Duan'duliir
Devil of Chance
Before I share the house-rule in question, a little context: I am building up a homebrew world and one of the traits of the world is that familiars are divine spirits. This means that the find familiar spell is removed from the wizard spell list, and clerics and paladins get the following feature as they get spellcasting:
Divine Guide
The find familiar spell is added to your spell list. You always have it prepared, and it doesn’t count against the number of spells you can prepare each day. In order to prepare your spells each day, your familiar must be within 15 feet of you.
This will mostly end up as a flavour thing, I expect. However, the basic fluff - that the familiar is the conduit for the magic of the two classes - kind of breaks down with the pact of the chain. There're four ways to solve this: ban pact of the chain, hope no-one picks warlock, ignore the fluff/crunch conflict and run it as raw, or a more complex house-rule.
The Pact of the Chain feature is modified as follows:
Pact of the Chain
You learn the find familiar spell and can cast it as a ritual. This spell is always prepared, and it doesn’t count against the number of spells you can prepare each day.
When you cast the spell, you can choose one of the normal forms for your familiar or one of the following special forms: imp, pseudodragon, quasit, or sprite.
Additionally, your familiar serves as a direct conduit to your patron's magic. Rather than knowing a limited amount of warlock spells, you immediately learn all the spells on the warlock spell list that are of a level equal to or lower than your pact magic slots. You can prepare a number of spells from the warlock spell list equal to the number of spells a warlock of your level would normally know*. In order to prepare your spells each day, your familiar must be within 15 feet of you.
The spells from your patron's expanded spell list are always prepared for you, and do not count against your number of prepared spells.
*i.e. the spells known column becomes a spells prepared column
This is what I'm currently looking at using. Now, this is a definite power boost, that I can see. But does it open up some completely broken thing that I can't see? Would giving a bonus invocation to warlocks who take the other pact boons balance them against this empowered form of Pact of the Chain?
Divine Guide
The find familiar spell is added to your spell list. You always have it prepared, and it doesn’t count against the number of spells you can prepare each day. In order to prepare your spells each day, your familiar must be within 15 feet of you.
This will mostly end up as a flavour thing, I expect. However, the basic fluff - that the familiar is the conduit for the magic of the two classes - kind of breaks down with the pact of the chain. There're four ways to solve this: ban pact of the chain, hope no-one picks warlock, ignore the fluff/crunch conflict and run it as raw, or a more complex house-rule.
The Pact of the Chain feature is modified as follows:
Pact of the Chain
You learn the find familiar spell and can cast it as a ritual. This spell is always prepared, and it doesn’t count against the number of spells you can prepare each day.
When you cast the spell, you can choose one of the normal forms for your familiar or one of the following special forms: imp, pseudodragon, quasit, or sprite.
Additionally, your familiar serves as a direct conduit to your patron's magic. Rather than knowing a limited amount of warlock spells, you immediately learn all the spells on the warlock spell list that are of a level equal to or lower than your pact magic slots. You can prepare a number of spells from the warlock spell list equal to the number of spells a warlock of your level would normally know*. In order to prepare your spells each day, your familiar must be within 15 feet of you.
The spells from your patron's expanded spell list are always prepared for you, and do not count against your number of prepared spells.
*i.e. the spells known column becomes a spells prepared column
This is what I'm currently looking at using. Now, this is a definite power boost, that I can see. But does it open up some completely broken thing that I can't see? Would giving a bonus invocation to warlocks who take the other pact boons balance them against this empowered form of Pact of the Chain?