I am having some issues trying to find a balance in what seems to me to be an overpowered spell considering its low level. I will state first that I have always considered the familiar as a very attractive archetype of fantasy literature and I’d love to have it in my games. But I think the way it is handled in DnD 5e is very disruptive for the game and, from a narrative point of view, very far from the fantasy trope of what a wizard’s familiar should be in my opinion.
I think the only way to address the problem is to change the spell, but before doing so (to my wizard player’s initial regret) I want to get other DM’s opinions first.
I am going to present my arguments against the spell as is written first, and after that, I am going to exemplify the effect that a familiar could have as the rule is written on a very well known adventure, Lost Mine of Phandelver, so that I can be told if I am misinterpreting something. The goal of using a prewritten adventure is because I cannot stress enough that what I am looking for is not ways to design adventures against the rules (more on why I don’t like/need that later), but help on shedding some light on whether maybe I am overstating its potential effects.
First of all, the narrative problem. In my opinion, a familiar should be a very special creature for the wizard, a sort of magical pet they are very fond of. It should be a creature with a name, and its survival should be of paramount importance for the wizard, being its death a great loss for them.
For example, I recall that this spell in Rolemaster required acquiring the creature by normal means, spending a week casting the spell on it and that if the creature died you had a -25 penalty for two weeks! So it was hard to get it and it was very, very bad to lose it. It was powerful, but the stakes were high. In D&D 3.5 a familiar death would cause the wizard to lose XP even to the point of going down a level and couldn't be replaced in a year! And all that, having in mind that the "remote surveillance drone" capacities required the wizard to reach level 13!
But as the spell is written in DnD, this is just some kind of disposable resource, not even worthy of a spell slot (since you can even cast it as a ritual). You can have one familiar now and a totally different one an hour later, almost at no cost. You can even make it disappear when you don't need it and it’s going to be a nuisance for a given scene (let's get rid of the damn cat in this scene, now it is useless!). Treated this way, it seems to me a familiar has the narrative weight of a magic potion: this is, none at all. What is sad.
Second, as the spell is written, it is what would be called a “disruptive technology” for the game. I know there are a thousand forums giving advice on different ways a DM can neutralize the power of a familiar (distance, area effect attacks, etc.), and I want to stress that is not the lack of ideas on how to do it what takes me here. I have plenty. Is that I have two big problems with this approach to “solving” the problem. First, I don’t think I should warp the whole world and completely redesign every adventure to accommodate for a rule that has the power to suck the fun out of almost every adventure as it is written. I think changing that rule is a far easier and logical alternative to that. Second, I think a DM shouldn't try to design encounters where the players can’t use their special powers or use them in a very diminished form. On the contrary, the DM should design situations where the players are challenged but where their powers can shine, and there is a very thin line between challenging their powers and making them useless. DMs tend to think they are very clever designers, but players are very good at detecting when a situation has been expressly designed by the DM to counteract some of their abilities, and the third time they notice you are actively working against their powers they are logically going to be pissed off. I think it is more honest to openly state that a rule/spell is not working and just change it.
Third, and in a certain way the most important reason why I don’t like it. Familiars are going to consistently hog the spotlight of other player’s characters precisely when those characters should have their “special moment”. What’s the point in investing in that stealthy rogue abilities if each time you have to approach an enemy camp, examine the enemy’s castle defenses or scout a possible ambush, the wizard is just going to send its spider before you and map every corner of the dungeon, and at absolutely no risk and no cost, before you even have the chance of trying?
At last, I am going to exemplify the effect this spell could have on an average dungeon (not one expressly designed to purposely counteract it). As this is a first level spell, let's keep in mind that this would be something a newly created character could perfectly do. Let's examine the potential effects of a familiar as is written in some of its dungeons (minor spoilers ahead).
Cragmaw hideout: our first level wizard uses his bat familiar to spot the goblins guards (no need for the rogue to even bother). From the entrance of the cave, the bat maps out the entire cave before the characters have even set one foot in it. Exciting adventure ahead.
Redbrand Hideout: our heroes approach the dungeon from the secret passage. Unless the DM rules that the spider is too big to pass under the doors (while the player suspiciously squints at him), 90% of the basement is going to be discovered without moving a finger. Yeah, you could get them attacked with the Nothic first, but since they are probably going to send the spider through the passage before them, it is going to be discovered earlier anyway. Exciting adventure ahead.
