Find Familiar says that familiars roll their own initiative and have their own turns separate from the PC. I can't think of any good reasons why this would be the case. They can't attack normally, so the primary thing they use their action for is Help. You can cast a spell through the familiar, but it must be a touch spell and it uses your own action (and familiar's reaction) and happens on your turn. If you are a PoC Warlock the familiar can attack, but again it uses your action (and the familiar's reaction) and happens on your turn.
Giving the familiar it's own turn adds complexity and takes up extra table time with few benefits. It means that using a touch spell through the familiar is more difficult since you need to set up the familiar's movement next to the target prior to your turn (and hope the enemy doesn't move or kill the familiar in the meantime), making something that's already rarely useful less so. Same with letting the familiar attack, an ability that is only comparable to your own attacks prior to getting a second eldritch blast at 5th level. Having the familiar use help on it's own turn does mean it might give advantage to an ally instead of you, which may or may not be useful, depending on initiative order.
Is there something I've missed, or does it save a lot of hassle and complexity to have the familiar share your turn, with minimal change to game-play?
It's a definite increase in power for the spellcaster if the familiar doesn't get it's own turn because it greatly reduces the risk to the familiar when delivering touch spells. Normally the familiar would have to hang out in a threatened space for a round to deliver a touch spell. If it acts on the caster's turn then the familiar can do silly things like fly in, deliver spell, disengage, fly away. It seems like you view the restriction on delivering touch spells as a negative, but I think it's intentional because touch spells tend to be more powerful than their ranged counterparts.
I think the best compromise is having the familiar get it's own turn but act on the same initiative as the caster.
I'm pretty sure the intent is to make it hard to use the familiar in combat. Mearls has mentioned that adding creatures to the party is powerful so they're being very careful with abilities that give you helpers (which is probably why the Beast Master Ranger turned out underwhelming.) Also, consistently delivering touch spells from a distance or automatically giving yourself advantage on attack rolls easily would make Find Familiar to good to pass up and really step on class features like Distant Spell or Tides of Chaos.
I guess I was thinking of it from the point of view of my warlock, where I think there's only one offensive spell with a range of touch (that I don't know), and my familiar is invisible most of the time anyway
It is in fact so cumbersome to have a familiar take up a random initiative slot doing nothing, that I often don't bring my familiars "out" at all. The fact that familiars, mounts, animal companions, and summoned creatures all interact with initiative and action economy differently, despite serving essentially the same purpose, is endlessly frustrating.
The fact that familiars, mounts, animal companions, and summoned creatures all interact with initiative and action economy differently, despite serving essentially the same purpose, is endlessly frustrating.
But they don't serve "essentially the same purpose." You don't use a horse to scout or spy and you don't use a familiar as a mount. Each ability that gives you an NPC helper is tailored to the purpose that helper is meant to serve.
Paladin's mounts are better familiars than familiars are, and I really don't see what purpose that was tailored to serve. Familiars are weak enough to be wholly irrelevant in combat, can't attack without stealing your action, can't communicate with you telepathically or otherwise in a useful manner, are tethered far closer to you than a paladin steed is, can't understand a language, and aren't any more intelligent than a regular critter. Overall, a paladin's steed makes a far better laboratory assistant or scout than a familiar does, in addition to also being able to operate as either a fully independent ally in combat (if uncontrolled) or a sweet pair of wheels (if controlled), all without sucking up your actions.
It doesn't feel like the same team wrote the rules for steeds and familiars with a coherent objective in mind, but rather like one team did a "better job" at it than another without them sharing notes.
Paladin's mounts are better familiars than familiars are, and I really don't see what purpose that was tailored to serve. Familiars are weak enough to be wholly irrelevant in combat, can't attack without stealing your action, can't communicate with you telepathically or otherwise in a useful manner, are tethered far closer to you than a paladin steed is, can't understand a language, and aren't any more intelligent than a regular critter. Overall, a paladin's steed makes a far better laboratory assistant or scout than a familiar does, in addition to also being able to operate as either a fully independent ally in combat (if uncontrolled) or a sweet pair of wheels (if controlled), all without sucking up your actions.
It doesn't feel like the same team wrote the rules for steeds and familiars with a coherent objective in mind, but rather like one team did a "better job" at it than another without them sharing notes.
You bring up some valid points, but seem to be mostly considering the combat applications of familiars. Definitely the mount is superior in combat, but the familiar's primary use in combat is to either hell attacks or search and report enemy positions to you. These are awesome, valuable actions that you can order your familiar to take in combat (no action required *cough* beastmaster *cough*).
