Spell Spotlight: Find Familiar

Tags Spell Spotlights author-riley-silverman

Do you want an extra set of eyes and ears in your Dungeons & Dragons campaign? Do you want to be able to deliver valuable spells to targets that would normally be out of range? Or do you simply want an adorable animal friend to follow you on your adventures without worrying over how to keep them alive? While it might seem like a virtual pet generator from the outside, find familiar can actually be a clutch spell when used properly. With this find familiar guide, we’ll tell you all about one of the most versatile 1st-level spells in fifth-edition D&D.

What does find familiar do?

Find familiar is a ritual Conjuration spell usually available to wizards. Find familiar could perhaps be more accurately called “summon familiar,” because that’s ostensibly what the spell does. But what is a familiar? In fifth-edition D&D, a familiar is a spirit which you summon into your service. This familiar spirit is of celestial, fey, or fiendish origin, which you as the caster choose. Typically, the familiar then takes on the form of a common beast, such as a cat, bat, owl, or even an octopus.

Once summoned, the familiar operates with a mind of its own but will always obey the caster’s commands as part of the spell. This means that a familiar operates on its own initiative order in combat and does not take up usages of the caster’s actions or bonus actions. During its turn, your familiar can take all of the actions that a normal creature can take, including the Help action, with the exception of the ability to attack. This can be an extremely useful tool in combat, especially at lower levels in the game, because the Help action can grant advantage to someone else in combat.

The familiar can also serve as a targeted spell delivery service. This is because one of the traits of your familiar is the ability to extend your “touch” spell range up to 100 feet, to anything it can touch. This also allows a wizard to hide behind cover on the battlefield while still utilizing close combat spells. 

Magic student in a library looking at a frog in a cage

Outside of combat, there are even more ways for a familiar to serve as a tactical tool. You and your familiar can communicate telepathically as long as it is within 100 feet of you. Depending on the form your familiar takes, this could help keep your party from falling victim to a surprise attack, as your familiar could warn you of approaching danger. You can also use an action to use the familiar’s eyes and ears instead of your own, including any natural benefits in the animal’s senses. Your own vision and hearing is nullified during this time, but you could still whisper vital information to your party as they watch over you. 

It takes an hour to cast the find familiar spell, so it’s a good idea to think about whether you’re going to want to use a familiar prior to heading into situations where you may want to have a little critter pal. The components for find familiar are also an example of components that have a monetary value, in this case 10 gp worth of charcoal, incense, and herbs burned in the fire of a brass brazier. This is important to keep in mind as monetary-cost components cannot be replaced with a spellcasting focus, so while the spell does have all the above benefits, it can be an investment, especially at earlier levels when you may not be as quick to gain much gold. 

Your familiar options

The list of primary creature forms your familiar can take on include the following:

Familiar forms in the basic rules

bat cat crab
frog (toad) hawk lizard
octopus owl poisonous snake
fish (quipper) rat raven
sea horse spider weasel

The caster is not locked into any of the forms the familiar takes. You need only recast the spell in order to have your familiar change form, so there is a great deal of versatility.

Alternate familiar options

White-haired hareSeveral sourcebooks provide some different animals or twists on the spell’s forms. Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden adds the fox and the hare to the spell’s creature list. Storm King’s Thunder suggests the winged tressym cat as a possible familiar, with the Dungeon Master’s permission. And Tomb of Annihilation adds the almiraj and flying monkey as optional forms. 

Other sourcebooks offer up changes and modifications to the find familiar spell for flavor or mood reasons. Curse of Strahd suggests that the atmosphere of Barovia might change your familiar into an undead creature rather than the typical celestial, fey, or fiend, though still immune to turn undead features. Similarly, Baldur’s Gate: Descent into Avernus recommends turning familiars into imps due to the corrupting influence of the entrance to the Nine Hells.

There are also some unique forms that familiars can take depending on variables of the spellcaster, which we’ll get more into below. If you have an unofficial creature form you’d rather have your familiar take on, speak with your DM to see if they’d approve of it. Just keep in mind that with a few exceptions, most familiars' challenge ratings are zero. 

Who can cast find familiar?

So, which spellcasters can cast find familiar? The short answer: wizards. The long answer: It’s complicated, but pretty much everyone.

