Familiars in 5e

Updated 1/10/24

Other articles in our Familiars series.

The Life of Pets, Familiars, and Animal Companions
Life of Pets II
Fun Familiars for 5e
Feats for Familiars
Famous Familiars
Fun Familiars Fiend Folio Edition

I wrote a few articles about animal companions, pets, and mounts a while back. Familiars were mentioned briefly, and I said I would be writing about them in the near future. Well, it's the future, so it's time to get off my butt and write about the wizard's best friend, the familiar. It may have taken a little longer than I planned, but now is the time to circle back and give the familiar its 15 minutes of fame.

A (Not so Brief) History of the Familiar

The familiar used to be one of the only ways for a player to have a creature at their side. It was a unique feature available for wizards only. Familiars were vital to a wizard, especially during the beginning of a campaign, when a stiff breeze could kill them. In Advanced Dungeons and Dragons (1e), the 1st level Find Familiar spell with great risk and great reward for several reasons. The familiar added to the spell caster's hit dice. It would convey its sight, hearing, and smell to its master. It could talk to the wizard, scout, spy, etc. Gaining additional hit points was especially important. Their hit points total was added to the hit point total of the magic user when it was within 12". The problem was if you killed your familiar, you lost double that amount. 

The wizard would roll 1d20 to determine the spell's results, with a 1-14 resulting in a common familiar. These familiars are the tried and true familiars we still have today and include the cat, owl, and weasel. If you rolled a 15, you summoned a special familiar: a quasit, pseudo-dragon, imp, or brownie. Replace the brownie with a sprite, and you have your 5th edition warlock familiar options. Now, if you rolled a 16-20, you sat around for 24 hours, and nothing happened. That really sucks, considering you just wasted 100 gold, a day of your life, and you can only cast the spell once a year. 

Since this isn't a Deep Dive article, I won't go down the rabbit hole looking at the familiar throughout the editions. Here's a brief recap of the rest of the editions:

• 2nd edition familiars were godawful. The Find Familiar spell costs 1000 gp, you still have a 1 in 4 chance of summoning nothing, and you can only cast it once a year. No extra hit points. Benefits are one way: the magic user gets nothing from being close to the familiar. Oh, and if your familiar dies, you can go into shock and die. At the very best, you lose a Constitution point. Forever.

• In the 3rd edition, there is no spell, as it is replaced with the Summon Familiar ability, which is now available to Sorcerers and Wizards. Each individual familiar gives the character a bonus (for example, the toad gives its master +3 hit points). They can attack. They also get special abilities as their master increases in level. Don't let it die, though, cause then it gets weird. If that happens, you'll attempt to make a DC 15 Fortitude saving throw. Failure means you lose 200 experience points per level. Success, and you only lose half that amount. And once again, you're waiting a year before you can summon another one.

• 4th edition is completely different, as it is with practically everything else. Familiars are now obtained via the Arcane Familiar feat, and any arcane class can have one. You get to customize your familiar in various ways and get some neat abilities as you go through the feat tree. The list of familiar types explodes from 10 in the 3rd edition to over two dozen potential choices.

Familiars in 5th Edition

We are led to think that we revert to familiars being a special perk available only to wizards in the 5th edition, but that would be a lie. Go Pact of the Chain when you play a warlock, and you learn the find familiar spell and can choose from four fantastic options. If you play an Eldritch Knight or Arcane Trickster, you have access to the spell. Any class can take the Ritual Caster or Magic Initiate feat and learn the find familiar spell. Just because only a few people do it doesn't mean it isn't taking away from the uniqueness of the concept. There are plenty of other opportunities out there to have an animal at your side, whether it be a riding or flying mount, animal companion, or pet. Familiars, in my humble opinion, should be for the wizard only.

The Find Familiar spell is still a 1st level spell, and it takes 1 hour and 10 minutes to cast since it has that spell slot-saving ritual tag. When you summon your familiar, it is not truly an animal. In actuality, you are summoning a celestial, fey, or fiend that happens to look like, act like, and have the same stats as the beast you decide to take. It's odd, but let's roll with it. No more killing your familiar to get rid of it, as you can use an action to dismiss it into a pocket dimension temporarily. It will hang out until you call it back, and you can recall it to any unoccupied space within 30 feet of your location. You can still dismiss the familiar if you wish, which is fine since it only costs you 10 gold and 10 minutes.

In combat, familiars cannot attack and will act separately from you. Keep them within 100 feet, and they will obey your commands. There are plenty of other actions to choose from. The Help action is the most popular because giving an ally advantage is the best way to stay on their holiday card mailing list. They can dash to deliver something to a comrade, search for an item while you're busy fighting that rust monster, and hide when the heat is on, and you don't have to use your action to send Mr. Kibbles the rat to its pocket dimension.

You can see and hear your familiar experiences, but it will cost you an action to do so, which may be an ineffective use of your action economy in combat. The big thing that everyone loves about the familiar is that it can deliver a touch spell to a friend or foe. Spells with a range of touch can be stored inside the familiar and delivered to a creature within 100 feet of you. It uses its reaction to 'cast' the spell, but let's be honest, you'd probably never use its reaction if it wasn't for this ability.

The Familiars

For the sake of what little sanity I have left, we will only talk about the familiars found in the spell description. Pact of the Chain familiars could take up their own article, plus a ridiculous number of variants are found throughout the textbooks. My favorite is the abyssal chicken from Baldur’s Gate: Descent into Avernus, but I digress.

The list contains the following options: bat, cat, crab, frog (toad), hawk, lizard, octopus, owl, poisonous snake, quipper, rat, raven, sea horse, spider, or weasel. Some are good, some bad, and some make me sad.

