My Kensei Monk and Eldritch Knight multi-class character is going to get the Find Familiar spell, I want a bird for the familiar and I am going to have it look like a Hawk... However, I am trying to decide between the stat block of Owl, Hawk or Raven.
Owl would be for the advantage of flyby, however as a Monk I'm going to be jumping in-and-out of combat a lot anyway and so my familiar would gain the same advantage by being on my shoulder, since as a "mount", it'll be moved by someone else's movement and thus won't provoke opportunity attacks (PHB 195 & Sage Advice).
Hawk because it is a Hawk, slightly higher AC and perception, but the most mundane of the three.
Raven for mimicry, which as far as I'm aware, let's me use my psychic bond to just flat out communicate with someone... also it gives my DM some role-play options because the Familiar may or may not have been sent by a God with as of yet unknown motives.
...Which makes me think I should go Raven but skinned as a Hawk (character's backstory... and mini), the fact that it is a celestial in a creature's form should be enough to overcome the barrier of a Hawk talking? ...Am I missing anything?
Maybe it's just a pet peeve of mine, but if a player comes to me asking to reskin something in the book to something else in the book, that's an automatic no.
Unless you're in a very different fantasy land, hawks have no history of being able to reproduce speech. My opinion is, if you want a hawk just choose a hawk. Alternatively, if you want a raven, retconning a backstory is not the worst thing you could do.
As far as the raven being able to talk for you, I think that's okay. You could easily teach your raven a rudimentary vocabulary from which you could communicate anything. The raven would still have to be less than 100 feet away when you communicate this way, so it's probably not that much of a boon anyways.
Idk about this "shoulder mount" and opportunity attack stuff. I have a digital version of the PHB so I can't go to specific page numbers (to my knowledge) but imo if you want a Hawk you get a Hawk, not a reskinned Owl or Raven.
My instinct is to say, if you want a Hawk, just go for Hawk... but honestly the Owl is so much more useful with its dark sight and flyby. Although the Owl abilities aren't too wild... I think I'd allow the reskin.
Owl is very useful for a spellcaster, to fly and deliver touch spells and then fly away. But if you're (mostly) a monk, Flyby probably won't be that useful for you since you're unlikely to be using them for that combat purpose.
If your backstory agitates for a Hawk, use a Hawk (or, if you want a slightly better/faster scout). If you want to talk through your familiar (cool), use a Raven. But I agree that it doesn't make a lot of sense to somehow have a talking Hawk.
I figured that I’d clarify what I meant by the ‘shoulder mounted’ thing.
Yes, I will want my familiar to be using the help action during combat and I’d be happy for it to be helping a teammate as much as me - in which case it’ll fly other so that it is also in base contact with the same enemy - my teammates tend to stay in base contact.
However, as mainly a monk, I’m going to be jumping in and out of base contact like nobodies business and when I do that, if I have my familiar occupying the same square as me (sacrificing half it’s movement on one round to land on my shoulder) - my familiar goes wherever I go and can still use the help action but not suffer Opportunity Attacks (Which makes sense for if I don’t go Owl/ want to make my familiar less of a target).
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Familiars have there own turn though and it has to be within 5 feet of an enemy in order to use help. So in order for this to work, either you have to end your turn within 5 feet of an enemy, or the familiar will have to travel to the enemy and back (more than likely the second one if the enemy moves before the familiar). Thus owl.
Familiars do generally have their own turn, as indeed creatures in general do. However, controlled mounts do not... if you just learn to surrender yourself to the hawk , perhaps you two can finally act as one glorious whole?
Really though, Dx is mostly right. A character takes a Help action on their own turn, in one of two ways: either A) you help a target within an unspecified range in an unspecified way, which somehow gives them advantage on their next ability check, or B) you mess with an enemy within 5 feet of you in some way which gives your ally advantage on their next attack against the same enemy. You don't have to stay 5 feet away from the enemy after messing with it, but you do have to be 5 feet away when you first do the harassing. So if your familiar's initiative is 15 and yours is 10, your hawk is going to have to leave your shoulder in order to go harass your target, then either fly back to you (Opportunity Attack) or wait for you to catch up (no longer a rider, potentially attacked).
