Lord almighty. How I despise the spell. It seems to gets abused to high heaven. It's a fur-covered equivalent of a ten foot pole. Checking anything remotely risky from a distance. The material components are quite cheap and can be bought in bulk if need be.
My familiar goes into this room. Now into this room. It goes to the left window. Beep boop. What do I see? Pet gets destroyed. Zero emotional attachment. Guess I'll resummon it later.
No risk. All reward. Also, let's forget about high damage "Touch" spells that can be cast from a distance using a pet proxy. I always figured the damage on something like "Inflict Wounds" was so high because it required "Touch". Making it risky for casters to use, but high damage as a reward to chance it.
As a new DM I'd greatly appreciate if it you guys could give some advice to reign in the absolute abuse of "Find Familiar" I've been experiencing. It breaks my heart to see the stealth/perception optimized rogue chill in the back because magical Steve Irwin over here gonna wheel in his magical animal like a remote controlled scout.
Overall, I don't have many problems with either DMing or using familiars. The most common usage in the games I have played is usually an owl with the flyby feature using the help action to grant advantage on an attack against the creature. Works great for rogues - particularly an arcane trickster.
Keep in mind that ..
- familiars can't open doors.
- in order to for a player to see what the familiar sees they have to spend their action to see through the familiars senses and they are blind and deaf while doing so. If the party gets attacked while the wizard is scouting with their familiar, the wizard won't know anything about it until they get bitten or a party member shoves them ... though even then they still won't know why they were shoved. Otherwise they can communicate telepathically but familiars aren't smart and the description of what they see would be approximate at best.
- if a familiar sets off a trap then they are likely dead and it takes an hour to cast the spell to summon another one. If a party thinks they can safely stop for an hour to summon up another familiar ... it is an opportunity to teach them otherwise.
- Most AoE spells or traps will instantly kill a familiar whether they pass a save or not
- familiars are usually just small animals - small animals are food for other animals. A dog or cat that wouldn't even look at the party will happily munch on a familiar. Dungeons are full of rats which means that the inhabitants may have cats and other creatures to keep the pests under control. Coincidentally, most of these are threats to a familiar. I wouldn't use it all the time but you need to make your players understand that a cute little owl with one hit point doesn't last long flying through a dungeon where a cat or another flying predator might be living. As DM, all you have to do is roll a die and then tell the wizard that the familiar is dead. In all likelihood the familiar might not even have seen the cat or other creature coming. Unfortunately for the predator, a familiar doesn't leave a body behind but the party might find some sign of the attack if they have someone good with the survival skill.
Anyway, using a familiar to scout to perform the help action are both excellent uses of the familiar but they don't act as a risk free get out of jail free card - they may offer useful information but there is a risk associated and if a familiar is killed scouting it won't be available for combat.
Edit: Ninja'd. Clearly I take too long writing posts...
Remember that Find Familiar has costly material components. (10 gp worth of charcoal, incense, and herbs that must be consumed by fire in a brass brazier)
It's up to you how you handle material components at your table, but restricting access to uncommon components is a strong way to make casters conservative. 10gp either represents a TON of regular charcoal and herb, or a small amount of very rare herbs, either of which present their own challenges.
Aside from that, Familiars are indeed potent, but a House rule that I've seen implemented is that unless a player has proficiency in a particular skill, they simply aren't capable of attempting certain checks or achieving exceptional results. For example, an Owl is proficient in Perception and Stealth, but isn't proficient in Investigation or Knowledge checks. Sure, it can jump from room to room, but it could very easily miss traps, hidden doors, treasure in plain sight, because it doesn't know what those are.
If the Caster is actively seeing through the Familiar's senses, they are Blind and Deaf. Getting ambushed or triggering a trap while blind to your own senses can get the caster in a whole world of pain. They might have someone tap on their shoulder to get their attention, but that's still a full round of Dex checks that automatically fail (Initiative, Acrobatics, etc).
Beyond that, if the familiar is simply flitting from room to room, just keep the doors closed and latched. People, especially those who are at risk of being ransacked, don't just leave their bedroom doors swung open. Locks are cheap, alarms can be set, doors can be squeaky, opposable thumbs work wonders.
