D&D 5E My Wizard Needs an Assistant! Who could it be?

The DM has said that I will be acquiring an assistant of some sort and I get a bit of choice, based on backstory, what/who it could be. We're 10th and most of the rest of the party has followers.

Backstory:
My wizard is in his 90s but was 'cursed' into the body of a young boy by a powerful Djinn. In return for 'becoming young again', the Djinn got most of my possessions, including my tower and everything in it. After insulting the Djinn, the fickle Djinn swore to kill my character. I slipped away to my tower, I took whatever I could grab and fled and have been in hiding for over a year. Of the things I left behind, was my faithful servant.

The tower was created by my character's master and my character inherited it (probably in his 50s or 60s). It has many wonderous things - some of which remain locked away until my character gained sufficient power. Sadly my character grew old before he could unlock many of the secrets - hence the need to 'become young' again and continue to research.

The Assistant was created by my Master and is, probably, hundreds of years old. I see us as being loyal to each other with a strong bond of friendship (my character was partly raised by the Assistant). My character wanted to rescue him and couldn't but now, with the help of new allies, he's going to reclaim his tower and rescue his Assistant!

Who is this Assistant?

I thought of, maybe, a homunculus or a pseudo dragon. I'm not sure what he could even do...The DM said, 'it can be anything Huge or smaller'.
My character has crafting in carpentry and jewelry. Maybe he was taught by the assitant?
My character also has expertise in Arcana so a walking library seems redundant.
Maybe it has access to the locked levels?

I just can't think of anything cool. I already have a regular familiar so I'm looking for something with a bit more utility and RP fun.

A mage of your importance needs something like a Chamberlain. This is a senior servant, someone to supervise those who do the basic chores, look after your finances AND maintain/improve your public reputation. ( Incidentally, Chamberlains in real life were given the keys of a castle and some had a key as a symbol of their rank. That might link in to your "locked levels" problem).

Batman's butler, Alfred Pennyworth would be a good example of a Chamberlain. Let's see if we can steal... er... "be inspired" by this character

This NPC should be very intelligent and have a lot of diplomacy and etiquette skills. They should also be utterly truthful and willing to keep "the young Master" informed of any potential problems that he's about to walk into. This would range from fashion mistakes to errors in strategy. Your DM might appreciate the opportunity for a little sarcasm.

Chamberlain: "You're not wearing THAT are you, sir?"

Young Master: "That was my plan. Do you object on aesthetic grounds, Chamberlain?"

Chamberlain: "Partially, sir. It is a little bright for my tastes. Also, it does seem a little... flammable ...when you're meeting with the Fire Priests for dinner."

SPECIAL CHARACTERISTICS
Your chamberlain should be able to perform repairs/maintenance on EVERYTHING in the castle (hence the carpentry and other craft skills) but they should also have hidden depths. Perhaps, some spy-type and wilderness skills?

Naturally, the Chamberlain should have access to Butlerspace and have a minor teleportation ability. He can appear whenever the Young Master speaks his name.

RACE
I suggest Drow. I know you stated that this NPC was created by your master, but Drow would provide the initial template.

MattW said:

A mage of your importance needs something like a Chamberlain. This is a senior servant, someone to supervise those who do the basic chores, look after your finances AND maintain/improve your public reputation. ( Incidentally, Chamberlains in real life were given the keys of a castle and some had a key as a symbol of their rank. That might link in to your "locked levels" problem).

Batman's butler, Alfred Pennyworth would be a good example of a Chamberlain. Let's see if we can steal... er... "be inspired" by this character

This NPC should be very intelligent and have a lot of diplomacy and etiquette skills. They should also be utterly truthful and willing to keep "the young Master" informed of any potential problems that he's about to walk into. This would range from fashion mistakes to errors in strategy. Your DM might appreciate the opportunity for a little sarcasm.

Chamberlain: "You're not wearing THAT are you, sir?"

Young Master: "That was my plan. Do you object on aesthetic grounds, Chamberlain?"

Chamberlain: "Partially, sir. It is a little bright for my tastes. Also, it does seem a little... flammable ...when you're meeting with the Fire Priests for dinner."