Castle Cragmaw: the wizard sends his owl to every window in the castle to examine its contents and enemies. Again, 90% of the castle is known before even getting too close to it. Sure, the wizard should move to repeat the operation from the southern and northern limits of the castle to cope with the 100’ limitation, but that's pretty easy. There is a chance that the owl is discovered in the window, but with almost no consequence: it would be very hard to attack, and the worst thing it could happen is that they have to wait an hour before repeating the operation. The rogue is again just yawning in a corner. Exciting adventure ahead.
Wave Echo Cave: since there are no doors, characters can easily be aware of every corner of the dungeon three or four rooms ahead. You could save time and lay out before them the entire dungeon floorplan and all its enemies. Exciting adventure ahead.
I know, I know, there are ways to avoid these uses of the familiar, but it would end up being too obvious that you are working hard against it, and when they notice (and they always do), that’s very annoying for the players (oh, what a coincidence, it turns out that the goblins have a trained hawk guarding the castle for no apparent reason!).
So, to wrap things up, it seems to me that the only logical alternative is to modify the rule. As I said, I love the idea of familiars in a fantasy setting, so ruling the spell out completely is something I don’t want to do. But I think I have to adjust it so that its effects are not so disrupting for the game. I haven’t made my mind about how to do it yet, honestly, but I like the idea of “hard to get, hard to lose” that the Rolemaster spell had. And I think also that the extent of the remote senses capacities should be limited somehow too.Opinions?
EDIT - Following some comments, I have to say to my wizard's player merit, that not only he has not being trying to take the spotlight away from other players, but in fact he has been underusing his familiar powers to avoid it, being aware that if he did everything the rule as written allows him to do, the adventure would lose much of its interest. And as some commenter has said and I agree, the player should not purposely avoid using his character's capacities just in order to balance the game.
EDIT 2 - I have to stress again as I have done in the second point that I am not short of ideas about how to neutralize the familiar effects in the game. For every ten suggestions I read, in nine of them (maybe ten?) is going to be so obvious to the players that you are trying to counteract the familiar effects on the adventure that they are going to be understandably annoyed (so if your wizard sees a room I just show you the map or reveal it in Roll20, but if you see it through your familiar then you have to roll Intelligence, Cartography, GPSing and what else, and I just give you description, yeah, sure, very subtle). That's why I have used a predesigned adventure as an example. To prove that a "standard" adventure, not one designed to work against the familiar, is going to easily fall to pieces if the familiar is used by the player as the rule allows him to do. And interestingly, no comment has addressed those examples. Again, it seems to me as a matter of Change the spell VS Change the world.
How much gold (and access to specific spell components) do you give your party before they start the adventure? It is a fairly big assumption that a wizard starts the game with a familiar or that they have infinite gold to spend re-summoning it.
I largely agree with you. My only sticking point is that I'm not convinced it's unreasonably burdensome to say the goblins have a hawk in every circumstance. Obviously the prewritten modules don't include counter-familiar strategies, but it's pretty easy to add them. Just add cats! Cats will eat any familiar.
Of course, it's a pretty repetitive play pattern: Roll hide against the cat or die. And if you make it more complex, the other players just have to sit out for longer. But that's another issue.
But yeah. I miss the 3.5 familiars that all gave you a minor passive bonus while you had them around. I thought that was neat.
There are limitations to the mapping function that you describe. Primarily, the master of the familiar would have to know the exact distance, and size of each room for them to then re-create said map, or describe it to fellow PCs for them to Cartography the thing into existence.
Your wizard is seeing everything from a bat's perspective, describe it that way. The rest of the party will be getting third hand Intel.
I wouldn't suggest flopping down the exact and accurate map for them because "familiar scout". Older versions had a player dedicated to be the party mapper, maybe bring that forward in some form.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.” - Mark Twain - Innocents Abroad
You can limit the familiar with an overly strict reading of the rules. I know it’s not quite what the spell says but it could be interpreted that the entire paragraph of things you can do starting with the sentence “While your familiar is within 100’ of you…” can only be done while within that range.
How much gold (and access to specific spell components) do you give your party before they start the adventure? It is a fairly big assumption that a wizard starts the game with a familiar or that they have infinite gold to spend re-summoning it.
I'm currently playing a tabaxi wizard named Chasing Waterfalls in a campaign running Tomb of Annihilation. In the middle of the jungle, there would be no way to acquire the material components necessary to re-cast the ritual if Left-Eye, his owl familiar, were to get poofed.