In Feudal Japan, Nightingale Floors were thought to have been used as an ancient security device, though perhaps not intentionally. It would be easy to imagine similar practices being used that only a trained rogue would know how to circumvent safely.
10 gp is not really cheap (unless you throw mountains of gold at your players). Most starting classes and backgrounds would only be able to afford one casting of the spell, if that. Besides, AoE spells are the familiars bane in combat. a fireball dropped in the range of the PC usually catches the familiar, and their low hp almost always guarantees they die.
My favorite PC of mine is a Sorlock with pact of the chain. He's blind (has a special trait that gives him 60' of blindsight) and uses his invisible familiar for normal sight when not in combat. Having the familiar has never really been an issue with my DM, and he's died about 6 times so far.
If a player is constantly getting their Familiar killed and re-summoning it, the Familiar might get kind of annoyed. Remember that a Familiar is a spirit manifesting as some small animal. They are intelligent and have minds of their own. Some fairly amusing roleplay can revolve around a player's Familiar deciding to get a little payback for being abused.
Familiars have to obey the orders they are given, but nothing prevents them from obeying the letter of their instructions while perverting the spirit of them. You might have the Familiar constantly wandering off, doing its own thing, and making the party sit on their thumbs while the player waits for their furry 10 foot pole to stop chasing butterflies and come back into the dungeon. You might have the Familiar intentionally alert monsters to the presence of the party. You might have the Familiar burn the player's spellbook while they are sleeping. You might have the Familiar put poison in the player's tea.
As for being used as a delivery system for touch spells, if you feel that the player does that too often, use monsters that are smart enough to kill Familiars before they can deliver their spell. It will probably only take one hit, and there went 10 gold and an entire hour spent casting.
Killing the familiar is easily worth 10 gp. Unless your DM is really cheap with the treasure.
But you left out the absolute worst part of the spell:
As an action while it is temporarily dismissed, you can cause it to reappear in any unoccupied space within 30 feet of you.
Note the lack of anything about line of sight. Per RAW it is totally legal to summon spider familiar INSIDE a locked safe, chest or on the other side of a locked door. The spider can use it's darkvision and you can see through it.
I agree completely with OP. Find Familiar has more or less removed the entire exploration pillar from the game. Sure I could contrive something to kill the familiar or shoehorn a door here or there, but then that would be me being adversarial for the sake of shutting down the player and I don’t care for that.
Enemies hiding behind those trees? Send in the owl. Need a high-altitude view of how the town is laid out? Send in the owl. Need to know if the orc army is marching five miles to the East? Send in the owl.
And it really doesn’t matter if the owl goes out of telepathy range because the forest gnome can speak with animals to get the info when it returns.
...and don’t even get me started on dragon’s breath.
It helps to look at the spell closely instead of shorthanding it. Players tend to use the familiar as an extension of themselves, but keep in mind:
It's a (celestial/fey/fiendish) animal, with animal level intelligence. I can tell my doggo "get the ball! get the ball! go get it get the ball!" and he understands that pretty well. If I tell him "put the ball in your basket! do it, put it away, put the ball away in the basket!" he can totally understand what I'm asking him to do, but he doesn't always listen to me if he's got different ideas.... but as a Familiar, he would ("it always obeys your commands.") Great. But if I told my dog "go down to the grocery store, look to see if they have balls, and if they have a ball that's red and larger than a grapefuit but smaller than a watermellon bring it directly back to me," even if he could understand me and wanted to obey, I really doubt the poor guy would have the intelligence to follow through and not get distracted. Your familiar is a cat, or a bat, or a rat, or whatever..... and just because it understands you, and wants to obey you, doesn't mean it has the capacity to perform complex scouting or object manipulation behaviors that involve intuition, decision making, or complex concepts.
Really an extension of the above, but.... all rats look the same to me. Maybe if I had a pet rat, I could tell that rat from other rats, but even then I doubt I'd be able to easily tell Random Rat A from Random Rat B, or a Norwegian Wharf Rat from a Roof Rat from a Whathaveyou Rat. This is because I'm not a rat, so rat faces aren't really something I'm wired to recognize. "I send my hawk to scout the village, does it see any raiders?" is assuming a lot about the Hawk's ability to tell humanoids from one another, interpret clothing, or understand the signifigance of humanoid behaviors. Do children playing tag look different from a bandit chasing a baker to a tiny bird?
