps dropping off the more you level.  I think it probably just feels a bit  too strong now because my warlock happens to be in the small level range where it is the strongest it will ever be.  It's also worth noting that at level 3-4, if your familiar does die paying 10g every time isn't an insignificant amount.

I've always described my owl familiar as flying the face of the enemy, flapping his wings and distracting them to momentarily give someone else an opening. Even if familiars cannot attack, they can be hostile and aggressive, miming an attack. This seems like a perfectly believable tactic to use in combat.

Quote from Ophidimancer >>

I've always described my owl familiar as flying the face of the enemy, flapping his wings and distracting them to momentarily give someone else an opening. Even if familiars cannot attack, they can be hostile and aggressive, miming an attack. This seems like a perfectly believable tactic to use in combat.

 As long as a player gives me a description such as that I accept use of “The Help Action” when I DM.

That's fine, and I'd give you "The Help Action" for it.  Under the aforementioned caveat that an owl who's being hostile and distracting in the face of large, powerful and aggressive enemies has made itself a target and the player has no room for complaint if one of their enemies finds a spare moment to pop the pigeon.