The Warlock's Pact Boon "Pact of the Chain" allows it to cast Find Familiar as a regular spell as well as a ritual, but it gives additional options for the familiar's form. These are the sprite, imp, quasit, and psuedodragon. This thread will focus on the last three.
These three compatible creatures have a variant form of themselves, namely, "Variant: Familiar" which gives the owner of the familiar the ability to sense what the familiar senses while they are within 1 mile of each other and when they are within 10ft of each other, the summoner shares their Magic Resistance feature. I've seen some DMs take issue with allowing a player to summon these variants as they aren't a "base creature" in the MM and therefore aren't a RAW option. I disagree because, while its true they are a variant, that doesn't mean they aren't a compatible creature from the MM. A variant imp is still an imp and therefore can be summoned.
I believe this also does some cool two-fold alleviation for concerns about the pact boon as I've coincidentally heard that its the weakest pact boon for the warlock. Firstly, it becomes an active defensive buff for the Warlock and therefore becomes a pact that's relevant for combat. Secondly, it also makes warlocks' familiars better scouts than a wizard's. Having the ability to have an imp turn into a raven or quasit into a bat means that the familiar still gets to be stealthy to a useful degree while being able to share its senses up to a mile. And if the familiar gets into a scuffle or falls into a trap, it has more ways to avoid getting killed and having a decent chance to fight back.
What do you think? Overpowered? Still underpowered? Would you allow this or you find it too much? I'm interested in the community's thoughts.