You can communicate with your animal, meaning, you can make yourself understood to it. That is not to say that it can communicate with you, meaning, tell you what it has seen. Unless you are using the ability that rides its senses, after that bat comes back from scouting the cave all its going to be able to do is chirp excitedly at you ("squeek once for danger, or twice for no danger!""), so multiple choice questions may be all you get out of it (and who knows how good/long a small animal's memory is?)
Communicating with a familiar, and it obeying you, is not the same as controlling it. Complex maneuvering of the familiar while it's out of sight and communication range should not be assumed, make the player describe to you what they've actually told the creature to do, and keeping in mind its poor intelligence, narratte appropriately. No course corrections allowed, unless the master is watching through its eyes and in communication range!
The intent of all of this is not to find ways to sabotage the player or frustrate them... it's to remind them, "you have a magical pet toad, act like it." It isn't a drone, it isn't a MiniMe, it isn't a helpful little sprite (which is why ChainLocks are actually cool!).... it's a Toad. It can do Toad things for you, and is eager to help, but there's a lot of dangers and complexities of the world that a Toad just simply can't grasp or help with. Creative use of Toad things is encouraged, metagaming is not.
well, i also agree with what's been said. to my understanding, fey are a pretty fickle bunch and if it is continuously dying, perhaps a roll to determine how pissed off it is might help. i also think it's okay to not have full control over it until like, 3rd level. it might be bound to its summoner but it doesn't have to like it, especially when it's a stranger at the beginning. maybe some downtime actions are also needed to become for familiar with the familiar. i also think mercer (and probably others) does a decent job of interpreting what the creature can understand.
but put it into context for a player: you have this great tool, you're probably squishy as hell if you have it unless you get it at higher levels...why WOULDN'T you use it a lot? if you have +2 arrows, aren't you going to use them? i think just make yourself clear at the outset on how you will allow the familiar to be used in your game, and you'll be okay. it CAN be annoying for the DM (i'm a newbie DM too) but we literally create the parameters to either allow it, disallow it, or configure it how we want. good luck!
Just remember, this is a 2-way street. Have a villain track the party via familiar, or get them with a spell. A trained guard could look out for animals that are out of place, and most would shoot a Iarge spider on sight.
I like the idea of natural limitations brought up, like lack of hands to open doors, doing its best to obey with limited understanding (like, it can't pick a lock), hour casting time, AoE, etc. I feel it's reasonable to have it do things that a highly trained animal can do. And trained animals are impressive.
However, if the DM started having my familiar sabotage the party, or nerfed the spell itself, I would feel somewhat blindsided. I would definitely speak to the DM after the session to ask what was going on. Hopefully we could reach an understanding.
Perhaps this is less a spell problem, and more a spotlight problem. Does the rogue feel under utilized? Do they want to be a scout, or did they take on the role because they felt the party needed one?
You could also suggest the rogue and wizard work together more. The rogue could take the familiar out of range and send it back like a homing pidgeon.
There could be a lot of solutions, depending on how your players feel. Checking in with your players is vital here.
Again, Critical Role does this well. Frumpkin is a cat first and foremost, even when he’s an Octopus. And he has a relationship with the rest of the party like a friendly cat would.
Just a quick comment ... but I completely disagree with the folks suggesting to interfere with the familiar mechanics or make it difficult to use by imposing limits on communications/understanding/interest/willingness to perform the instructed actions. A DM can do this if they want but the spell specifically says:
"You gain the service of a familiar, a spirit that takes an animal form you choose:"
"Appearing in an unoccupied space within range, the familiar has the statistics of the chosen form, though it is a celestial, fey, or fiend (your choice) instead of a beast."
"Your familiar acts independently of you, but it always obeys your commands. In combat, it rolls its own initiative and acts on its own turn."
"While your familiar is within 100 feet of you, you can communicate with it telepathically. Additionally, as an action, you can see through your familiar's eyes and hear what it hears until the start of your next turn. gaining the benefits of any special senses that the familiar has."
