Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer Creatures
Frozen Sick
D&D Beyond Basic Rules
Basic Rules (2014)
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Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer CreaturesFrozen SickD&D Beyond Basic RulesBasic Rules (2014)Sign in to view your library & saved favorites.
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Let's assume a warlock here, human for that nifty familiar friend origin feat (extra familiar hit points helps) and once a day casting of find familiar without material components. As a magic action.
My favorite is the imp, with its' invisibility, shapeshifting and 3d6+3 poison sting damage (+5 attack with advantage because of stealth). It's just devastating at lower levels. Here is how to optimize your imp.
Upgrading to investments of the chain master allows you to do this with a bonus action, but that makes the "synchronization" of keeping the imp invisible quite a bit more difficult. Your bonus action is allowing the imp to take an attack action, meaning it can't also go invisible. The upside is that you can take the attack action, allowing your imp to attack using it's reaction AND use your bonus action to enable the imp to take the attack action next time it's the imps' turn (or go invisible then, if that's your choice at the time).
You also have the spell battle familiar, which totally negates which type of familiar you have when it comes to combat as it's stat block is replaced. But the battle familiar has flight or swim speed. Uses your spell saving throw. Uses your reaction to gain resistance.
But there is more. In the new arcana book there is this magic item called Necklace of the Beastly Familiar. The necklace has no limit on it's transformation ability, meaning you can just keep transforming your familiar into a flying giant scorpion (rare version) with grapple strength of your save DC. Or a flying hippo. Not to mention a flying mammoth or TRex on higher level versions of the item.
And unlike other owners of familiars. If you lose yours, you don't have to spend an hour. You get your familiar back with a magic action using your pact of the chain invocation. You don't need the battle familiar spell to have the familiar attack in the transformed version. And it only costs you 10 gp (one free per day if you have the friendly familiar origin feat).
It does take up an attunement slot, of course. But an endless stream of 52 hp giant flying scorpions (at rare level) is quite terrifying.
Have you considered Flock of Familiars? Summon multiple familiars for an hour. Notably: "Each familiar uses the same rules and options for a familiar conjured by the find familiar spell."
Pact of the Chain better familiar forms? That's options for a familiar conjured with Find Familiar. Want to have multiple pseudodragons at the same time?
Familiar Friend's bonus hp? That's a rule for a familiar conjured with Find Familiar. All of them get it. (Same with all the other familiar feat abilities, although if it requires an action from you, pretty sure you can only make use of one familiar for that in a turn with your one action of the right type. Otherworldly familiar for a flock of familiars that travel through walls sounds fun though, as does Warlike familiar's reaction to add PB to AC of an adjacent character - only once per character, but you could protect your whole party).
Flock of Familiars explicitly overrides the 'only one familiar' text. Now, if you cast Battle Familiar, it will replace one of your flock. Seems fair. While technically you might be able to cast Battle Familiar multiple times, replacing a different familiar each time... that's not 100% obvious.
It's in an adventure (LLK), but it is on the Warlock spell list.
Yes, I've used it too. It's quite a good spell. But you can only target one of your flock of familiars for a reaction attack or an attack action from the investment of the chain master. It does allow you to spread around some chaos - and in terms of the pseudodragons that can sting without attacking (using your spell save DC), it's quite a good multiplier on that ability.
Yes, all of them would get the friendly familiar hp buff which is significant from their base 10 hps.
There is a spell slot issue. You could cast battle familiar (not concentration) using the warlike familiar feat without spending a spell slot. Flock of familiar (concentration) is one spell slot. So you'd have one spell slot left for one more battle familiar. And then you could use the necklace to upgrade one of them to a giant scorpion.
But that's a lot of actions you'd need to set that up. Doable if you can set up before combat. You would give reactions and attacks to your one remaining normal familiar, the battle familiar acts on its' own and so does the transformed familiar.
This is doable on level 5, when you get investement of the chain master.
Speaking of which, I could use some help actually building a Pact of the Chain Master.
I've got the following nailed down:
But the sub-classes are all kinda meh for 'guy in the chair' style play. I can get some healing with Celestial, but the spell list is merely okay, and the other features aren't great since they require me to be near the party. I can make it easier to be unnoticed as a GOO, with being able to cast while hidden or otherwise unnoticed for some spells, but not really taking great advantage of some of the other features. I can be a genie warlock, but that's mostly for the level 10 feature for easy short rests pretty much whenever (as my familiar can carry my vessel). Or I could be an Undead warlock, mostly for adding a fear effect to every time I hit, which would make EB a pretty good debuff from 'offscreen', as it were. But it's all sort of tangential to what I'd be doing.
