I'd work with someone who wants an elf adopted by dwarves so they can swap certain racial attributes. But if someone wants powergame, then the fluff should only go so far. If someone wants 10 foot reach, then play a bugbear if its that important. You shouldn't be able to reskin your bugbear into a pretty elf maiden.
Is using a familiar in combat to grant advantage a common tactic?
I'd work with someone who wants an elf adopted by dwarves so they can swap certain racial attributes. But if someone wants powergame, then the fluff should only go so far. If someone wants 10 foot reach, then play a bugbear if its that important. You shouldn't be able to reskin your bugbear into a pretty elf maiden.
Satyrn
First Post
That is what I would tell you first.
Honestly I didn't encounter overly powergaming in 5e yet. My players are not too much on the powergamer front...
Although all our familiars are bats so far... could have something to do with the blind sight they have...
The last time i had a familiar it was a bat, too. Not for the blindsight. I just wanted to call my character Batgnome.
The Crimson Binome
Hero
As far as I'm concerned, the stats are there for a reason. If you want to play a strong character, then looking like a strong character goes with the territory, and assigning a high Strength score to a waif is playing it bad faith.
If someone wants the stats of a greatsword, but they want the flavor of using an improvised weapon (like a sign post), then they're out of luck. The entire reason why the improvised weapon might seem cooler is because you wouldn't normally associate it with being very effective, and by giving it much better stats than it deserves, you're claiming credit for a coolness factor that's entirely undeserved. If you want people to think you're cool because you successfully fight with an inferior weapon, then you need to actually fight with the inferior weapon.
If someone wants to run a bugbear sized elf maiden with bugbear reach, **and** I allow bugbear racial stat blocks as PC, and it doesnt overtly conflict eith setting, I leave my "power gamer boogeyman in the closet.
Really, if I have allowed bugbear stats already as allowable PCs it's because I am ok with that and it's not likely due to their chewbacca looks.
My first 5e campaign was Esper Genesis scifi. There your familiar sprll is basically build-a-bot drones. So you hot a friggin checklist of abilities to choose to add in and the appearance is pretty much wide open beyond fitting those traits. One familiar with flyby was a spinning anti-g ring not unlike Xena shakrum. Another was an anti-g flying spider, not unlike replicators from stargate. Others went girl different enhancements and appearances.
It was fun, each choosing their own types, even adjusting the look to suit materials on hand.
Way too many campaigns in effects driven systems to get my dice all bounced over looks for gun snd distinctiveness.
Funny story. When Sam L Jackson played a jedi he got a purple light saber "blade". Itvwasnt because that purple light saber blade got flyby, or blind sight or any other mechanical difference from the other non-purple light sabers did. It wasnt because it showed him as a chief or novice. It wasnt him being a Munchkin.
It was cuz his younger daughter, granddaughter whatever thought it was cool he was in star wars and so he asked for a purple saber so she could spot him easily, he stood out.
Well, that and the obvious scheme for purple light sabers ctittingbon a 17+. I suppose.
How do you possibly enforce that in a game of imagination. I feel like most players would just say, "ok, fine, greatsword" to get the DM to shut up and then picture their character however they please.
The Crimson Binome
Hero
If the game isn't fun, then I don't expect the player to stick around, and I expect the shared experience is part of what makes it fun. Of course you can say that anything you want happens in your own imagination, but if nobody else is interacting with your changes, then it feels a lot like you're just playing by yourself.
The narrative where you're swinging a greatsword is only important because everyone else at the table acknowledges it. The narrative where you're swinging a sign post is no more important than the one where you solve every obstacle single-handedly by rolling a 20 on every check; it's meaningless, because it's only in your head, rather than being part of the shared experience.
But it is still a shared experience, its just that one player is mentally replacing the word "greatsword" with the word "signpost of awesomeness"; the narrative remains the same, its just the mental picture that is different.
The Crimson Binome
Hero
No, they are fundamentally different narratives. If they weren't different enough for it to matter, then the player wouldn't feel any reason to make a mental substitution.
In any case, as long as it doesn't disrupt the rest of the table, what happens in your own brain is irrelevant.
shadowoflameth
Adventurer
Normal Familiars would not always grant advantage in combat because they don't have attacks. If it's not a threat, it doesn't flank if you are using that optional rule. Some powers grant advantage when you have an ally adjacent and those would work with a familiar. If you have a special familiar which can attack in melee it could flank and they can perform the help action.
That's fine of course as a house rule but the help action in combat RAW does not require an attack or threat to help. It specifically mentions directly "feint, distracts the target or in some other way... "
The rule requiring both parties involved to be able to do whatever it is on their own is in the broader scope "Working Together" section in the chapter on Ability Checks, not the chapter on combat and attack rolls.
This is but one of many cases of how ability checks and attack checks play by different rules.
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