I usually interpret this to mean exactly what is says. You CAN communicate. It understands you, you understand it. You can tell it what to do. Within reason it can tell you what it sees though the response may be limited by its intelligence unless you are using its senses to also see in which case you see/hear what the familiar does. It will also do whatever you ask, it obeys your commands. It isn't, in my understanding, a spirit with free will chafing under the commands of the wizard who summoned it (though that is certainly an option if a DM wants to run it that way).
I also don't think a DM needs to turn to methods like these if a player chooses to use their familiar as intended - the DM has many more tools that are far more effective if they want to deal with a familiar than trying to make it mechanically useless.
Just a quick comment ... but I completely disagree with the folks suggesting to interfere with the familiar mechanics or make it difficult to use by imposing limits on communications/understanding/interest/willingness to perform the instructed actions. A DM can do this if they want but the spell specifically says:
"You gain the service of a familiar, a spirit that takes an animal form you choose:"
"Appearing in an unoccupied space within range, the familiar has the statistics of the chosen form, though it is a celestial, fey, or fiend (your choice) instead of a beast."
"Your familiar acts independently of you, but it always obeys your commands. In combat, it rolls its own initiative and acts on its own turn."
"While your familiar is within 100 feet of you, you can communicate with it telepathically. Additionally, as an action, you can see through your familiar's eyes and hear what it hears until the start of your next turn. gaining the benefits of any special senses that the familiar has."
I usually interpret this to mean exactly what is says. You CAN communicate. It understands you, you understand it. You can tell it what to do. Within reason it can tell you what it sees though the response may be limited by its intelligence unless you are using its senses to also see in which case you see/hear what the familiar does. It will also do whatever you ask, it obeys your commands. It isn't, in my understanding, a spirit with free will chafing under the commands of the
You’re right of course but it also doesn’t say right away or that the spirit has to like it. There is room for interpretation there. Clearly this would be avoided through open communication with your player.
I don't have a problem with people using a familiar to deliver a damage or heal spell. If the enemy catches on, the familiar dies. The problem I have is definitely with exploration and detection of enemies. My player uses a bat and it can detect enemies all to well. It never does anything out of the ordinary and is generally undetected itself. No reason to kill it off. I also believe the reading of the spell describes a level of communication between the caster and the familiar that is sufficiently clear for simple commands to be understood and results reported. The bat reports anything it considers a disturbance and the players check it out. If necessary, the caster looks through the familiar's senses for detail.
If the problem is with scouting, there are many counters. Closed doors are a major problem for familiars, but also the fact that adversaries would notice unusual creatures. Bats are nice, but would not be active during the day, for example. And even at night it might be a bit suspicious to see a lone bat in a lot of places. A bat has +2 to stealth anyway, which is not much for an alert sentry. And their skills never increase, which means that at medium+ level, they are almost always spotted by not too stupid adversaries. And their senses also become too low to spot an ambush or a trap.
The problem is probably more with the competition with rogues at low level, but even then the lack of intelligence of a familiar and lack of skills make them less useful than a skillfull scout. Where they shine is for airborne scouting, but there is no concurrence here from other party members anyway.
This is the relevant issue. Outdoors, the bat is a menace detector without bounds, night has been it's cover. It did miss half a map's worth of enemies once but, that was on the player's mismanagement. :P
If you are really upset about the use of familiars as a DM, talk to your players, agree to a standard of what you are OK with a familiar being able to do and what uses you want to prevent.
Then give your player the opportunity to decide if that is still worth taking a feat, learning the spell, or making a pact.
I would find that very unfair, if you just turn the familiar against the player (and the character), without explaining why you do so and giving the player an 'out'.
Just my two cents (feel free to rule differently in your games):
Obedience: Familiars summoned by find familiaralways try to fulfill their owner's commands to the best of their ability, and do not question or attempt to subvert those commands due to things like self-preservation. The only reason a summoned familiar would not fulfill their casters command is if they lack the ability or intelligence to do so (see below). This applies to standard familiars as well as those summoned by pact of the chain.