I think that the way around this is to have your Familiar always ready their action to help you attack the next target that you walk within 5 feet of. You move up, it uses its reaction to interupt your turn to take the Help action against an enemy, you then take your Attack with advantage. That should work for a shoulder-mounted familiar.
Regarding your familiar being safe from opportunity attacks though... that's not quite right. If anything, calling you a "mount" for your Familiar is making it more vulnerable to OA's, because when a Mount triggers an OA with its movement, the attacker may choose whether to target Mount or Rider. It's the Mounted Combatant feat which allows Riders to always protect their Mounts... but I'm not aware of anything which lets the Mount always protect the Rider? Now, if it isn't riding you but instead merely being carried around against its will... forced movement does not provoke an OA, that's true. Where the line is drawn between willing forced movement and riding an uncontrolled mount is probably not a question that can be answered within the bounds of the rules text, because neither rule was designed to address tiny players being carried around in combat by wholly independent giant allies not controlled by class feature or spell.
Familiars have there own turn though and it has to be within 5 feet of an enemy in order to use help. So in order for this to work, either you have to end your turn within 5 feet of an enemy, or the familiar will have to travel to the enemy and back (more than likely the second one if the enemy moves before the familiar). Thus owl.
Familiars can Hold Actions as well, I could command it to hold an action until we are within 5ft of an enemy... but even better: Because held actions are triggered by external events I can command my familiar to hold the help action until I say so. On my turn I can then command an Advantage whenever I need it and my Familiar just uses their reaction.
I think that the way around this is to have your Familiar always ready their action to help you attack the next target that you walk within 5 feet of. You move up, it uses its reaction to interrupt your turn to take the Help action against an enemy, you then take your Attack with advantage. That should work for a shoulder-mounted familiar.
Regarding your familiar being safe from opportunity attacks though... that's not quite right. If anything, calling you a "mount" for your Familiar is making it more vulnerable to OA's, because when a Mount triggers an OA with its movement, the attacker may choose whether to target Mount or Rider. It's the Mounted Combatant feat which allows Riders to always protect their Mounts... but I'm not aware of anything which lets the Mount always protect the Rider? Now, if it isn't riding you but instead merely being carried around against its will... forced movement does not provoke an OA, that's true. Where the line is drawn between willing forced movement and riding an uncontrolled mount is probably not a question that can be answered within the bounds of the rules text, because neither rule was designed to address tiny players being carried around in combat by wholly independent giant allies not controlled by class feature or spell.
Yep Held Actions were how I was planning on getting around the turn order problem.
If I provoked an opportunity attack whilst my Familiar was on my shoulder, the attacker could chose... but as a Monk (and planning to take Mobile Feat), provoking an opportunity attack should be a rare occurrence. I will be Disengaging in some form or the other, therefore let me defer to Jeremy Crawford:
Sage Advice - 29 May 2015
Question: If a mount takes the Disengage action does the rider provoke opportunity attacks? Wording of PHB 198 (1/3)
Answer: No, since the mount isn't provoking them and the rider is being moved by someone else's movement (PH, 195).
Sage Advice doesn't trump rules text... but luckily that tweet is perfectly in line with the Mounted Combat rules. :) Just dont go conflating "the hawk doesn't provoke OAs" with "the hawk can't be targeted by OAs," which is the vibe I thought I picked up in the first post. If you do ever slip up and provoke an OA, just realize there's a very real chance that any old goon will straight up murder your pigeon, especially if you've been annoying the DM by weaponizing it for free advantage all campaign. Also, be prepared for Acid Splash or Burning Hands to put a pinch on things quite often. At least an owl is safely circling 25 feet up in the air most of the time safe from most such nonsense, instead of constantly getting its goose cooked on your shoulder in the thick of things.
