D&D 5E (2024) Can a Warlock who swaps out Pact of Chain keep his familiar?

[ECMO3]

One of my players just leveled in Warlock to Warlock4/Fighter1.

Prior to leveling he had Pact of Blade, Pact of Tome and Pact of Chain Invocations and a Quasit familiar. After leveling he swapped out Pact of Chain with Agonizing Blast-Green Flame Blade, but his Quasit familiar is still alive.

He says he should be able to keep it as a familiar until it is dead, just like if a Wizard found a Find Familiar scroll and cast the spell. I told him it could not attack because that is part of the invocation, but it can still use scare and help and scout and similar.

What do you think?

 

[Charlaquin]

Your ruling seems perfectly reasonable to me. That’s probably what I would do too.

 

[James Gasik]

I mean, with DM permission, any caster can gain a Quasit as a Familiar, right? Ditto with Pseudodragons and other options not part of the spell's normal availability.

The guy took a shortcut, but if he's already got a working relationship with the Quasit, the demon's dark masters are probably like "yeah, stay on the job, tempt him to our side".

-

Now, in most games, I don't see this as a problem. The Quasit's contributions shouldn't be that insane that the game would become unbalanced. But if you are a stickler for these kinds of things, or, say, you have two Chain Pact Warlocks and one wants to change their Pact, and the other feels put out by it, you could call it an exploit- but you'd run into the same issue if a player gets a special Familiar as a Boon or DM reward anyways.

Strictly RAW, it's probably not intended that you do this sort of thing, if that's important to you and your group. I think most of the issues people would have with this is the narrative of this guy just re-negotiating his Pact and would demand an explanation.

OTOH, those same people probably have similar issues with things you're already allowed to retrain, like spells known- and since you've already allowed the retraining, I think that's all pretty moot anyways.

 

[Clint_L]

I would rule against it - the player is trying to eat his cake and have it too. It also goes against the intent of the invocation, IMO. Plus, allowing it encourages players to shop around for other advantages they can get by swapping around pacts and keeping some of the advantages of the swapped pacts. Do you really want to open that can of worms?

To me, this just seems like a strategy to get a familiar for free before taking the pact they always intended. Had the player started the character at level 5 would you still let them have the familiar if they told you they had swapped pacts as part of their backstory?

Finally, I think the analogy to using a scroll is nonsense.

Edited to replace the word subclass with pact - was tired

 

[TiQuinn]

Personally, I think it’s part of the pact, you change the pact, you change the terms and conditions, and you lose the familiar.

But it’s probably not a big deal but I would only allow it as a one off, not as a constant loophole.

 

[DEFCON 1]

If a player took Pact of the Chain because they wanted the narrative of having a more powerful and intelligent familiar than the animals that Wizards normally get and they enjoy the interactions between their PC and their familiar... then there's no reason why the player should want or need to swap that invocation out.

If, however, they took the invocation to gain a more powerful familiar purely for the mechanical combat benefits of having one and now want to swap out the invocation for another powerful mechanical benefit (while retaining the previous mechanical benefit at the same time)... I'd tell that player to pound sand. If you are a Warlock taking these abilities for their mechanical strength, then deal with having to choose which ones you want. None of this trying to "double-dip" in mechanical benefit.

In both cases the answer is the same-- no, you can't (or shouldn't want to) have both. Or at the very least... if they want the narrative of having the quasit, but still want the combat invocation... the most I would say would be that's fine, but we will remove almost all of the quasit's abilities except for what a similar animal familiar would get from the normal Find Familiar spell, say like a raven. If they are good with a quasit whose mechanics are a raven, then they can have both.

 

[sevenbastard]

Let the quasit stick around but he loses some of his controll over it. Its a Chaotic Evil mischief maker that will get him into a ton of trouble.

 

[TwoSix]

As long as the Quasit's name is Shovel, let him hang around.

 

[TwoSix]

Let the quasit stick around but he loses some of his controll over it. Its a Chaotic Evil mischief maker that will get him into a ton of trouble.

I like this one. If the pact is broken, that doesn't make a materialized demon leave...it just doesn't have to listen anymore.

 

[Cap'n Kobold]

Remember the familiar isn't actually a quasit, unlike if the character had made an actual deal with a quasit.

I would probably rule the same as you did: The familiar can keep its form until it needs to be resummoned, but is bound by the restrictions of the base spell. - You could lower the HP to closer to a normal familiar if you wanted to limit it further.

Most potential abuses should be curbed by the player not wanting to risk it getting killed and losing the quasit form.