Live familiars (which typically have greater intelligence than the animals summoned by the base spell) will ignore or disobey an order due to danger (they are alive, and will absolutely practice self-preservation), or if the order is against the creature's alignment, or if their relationship with their PC is poor (due to mistreatment or constant disregard for the familiar's safety)
Ability: Summoned (and live) familiars will be able to perform any action that could be easily interpreted as a standard action available to them, (dodge, disengage, help, etc), any action available via the spell description (deliver a spell, etc), or that could be construed as "natural" to the creatures form (fly around and spot other creatures for an owl, retrieve something lodged in a tiny crack for a rat, eat a bug for a toad, etc). the smarter familiars summoned by pact of the chain warlocks work the same way, but typically have greater abilities (imps and sprites could open doors, imps can turn invisible, for example). In all cases, the ability to perform a command is also helped (or hindered) by the creatures intelligence. Octopi could feasibly open a door, so long as the command was described in the right way (Instead of "open a door", it could be "squeeze under this thing and turn the lever on the other side") but that is due to their above average animal intelligence and their demonstrated IRL abilities to learn and perform those actions.
Intelligence: All familiars are limited by their intelligence. A command of "search the area for enemies" will likely be lost on a typical familiar, or they might respond in a way that is typical for their form. (a raven may search for hawks or other predators, a mouse might search for cats or snakes, etc). smarter familiars (like imps and pseudodragons) would be able to interpret that command more accurately, as they have human or near-human intelligence.
If it was a normal NPC instead of a familiar and they were treated like cannon fodder, would you likewise get upset at the NPC reacting negatively to it?
Is that normal NPC an immortal spirit that only manifests in a physical body?
A familiar in folk tales is a trusted ally, a creature that uncompromisingly sides with its 'master'. I can see them 'banter' with each other, but a familiar would always act for the benefit of the master.
That being said, this topic - at the core - is about a DM having problem with a game mechanic. The only reasonable way to address this - imho - is to set expectations between everyone in that game.
I can even see how the same DM may object to a familiar and agree to one, depending on the type of campaign they are planning for. Again, this is something that all participants should be aware of and agree to.
Lord almighty. How I despise the spell. It seems to gets abused to high heaven.
It's a fur-covered equivalent of a ten foot pole. Checking anything remotely risky from a distance.
The material components are quite cheap and can be bought in bulk if need be.
Familiars die.
Overall, I don't have many problems with either DMing or using familiars. The most common usage in the games I have played is usually an owl with the flyby feature using the help action to grant advantage on an attack against the creature. Works great for rogues - particularly an arcane trickster.
Keep in mind that ..
- familiars can't open doors.
- in order to for a player to see what the familiar sees they have to spend their action to see through the familiars senses and they are blind and deaf while doing so. If the party gets attacked while the wizard is scouting with their familiar, the wizard won't know anything about it until they get bitten or a party member shoves them ... though even then they still won't know why they were shoved. Otherwise they can communicate telepathically but familiars aren't smart and the description of what they see would be approximate at best.
- if a familiar sets off a trap then they are likely dead and it takes an hour to cast the spell to summon another one. If a party thinks they can safely stop for an hour to summon up another familiar ... it is an opportunity to teach them otherwise.
- Most AoE spells or traps will instantly kill a familiar whether they pass a save or not
- familiars are usually just small animals - small animals are food for other animals. A dog or cat that wouldn't even look at the party will happily munch on a familiar. Dungeons are full of rats which means that the inhabitants may have cats and other creatures to keep the pests under control. Coincidentally, most of these are threats to a familiar. I wouldn't use it all the time but you need to make your players understand that a cute little owl with one hit point doesn't last long flying through a dungeon where a cat or another flying predator might be living. As DM, all you have to do is roll a die and then tell the wizard that the familiar is dead. In all likelihood the familiar might not even have seen the cat or other creature coming. Unfortunately for the predator, a familiar doesn't leave a body behind but the party might find some sign of the attack if they have someone good with the survival skill.
Anyway, using a familiar to scout to perform the help action are both excellent uses of the familiar but they don't act as a risk free get out of jail free card - they may offer useful information but there is a risk associated and if a familiar is killed scouting it won't be available for combat.
Edit: Ninja'd. Clearly I take too long writing posts...