Sage Advice doesn't trump rules text... but luckily that tweet is perfectly in line with the Mounted Combat rules. :) Just dont go conflating "the hawk doesn't provoke OAs" with "the hawk can't be targeted by OAs," which is the vibe I thought I picked up in the first post. If you do ever slip up and provoke an OA, just realize there's a very real chance that any old goon will straight up murder your pigeon, especially if you've been annoying the DM by weaponizing it for free advantage all campaign. Also, be prepared for Acid Splash or Burning Hands to put a pinch on things quite often. At least an owl is safely circling 25 feet up in the air most of the time safe from most such nonsense, instead of constantly getting its goose cooked on your shoulder in the thick of things.
Very good points and I'm interested as to what will happen when I take a Dex save against a trap or something...
Familiars have there own turn though and it has to be within 5 feet of an enemy in order to use help. So in order for this to work, either you have to end your turn within 5 feet of an enemy, or the familiar will have to travel to the enemy and back (more than likely the second one if the enemy moves before the familiar). Thus owl.
Yep. This is basically every round at my table. Owl flies by and uses the help action before flying away. Next round: Rinse and repeat.
Familiars have there own turn though and it has to be within 5 feet of an enemy in order to use help. So in order for this to work, either you have to end your turn within 5 feet of an enemy, or the familiar will have to travel to the enemy and back (more than likely the second one if the enemy moves before the familiar). Thus owl.
Yep. This is basically every round at my table. Owl flies by and uses the help action before flying away. Next round: Rinse and repeat.
definitely a dead owl at my table as well...and I'd follow it up with a "Your familiar is now dead. In order to resummon it, you need to light a brazier, spend somewhere between an hour and an hour and ten minutes casting the spell, and loose 10gp worth of materials you toss into the brazier." ...just because i totally dislike this constant use of the familiar - alls it does it adversely affect the balance of the adventure and make the player comparatively more powerful than everyone else at the table. It's not fun for anyone else. The familiar spell just wasn't designed to give someone permanent advantage and an owl constantly flying in something's face WILL get swatted out of the sky.
Also, I believe the whole 'can a familiar use Ready as an Action' is at DM discretion. At least I'm not aware of anything that says a Familiar (or any of the animals they're based on) can use the Ready action. The whole discussion of Ready is in the section talking about player Action options.
well...unless the familiar is at least as smart as a border collie...but even then I'd make the player use their own Reaction to trigger the familiar's Readied Action.
having said that though, as a DM, I love a party with a familiar in outdoor settings. That way I can just drop the map on the table and say 'ok, your owl sees this'. just makes it way easier.
Sage Advice doesn't trump rules text... but luckily that tweet is perfectly in line with the Mounted Combat rules. :) Just dont go conflating "the hawk doesn't provoke OAs" with "the hawk can't be targeted by OAs," which is the vibe I thought I picked up in the first post. If you do ever slip up and provoke an OA, just realize there's a very real chance that any old goon will straight up murder your pigeon, especially if you've been annoying the DM by weaponizing it for free advantage all campaign. Also, be prepared for Acid Splash or Burning Hands to put a pinch on things quite often. At least an owl is safely circling 25 feet up in the air most of the time safe from most such nonsense, instead of constantly getting its goose cooked on your shoulder in the thick of things.
Very good points and I'm interested as to what will happen when I take a Dex save against a trap or something...
Well, if it's an AOE effect that deals half-damage on a successful dodge, then your familiar is basically cooked and you've gotta spend the time/gold to summon again later.
yeah, that'd definitely be a dead owl at my table as well. (essentially)
I'm intrigued by the balance of using a familiar with this perspective that effective use will be punished... Would you send the familiar to it's pocket dimension until a hard/boss battle is coming and then make full use of it there in order to maximize the gold value?
yeah, that'd definitely a dead owl at my table as well. (essentially)
I'm intrigued by the balance of using a familiar with this perspective that effective use will be punished... Would you send the familiar to it's pocked dimension until a hard/boss battle is coming and then make full use of it there in order to maximize the gold value?