Also not seeing any reason to stay in Warlock after 9th level (10th if Genie). Okay, I suppose Undead and GOO both have good reasons to go to 14.
I’d say the new subclass is as close to the guy in the chair (Spiderman reference?) as there is. Regardless, it is very powerful, and there are several feats that can help. I’m in the same boat trying to make a new build.
The only thing bad about the new main familiar feat (besides maybe being TOO good to be “fun” at the table) is pact of the chain already gives you access to familiars, so in a way it’s a little redundant. I guess it’s worth it though; I just wish it wasn’t a requirement for all the other new familiar feats.
I keep wanting to combine Familiar Friend with Pact of the Chain and House Vidalis Heir, all of which give Find Familiar separately xP
I agree, I wish the familiar feats just required you knew Find Familiar.
The problem with Vestige is it seems to want you to be there. So you can't really go hide with Gaze of Two Minds... But maybe... it certainly has a better support spell list than Celestial Warlock (taking Life domain). (... I think Vestige Warlock made Celestial straight up obsolete).
NOOOOO!!!! That’s MY main! Lol. I was thinking of redoing it for a Vestige Warlock, but I’d like a plan in place before I buy it. I’d like to still start fighter and then go Pact of the Blade, but perhaps I can take Pact of the Chain and the familiar origin feat at warlock level 2 (hopefully DnD Beyond functions properly to do that).
Not to hijack the thread, but this is what I was thinking of for my familiar build regarding my eldritch invocations:
Pact of the Blade
Familiar Friend
Pact of the Chain
Portal Jumper
Thirsting Blade
Eldritch Mind
Arcane Omens
Devouring Blade
Witch’s Sight
Arcane Eloquence
Well, it saves you 10 gp of find familiar per day.
Think of it this way. You've got a goblin hideout you are trying to clear out. In goes your invisible imp for a hit / run tactics style operation. If it's unlucky enough to get caught and killed, you just summon a new one as a magic action. First one free, next ones 10 gp per imp. Imagine the horror you can inflict with a flock of familiars like that.
Fair enough.
So when you summon a pack of familiars you pay for each individual one? Makes sense, but I’m just verifying.
Flock of Familiars has no M component, but it only lasts an hour with concentration.
But re-using Find Familiar over and over again will cost you 10gp apiece.
I'm looking at focusing on Flock with Otherworldly Familiar and Pact of the Chain to get a pack of Imps or Sprites which are invisible and walk through walls.
Alright, I'm looking at Vestige Warlock (all official publications allowed, incl. not yet reprinted 2014 material):
In addition to getting Find Familiar from 3 sources, i also get Speak with Animals twice, but spending 10 minutes to ritual cast it could be obnoxious, so I really value that at-will from Beast Speech.
Voice of the Chain Master removes the need to use my bonus action to access a familiar's sight, and lets me see through all familiars at the same time, although Gaze would require the bonus action still. And I was thinking of making the character blind, so he depends on a familiar to see at all.
Normally I'd take Potent Dragonmark with a Dragonmark, but what I really want from Mark of Handling is Animal Friendship, ability to use Speak with/Friendship on Monstrosities <4 int, and access to Awaken (and let's be honest, Flock of Familiars is going to be eating my concentration most of the time, so the Warlock 5th level spells are not very exciting).
Magic Initiate is purely to get Magic Connoisseur, and I probably just take Alarm for the Ritual. But Magic Connoisseur is essential for Nystul's Magic Aura. Now when I Animal Friendship a monstrosity, I can get them to be willing for Nystul's to change their type to beast so I can Awaken them. Awakened purple worm sounds like fun. (Nystul's is one of my favorite spells in the game, because it enables such ridiculous shenanigans).
Now, Vestige's 14th level subclass ability is really good, so I probably stick with Warlock through 14th... but I'm not seeing any good reason to stick with Warlock after 14th. 5-6 levels of Sorceror gives me metamagic (extend spell is especially useful here) and some more low-level spell slots for utility/support spells.
I know the Vestige Warlock is in the UA PDF: UNEARTHED ARCANA 2026 MYSTIC SUBCLASSES.
Where are you getting all of these invocations at?
Vestige Warlock is now published in Arcana Unleashed (AU).
The invocations are all PHB '24 or PHB '14 (not reprinted, so backwards compatible)
All the feats are from AU, except Mark of Handling, which is from Eberron (Dragonmark feat, accessible via the listed background), and Magic Initiate.