Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer Creatures
Frozen Sick
D&D Beyond Basic Rules
Basic Rules (2014)
Sign in to view your library & saved favorites.
Sign in- Marketplace
Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer CreaturesFrozen SickD&D Beyond Basic RulesBasic Rules (2014)Sign in to view your library & saved favorites.
Sign in
Investment of the Chain Master says this:
"Your Save DC. If the familiar forces a creature to make a saving throw, it uses your spell save DC."
Does this apply to grapples? If you use a skeleton familiar with the Investment of the Chain Master, can it grapple a tiny to large creature and fly it 20 feet off the ground (With the 40ft fly speed from IotCM) and drop it for 2d6 bludgeoning and prone?
And does it apply to shove attacks as well? (Less important because it's only 5ft move or knock prone when grappling can do both)
RAW: yes
RAI: "If the familiar forces a creature to make a saving throw" is a pretty general condition that necessarily incorporates grappling, so I'd say yes.
RAI: I'd assume the spell save DC is intended to apply for things like a familiar's poison sting or tiny arrows that charm or the various other minor magical effects a familiar stat block describe. I would be very dubious that the rule authors intended this sentence to mean that your small Jackal could grab a full grown humanoid and lift it into the air with the effective strength of a Barbarian.
RAW: Yeah, it's hard to see an argument against it. Maybe carrying capacity would have to be checked against creature weight...
Would it fly at my table: Absolutely not, but I will generally not allow grapples to be used to cause damage via pretty much any mechanism (suplex off a cliff, drag into lava, fly and drop) without the grappler also suffering the effect or allowing a follow-up save or check of some sort to avoid the fate. I just don't go for that.
That phrasing is really general. If they wanted it to be an action or effect listed in the creature's statblock, it would have been easy to say that. ("The DC of any familiar feature uses your spell saving throw DC"). Instead they chose a phrasing that applies to any method the familiar uses to force a saving throw. Your assumption requires the designers to be exceptionally bad at their job.
(It's not inconceivable that they were exceptionally bad at their jobs, but it's hardly where I would start with trying to guess their intentions).
I'd let it fly at my table as written. Next to the brokenness of pseudodragon's poison, if they're choosing to use it on anything else it's a strict downgrade, and I'm happy to encourage them to do so.
(And the lift it into the air and drop them part is a consequence of the grapple rules being just that silly. That has nothing to do with whether the ability affects the grapple DC or not).
It's not that I think anyone is so bad at their jobs that they are unable to choose to include or exclude grappling in a rule like this, but that I have noticed all rules relating monsters and their stat blocks kind of seem to ignore the standard actions all creatures can take. Like no rule ever assumes a monster will take the dodge action, or use an unarmed attack.
It's not that the rules assume monsters can't or won't use those actions - they just never come up. As if the rules designers just do not think about them at all when writing monster rules. When they want to design a monster that regularly grapples, they will give it a specific grappling attack.
With my reading of the full set of rules, and my imagining of how complex these rules were to write with however many people involved - I would just be very willing to gamble significant amounts of money that the writer of this specific rule did not once think about familiars grappling. Not to exclude it, nor to be sure it was included. Just not a thought at all.
If you command the familiar to take the Attack action and make an Unarmed Strike to Grapple or Shove, it effectively forces a creature to make a saving throw and use your spell save DC.
More silly, if the familiar uses a magic item to cast a spell or otherwise cause a save, that item uses your spell save dc (regardless of whether that's better or worse than the item says).
I'd say it depends of the wording but if an effect is produced by the magic items, the DC should be the one provided by it.
At least for a spell from an item, it is generally the user that is casting the spell. (Which is why the user has to maintain concentration. The only exception I can think of is potions).
We're dealing with two general rules which both apply over the top of the base rules. Any competent DM will rule the magic item DC as being more specific here.