RPGaDay 2019: 7 Familiar

One of the best reasons to be a wizard, back in the days when you had to fend off triceratops on your way to the hobby shop in the mall (I know, I’m speaking in tongues right now), was that you got a familiar at first level (or second, if your DM was being a stickler for those material components). The familiar was a staple of high fantasy and fairy tales, true, but in AD&D, it meant up to four additional hit points—and at first level, that was a HUGE deal. It also meant you got some extra sensory bonuses and, if you were really lucky, you might get a magical familiar that would certainly be a benefit in those early levels as you struggled to stay at the back of the party and not get killed.

5th edition familiars are, by comparison, a little lacking in pizzazz.  Sure, it’s cheaper to cast the spell, and you get more animals to choose from, but they are not special in that way that they are all either celestials, fey, or fiends, as you choose. They still look like a harmless li'l bat, but trust me, they are evil!

You don’t get to add hit points, and you aren’t penalized when the familiar dies. In fact, you can dump it into a hyperpocket whenever you want. It’s potentially useful, but given the expanded list of familiar chdices (including bat, cat, crab, frog, hawk, lizard, octopus, owl, poisonous snake, fish, rat, raven, sea horse, spider, or weasel—but NOT the quasit, brownie, or imp) and the fact that they are all interchangeable, well, who cares about a familiar in fifth edition?

My solution is to bring a little first edition into the spell. Below is the link to my write-up for Familiars. It’s free for you to use. Click here to get it.

Familiars--Homebrew 

If you’d like some more inspiration on how to handle familiars, I would highly recommend the Vlad Taltos series of books by Steven Brust. His titular character has a small flying lizard (a Jhereg) named Loiosh and their relationship is amazing and should give you plenty of examples for how to run a wizard with a familiar.

Also, there’s a great novel by Roger Zelazny called A Night in the Lonesome October. I can’t recommend it strongly enough. A great book about what the help gets up to when the masters are away.