In terms of how much I use her, she does a bit of scouting, but mainly just to get an aerial overview of an area. The rogue certainly isn't gathering dust. I think there was one spot where we only got the door open a crack and I sent her through to pick something up for me before we forced it the rest of the way. Left Eye mainly just makes it a bit easier to cast Touch buffs on other party members, to be honest.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock) Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric) Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue) Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
How much gold (and access to specific spell components) do you give your party before they start the adventure? It is a fairly big assumption that a wizard starts the game with a familiar or that they have infinite gold to spend re-summoning it.
I'm currently playing a tabaxi wizard named Chasing Waterfalls in a campaign running Tomb of Annihilation. In the middle of the jungle, there would be no way to acquire the material components necessary to re-cast the ritual if Left-Eye, his owl familiar, were to get poofed.
In terms of how much I use her, she does a bit of scouting, but mainly just to get an aerial overview of an area. The rogue certainly isn't gathering dust. I think there was one spot where we only got the door open a crack and I sent her through to pick something up for me before we forced it the rest of the way. Left Eye mainly just makes it a bit easier to cast Touch buffs on other party members, to be honest.
Don't go, Chasing waterfalls. send Left-Eye instead. Of course, so you can stick to the rivers and ponds that you're used to.
Do you really think the kind of player that makes the game unfun for other players with find familiar won't continue to do that with whatever other abilities they have?
Yes, Find Familiar has problems. It and Find Steed arguably should've remained class features. The high utility and ease of replacing a dead familiar does undermine the narrative intent of the spell and leads to players picking it up solely because it's an extremely useful tool to have in their bag. That said, I do think the gameplay disruptions you're describing result from giving the spell more power than what's written in the rules.
For starters, a familiar can't "map out a whole dungeon" for a party. They can't draw, they don't have opposable thumbs to open doorknobs and pull levers, they might miss traps and secret doors the rogue wouldn't have, and the party might end up triggering missed traps because a flying bat isn't going to step on a pressure plate or trip a ground-level tripwire. Also, despite how relatively cheap they are to replace, they still can't be trivially replaced in the field unless your party's hauling around a brass brazier into every dungeon. Make one small mistake and you've probably locked yourself out of your familiar until you can head back to town.
Your problems with Find Familiar are deeply entrenched in its design, so I suspect you'd be happier starting from the 3.5 version and easing up on the harsher penalties (1 year to replace a familiar is pretty extreme) than trying to mold the 5e version into something you like.
I can agree with some of the flavor fails of a "disposable" familiar.
But I don't see any other problems with the spell. It only has a 100 foot range for more than the most basic scouting. Unusual animals will be noticed by anything intelligent. And if the only thing the familiar does is scout, I don't see how that nerfs any class short of the original ranger ("Oh, this is the only time half your core class features will be useful? It's ok, I have a level 1 spell that will do that for us." The wizard to the level 10 ranger on the first map made of their favorite terrain since the beginning of the campaign).
And while 10GP is affordable. At level 1-3 it is pretty pricey.
Do you really think the kind of player that makes the game unfun for other players with find familiar won't continue to do that with whatever other abilities they have?
Well, if they choose not to do the things described here, they're gimping themselves and their party, putting them in unnecessary danger. I don't think it's stemming from a desire for the spotlight, it's just being as cautious as possible and managing resources.
I can agree with some of the flavor fails of a "disposable" familiar.
But I don't see any other problems with the spell. It only has a 100 foot range for more than the most basic scouting. Unusual animals will be noticed by anything intelligent. And if the only thing the familiar does is scout, I don't see how that nerfs any class short of the original ranger ("Oh, this is the only time half your core class features will be useful? It's ok, I have a level 1 spell that will do that for us." The wizard to the level 10 ranger on the first map made of their favorite terrain since the beginning of the campaign).
And while 10GP is affordable. At level 1-3 it is pretty pricey.
I have to agree with this.
A Familiar isn't going to find traps or secret doors or anything that isn't completely obvious. Anything that would be large enough to manipulate objects and open doors would be very out of place and easily seen, while anything that is small enough to go unnoticed or fit through cracks would be too small to do much of anything not to mention the perspective of say a Spider would be next to useless unless you spent hours crawling over each room. Also, I require the players to make Wisdom (Perception) and Intelligence (Investigation) Checks using the Familiar's abilities not their own, which is also no where near as good as the party Rogue.
