Sure, but I bet if I get rid of flyby (which I don't do right now), I'd see fewer owls or reskinned owls and more of other options. Almost every player cites this as their main reason for taking owl in my experience.
but then these are not kobolds, I would never have sent my owl after cuties like this...I agree that the help tactic is fine now and then, it's a question of it being abused and making things non-fun for the group. We had to tell one of our players that their familiar was starting to get PTSD from dying every combat. An invisible flying creature doing all the exploration can also simply be boring for most of the group, even if it is a valid tactic.
We just limit familiars and don't allow imps while reminding people that anything they can do the bad guys can also do, so we have kind of a mutual agreement. Now and then is fine, they should be useful in many ways. Just don't abuse it.
Your projection appears to be based on a DM unfairly taking out your familiar. Telling a player that their familiar will be at risk if they put them at risk is not the same thing as unfairly taking them out. My players know ahead of time what the threat is and can then take steps to mitigate the chance of the familiar getting taken out. That is fair.
There's nothing "needlessly punitive" about targeting a player's resources when they put them at risk. That's just part of the game. What I want players to understand is that their familiar isn't somehow off-limits as I see in many other games - the very same games where some DMs then turn around and complain that familiars are too powerful! Well, yeah! If there are no risks or trade-offs to using the familiar in certain ways, then it may well boost their intended power!
As someone who played a wizard with a familiar, I was absolutely fine with my DM targeting my familiar in combat.
The details of your example are scant, but it would appear you were in some sense unaware of threats being present or, at least, threats to your owl. Is it reasonable in the context of that campaign setting that monsters like kobolds hunt creatures like owls for sustenance or for their feathers, etc.? Was the owl keeping watch for threats so that it's PP applied to noticing the kobolds? Was the owl hiding? If so, did you make a Stealth check and failed compared to the kobold's PP? Or, alternatively, did the DM make a Stealth check to resolve the kobolds getting the drop on the owl? Was the owl surprised? Did the owl lose initiative? Or did the familiar just die without any of those things taking place? Because if that's what happened, then that definitely seems unfair to me!
"At risk" means that you put them in harm's way. If you don't want them targeted, don't do that. If you want advantage on your attack via the Help action, know that your familiar is now a target. If they're flying around spewing fire, a monster might loose an arrow at them or throw a rock. They might even ready an attack to do it.
Failure to telegraph threats sets up situations where attacks or traps can be perceived by players as a "gotcha."
That's got a different nuance from "My general policy is to kill familiars on sight anyway" so I can certainly Lyxen's point about NPCs killing a small animal in their environment just because it happens to be a PC's familiar.
I think you are exaggerating the poster's point. I see it as no different than enemies targeting the cleric because they have the power to heal others, or charging past the fighter to attack the fireball-slinging wizard.