In my experience, most familiars are more useful out of battle than in. Advantage is nice, but all it takes is one enemy with a shortbow and a short temper to get annoyed and just shoot it out of the sky. And pretty much any "save or take half" area spell will explode a familiar, no questions asked. So, yeah... I think it makes sense to keep your familiar sort of in your "back pocket" until you feel like you're approaching the final battle in a dungeon. Gaining advantage, either for yourself or an ally, right at the start of combat at minimum is pretty handy, but generally isn't worth the risk against the average mook. Although keep in mind, at least, that you can keep your familiar out of combat and still have it be useful. While you and the team are busy fighting a bunch of gnolls your familiar can stealthily fly ahead and see if anyone else is coming and report back if you need to get ready for more opponents.
yeah, that'd definitely be a dead owl at my table as well. (essentially)
I'm intrigued by the balance of using a familiar with this perspective that effective use will be punished... Would you send the familiar to it's pocked dimension until a hard/boss battle is coming and then make full use of it there in order to maximize the gold value?
not really punishing them...just think the idea of being able to use an owl during an entire combat sequence to keep darting in and out of a mob's face is absurd - even in fantasy land. Either the owl would die or the mob would be like 'ok, i'm just going to ignore the effect of this stupid owl because its actually harmless'. Would it work once or twice? Sure but, IMO, its like the belly-flopping Tortle who likes to get up on bars and throw his 450lb body down onto his opponents, thereby crushing them. Is it possible? Sure, once or twice...but he fast finds the bar that can't support his big arse and he looses a round and gets knocked prone when the the next bar collapses under his weight.......because the idea of it as an un-failing go-to mechanic is absurd....even in fantasy land.
Being attacked in combat is not being punished, it’s the game. If your DM is trying to scrub your familiar from existence with targeted effects (you wake up to acid rain, 4 damage dex save for half all living creatures in the party!) then yes that’s probably punishment, and a sign that your DM thinks you’re over-utilizing a level 1 spell. But if your DM is simply neutralizing a troublesome combatant with the minor expenditure of a single attack... that’s just good tactics, and appropriate for many types of enemies rather than always trying to hit you in your strengths. Could always invest in Hawk Plate Barding if you’re worried about it? :p
My Kensei Monk and Eldritch Knight multi-class character is going to get the Find Familiar spell, I want a bird for the familiar and I am going to have it look like a Hawk... However, I am trying to decide between the stat block of Owl, Hawk or Raven.
...Which makes me think I should go Raven but skinned as a Hawk (character's backstory... and mini), the fact that it is a celestial in a creature's form should be enough to overcome the barrier of a Hawk talking? ...Am I missing anything?
Maybe it's just a pet peeve of mine, but if a player comes to me asking to reskin something in the book to something else in the book, that's an automatic no.
Unless you're in a very different fantasy land, hawks have no history of being able to reproduce speech. My opinion is, if you want a hawk just choose a hawk. Alternatively, if you want a raven, retconning a backstory is not the worst thing you could do.
As far as the raven being able to talk for you, I think that's okay. You could easily teach your raven a rudimentary vocabulary from which you could communicate anything. The raven would still have to be less than 100 feet away when you communicate this way, so it's probably not that much of a boon anyways.
Idk about this "shoulder mount" and opportunity attack stuff. I have a digital version of the PHB so I can't go to specific page numbers (to my knowledge) but imo if you want a Hawk you get a Hawk, not a reskinned Owl or Raven.
My instinct is to say, if you want a Hawk, just go for Hawk... but honestly the Owl is so much more useful with its dark sight and flyby. Although the Owl abilities aren't too wild... I think I'd allow the reskin.
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Owl is very useful for a spellcaster, to fly and deliver touch spells and then fly away. But if you're (mostly) a monk, Flyby probably won't be that useful for you since you're unlikely to be using them for that combat purpose.
If your backstory agitates for a Hawk, use a Hawk (or, if you want a slightly better/faster scout). If you want to talk through your familiar (cool), use a Raven. But I agree that it doesn't make a lot of sense to somehow have a talking Hawk.