When it comes to most bad guys with any level of intelligence, there is a chance that they are aware of what a Familiar is and having a random animal that is out of place running around in your lair is a good sign that those pesky adventurers are about.
How much gold (and access to specific spell components) do you give your party before they start the adventure? It is a fairly big assumption that a wizard starts the game with a familiar or that they have infinite gold to spend re-summoning it.
I'm currently playing a tabaxi wizard named Chasing Waterfalls in a campaign running Tomb of Annihilation. In the middle of the jungle, there would be no way to acquire the material components necessary to re-cast the ritual if Left-Eye, his owl familiar, were to get poofed.
In terms of how much I use her, she does a bit of scouting, but mainly just to get an aerial overview of an area. The rogue certainly isn't gathering dust. I think there was one spot where we only got the door open a crack and I sent her through to pick something up for me before we forced it the rest of the way. Left Eye mainly just makes it a bit easier to cast Touch buffs on other party members, to be honest.
Don't go, Chasing waterfalls. send Left-Eye instead. Of course, so you can stick to the rivers and ponds that you're used to.
"I roll for a Creep check"
"You mean Stealth"
"Yeah, that's what I said"
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock) Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric) Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue) Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
Do you really think the kind of player that makes the game unfun for other players with find familiar won't continue to do that with whatever other abilities they have?
Well, if they choose not to do the things described here, they're gimping themselves and their party, putting them in unnecessary danger. I don't think it's stemming from a desire for the spotlight, it's just being as cautious as possible and managing resources.
I really don't think that addresses the point. Players can and should choose to share the spotlight. Someone who uses find familiar to steal another player's thunder is just going to find a different way to do that if you take the spell away from them.
Do you really think the kind of player that makes the game unfun for other players with find familiar won't continue to do that with whatever other abilities they have?
Well, if they choose not to do the things described here, they're gimping themselves and their party, putting them in unnecessary danger. I don't think it's stemming from a desire for the spotlight, it's just being as cautious as possible and managing resources.
I really don't think that addresses the point. Players can and should choose to share the spotlight. Someone who uses find familiar to steal another player's thunder is just going to find a different way to do that if you take the spell away from them.
I find when I play a wizard (or otherwise have a familiar) that I have to intentionally not use the little guy to solve problems he'd easily solve so that I can share the spotlight. That is problematic. Good game play should never be: Intentionally not using your abilities. Either I use my abilities well, or I share the spotlight. There is a fundamental design issue there. Is it the end of the world? No. I just leave the little feller tucked away in his pocket dimension 99% of the time and effectively rarely actually have it. Our scouting/sneak player gets his glory, as does our druid, and everything works out well for party fun. Except, well, the intentional self-handicap. That feels odd for a character who is supposedly a genius to intentionally play tactics that are dumb.
It is apparently so hard to program Aberrant Mind and Clockwork Soul spell-swapping into dndbeyond they had to remake the game without it rather than implement it.
To be clear, I am not saying that this spell isn’t strong (or even stronger than other options at level 1). I can see some of the problems that the OP describes with the spell.
I just think that the problem in particular of stealing the rogue’s role is as much a player problem as a mechanical problem.
As a DM, the most unfortunate thing about find familiar in my campaign has been that it has basically trivialized a good chunk of the exploration aspect of gameplay. And it's kind of a shame.
- It takes an hour to summon or change the form of a familiar, or more as a ritual. Stopping for an hour to cast a spell near an enemy camp should never be a stress free situation. Patrols should wander about. So you are really stuck with whatever form you chose earlier. Replacing a lost familiar mid-dungeon should be near impossible, unless you can find a safe resting place.
- Familiars are only effective scouts within 100 ft. Beyond that they are a normal owl trying its best to follow instructions it remembers from its master. Outside that range you are within your rights as DM to roll a dice every now and then and just declare the familiar is dead. There are dangers of all sorts out there and if the wizard wasn't connected to its senses at the time then there is no information gained from that death. Even if you are looking through its senses, the bat could fly straight into a gelatinous cube, or be struck by some other unseen danger and the spying wizard would just get a "it was killed by something squishy" telepathic report.