Outside of combat I think the familiar is better than the mount. Outside of combat, the mount is literally just a mount and maybe an extra pair of eyes. Familiar's are awesome for scouting. You can't see through a mount's eyes using its senses. Mounts are all at least medium size. It's hard to miss the mastiff walking down the hallway, but pretty easy to overlook the rat. The mount can't be dismissed to a pocket dimension when you don't need it. If you lose it, the familiar can be summoned with a ritual saving you a spell slot.
I'm not sure what you mean when you say that a familiar can't communicate telepathically in a useful manner. Within 100' it can communicate telepathically, it always obeys your commands, and even beast level intelligences can communicate simple things (just look at the speak with animals spell).
As far as being a better laboratory assistant, none of the mount options have opposable thumbs.
I'm not sure what you mean when you say that a familiar can't communicate telepathically in a useful manner. Within 100' it can communicate telepathically, it always obeys your commands, and even beast level intelligences can communicate simple things (just look at the speak with animals spell).
As far as being a better laboratory assistant, none of the mount options have opposable thumbs.
I mean, you can sort of hand-wave away a lack of common language when you're telepathically bonded with something so as to allow basic concepts to be exchanged, but you can't handwave away the intelligence score: it's just a regular crab, apart from creature type. Certainly it can communicate simple [crab] things, but when you send your crab scuttling up onto the pirate's ship to scout, it probably can't really tell you much more than whether there are "some humanoids," much less the complexities of what those humanoids might be doing to each other or saying, or which ones are pirates vs. captives (what do crabs know about ropes? can a crab tell the difference between a canon and a barrel? would a crab be able to tell the difference between a closed door and a wall?). There are certainly some situations where an animal-level intelligence might tell you some useful things (bear in cave: yes or no?), but there's also a lot of more complex situations where literally sending your unaccompanied horse steed wandering down the dock to eavesdrop and glance on board will be more useful, despite it sticking out like a sore thumb. I'm not really arguing that steeds are always better scouts than familiars... but I certainly do not agree that there is any design element or concept that requires that steeds have humanoid-level intelligence where familiars do not, the ability to understand common, and the ability to report back and receive further directions within 1 mile while a wizard's helper has precisely none of those advantages. And on the action economy side, I do not think that having all allies operate the same as summon spells (can give detailed directions verbally as no action, or they do nothing but defend themselves) would have unbalanced anything if applied to familiars as it does to steeds and summons (beast master rangers are another question, but that should be addressed by either not publishing them, or by balancing the rest of their abilities around the way that allies "work" in general, rather than making them work differently for one specific class than everyone else).
And as for bringing your horse into the lab... you know what else doesn't have opposable thumbs? Any of the basic familiars :)
I think that the point of the Familiar having its own position in initiative is to prevent the meta gaming of things like the help action. It is intelligent and acts independently from you, and while it obeys your commands it uses its own personality and may not always obey in the exact way that you expect. Every other creature has to deal with the inconvenience of unpredictable initiative order, familiars are exactly the same and may not always be able to act immediately before their master.
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Find Familiar says that familiars roll their own initiative and have their own turns separate from the PC. I can't think of any good reasons why this would be the case. They can't attack normally, so the primary thing they use their action for is Help. You can cast a spell through the familiar, but it must be a touch spell and it uses your own action (and familiar's reaction) and happens on your turn. If you are a PoC Warlock the familiar can attack, but again it uses your action (and the familiar's reaction) and happens on your turn.
Giving the familiar it's own turn adds complexity and takes up extra table time with few benefits. It means that using a touch spell through the familiar is more difficult since you need to set up the familiar's movement next to the target prior to your turn (and hope the enemy doesn't move or kill the familiar in the meantime), making something that's already rarely useful less so. Same with letting the familiar attack, an ability that is only comparable to your own attacks prior to getting a second eldritch blast at 5th level. Having the familiar use help on it's own turn does mean it might give advantage to an ally instead of you, which may or may not be useful, depending on initiative order.
Is there something I've missed, or does it save a lot of hassle and complexity to have the familiar share your turn, with minimal change to game-play?
I think you got all the highlights.
It's a definite increase in power for the spellcaster if the familiar doesn't get it's own turn because it greatly reduces the risk to the familiar when delivering touch spells. Normally the familiar would have to hang out in a threatened space for a round to deliver a touch spell. If it acts on the caster's turn then the familiar can do silly things like fly in, deliver spell, disengage, fly away. It seems like you view the restriction on delivering touch spells as a negative, but I think it's intentional because touch spells tend to be more powerful than their ranged counterparts.
I think the best compromise is having the familiar get it's own turn but act on the same initiative as the caster.
I'm pretty sure the intent is to make it hard to use the familiar in combat. Mearls has mentioned that adding creatures to the party is powerful so they're being very careful with abilities that give you helpers (which is probably why the Beast Master Ranger turned out underwhelming.) Also, consistently delivering touch spells from a distance or automatically giving yourself advantage on attack rolls easily would make Find Familiar to good to pass up and really step on class features like Distant Spell or Tides of Chaos.