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I'm going to make this way harder than it needs to be.
Not sure what you intend to do with the familiars in combat if not flying in and out using help action.
Owl has advantage on sight and hearing and has flyby. Hawk has that slightly higher AC and perception, but only advantage on sight and no flyby.
I say take one of those 2.
I figured that I’d clarify what I meant by the ‘shoulder mounted’ thing.
Yes, I will want my familiar to be using the help action during combat and I’d be happy for it to be helping a teammate as much as me - in which case it’ll fly other so that it is also in base contact with the same enemy - my teammates tend to stay in base contact.
However, as mainly a monk, I’m going to be jumping in and out of base contact like nobodies business and when I do that, if I have my familiar occupying the same square as me (sacrificing half it’s movement on one round to land on my shoulder) - my familiar goes wherever I go and can still use the help action but not suffer Opportunity Attacks (Which makes sense for if I don’t go Owl/ want to make my familiar less of a target).
Familiars have there own turn though and it has to be within 5 feet of an enemy in order to use help. So in order for this to work, either you have to end your turn within 5 feet of an enemy, or the familiar will have to travel to the enemy and back (more than likely the second one if the enemy moves before the familiar). Thus owl.
Familiars do generally have their own turn, as indeed creatures in general do. However, controlled mounts do not... if you just learn to surrender yourself to the hawk , perhaps you two can finally act as one glorious whole?
Really though, Dx is mostly right. A character takes a Help action on their own turn, in one of two ways: either A) you help a target within an unspecified range in an unspecified way, which somehow gives them advantage on their next ability check, or B) you mess with an enemy within 5 feet of you in some way which gives your ally advantage on their next attack against the same enemy. You don't have to stay 5 feet away from the enemy after messing with it, but you do have to be 5 feet away when you first do the harassing. So if your familiar's initiative is 15 and yours is 10, your hawk is going to have to leave your shoulder in order to go harass your target, then either fly back to you (Opportunity Attack) or wait for you to catch up (no longer a rider, potentially attacked).
I think that the way around this is to have your Familiar always ready their action to help you attack the next target that you walk within 5 feet of. You move up, it uses its reaction to interupt your turn to take the Help action against an enemy, you then take your Attack with advantage. That should work for a shoulder-mounted familiar.
Regarding your familiar being safe from opportunity attacks though... that's not quite right. If anything, calling you a "mount" for your Familiar is making it more vulnerable to OA's, because when a Mount triggers an OA with its movement, the attacker may choose whether to target Mount or Rider. It's the Mounted Combatant feat which allows Riders to always protect their Mounts... but I'm not aware of anything which lets the Mount always protect the Rider? Now, if it isn't riding you but instead merely being carried around against its will... forced movement does not provoke an OA, that's true. Where the line is drawn between willing forced movement and riding an uncontrolled mount is probably not a question that can be answered within the bounds of the rules text, because neither rule was designed to address tiny players being carried around in combat by wholly independent giant allies not controlled by class feature or spell.
dndbeyond.com forum tags
I'm going to make this way harder than it needs to be.
Familiars can Hold Actions as well, I could command it to hold an action until we are within 5ft of an enemy... but even better: Because held actions are triggered by external events I can command my familiar to hold the help action until I say so. On my turn I can then command an Advantage whenever I need it and my Familiar just uses their reaction.
Sage Advice doesn't trump rules text... but luckily that tweet is perfectly in line with the Mounted Combat rules. :) Just dont go conflating "the hawk doesn't provoke OAs" with "the hawk can't be targeted by OAs," which is the vibe I thought I picked up in the first post. If you do ever slip up and provoke an OA, just realize there's a very real chance that any old goon will straight up murder your pigeon, especially if you've been annoying the DM by weaponizing it for free advantage all campaign. Also, be prepared for Acid Splash or Burning Hands to put a pinch on things quite often. At least an owl is safely circling 25 feet up in the air most of the time safe from most such nonsense, instead of constantly getting its goose cooked on your shoulder in the thick of things.