- Familiars should only be able to operate safely in two ways: hanging about close to the party, or behaving exactly as a normal animal would. Any odd behaviour will expose it to summary attack by intelligent creature, and most unnatural behaviour by small animals will get it killed by predators in a matter of minutes. A bat or owl out flying during the day risks falling to a hawk or other daytime predators. A rat or spider running down the middle of corridor and through rooms will be snapped up by any passing hungry thing.
- Based on the above, scouting safely with a familiar will take a very long time as the bird moves carefully from tree to tree, or the spider edges along in the cracks and shadows. See the patrol issue from point 1.
- The death of a familiar will not just cost you 10gp, it should raise the alarm in any intelligent enemy camp. That dead bat disappears in a puff of smoke, revealing that an enemy wizard is spying on the camp. All enemies to full battle stations.
- When dealing with enemies who know who you are, all of these dangers become more severe, as they will know about your tendency to scout via owl.
So, in summary, if you are playing a game where wasting an hour to summon a familiar several times a day is a consequence-free situation, then yes the spell will be disproportionately powerful. Otherwise, a wizard will have a single creature which is useful in certain environments to scout around corners - but doing so will slow the party down while the wizard stands blindly controlling the familiar.
It would be easier to argue that the Wizard shouldn't be able to ever take an hour's break to cast a spell, if taking an hour's break wasn't a core mechanic that every class relies upon to function, and that there are several spells and features present in the game to facilitate.
I do like the idea of the familiar dying in an obviously magical way, and in so doing, revealing there's a Wizard.
When the familiar drops to 0 Hit Points, it disappears, leaving behind no physical form.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
I'm probably laughing.
It is apparently so hard to program Aberrant Mind and Clockwork Soul spell-swapping into dndbeyond they had to remake the game without it rather than implement it.
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
I am having some issues trying to find a balance in what seems to me to be an overpowered spell considering its low level. I will state first that I have always considered the familiar as a very attractive archetype of fantasy literature and I’d love to have it in my games. But I think the way it is handled in DnD 5e is very disruptive for the game and, from a narrative point of view, very far from the fantasy trope of what a wizard’s familiar should be in my opinion.
I think the only way to address the problem is to change the spell, but before doing so (to my wizard player’s initial regret) I want to get other DM’s opinions first.
I am going to present my arguments against the spell as is written first, and after that, I am going to exemplify the effect that a familiar could have as the rule is written on a very well known adventure, Lost Mine of Phandelver, so that I can be told if I am misinterpreting something. The goal of using a prewritten adventure is because I cannot stress enough that what I am looking for is not ways to design adventures against the rules (more on why I don’t like/need that later), but help on shedding some light on whether maybe I am overstating its potential effects.
First of all, the narrative problem. In my opinion, a familiar should be a very special creature for the wizard, a sort of magical pet they are very fond of. It should be a creature with a name, and its survival should be of paramount importance for the wizard, being its death a great loss for them.
For example, I recall that this spell in Rolemaster required acquiring the creature by normal means, spending a week casting the spell on it and that if the creature died you had a -25 penalty for two weeks! So it was hard to get it and it was very, very bad to lose it. It was powerful, but the stakes were high. In D&D 3.5 a familiar death would cause the wizard to lose XP even to the point of going down a level and couldn't be replaced in a year! And all that, having in mind that the "remote surveillance drone" capacities required the wizard to reach level 13!
But as the spell is written in DnD, this is just some kind of disposable resource, not even worthy of a spell slot (since you can even cast it as a ritual). You can have one familiar now and a totally different one an hour later, almost at no cost. You can even make it disappear when you don't need it and it’s going to be a nuisance for a given scene (let's get rid of the damn cat in this scene, now it is useless!). Treated this way, it seems to me a familiar has the narrative weight of a magic potion: this is, none at all. What is sad.
Second, as the spell is written, it is what would be called a “disruptive technology” for the game. I know there are a thousand forums giving advice on different ways a DM can neutralize the power of a familiar (distance, area effect attacks, etc.), and I want to stress that is not the lack of ideas on how to do it what takes me here. I have plenty. Is that I have two big problems with this approach to “solving” the problem. First, I don’t think I should warp the whole world and completely redesign every adventure to accommodate for a rule that has the power to suck the fun out of almost every adventure as it is written. I think changing that rule is a far easier and logical alternative to that. Second, I think a DM shouldn't try to design encounters where the players can’t use their special powers or use them in a very diminished form. On the contrary, the DM should design situations where the players are challenged but where their powers can shine, and there is a very thin line between challenging their powers and making them useless. DMs tend to think they are very clever designers, but players are very good at detecting when a situation has been expressly designed by the DM to counteract some of their abilities, and the third time they notice you are actively working against their powers they are logically going to be pissed off. I think it is more honest to openly state that a rule/spell is not working and just change it.
