Level Up (A5E) Just a thought: Give druids Find Familiar.

[Faolyn]

I added the thought to my survey (I just completed it; I'm late). Give druids the ability to cast find familiar--potentially with "improved", higher-CR familiars at higher levels. Familiars in 5e aren't intelligent, can't speak, and only give the wizard a few abilities (using their senses, casting through them). Lots of people want druids to have an animal companion. This could be one way of doing so.

 

[CleverNickName]

This is a great idea. I'd like to see it added to the Druid, Ranger, and Sorcerer spell lists.

 

[Zaukrie]

Agree!

 

[tommybahama]

The 2019 Class Feature Variants UA gave an ability similar to find familiar:

This gives a great boost to non-Circle of the Moon druids without being overpowered. I don't think Druids should be given an animal companion as powerful as a Beast master Ranger.

 

[Faolyn]

The 2019 Class Feature Variants UA gave an ability similar to find familiar:

I had completely forgotten that! I hope something similar works its way into LU, then.

I agree that it shouldn't be as powerful as a ranger's companion. You tend to think of rangers as having big, powerful hunting beasts or majestic horses, but druids can easily get away with smaller creatures.

 

[tetrasodium]

TBH find familiar in 5e is kinda borked & giving druids find familiar would remove a lot of the reason for non-moon druids to wildshape for scouting type stuff.
[spoiler["the spell"]

[/spoiler]
In short, it's a ritual virtually no cost parrot drone. There is no penalty to getting it killed, no loss of bonus if it dies like in 3.5/pf, minimal if any use for anything other than a disposable scout drone, & it only takes an hour to ritual up a new one. The warlock improved familiar is even worse in that it has the ability to become invisible. I've literally seen groups scold a sneaky sneaky rogue for wanting to scout instead of just letting the owl scout everything first... Oh a door? well sneaky rogue you can scout up to open doors for it. Giving them a useful animal companion wouldn't be bad for druid but would be terribad for ranger. Giving them find familiar is also the kind of thing that should logically cost them elsewhere, even in the minds of other players/GMs; but that familiar has minimal if any benefit when it comes to the stuff druids do

 

[CleverNickName]

The Ritual Caster feat can give anyone the Find Familiar spell (at first level even, if they chose human for their race.) Even fighters, barbarians, and clerics can have a familiar if they want one.

I don't think adding the Find Familiar spell to the druid's spell list is much of a problem.

 

[tetrasodium]

The Ritual Caster feat can give anyone the Find Familiar spell (at first level even, if they chose human for their race.) Even fighters, barbarians, and clerics can have a familiar if they want one.

I don't think adding the Find Familiar spell to the druid's spell list is much of a problem.

that feat is a huge expense. druids have ritual caster for prepared spells, just adding it to the list dives in there by lowering the bar to prepare a spell.

Spoiler: old familiars

Yes they made a bunch of changes like lowering the range it works, but the scaling of bounded accuracy, viability of most anyone with trained perception vrs dumping a ton of skill points into spot, removal of any reason to pick a different familiar than the owl (like that +3 fort rat & such), & adding the ability to swap your pokemon whenever you can spare an hour shifts the role from being a familiar to being a throw awayscout that might have the benefit of being a creature that appears to belong somewhere naturlly when sending it to scout

 

[CleverNickName]

Eh, I'm not convinced that the Find Familiar spell is as problematic as you say, @tetrasodium. We're going to just disagree on this.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Yeah, afraid I've also got to disagree, Tetrasodium. Or, rather, I think you've overstated the negative consequences. Yes, familiars will have some ability to scout etc. Groups behaving as you've described doesn't sound to me like "natural result of the rules," it sounds like a group dynamic where anything less than the "optimal" choice gets ruthlessly culled. (Ironically, I normally do advocate that degenerate solutions should be designed out before things hit print. I just don't see the "optimalness" as being anywhere near as dramatic as you do, evidently.)