Hey Everyone, fairly new to 5E and can't seem to find any information regarding "actions" familiars can take. One of my players claims familiars can "assist" their owner every round giving them advantage on attacks or distracting enemies giving them disadvantage on attacks without any sort of save being involved. Searching through the slew of books and materials I can't seem to find this rule anywhere. Does anyone know where to find the rule or if it even exists? In my mind it seems overly powerful to have constant advantage or disadvantage.
The spell Find Familiar says that the familiar can take all actions as normal except for the Attack action. This means it can do all the same actions a player can that don't involve attacking. The one your player is referring to is the Help action (and it only helps allies - it doesn't hinder enemies).
Delivering touch spells (Owl has flyby, so it is most often taken)
SPYING. You can see through it's eyes within 100 ft of you and you can dismiss it as an action then call it back anywhere within 30 ft of you. Per RAW it is within 30 ft of you, nothing mentioned about line of sight. So unless your DM house rules (confirm with him before you try it), that means you can summon him behind a locked door, or even inside a locked chest (if he is small enough - use a spider for tiny darkvision).
Yeah, the normal use of a familiar in combat is to grant one ally advantage on one attack per round. This is pretty awesome early on, though it becomes less useful around level 5 when multiattack becomes normal. And using it well requires the owl familiar which can use flyby to go out of range of counterattacks without triggering opportunity attacks.
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Hey Everyone, fairly new to 5E and can't seem to find any information regarding "actions" familiars can take. One of my players claims familiars can "assist" their owner every round giving them advantage on attacks or distracting enemies giving them disadvantage on attacks without any sort of save being involved. Searching through the slew of books and materials I can't seem to find this rule anywhere. Does anyone know where to find the rule or if it even exists? In my mind it seems overly powerful to have constant advantage or disadvantage.
The spell Find Familiar says that the familiar can take all actions as normal except for the Attack action. This means it can do all the same actions a player can that don't involve attacking. The one your player is referring to is the Help action (and it only helps allies - it doesn't hinder enemies).
For more info take a look here: https://www.dndbeyond.com/sources/basic-rules/combat#ActionsinCombat
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Normal things you use a familiar for:
Yeah, the normal use of a familiar in combat is to grant one ally advantage on one attack per round. This is pretty awesome early on, though it becomes less useful around level 5 when multiattack becomes normal. And using it well requires the owl familiar which can use flyby to go out of range of counterattacks without triggering opportunity attacks.