I've been checking out the Find Familiar spell, and mulling over potential shenanigans in 5e. Thought I'd share a couple of ideas and beg you folks for more suggestions. Owls look pretty promising - 60ft fly speed, Flyby, 120ft Darkvision, advantage on most perception checks, Harry Potter jokes (this may or may not be a positive).
First, let's get the obvious stuff out of the way:
Looking through the eyes of an owl on your shoulder (or nestled in the front of your shirt) grants you its Darkvision and perception advantage
The owl can deliver touch attack spells with Flyby, essentially granting a 30ft range.
You can also use the Help action with Flyby to grant advantage to attack - swoop in front of the bad guy's face, or give him a peck somewhere uncomfortable.
It's pretty easy for a Tiny creature to get cover - your owl can swoop out, take care of business, and hide behind the Medium-size fighter. Or throw up some concealment with Minor Illusion.
A couple more interesting ideas:
Oil flasks are cheap, and at level 1 the extra 5 damage is a big deal. By the standard rules, an owl can carry 22.5lbs - Strength of 3, times 15, divided by 2 for Tiny size. Oil flasks weigh 1lb each, and only cost 1sp. Rig your owl an adorable string bandoleer, and attach a string to the cork of each flask so he can pull it with his beak.Splashing oil on a creature within 5ft of you succeeds automatically, with no attack roll (if I'm reading the rules correctly). At low levels, that 5 fire damage is pretty significant. If your owl goes before you in the initiative order, he can soak a baddie in oil and then you firebolt it. If you go first, just ready an action that triggers when your owl makes his move. All of a sudden you do as much damage as the fighter with your cantrips. Or maybe you are a fighter using the Magic Initiate feat - just set your sword on fire with some more oil.
22.5lbs strike you as a little high for an owl's carrying capacity? Well if you hit your familiar with an Enlarge, that goes up to 45lbs - enough for an average gnome or halfling, plus some of their gear. 60ft fly speed at level three for the shorties in the party.
Any other suggestions? Non-owl familiar ideas are welcome.
Old_Crow wrote:
HeirRaktus wrote:
http://community.wizards.com/comment/51345096 -- A discussion about owl familiars, flyby and Help action.
p. 176 PHB - Variant: Encumberance will reduce the owl's carrying capacity to 15 without being slowed down. Of course, then you should apply the variant rules to PCs too. Still seems Iike a lot for an owl, but I have a nagging suspicion encumberance rules assume a medium sized creature, and the devs just left that assumption out for simplification. Str x 5 for medium, x3 for small, and x1 for tiny would be a reasonable house rule IMO. A corresponding upscale for large x10, huge x20, gargantuan x30 or something...
I think it's generally safer to send a familiar ahead as a scout, rather than the resident stealther. Range limited to 100 feet, and will raise suspicion if detected outside their natural habitat, but preferable to a PC getting caught. Also super handy when your party lacks a stealther entirely.
Grappling hooks make a lot of noise. Have your owl emplace it -- and make sure there aren't any unseen guards up there in the first place.
Sacrifice it to the flame gods! Smother a distant torch with his body, and generally spook the F#$% out of any witnesses -- enemies familar with magic users/arcana might recognize what's going on when it dies and poofs mid air, instead of smoldering on the ground.
Not specific to owls, but useful for getting out of prison if the gaoler's keys are in the same room as the prisoners, and you didn't take mage hand.
Why an Owl?
Use a bat with blindsight and throw Darkness out there.
The "carry" rules assume you travel via contact with the ground - walk, run, perambulate, slither. A fly-er must be lightweight to stay in the air. So say his total weight carried equals his STR in pounds, max overload, and work backwards from there. (I think he can still be a one-shot dive bomber of flames.)
Other trick: the owl drops off a lookout post and falls to the ground. No, thre's nothing wrong or unusual, it just found a fieldmouse and wanted a snack. Perfectly natural owl here, nothing to see, nothing unusual about it, can't possibly be an enspelled lookout triggering an Alarm ... And of course there isn't anybody in the lookout post if the owl was sitting there, right?
Dirty trick: the owl flies directly over a Recurring Rival and takes a dump on it, like how IRL birds always target your newly-washed car. Also good if it spits up a hairball made of fur and bones and other indigestible remains of its last meal. Bonus points if RR is obsessed with his good looks and having an adoring public.