Your chamberlain should be able to perform repairs/maintenance on EVERYTHING in the castle (hence the carpentry and other craft skills) but they should also have hidden depths. Perhaps, some spy-type and wilderness skills?

Naturally, Chamberlain should have access to Butlerspace and have a minor teleportation ability

Click to expand...

Very cool. Thanks for that, I love all of it. And it follows well because my character is not socially adept. He's a bit of a sit in the background and feed information to the Face kind of guy. I followed your Butlerspace link and it suggested that a Djinni-like creature makes for a good Chamberlain. That would be an interesting complication to the story...

I had two ideas pop into mind. The first was a warforged; it doesn't matter if you're not in an Eberron campaign - I like to use warforged as immortal physical bodies that house a "memory crystal" of a person's downloaded entire mind. In a previous campaign, I had an NPC warforged whose mind was that of a gnome cleric (who had long since died and gone on to his afterlife) but who was able to continue to assist his archmage friend in this manner. The warforged assistant explains why he's been around for so long - he no longer ages.

The other idea was another one I've used myself in a previous campaign: a permanent unseen servant effect that's confined to the interior of the tower. The version I used was more of a librarian, keeping the wizard's library in order; I'll include the cool picture I discovered that led to me creating such a character in the first place.



Johnathan

How about a Shield Guardian?

Don't know if you recall the sha'ir from Al-Qadim, but there were these little non-mephit elementals called "gen" which retrieved spells for their masters and functioned like familiars.

Something elemental like a "gen" might explain (at least partially) the djinn's involvement in the first place, since if it felt robbed of a member of its court or offended by something the "gen" did (under orders or no), that would give it the motivation to muck with your character / your mentor / the old tower.

in my version of Yoon-Suin, Slug-men were a race created by an archmage to serve him. When he was near death, he gave them the secret so they could continue their race without him.

So a slugman alchemist would be a wonderful wizard assistant. What are slugmen's stats? Well I converted them to 5e.

.

So as an alchemist and artificer, this slugman is there to assist the wizard with their research by providing high quality instruments and magical ingredients to the wizard, as well as provide more "robust" aid when things go wrong.

If your Assistant was tied to the tower somehow - a magical Alexa built in to the fabric of the building. In order to demonstrate physical things - such as somatic spell materials, how to use a knife and fork at a wizarding convocation, etc - it could activate either an Unseen Servant aspect or if need be, animate a collection of nearby items to create a Warforged type creature depending on which room he is in (eg a chair could animate its arms as he sits in it to provide guidance on hand movements). Even a homunculus type idea but a kind of Awakened Corn Dolly? Essentially Wurzel Gummidge but I imagine with Terry-Thomas’ voice. Alternatively, I have an image of a pair of white gloves being the assistant (formless everything else)? Or

The first thing that popped into my head was some sort of construct that fills the role of maid/housekeeper/den mother. Sort of like a cross between the maid on the Jetsons and the teapot from Beauty and the Beast. If she's been around for centuries she might have even helped raise your character's master. Maybe she goes back through several wizards and apprentices and acts as a substitute mother for young, homesick apprentice wizards. She would be skilled at cooking and mending (probably have access to the mending cantrip) and have enough of a familiarity with wizarding to help out as an extra set of hands with potion creation and such. Such a construct would also have at least a small degree of defensive capability (at least more than a 0-level wizard).

Maybe a tiny mini-mimic or mimic-like construct familiar? (I'm envisioning an oozy pool of liquid metal or something.) It "remembers" within itself the schematic for every item, mundane and magical, that the Master ever created. It can shapeshift into such an item (albeit without any magical properties) for inspection, sort of like a reference manual.

By personality, it's a prankster that takes great delight in disguising itself as ordinary things to play practical jokes (like morphing into a dribble glass for an unsuspecting guest, or the like). It might also have mage hand available for when it has to hold up a book or extra flask for Master when deep into an experiment.

Mechanically, with the aid of this familiar, the character might get some sort of bonus on craft checks to create new copies of (known) items. Might also be (gleefully) helpful in sabotaging existing items, too.