Third, and in a certain way the most important reason why I don’t like it. Familiars are going to consistently hog the spotlight of other player’s characters precisely when those characters should have their “special moment”. What’s the point in investing in that stealthy rogue abilities if each time you have to approach an enemy camp, examine the enemy’s castle defenses or scout a possible ambush, the wizard is just going to send its spider before you and map every corner of the dungeon, and at absolutely no risk and no cost, before you even have the chance of trying?
At last, I am going to exemplify the effect this spell could have on an average dungeon (not one expressly designed to purposely counteract it). As this is a first level spell, let's keep in mind that this would be something a newly created character could perfectly do. Let's examine the potential effects of a familiar as is written in some of its dungeons (minor spoilers ahead).
Cragmaw hideout: our first level wizard uses his bat familiar to spot the goblins guards (no need for the rogue to even bother). From the entrance of the cave, the bat maps out the entire cave before the characters have even set one foot in it. Exciting adventure ahead.
Redbrand Hideout: our heroes approach the dungeon from the secret passage. Unless the DM rules that the spider is too big to pass under the doors (while the player suspiciously squints at him), 90% of the basement is going to be discovered without moving a finger. Yeah, you could get them attacked with the Nothic first, but since they are probably going to send the spider through the passage before them, it is going to be discovered earlier anyway. Exciting adventure ahead.
Castle Cragmaw: the wizard sends his owl to every window in the castle to examine its contents and enemies. Again, 90% of the castle is known before even getting too close to it. Sure, the wizard should move to repeat the operation from the southern and northern limits of the castle to cope with the 100’ limitation, but that's pretty easy. There is a chance that the owl is discovered in the window, but with almost no consequence: it would be very hard to attack, and the worst thing it could happen is that they have to wait an hour before repeating the operation. The rogue is again just yawning in a corner. Exciting adventure ahead.
Wave Echo Cave: since there are no doors, characters can easily be aware of every corner of the dungeon three or four rooms ahead. You could save time and lay out before them the entire dungeon floorplan and all its enemies. Exciting adventure ahead.
I know, I know, there are ways to avoid these uses of the familiar, but it would end up being too obvious that you are working hard against it, and when they notice (and they always do), that’s very annoying for the players (oh, what a coincidence, it turns out that the goblins have a trained hawk guarding the castle for no apparent reason!).
So, to wrap things up, it seems to me that the only logical alternative is to modify the rule. As I said, I love the idea of familiars in a fantasy setting, so ruling the spell out completely is something I don’t want to do. But I think I have to adjust it so that its effects are not so disrupting for the game. I haven’t made my mind about how to do it yet, honestly, but I like the idea of “hard to get, hard to lose” that the Rolemaster spell had. And I think also that the extent of the remote senses capacities should be limited somehow too.Opinions?
EDIT - Following some comments, I have to say to my wizard's player merit, that not only he has not being trying to take the spotlight away from other players, but in fact he has been underusing his familiar powers to avoid it, being aware that if he did everything the rule as written allows him to do, the adventure would lose much of its interest. And as some commenter has said and I agree, the player should not purposely avoid using his character's capacities just in order to balance the game.
EDIT 2 - I have to stress again as I have done in the second point that I am not short of ideas about how to neutralize the familiar effects in the game. For every ten suggestions I read, in nine of them (maybe ten?) is going to be so obvious to the players that you are trying to counteract the familiar effects on the adventure that they are going to be understandably annoyed (so if your wizard sees a room I just show you the map or reveal it in Roll20, but if you see it through your familiar then you have to roll Intelligence, Cartography, GPSing and what else, and I just give you description, yeah, sure, very subtle). That's why I have used a predesigned adventure as an example. To prove that a "standard" adventure, not one designed to work against the familiar, is going to easily fall to pieces if the familiar is used by the player as the rule allows him to do. And interestingly, no comment has addressed those examples. Again, it seems to me as a matter of Change the spell VS Change the world.
How much gold (and access to specific spell components) do you give your party before they start the adventure? It is a fairly big assumption that a wizard starts the game with a familiar or that they have infinite gold to spend re-summoning it.