Remember that Find Familiar has costly material components. (10 gp worth of charcoal, incense, and herbs that must be consumed by fire in a brass brazier)
It's up to you how you handle material components at your table, but restricting access to uncommon components is a strong way to make casters conservative. 10gp either represents a TON of regular charcoal and herb, or a small amount of very rare herbs, either of which present their own challenges.
Aside from that, Familiars are indeed potent, but a House rule that I've seen implemented is that unless a player has proficiency in a particular skill, they simply aren't capable of attempting certain checks or achieving exceptional results. For example, an Owl is proficient in Perception and Stealth, but isn't proficient in Investigation or Knowledge checks. Sure, it can jump from room to room, but it could very easily miss traps, hidden doors, treasure in plain sight, because it doesn't know what those are.
If the Caster is actively seeing through the Familiar's senses, they are Blind and Deaf. Getting ambushed or triggering a trap while blind to your own senses can get the caster in a whole world of pain. They might have someone tap on their shoulder to get their attention, but that's still a full round of Dex checks that automatically fail (Initiative, Acrobatics, etc).
Beyond that, if the familiar is simply flitting from room to room, just keep the doors closed and latched. People, especially those who are at risk of being ransacked, don't just leave their bedroom doors swung open. Locks are cheap, alarms can be set, doors can be squeaky, opposable thumbs work wonders.
In Feudal Japan, Nightingale Floors were thought to have been used as an ancient security device, though perhaps not intentionally. It would be easy to imagine similar practices being used that only a trained rogue would know how to circumvent safely.
10 gp is not really cheap (unless you throw mountains of gold at your players). Most starting classes and backgrounds would only be able to afford one casting of the spell, if that. Besides, AoE spells are the familiars bane in combat. a fireball dropped in the range of the PC usually catches the familiar, and their low hp almost always guarantees they die.
My favorite PC of mine is a Sorlock with pact of the chain. He's blind (has a special trait that gives him 60' of blindsight) and uses his invisible familiar for normal sight when not in combat. Having the familiar has never really been an issue with my DM, and he's died about 6 times so far.
If a player is constantly getting their Familiar killed and re-summoning it, the Familiar might get kind of annoyed. Remember that a Familiar is a spirit manifesting as some small animal. They are intelligent and have minds of their own. Some fairly amusing roleplay can revolve around a player's Familiar deciding to get a little payback for being abused.
Familiars have to obey the orders they are given, but nothing prevents them from obeying the letter of their instructions while perverting the spirit of them. You might have the Familiar constantly wandering off, doing its own thing, and making the party sit on their thumbs while the player waits for their furry 10 foot pole to stop chasing butterflies and come back into the dungeon. You might have the Familiar intentionally alert monsters to the presence of the party. You might have the Familiar burn the player's spellbook while they are sleeping. You might have the Familiar put poison in the player's tea.
As for being used as a delivery system for touch spells, if you feel that the player does that too often, use monsters that are smart enough to kill Familiars before they can deliver their spell. It will probably only take one hit, and there went 10 gold and an entire hour spent casting.
<Insert clever signature here>
Killing the familiar is easily worth 10 gp. Unless your DM is really cheap with the treasure.
But you left out the absolute worst part of the spell:
Note the lack of anything about line of sight. Per RAW it is totally legal to summon spider familiar INSIDE a locked safe, chest or on the other side of a locked door. The spider can use it's darkvision and you can see through it.
Very good non-combat spell.
I agree completely with OP. Find Familiar has more or less removed the entire exploration pillar from the game. Sure I could contrive something to kill the familiar or shoehorn a door here or there, but then that would be me being adversarial for the sake of shutting down the player and I don’t care for that.
Enemies hiding behind those trees? Send in the owl. Need a high-altitude view of how the town is laid out? Send in the owl. Need to know if the orc army is marching five miles to the East? Send in the owl.
And it really doesn’t matter if the owl goes out of telepathy range because the forest gnome can speak with animals to get the info when it returns.
...and don’t even get me started on dragon’s breath.