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I guess I was thinking of it from the point of view of my warlock, where I think there's only one offensive spell with a range of touch (that I don't know), and my familiar is invisible most of the time anyway
It is in fact so cumbersome to have a familiar take up a random initiative slot doing nothing, that I often don't bring my familiars "out" at all. The fact that familiars, mounts, animal companions, and summoned creatures all interact with initiative and action economy differently, despite serving essentially the same purpose, is endlessly frustrating.
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But they don't serve "essentially the same purpose." You don't use a horse to scout or spy and you don't use a familiar as a mount. Each ability that gives you an NPC helper is tailored to the purpose that helper is meant to serve.
The Forum Infestation (TM)
Paladin's mounts are better familiars than familiars are, and I really don't see what purpose that was tailored to serve. Familiars are weak enough to be wholly irrelevant in combat, can't attack without stealing your action, can't communicate with you telepathically or otherwise in a useful manner, are tethered far closer to you than a paladin steed is, can't understand a language, and aren't any more intelligent than a regular critter. Overall, a paladin's steed makes a far better laboratory assistant or scout than a familiar does, in addition to also being able to operate as either a fully independent ally in combat (if uncontrolled) or a sweet pair of wheels (if controlled), all without sucking up your actions.
It doesn't feel like the same team wrote the rules for steeds and familiars with a coherent objective in mind, but rather like one team did a "better job" at it than another without them sharing notes.
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I'm going to make this way harder than it needs to be.
You bring up some valid points, but seem to be mostly considering the combat applications of familiars. Definitely the mount is superior in combat, but the familiar's primary use in combat is to either hell attacks or search and report enemy positions to you. These are awesome, valuable actions that you can order your familiar to take in combat (no action required *cough* beastmaster *cough*).
Outside of combat I think the familiar is better than the mount. Outside of combat, the mount is literally just a mount and maybe an extra pair of eyes. Familiar's are awesome for scouting. You can't see through a mount's eyes using its senses. Mounts are all at least medium size. It's hard to miss the mastiff walking down the hallway, but pretty easy to overlook the rat. The mount can't be dismissed to a pocket dimension when you don't need it. If you lose it, the familiar can be summoned with a ritual saving you a spell slot.
I'm not sure what you mean when you say that a familiar can't communicate telepathically in a useful manner. Within 100' it can communicate telepathically, it always obeys your commands, and even beast level intelligences can communicate simple things (just look at the speak with animals spell).
As far as being a better laboratory assistant, none of the mount options have opposable thumbs.
I mean, you can sort of hand-wave away a lack of common language when you're telepathically bonded with something so as to allow basic concepts to be exchanged, but you can't handwave away the intelligence score: it's just a regular crab, apart from creature type. Certainly it can communicate simple [crab] things, but when you send your crab scuttling up onto the pirate's ship to scout, it probably can't really tell you much more than whether there are "some humanoids," much less the complexities of what those humanoids might be doing to each other or saying, or which ones are pirates vs. captives (what do crabs know about ropes? can a crab tell the difference between a canon and a barrel? would a crab be able to tell the difference between a closed door and a wall?). There are certainly some situations where an animal-level intelligence might tell you some useful things (bear in cave: yes or no?), but there's also a lot of more complex situations where literally sending your unaccompanied horse steed wandering down the dock to eavesdrop and glance on board will be more useful, despite it sticking out like a sore thumb. I'm not really arguing that steeds are always better scouts than familiars... but I certainly do not agree that there is any design element or concept that requires that steeds have humanoid-level intelligence where familiars do not, the ability to understand common, and the ability to report back and receive further directions within 1 mile while a wizard's helper has precisely none of those advantages. And on the action economy side, I do not think that having all allies operate the same as summon spells (can give detailed directions verbally as no action, or they do nothing but defend themselves) would have unbalanced anything if applied to familiars as it does to steeds and summons (beast master rangers are another question, but that should be addressed by either not publishing them, or by balancing the rest of their abilities around the way that allies "work" in general, rather than making them work differently for one specific class than everyone else).
And as for bringing your horse into the lab... you know what else doesn't have opposable thumbs? Any of the basic familiars :)
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I'm going to make this way harder than it needs to be.
I think that the point of the Familiar having its own position in initiative is to prevent the meta gaming of things like the help action. It is intelligent and acts independently from you, and while it obeys your commands it uses its own personality and may not always obey in the exact way that you expect. Every other creature has to deal with the inconvenience of unpredictable initiative order, familiars are exactly the same and may not always be able to act immediately before their master.