I largely agree with you. My only sticking point is that I'm not convinced it's unreasonably burdensome to say the goblins have a hawk in every circumstance. Obviously the prewritten modules don't include counter-familiar strategies, but it's pretty easy to add them. Just add cats! Cats will eat any familiar.
Of course, it's a pretty repetitive play pattern: Roll hide against the cat or die. And if you make it more complex, the other players just have to sit out for longer. But that's another issue.
But yeah. I miss the 3.5 familiars that all gave you a minor passive bonus while you had them around. I thought that was neat.
There are limitations to the mapping function that you describe. Primarily, the master of the familiar would have to know the exact distance, and size of each room for them to then re-create said map, or describe it to fellow PCs for them to Cartography the thing into existence.
Your wizard is seeing everything from a bat's perspective, describe it that way. The rest of the party will be getting third hand Intel.
I wouldn't suggest flopping down the exact and accurate map for them because "familiar scout". Older versions had a player dedicated to be the party mapper, maybe bring that forward in some form.
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.” - Mark Twain - Innocents Abroad
You can limit the familiar with an overly strict reading of the rules. I know it’s not quite what the spell says but it could be interpreted that the entire paragraph of things you can do starting with the sentence “While your familiar is within 100’ of you…” can only be done while within that range.
I'm currently playing a tabaxi wizard named Chasing Waterfalls in a campaign running Tomb of Annihilation. In the middle of the jungle, there would be no way to acquire the material components necessary to re-cast the ritual if Left-Eye, his owl familiar, were to get poofed.
In terms of how much I use her, she does a bit of scouting, but mainly just to get an aerial overview of an area. The rogue certainly isn't gathering dust. I think there was one spot where we only got the door open a crack and I sent her through to pick something up for me before we forced it the rest of the way. Left Eye mainly just makes it a bit easier to cast Touch buffs on other party members, to be honest.
Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock)
Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric)
Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue)
Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
Don't go, Chasing waterfalls. send Left-Eye instead. Of course, so you can stick to the rivers and ponds that you're used to.
Do you really think the kind of player that makes the game unfun for other players with find familiar won't continue to do that with whatever other abilities they have?
Yes, Find Familiar has problems. It and Find Steed arguably should've remained class features. The high utility and ease of replacing a dead familiar does undermine the narrative intent of the spell and leads to players picking it up solely because it's an extremely useful tool to have in their bag. That said, I do think the gameplay disruptions you're describing result from giving the spell more power than what's written in the rules.
For starters, a familiar can't "map out a whole dungeon" for a party. They can't draw, they don't have opposable thumbs to open doorknobs and pull levers, they might miss traps and secret doors the rogue wouldn't have, and the party might end up triggering missed traps because a flying bat isn't going to step on a pressure plate or trip a ground-level tripwire. Also, despite how relatively cheap they are to replace, they still can't be trivially replaced in the field unless your party's hauling around a brass brazier into every dungeon. Make one small mistake and you've probably locked yourself out of your familiar until you can head back to town.
Your problems with Find Familiar are deeply entrenched in its design, so I suspect you'd be happier starting from the 3.5 version and easing up on the harsher penalties (1 year to replace a familiar is pretty extreme) than trying to mold the 5e version into something you like.
The Forum Infestation (TM)
I can agree with some of the flavor fails of a "disposable" familiar.
But I don't see any other problems with the spell. It only has a 100 foot range for more than the most basic scouting. Unusual animals will be noticed by anything intelligent. And if the only thing the familiar does is scout, I don't see how that nerfs any class short of the original ranger ("Oh, this is the only time half your core class features will be useful? It's ok, I have a level 1 spell that will do that for us." The wizard to the level 10 ranger on the first map made of their favorite terrain since the beginning of the campaign).
And while 10GP is affordable. At level 1-3 it is pretty pricey.
Well, if they choose not to do the things described here, they're gimping themselves and their party, putting them in unnecessary danger. I don't think it's stemming from a desire for the spotlight, it's just being as cautious as possible and managing resources.
I have to agree with this.
A Familiar isn't going to find traps or secret doors or anything that isn't completely obvious. Anything that would be large enough to manipulate objects and open doors would be very out of place and easily seen, while anything that is small enough to go unnoticed or fit through cracks would be too small to do much of anything not to mention the perspective of say a Spider would be next to useless unless you spent hours crawling over each room. Also, I require the players to make Wisdom (Perception) and Intelligence (Investigation) Checks using the Familiar's abilities not their own, which is also no where near as good as the party Rogue.