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I'm going to make this way harder than it needs to be.
Very good points and I'm interested as to what will happen when I take a Dex save against a trap or something...
I had not considered the ready action. I guess that works.
I wish you the best of luck with your jank and hope you don't have to spend too much time and gold resummoning dead familiars.
Yep. This is basically every round at my table. Owl flies by and uses the help action before flying away. Next round: Rinse and repeat.
"Not all those who wander are lost"
yeah, that'd be a dead ow
definitely a dead owl at my table as well...and I'd follow it up with a "Your familiar is now dead. In order to resummon it, you need to light a brazier, spend somewhere between an hour and an hour and ten minutes casting the spell, and loose 10gp worth of materials you toss into the brazier." ...just because i totally dislike this constant use of the familiar - alls it does it adversely affect the balance of the adventure and make the player comparatively more powerful than everyone else at the table. It's not fun for anyone else. The familiar spell just wasn't designed to give someone permanent advantage and an owl constantly flying in something's face WILL get swatted out of the sky.
Also, I believe the whole 'can a familiar use Ready as an Action' is at DM discretion. At least I'm not aware of anything that says a Familiar (or any of the animals they're based on) can use the Ready action. The whole discussion of Ready is in the section talking about player Action options.
well...unless the familiar is at least as smart as a border collie...but even then I'd make the player use their own Reaction to trigger the familiar's Readied Action.
having said that though, as a DM, I love a party with a familiar in outdoor settings. That way I can just drop the map on the table and say 'ok, your owl sees this'. just makes it way easier.
Guide to the Five Factions (PWYW)
Deck of Decks
Well, if it's an AOE effect that deals half-damage on a successful dodge, then your familiar is basically cooked and you've gotta spend the time/gold to summon again later.
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I'm intrigued by the balance of using a familiar with this perspective that effective use will be punished... Would you send the familiar to it's pocket dimension until a hard/boss battle is coming and then make full use of it there in order to maximize the gold value?
In my experience, most familiars are more useful out of battle than in. Advantage is nice, but all it takes is one enemy with a shortbow and a short temper to get annoyed and just shoot it out of the sky. And pretty much any "save or take half" area spell will explode a familiar, no questions asked. So, yeah... I think it makes sense to keep your familiar sort of in your "back pocket" until you feel like you're approaching the final battle in a dungeon. Gaining advantage, either for yourself or an ally, right at the start of combat at minimum is pretty handy, but generally isn't worth the risk against the average mook. Although keep in mind, at least, that you can keep your familiar out of combat and still have it be useful. While you and the team are busy fighting a bunch of gnolls your familiar can stealthily fly ahead and see if anyone else is coming and report back if you need to get ready for more opponents.
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not really punishing them...just think the idea of being able to use an owl during an entire combat sequence to keep darting in and out of a mob's face is absurd - even in fantasy land. Either the owl would die or the mob would be like 'ok, i'm just going to ignore the effect of this stupid owl because its actually harmless'. Would it work once or twice? Sure but, IMO, its like the belly-flopping Tortle who likes to get up on bars and throw his 450lb body down onto his opponents, thereby crushing them. Is it possible? Sure, once or twice...but he fast finds the bar that can't support his big arse and he looses a round and gets knocked prone when the the next bar collapses under his weight.......because the idea of it as an un-failing go-to mechanic is absurd....even in fantasy land.
Guide to the Five Factions (PWYW)
Deck of Decks
Being attacked in combat is not being punished, it’s the game. If your DM is trying to scrub your familiar from existence with targeted effects (you wake up to acid rain, 4 damage dex save for half all living creatures in the party!) then yes that’s probably punishment, and a sign that your DM thinks you’re over-utilizing a level 1 spell. But if your DM is simply neutralizing a troublesome combatant with the minor expenditure of a single attack... that’s just good tactics, and appropriate for many types of enemies rather than always trying to hit you in your strengths. Could always invest in Hawk Plate Barding if you’re worried about it? :p
dndbeyond.com forum tags
I'm going to make this way harder than it needs to be.