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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Li Shenron" data-source="post: 3164947" data-attributes="member: 1465">I think perhaps half of W/S in our games have it and half don't.But I also think that most players have only two extreme options in mind: either 1) forget about the familiar altogether, or 2) carry it with you all the time.The second option means you're going to carry it in the dungeon and in every battle, only to complain that it's got too few hp, and if it gets killed then it's DM who has been unfair with the player.Instead, there are intermediate possibilities to those two extremes:3) you can have a familiar and just leave it at home when you go adventuring. Because the bonuses work as far as 1 mile, you probably won't benefit from them if you go on a quest. But at least they work as long as the wizard stays in town, and the familiar can do a lot of useful tasks (such as serving as alarm, or messenger), so it would make sense for an average wizard to have a familiar even without ever bringing it to adventuring.4) you can carry it with you in the adventures, but NOT in battle, and not in enclosed dangerous spaces such as a dungeon. This way, you can use it for scouting for example, and you can also benefit from Alertness when travelling. If battle ensues, have it hide away or run/fly away from danger.As it is designed, a Familiar is rarely effective in combat. You CAN use it in combat e.g. to deliver spells, but you can't pretend it's not risky. Eventually you just need to realize that not everything in the game is about fighting, and you'll see that the Familiar is almost always worth having <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" /></blockquote>

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