Familiar Alternative

Familiars are summoned spirits from another plane of existence that take on a form that is shaped for them by a spell caster. They are celestials, feys or fiends, that obey their master, the one who summoned them. They can be faithful allies, obey your every command, or in some case belligerently completing the task set before them. Most spell casters utilise the Find Familiar ritual to summon such a creature into their service, and should their familiar be killed, it can be replaced following the casting of the ritual again.

But that is not the only way that a familiar can be bonded to a spell caster. Much in the way that an individual who embraces nature can gain the trust and friendship of an animal companion, a spell caster can imbue an existing beast with their own power, elevating them from beast to familiar. This process is in itself the result of a ritual, once forgotten, but now rediscovered.

Create Familiar (Ritual)

1st-level enchantment

Casting Time: 1 hour

1 hour Range: 10 ft.

10 ft. Components: V, S, M (100 GP worth of alchemy ingredients, clean water slowly boiled over an incensed brass brazier)

V, S, M (100 GP worth of alchemy ingredients, clean water slowly boiled over an incensed brass brazier) Duration: Instantanious

You gain the service of a familiar from a willing: bat, cat, crab, frog (toad), hawk, lizard, octopus, owl, poisonous snake, fish (quipper), rat, raven, scorpion, sea horse, spider, vulture, or weasel. The beast consumes the alchemical tincture with you as part of the ritual, creating a bond where you invest magical energy into the beast. As a result of the magical energy given, your familiar can understand all of the languages you understand, but is unable to read, write or speak them.

Your familiar acts independently of you, but it always obeys your commands. 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. When you cast a spell with a range of 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.

While your familiar is within 100 feet of you, you can communicate with it telepathically. Additionally, as an action, you can see through your familiar’s eyes and hear what it hears until the start of your next turn, gaining the benefits of any special senses that the familiar has. During this time, you are deaf and blind with regard to your own senses.

Additionally, having invested your own magical energy into your familiar, the familiar is able to learn spells on your behalf, adding to your list of known spells. The familiar cannot cast the spells themselves, nor do they add to the number of spells that you are able to cast in a given period, but whilst they are alive and you share a plane of existence, you can draw on their known spells when casting spells yourself. For learning new spells, see known spells below.

You can’t have more than one familiar at a time. If you cast this spell while you already have a familiar, the spell will fail. If your familiar drops to 0 hit points, it is killed and does not make death saving throws. It can be revived through the use of an appropriate spell (e.g. revivify), but whilst it is dead, you lose access to its known spells. Whilst dead, if it is not revived within 24 hours, it will start to forget spells, starting with the highest level spell it knows (if tied, this is decided randomly), losing 1 spell every 24 hours thereafter.

Known Spells

Your familiar has a number of spell points depending on your own spellcaster level that can be used to learn spells. It can learn spells up to level 5, and cannot know a spell that you do not have a spell slot to be able to cast it with. Your familiar can only learn spells that you are able to learn yourself (i.e. from your class spell list).

Spell caster level Spell Points 1 1 (+1 Cantrip) 2 2 3 4 4 6 5 8 6 10 7 12 8 14 9 16 10 18 (+1 Cantrip) 11 20 12 22 13 24 14 26 15 28 16 30 17 32 18 34 19 36 20 38 (+1 Cantrip)

Your familiar can also learn additional cantrips as you level up. As cantrips cannot be forgotten, these can only be learnt directly by your familiar (See Learning Spells below).