Find Familiar

A Familiar is awesome in D&D 5E, full stop. Learning and using the Find Familiar spell is something that every Wizard should strive for. This spell is a bit of a can'o'worms to fully understand and to use.


A familiar is an able helper that doesn't mind giving up its action, granting advantage on skill checks. Limited chiefly by its lack of language skills (hard to help with persuasion if you can't communicate) and fingers (picking a lock is hard with only a beak).  It also can be used for flanking in melee as another source of advantage; although, with 1 hit point and generally terrible armor, being in melee isn't a very good idea.

Casting the Spell

Find Familiar has a one hour casting time and can be cast as a ritual, so it will take 70 minutes to complete in all but the oddest circumstances. It consumes 10gp worth of charcoal, incense and herbs.  Hoe much of each and type is unspecified.  Presumably the value is mostly in incense and to a lesser degree herbs.  I am assuming the materials are compact, high value items.  If on average, them have the same value density as gold, they should way 0.2 pounds (50gp is 1 pound in the D&D).

The materials are to be burned in a Brass Brazier, which is not further defined.  It is also not something listed in the PHB or DMG, so it is up the DM.  I found a discussion that contains arguments for a brazier that is about the size of an end table and for the use of a censor.  In discussions with our DM, we settled on a small brazier.  A few of which we looked at online. We picked one from Etsy that seems right, it's about 8 inches in diameter and 1.5 inches deep, making it a reasonable size to carry, perhaps as part of a mess kit. We don't know how much it weighs, but one pound seems plausible.

Having answered those two points the casting of the spell is straight forward.

Using the Spell

An excellent guide to this spell is posted on Giant in the Playground: Celestial, Fey, and Fiend: A Guide to Familiar Keeping.  I'll not rehash those elements beyond providing links to the better familiar types and echoing the stat block of my favorite, the Owl.

• Bat: Blindsight is the only real selling point here, though if your DM rules Keen Hearing enhances it it becomes better. If the idea of invisible assassins creeps you out for some reason; who am I to stop you?
• Hawk: Fast flier with great perception. A decent aerial scout.
• Octopus: A great scout for when you're underwater. Note that Ink Cloud isn't an attack, so you can enjoy heavy obscuration (is that a word?) all combat long.
• Owl: Perhaps the best of all standard familiars. Long-range darkvision, a high flying speed, proficiencies where you need them, and on top of all that they've got Flyby. 
• Poisonous Snake: I like it as a downtime form, seeing you can just milk its poison all day long. Taking it on adventures is less interesting, though.
• Raven: Mimicry makes this perhaps the most versatile of all familiars. Bonus points if you fluff it as a parrot.
• Weasel: The stealthiest of all familiars, and a good perception score to go with it.

Celestial, Fey or Fiend

When the familiar is summoned, it will appear as a celestial, fey, or fiendish version of the appropriate animal.  This has little effect from a mechanics point of view other than changing the type from beast which makes them immune to Animal Friendship and potentially susceptible to other spells such as Magic Circle.

The type may say more about the alignment of the summoner than anything else.

More About Owl Familiars