The Alphas

1. Owl - By far the most popular familiar out there since the owl has a 60 ft. fly speed, matching the hawk as the fastest flying creature. The owl also has 120 feet of darkvision, putting the other familiars to shame. It has a weak AC, but that doesn’t matter because it has the best ability of all the creatures on this list, the flyby. Flyby allows the owl to swoop in, deliver that shocking grasp spell you cast into it, and then not provoke an attack of opportunity on its way out. With 60 feet of flying speed, darkvision, and flyby ability, the owl is a highly effective offensive weapon, especially for one that can’t attack!

2. Bat - It has a decent AC and a mediocre fly speed of 30 feet, so why is it second on the list? The reason is 60 feet of Blindsight. The bat can perceive its surroundings within a 60 ft. radius without relying on sight. A 60 ft. radius is enormous. Pull out your grid map and draw a 60 ft. radius circle. I’ll wait…. Yep, it’s that big. Creatures cannot hide from the bat, whether they attempt to slink into darkness, become invisible, or crouch behind a big rock. The bat is a fantastic battlefield management familiar.

3. Hawk - What’s not to like about the hawk? It has a decent AC, a fly speed of 60 feet, and the best passive Perception of all the familiars. When you add that their Keen Sight ability gives them advantage on all Perception checks relying on sight, you have a nice scout on your hands. Not having darkvision drops it down to third.
   
   Middle of the Road
   

4. Raven - The last of the flying familiars, its fly speed is a notch below the other two birds, and an AC 12 puts it in between the hawk and owl. No darkvision is a knock on the raven, and its Perception is good but still lower than a hawk. It does have the Mimicry trait, which is fun but more suited for roleplay than combat. That's not to say it can't be used as a distraction or deceptive trick, but with a DC 10 Insight check, it's not very hard to discover the ruse.

5. Spider - The spider is an underrated familiar, in my humble opinion. They are another utility familiar only since you can literally step on them and kill the poor thing. It does have some interesting abilities that a creative player can optimize regularly. It may not move very fast, but with the Spider Climb ability, our little friend can easily crawl up and down walls and scurry across the ceiling. Add a +4 Stealth, and you have yourself a little spy on eight legs. (Note - I am not mentioning anything in conjunction with its Web Sense or Web Walker abilities on purpose. There is nothing in the spider's description that says it can spin a web of any sort, whereas the giant spider does. One may assume the spider can spin a web, but I'd check with your DM just in case)

6. Cat - We've got two in my house. While they are great pets but vanilla familiars. They can move around well with a walking speed of 40 ft and a climb speed of 30 ft. Add their bonuses to Stealth and Perception, and you may wonder why they are sixth on the list. The issue is that there is nothing else to talk about. You can certainly do worse, but as we've seen, better options exist.

7. Weasel - They are sneaky little bastards with Keen Hearing and Smell. Beyond that, there's little to talk about.
   
   No Thanks
   

8. Snake -They have a walking speed (slithering?), a swim speed of 30 ft., and a tiny bit of Blindsight (10 ft.). The poisonous snake would be in the top tier if familiars could attack. But since they cannot, I'll pass.

9. Frog - The frog can breathe both air and water. They can walk and swim, but just 20 feet per round. That could be better. Minimal darkvision (30 ft.) and a +3 to Stealth are decent. Their biggest claim to fame is they can jump far. 

10. Crab - Does crawling along with the ocean floor count as swimming? They amble on land and in water (20 feet), which isn't great. They do have 30 feet of Blindsight, which is excellent. But do you really want to be seen walking around with a crab tucked in your pocket?

11. Lizard - The lizard can climb but at a speed of only 20 feet. Add to that they have no Stealth bonus, and the lizard is a hard pass.

12. Rat - A lizard without the ability to climb. That rat is a no-go unless it can prepare all my meals like Remy in Ratatouille.
    
    Are You Kidding Me?
    

13. Octopus - Look, if you're going to be playing an underwater campaign, the octopus is number one. They are fast little swimmers with decent Stealth and darkvision, but Ink Cloud makes them extraordinary. A 5-foot-radius cloud of ink that heavily obscures the area for 1 minute and lets the octopus take the Dash action as a bonus action is neat. They are also the only familiar that isn't a tiny beast. But unless you don't mind carrying around a fish tank with you, you've got 30 minutes of land time with it before you spend an hour summoning it back into existence.

14. Quipper - Great, I have a mean goldfish. Blood Frenzy lets the Quipper cast my touch spells with advantage, but Quippy is either taking an attack of opportunity or hanging out in front of the bad guy next round. An AC of 13 is good, but no AC is good enough with a single hit point.

15. Seahorse - Why? 

    No, seriously, why?
    

Conclusion

The familiar is synonymous with the wizard. The problem is that most familiars don’t serve much purpose outside of fun roleplay and crawling through small places to scout ahead. There’s a reason everyone takes the owl as their familiar because it serves a valuable purpose during combat. Sending your familiar into the fray to help an ally may work once or twice, but if you get too close, it’s a bad guy’s bonus action away from death.

I’m gearing up for a Pathfinder 2 campaign in a couple of weeks, and I’ll play a wizard. I’m looking forward to choosing from the over twenty choices of potential familiars, each with specific traits and abilities that both I and the familiar benefit from. Plus, as I advance in level and power, my familiar advances with me.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with the 5th edition familiar. But after you look at them throughout the editions and the traits and abilities they currently have, you can't help but feel disappointed at how bland they are.

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