The new rules are out and my druid has easier access to the Find Familiar spell. This is awesome and I'm excited. But... looking through the options, there seems to be a "best choice". The owl has a ton of movement, a flying speed, flyby which is amazing and why most players take it, huge dark vision range, and advantage on perception for vision and hearing. Toad, rat, deer, snake, bat... nothing comes close. The rat is close with agile, but half the movement and vision and is stuck on the ground.
What percentage of games does someone have a familiar other than an owl? For me it's less than 1 on a d20. In about a quarter of sessions the player will use owl stats and just say it's a hawk or humming bird to match the flavor of their character.
1 clear and obvious choice is not really a choice.
Ok, so have solutions if your going to complain... got it. Why not a point buy system for creating a familiar? 10 points for have 10 feet of fly speed with a cap of 60ft or whatever. 5 points for regular movement with a cap, 30 points for flyby, 20 points for agile, 20 points for fire resistance, 40 points for fire immunity, 20 points for advantage of hear or vision checks... and so on. I'm not a game designer so total points and how much each skill is worth isn't really my area.
Now, I like the system, but it seems a bit overcomplicated. D&D is usually simple once you get the hang of it. Also, Owls are small and have very little health, so they die quickly and can't really do anything.
We've never had a single owl in the last 3 campaigns that made it to Level 20, so I guess we're not your normal party. Actually, the main reason for that is that our characters with Familiars were all Warlocks and had a better list! Usually for us though it comes down to character flavor so the one wizard was a Scribe and had his book so did not need a familiar. The hexblade did not use one and the other ended up with an imp. The Ranger currently is trying to get a hawk, and we've all hinted darkly for him to take a pact to pick one up easily along with disguise self as he keeps running into bounty hunters with his wanted posters... lol so no, owl might be a superior choice at some tables, but certainly not all, especially when roleplay is a strong component of character building options.
They did actually experiment with using a single stat block for Find Familiar (with some choices, such as flying va swimming speed) during the playtesting period for 2024, but presumably not enough people liked it for them to make it the new standard.
Just to point out, among the standard-issue options, I've seen numerous familiar types used. Examples:
-Bat: Used by a character without darkvision to help navigate dark areas when giving off light was a bad idea -Owl: Flyby is useful, admittedly -Raven: I've used this for Mimicry, using it to pass on simple one- or two-word messages -Spider: Good for infiltration
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The new rules are out and my druid has easier access to the Find Familiar spell. This is awesome and I'm excited. But... looking through the options, there seems to be a "best choice". The owl has a ton of movement, a flying speed, flyby which is amazing and why most players take it, huge dark vision range, and advantage on perception for vision and hearing. Toad, rat, deer, snake, bat... nothing comes close. The rat is close with agile, but half the movement and vision and is stuck on the ground.
What percentage of games does someone have a familiar other than an owl? For me it's less than 1 on a d20. In about a quarter of sessions the player will use owl stats and just say it's a hawk or humming bird to match the flavor of their character.
1 clear and obvious choice is not really a choice.
Ok, so have solutions if your going to complain... got it. Why not a point buy system for creating a familiar? 10 points for have 10 feet of fly speed with a cap of 60ft or whatever. 5 points for regular movement with a cap, 30 points for flyby, 20 points for agile, 20 points for fire resistance, 40 points for fire immunity, 20 points for advantage of hear or vision checks... and so on. I'm not a game designer so total points and how much each skill is worth isn't really my area.
Thanks for reading
Now, I like the system, but it seems a bit overcomplicated. D&D is usually simple once you get the hang of it. Also, Owls are small and have very little health, so they die quickly and can't really do anything.
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We've never had a single owl in the last 3 campaigns that made it to Level 20, so I guess we're not your normal party. Actually, the main reason for that is that our characters with Familiars were all Warlocks and had a better list! Usually for us though it comes down to character flavor so the one wizard was a Scribe and had his book so did not need a familiar. The hexblade did not use one and the other ended up with an imp. The Ranger currently is trying to get a hawk, and we've all hinted darkly for him to take a pact to pick one up easily along with disguise self as he keeps running into bounty hunters with his wanted posters... lol so no, owl might be a superior choice at some tables, but certainly not all, especially when roleplay is a strong component of character building options.
They did actually experiment with using a single stat block for Find Familiar (with some choices, such as flying va swimming speed) during the playtesting period for 2024, but presumably not enough people liked it for them to make it the new standard.
Just to point out, among the standard-issue options, I've seen numerous familiar types used. Examples:
-Bat: Used by a character without darkvision to help navigate dark areas when giving off light was a bad idea
-Owl: Flyby is useful, admittedly
-Raven: I've used this for Mimicry, using it to pass on simple one- or two-word messages
-Spider: Good for infiltration