D&D 5E Pact of the chain - how did it work out?

[Ancalagon]

Or target practice.

arrows cost money

Did the player specify the bird was flying higher than 400 ft.?

No?

Then bstd DM is a bstd.

That works once

 

[BookTenTiger]

Or target practice.

That's why I always make my familiar wear a bright orange vest.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

arrows cost money

Welcome to Eberron.

That works once

Eaten by a bigger hawk.

Distracted by prey and eaten by a badger.

Struck by lightning.

Blown away by a hurricane.

Can't see anything. Army is camouflaged and Hawk only has 14 Passive Perception.

If the DM wants to make life difficult for familiars it's very easy for them to do so. And I know some DMs who hate familiars. DMs can make life difficult for imps too, but they have a better chance.

 

[THEMNGMNT]

In my game I had a Pact of the Chain warlock with a pseudodragon up through level 6. The pseudodragon took the surprise out of a lot of encounters by being able to scout ahead. It was a definite pain point for me. If the character had stuck around, I would have had to change my DMing style and adventure design approach to deal with the fact that 90% of the time the players would know what was around every single corner.

 

[Charlaquin]

I love DMing for Pact of the Chain warlocks. They can send their invisible familiar to scope out the dungeon, and players are so much less hesitant to explore when it’s 10gp and an hour of ritual casting on the line instead of their character(‘s hit points). Far less agonizing over how to proceed, they just scout ahead, learn the layout and hazzards, come up with a plan of attack, execute the plan. It’s beautiful.

 

[MarkB]

The 100 foot range of the "basic" familiar has been mentioned a fair bit, but I'm not sure it's as limiting as some people say.

Supposed it's daytime, and you have a hawk familiar (or another good flier with good eyesight). You send it up with instructions. "Go fly over that valley, look around, tell me what you see". It flies off, you very quickly lose telepathic contact... but it comes back and you get a report.

It won't have the same level of initiative a smarter familiar (or another PC...) will have, but you will still gain valuable information.

It's a hawk. It has Intelligence 2. It can tell you if there are any bipeds in that valley, probably give you a rough description of their size and shape, and estimate their numbers in terms of "one", "few" or "many". It can tell you if it saw any major structures, but it doesn't know the difference between a farmhouse and a fort.

That's the real value of being able to see through its eyes.

 

[jmartkdr2]

Given that it's categorically an imp, I'd suggest it might not always be happy to throw itself into danger on behalf of its master. It might decide not to be available at times. It could also get sidetracked when exploring. This is both a way of the DM controlling just how effective it is, and an excellent role-playing opportunity.

It doesn't have to be an imp, though - there are a lot of options (including a normal animal familiar, even with the Pact Boon.) Imps are just the 'optimized" choice, but frankly optimizers tend to favor the other Boons anyways that's a rather moot point.

For myself, when I played one I was running a shadow-blade based character and the reliable advantage was rather useful, plus the familiar being able to use my sight-based Invocations really helped in exploration - when we did any. It wasn't a good match for the campaign, but that's not an issue with the option.

 

[TheDelphian]

I had a warlock with a familiar Undead Imp. Yes the Imp was undead but It was mostly;y a reskin switched some resistances (If I remember correctly) from fire to necrotic and other minor tweaks and said he was undead an Imp wrapped up like a mummy. The player knew the Imp being undead wasn't quite right cause imps lack souls and couldn't become undead. I had a whole reason etc, player never did learn but It was possible to find out.

I react with an intelligent / or even animal familiar based on how he treated it. He treated his familiar like a fellow party member and friend. Yes he scouted a lot but that was his job. Very seldom did he engage in combat because the familiar knew he was fragile and the player did not see him as disposable. The familiar was always afraid of anything that could see him when Invisible. I figured if most of its life it hid and was invisible things taht got past its main defense scared the crap out of it.

Th warlock went so far as to use a spell slot (Sort of precious to warlocks) to learn an otherwise useless spell to allow the undead imp to enjoy things like he did when he was an imp, food , wine, fresh air, sex whatever. he would cast it on him whenever they had a rough week or adventure.

The Familiar got banished to the far realm once and became lost to the character, he could not summon him back. He could have gotten a new one but not Lucius his Familiar. So the whole party went to the far realm and almost died multiple times to rescue the Imp. It was its own story arc. So Lucius became pretty loyal to the warlock and the group. Delivering emergency healing potions to prevent death etc.

So what I am actually getting at is the Familiar acts like any NPC, treat them well they do so in kind. As with many things in many games I won't be a difficult GM if you are not a difficult player. This is for things like frenzied barbarians, magic disjunctions, and other slightly abusive out of balance things. I don't pull them from the game with house rules I simple tell players I won't be abusive with the rules as long as you aren't. Never really had a problem.

 

[Benjamin Olson]

I DM'd for one, but my player never tried to map out dungeons ahead with it (which for a small dungeon you can usually do pretty well with a normal spider familiar if that's your deal). He found most of the value in the Voice of the Chain Master invocation giving him unlimited range and the ability to speak through it. He was able to use his familiar to conduct diplomacy with enemies while the group hid at a distance and on one occasion while he was using the at-will Alter Self invocation to infiltrate an enemy army for several days he left his familiar with the group to maintain the lines of communication and give him some minimal ability to participate in whatever the rest of the group was doing. I would say that for an intrigue and shenanagans campaign it's probably a pretty strong pick.

 

[Al2O3]

I'm playing a pact of the chain warlock with a pseudodragon in Tomb of Annihilation. As others have said, it's decent for some roleplaying and exploration. However, my character now only keeps it around during rests and for explosion of small and relatively safe areas. There was simply one "friendly fireball" too much during surprise combat, and for a while the character was out of components to cast the ritual again.

I think pact of the tome and using it as a diary would have provided similar amounts of roleplaying for me. Last session i noted how much more fitting pact of the blade would have been for the character as it has developed.

I will never again play a chain warlock, unless maybe if that is the only way to get a recurring friendly NPC in the campaign.