When it comes to most bad guys with any level of intelligence, there is a chance that they are aware of what a Familiar is and having a random animal that is out of place running around in your lair is a good sign that those pesky adventurers are about.
She/Her Player and Dungeon Master
"I roll for a Creep check"
"You mean Stealth"
"Yeah, that's what I said"
Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock)
Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric)
Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue)
Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
I really don't think that addresses the point. Players can and should choose to share the spotlight. Someone who uses find familiar to steal another player's thunder is just going to find a different way to do that if you take the spell away from them.
I find when I play a wizard (or otherwise have a familiar) that I have to intentionally not use the little guy to solve problems he'd easily solve so that I can share the spotlight. That is problematic. Good game play should never be: Intentionally not using your abilities. Either I use my abilities well, or I share the spotlight. There is a fundamental design issue there. Is it the end of the world? No. I just leave the little feller tucked away in his pocket dimension 99% of the time and effectively rarely actually have it. Our scouting/sneak player gets his glory, as does our druid, and everything works out well for party fun. Except, well, the intentional self-handicap. That feels odd for a character who is supposedly a genius to intentionally play tactics that are dumb.
I'm probably laughing.
It is apparently so hard to program Aberrant Mind and Clockwork Soul spell-swapping into dndbeyond they had to remake the game without it rather than implement it.
To be clear, I am not saying that this spell isn’t strong (or even stronger than other options at level 1). I can see some of the problems that the OP describes with the spell.
I just think that the problem in particular of stealing the rogue’s role is as much a player problem as a mechanical problem.
As a DM, the most unfortunate thing about find familiar in my campaign has been that it has basically trivialized a good chunk of the exploration aspect of gameplay. And it's kind of a shame.
"Not all those who wander are lost"
A few things limit the power of familiars:
- It takes an hour to summon or change the form of a familiar, or more as a ritual. Stopping for an hour to cast a spell near an enemy camp should never be a stress free situation. Patrols should wander about. So you are really stuck with whatever form you chose earlier. Replacing a lost familiar mid-dungeon should be near impossible, unless you can find a safe resting place.
- Familiars are only effective scouts within 100 ft. Beyond that they are a normal owl trying its best to follow instructions it remembers from its master. Outside that range you are within your rights as DM to roll a dice every now and then and just declare the familiar is dead. There are dangers of all sorts out there and if the wizard wasn't connected to its senses at the time then there is no information gained from that death. Even if you are looking through its senses, the bat could fly straight into a gelatinous cube, or be struck by some other unseen danger and the spying wizard would just get a "it was killed by something squishy" telepathic report.
- Familiars should only be able to operate safely in two ways: hanging about close to the party, or behaving exactly as a normal animal would. Any odd behaviour will expose it to summary attack by intelligent creature, and most unnatural behaviour by small animals will get it killed by predators in a matter of minutes. A bat or owl out flying during the day risks falling to a hawk or other daytime predators. A rat or spider running down the middle of corridor and through rooms will be snapped up by any passing hungry thing.
- Based on the above, scouting safely with a familiar will take a very long time as the bird moves carefully from tree to tree, or the spider edges along in the cracks and shadows. See the patrol issue from point 1.
- The death of a familiar will not just cost you 10gp, it should raise the alarm in any intelligent enemy camp. That dead bat disappears in a puff of smoke, revealing that an enemy wizard is spying on the camp. All enemies to full battle stations.
- When dealing with enemies who know who you are, all of these dangers become more severe, as they will know about your tendency to scout via owl.
So, in summary, if you are playing a game where wasting an hour to summon a familiar several times a day is a consequence-free situation, then yes the spell will be disproportionately powerful. Otherwise, a wizard will have a single creature which is useful in certain environments to scout around corners - but doing so will slow the party down while the wizard stands blindly controlling the familiar.
It would be easier to argue that the Wizard shouldn't be able to ever take an hour's break to cast a spell, if taking an hour's break wasn't a core mechanic that every class relies upon to function, and that there are several spells and features present in the game to facilitate.
I do like the idea of the familiar dying in an obviously magical way, and in so doing, revealing there's a Wizard.
I'm probably laughing.
It is apparently so hard to program Aberrant Mind and Clockwork Soul spell-swapping into dndbeyond they had to remake the game without it rather than implement it.