"Not all those who wander are lost"
It helps to look at the spell closely instead of shorthanding it. Players tend to use the familiar as an extension of themselves, but keep in mind:
The intent of all of this is not to find ways to sabotage the player or frustrate them... it's to remind them, "you have a magical pet toad, act like it." It isn't a drone, it isn't a MiniMe, it isn't a helpful little sprite (which is why ChainLocks are actually cool!).... it's a Toad. It can do Toad things for you, and is eager to help, but there's a lot of dangers and complexities of the world that a Toad just simply can't grasp or help with. Creative use of Toad things is encouraged, metagaming is not.
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I'm going to make this way harder than it needs to be.
well, i also agree with what's been said. to my understanding, fey are a pretty fickle bunch and if it is continuously dying, perhaps a roll to determine how pissed off it is might help. i also think it's okay to not have full control over it until like, 3rd level. it might be bound to its summoner but it doesn't have to like it, especially when it's a stranger at the beginning. maybe some downtime actions are also needed to become for familiar with the familiar. i also think mercer (and probably others) does a decent job of interpreting what the creature can understand.
but put it into context for a player: you have this great tool, you're probably squishy as hell if you have it unless you get it at higher levels...why WOULDN'T you use it a lot? if you have +2 arrows, aren't you going to use them? i think just make yourself clear at the outset on how you will allow the familiar to be used in your game, and you'll be okay. it CAN be annoying for the DM (i'm a newbie DM too) but we literally create the parameters to either allow it, disallow it, or configure it how we want. good luck!
DM - And In The Darkness, Rot: The Sunless Citadel
DM - Our Little Lives Kept In Equipoise: Curse of Strahd
DM - Misprize Thou Not These Shadows That Belong: The Lost Mines of Phandelver
PC - Azzure - Tyranny of Dragons
Just remember, this is a 2-way street. Have a villain track the party via familiar, or get them with a spell. A trained guard could look out for animals that are out of place, and most would shoot a Iarge spider on sight.
I like the idea of natural limitations brought up, like lack of hands to open doors, doing its best to obey with limited understanding (like, it can't pick a lock), hour casting time, AoE, etc. I feel it's reasonable to have it do things that a highly trained animal can do. And trained animals are impressive.
However, if the DM started having my familiar sabotage the party, or nerfed the spell itself, I would feel somewhat blindsided. I would definitely speak to the DM after the session to ask what was going on. Hopefully we could reach an understanding.
Perhaps this is less a spell problem, and more a spotlight problem. Does the rogue feel under utilized? Do they want to be a scout, or did they take on the role because they felt the party needed one?
You could also suggest the rogue and wizard work together more. The rogue could take the familiar out of range and send it back like a homing pidgeon.
There could be a lot of solutions, depending on how your players feel. Checking in with your players is vital here.
Again, Critical Role does this well. Frumpkin is a cat first and foremost, even when he’s an Octopus. And he has a relationship with the rest of the party like a friendly cat would.
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I'm going to make this way harder than it needs to be.
Just a quick comment ... but I completely disagree with the folks suggesting to interfere with the familiar mechanics or make it difficult to use by imposing limits on communications/understanding/interest/willingness to perform the instructed actions. A DM can do this if they want but the spell specifically says:
"You gain the service of a familiar, a spirit that takes an animal form you choose:"
"Appearing in an unoccupied space within range, the familiar has the statistics of the chosen form, though it is a celestial, fey, or fiend (your choice) instead of a beast."
"Your familiar acts independently of you, but it always obeys your commands. In combat, it rolls its own initiative and acts on its own turn."
"While your familiar is within 100 feet of you, you can communicate with it telepathically. Additionally, as an action, you can see through your familiar's eyes and hear what it hears until the start of your next turn. gaining the benefits of any special senses that the familiar has."
I usually interpret this to mean exactly what is says. You CAN communicate. It understands you, you understand it. You can tell it what to do. Within reason it can tell you what it sees though the response may be limited by its intelligence unless you are using its senses to also see in which case you see/hear what the familiar does. It will also do whatever you ask, it obeys your commands. It isn't, in my understanding, a spirit with free will chafing under the commands of the wizard who summoned it (though that is certainly an option if a DM wants to run it that way).
I also don't think a DM needs to turn to methods like these if a player chooses to use their familiar as intended - the DM has many more tools that are far more effective if they want to deal with a familiar than trying to make it mechanically useless.