If you’re playing as a wizard, congratulations, you’ve got find familiar right there in your spell list strutting its stuff. If you’re another type of spellcaster, however, you might need to take a few steps in order to get there, but it is possible. First off, here are some classes that can use the spell as part of a subclass or class feature:

  • Bard: You can choose to take the find familiar spell as part of Magical Secrets, a feature you’ll unlock at 6th level for a College of Lore bard, or 10th level for all bards. This powerful feature allows the bard to learn spells from any class spell list as long as they’re available at the bard’s spellcasting level. 
  • Druid: Using optional Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything rules with DM discretion, a druid may spend one use of their Wild Shape to cast find familiar. This familiar is a fey and only lasts for a number of hours equal to half your druid level, but the spellcasting does not require any of the typical material components. 
  • Eldritch Knight fighter and Arcane Trickster rogue: Both of these classes learn spells from the wizard spell list. As find familiar is a 1st-level spell, you could take it when playing one of these subclasses.
  • Thief rogue: At 13th level, the Thief bypasses class, race, and level requirements when using magic items. This allows them to access find familiar by using a spell scroll containing the spell.
  • Warlock: Warlocks in fifth-edition D&D can add find familiar to their spell list by taking the Pact of the Chain feature as their Pact Boon at 3rd level. This feature adds find familiar to your spell list and even gives you some special forms for the familiar to change into, either an imp, pseudodragon, quasit, or sprite. As another special feature of the warlock version of the familiar, Pact of the Chain familiars can use their reaction to attack if you take the Attack action and forgo one of your attacks. Alternatively, a warlock that has taken the Pact of the Tome can pick up the Book of Ancient Secrets invocation. 

Feats are another great way to access find familiar. If your DM allows for feats, there are three ways to learn find familiar, although one is setting specific. They are: 

  • Ritual Caster: This feat requires you to have an Intelligence or Wisdom of 13 or higher, but it allows you to take two 1st-level spells that can be cast as rituals from a specific spellcasting class’ spell list. If you select wizard, then find familiar will become available to you. If having a familiar is important to you, this feat may be worth taking because you’ll also have access to one more ritual spell from the wizard list, and the ability to add more to your new wizard spellbook later. 
  • Magic Initiate (Wizard): This feat allows you to take two cantrips and one 1st-level spell from a specific spellcaster’s spell list. Since find familiar is a 1st-level spell, that means you could take it using this feat. This might be a particularly useful feat if you've had your eye on a couple of cantrips.
  • Strixhaven Mascot: Strixhaven: A Curriculum of Chaos has a special version of find familiar that allows your familiar to take the form of the mascot of your chosen magical college. Similar to the warlock Pact of the Chain, this version allows you to forgo one of your attacks to have the mascot familiar attack, and you can swap places with your mascot familiar from up to 60 feet away. You can only do this once per long rest unless you spend a 2nd-level or higher spell slot.

If your party has access to magic items and one of the characters already knows find familiar, they could cast the spell into a ring of spell storing. That would then permit your character to cast the spell. Similarly, a spellwrought tattoo could offer you a one-time use of find familiar.

Why we love this spell

Like I said earlier, this spell is extremely versatile for a 1st-level spell. A familiar taking the Help action can be a pretty valuable resource in combat. When find familiar is combined with a support class, it can function almost as a field medic boon, a little furry nurse dropping touch-based healing spells in the middle of combat. 

But the biggest reason we love the spell is its value for roleplaying on top of the mechanical or tactical advantages. Having a familiar as a built-in companion for a character is a prime resource for some interesting interactions and personality quirks. The familiar is an extension of the spellcaster and functions as a conduit to how they view and experience the world. Because the familiar has their own independent personality as well, there’s ample room for both the player and the DM to have fun with how the two interact. 

FAQ: Find familiar

Can non-ritual casters use find familiar?

The fifth-edition D&D rules for ritual casting do not prevent spellcasters from using ritual spells as a regular spell, only from taking advantage of the ritual casting feature that allows them to preserve a spell slot. 

How long does find familiar last? 

The typical use of find familiar takes an hour to cast. But the familiar sticks around until it reaches 0 hit points or the spellcaster casts the spell again or dispels it. 

Does my familiar have to stay in the space of an enemy after using the Help action?

No, the Help action doesn’t require you to stay in the same space after you’ve distracted a foe, so your familiar could risk an opportunity attack to flee. This makes the owl one of the best familiars in the game, as their Flyby feature allows them to distract and then escape without provoking an opportunity attack.

What happens to a familiar in an antimagic field?

An antimagic field temporarily winks creatures summoned by magic out of existence. Since summoning is the descriptive term used for the find familiar spell, the familiar would disappear until the antimagic field no longer occupies the space, at which time the familiar would reappear in that space.

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Riley Silverman (@rileyjsilverman) is a contributing writer to D&D Beyond, Nerdist, and SYFY Wire. She DMs the Theros-set Dice Ex Machina for the Saving Throw Show, and has been a player on the Wizards of the Coast-sponsored The Broken Pact. Riley also played as Braga in the official tabletop adaptation of the Rat Queens comic for HyperRPG, and currently plays as The Doctor on the Doctor Who RPG podcast The Game of Rassilon. She currently lives in Los Angeles.

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