Undrhil wrote:
BRJN wrote:
One thing I feel is sorely missing from the monster manual is information telling us the height, weight, and carrying capacity each creature has depending on the current form of movement. Just some good, general information a DM might want to know to improvise an attempted action.
Fralex wrote:
Speaking of Tiny, are there any rules towards stealth of Tiny critters? It seems to me that a spider familiar ought to be darned stealthy, unless he's like...
even then, he's going to be pretty quiet!
raleel wrote:
IxidorRS wrote:
mellored wrote:
Undrhil wrote:
More tricks with an Owl familiar:
Tell it to EAT the villian's Rat familiar. (Also works with small bird familiars.)
raleel wrote:
HeirRaktus wrote:
IxidorRS wrote:
HeirRaktus wrote:
HeirRaktus wrote:
tdaelin wrote:
tdaelin wrote:
@ OP
PG 240 under the "Find Familiar" Spell:
"In combat, it rolls its own initiative and acts on its own turn. A familiar can’t attack, but it can take other actions as normal."
In the case of the owl wouldn't this make flyby attack worthless for a familiar? Even if you were using the flyby attack to deliver a tough spell I don't think that would work because:
"Finally, when you cast a spell with a range o f touch, your familiar can deliver the spell as if it had cast the spell. Your familiar must be within 100 feet of you, and it must use its reaction to deliver the spell when you cast it. If the spell requires an attack roll, you use your attack modifier for the roll."
That tells me, because the familiar has its own initiative, the familiar has to be waiting by the enemy to use it's reaction to deliver the touch spell. That is unless the caster ready's an action to cast the touch spell when the owl is within reach of the enemy.
Thoughts?
BTW - I love the idea of having a owl familiar with my Warlock, which is why I looked into it.
Important to note as well about looking through the owl's eyes and gaining darkvision and advantage on perception:
"Additionally, as an action, you can see through your familiar’s eyes and hear what it hears until the start o f your next turn, gaining the benefits o f any special senses that the familiar has."
So, yes you would gain advantage on perception checks (although not sure about using the owls mod or your own) and darkvision. The way I read it is you would use your own modifier. But doing so would consume your action every round. That means moving at half your speed if you're just exploring with the party while observing through the owl.
Where I see this being especially awesome is as a human character taking his/her turn as lookout and watching through the owls eyes. Or just scouting at night. Keep in mind though if the owl goes beyond 100ft you can no longer telepathically command it, even though you could still use its senses as your own.
Also on the "Help Action".
Help is a special action because it is initiated by one character (initiator) and resolved by a second character (recipient) as long the conditions are met. The conditions to be met for both characters are "creature within 5 feet of you (initiator)…before the beginning of your (initiator) next turn”. If both of those conditions aren’t met when the recipient takes his attack action against the designated creature, then he/she will not have advantage against that creature.
Situational, yes. But it can still be quite powerful when used correctly.
LordOfTheChance wrote:
As a follow up to my Help questions: I tweeted Crawford earlier and he responded.
How do you keep your familiar from being one shotted? I was really interested in getting a psuedo-dragon, until I saw that they only have 7 hit points and could be one shot by a kobold.
Knight_Marshal wrote:
HeirRaktus wrote:
Jay_Ibero_911 wrote:
Fralex wrote:
LordOfTheChance wrote:
Old_Crow wrote:
I like turtles!
LordOfTheChance wrote:
Use a mount. That should help
Old_Crow wrote:
awaken_D_M_golem wrote:
If you decide to use the "I can carry LOTS of weight" option discussed above, have your Owl familiar fly over and retrieve your backpack when you are stuck in a jail cell. After the whole party is re-equipped, then grab the keyring off the jailer's waist.
Kind of an old thread, but thought I'd bring up another good use of familiars that came up at my table last weekend. The characters are a merciful bunch, accepting enemy surrender when its offered. The party had more work to do after an encounter in which they took some prisoners, but didn't feel very safe simply tying them up, putting them in a corner, and pressing on. The wizard got the bright idea to leave his familiar as a guard, and to come notify him if the prisoners tried to escape.