You’re right of course but it also doesn’t say right away or that the spirit has to like it. There is room for interpretation there. Clearly this would be avoided through open communication with your player.
DM - And In The Darkness, Rot: The Sunless Citadel
DM - Our Little Lives Kept In Equipoise: Curse of Strahd
DM - Misprize Thou Not These Shadows That Belong: The Lost Mines of Phandelver
PC - Azzure - Tyranny of Dragons
I don't have a problem with people using a familiar to deliver a damage or heal spell. If the enemy catches on, the familiar dies. The problem I have is definitely with exploration and detection of enemies. My player uses a bat and it can detect enemies all to well. It never does anything out of the ordinary and is generally undetected itself. No reason to kill it off. I also believe the reading of the spell describes a level of communication between the caster and the familiar that is sufficiently clear for simple commands to be understood and results reported. The bat reports anything it considers a disturbance and the players check it out. If necessary, the caster looks through the familiar's senses for detail.
Great ability. Way too powerful for level 1.
As a DM you have plenty of options to counter Familiars and you can use them too against the players.
If you have a problem with scouting of rooms or areas: making use of alarm spells and illusions usually does the trick.
playing since 1986
This is the relevant issue. Outdoors, the bat is a menace detector without bounds, night has been it's cover. It did miss half a map's worth of enemies once but, that was on the player's mismanagement. :P
If you are really upset about the use of familiars as a DM, talk to your players, agree to a standard of what you are OK with a familiar being able to do and what uses you want to prevent.
Then give your player the opportunity to decide if that is still worth taking a feat, learning the spell, or making a pact.
I would find that very unfair, if you just turn the familiar against the player (and the character), without explaining why you do so and giving the player an 'out'.
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Just my two cents (feel free to rule differently in your games):
Obedience: Familiars summoned by find familiar always try to fulfill their owner's commands to the best of their ability, and do not question or attempt to subvert those commands due to things like self-preservation. The only reason a summoned familiar would not fulfill their casters command is if they lack the ability or intelligence to do so (see below). This applies to standard familiars as well as those summoned by pact of the chain.
Live familiars (which typically have greater intelligence than the animals summoned by the base spell) will ignore or disobey an order due to danger (they are alive, and will absolutely practice self-preservation), or if the order is against the creature's alignment, or if their relationship with their PC is poor (due to mistreatment or constant disregard for the familiar's safety)
Ability: Summoned (and live) familiars will be able to perform any action that could be easily interpreted as a standard action available to them, (dodge, disengage, help, etc), any action available via the spell description (deliver a spell, etc), or that could be construed as "natural" to the creatures form (fly around and spot other creatures for an owl, retrieve something lodged in a tiny crack for a rat, eat a bug for a toad, etc). the smarter familiars summoned by pact of the chain warlocks work the same way, but typically have greater abilities (imps and sprites could open doors, imps can turn invisible, for example). In all cases, the ability to perform a command is also helped (or hindered) by the creatures intelligence. Octopi could feasibly open a door, so long as the command was described in the right way (Instead of "open a door", it could be "squeeze under this thing and turn the lever on the other side") but that is due to their above average animal intelligence and their demonstrated IRL abilities to learn and perform those actions.
Intelligence: All familiars are limited by their intelligence. A command of "search the area for enemies" will likely be lost on a typical familiar, or they might respond in a way that is typical for their form. (a raven may search for hawks or other predators, a mouse might search for cats or snakes, etc). smarter familiars (like imps and pseudodragons) would be able to interpret that command more accurately, as they have human or near-human intelligence.
Is that normal NPC an immortal spirit that only manifests in a physical body?
A familiar in folk tales is a trusted ally, a creature that uncompromisingly sides with its 'master'. I can see them 'banter' with each other, but a familiar would always act for the benefit of the master.
That being said, this topic - at the core - is about a DM having problem with a game mechanic. The only reasonable way to address this - imho - is to set expectations between everyone in that game.
I can even see how the same DM may object to a familiar and agree to one, depending on the type of campaign they are planning for. Again, this is something that all participants should be aware of and agree to.
More Interesting Lock Picking Rules