The companion piece. If you want the rules, the full 2014 versus 2024 breakdown, and the fifty-year history of a spell that used to be able to kill you, that’s all in the Find Familiar explainer post. Go read that first, then come back, because this one is the part your DM was afraid of. We’re asking what you can get away with.
Find Familiar is the spell the optimizer crowd, the DM crowd, and the “I just want a cat” crowd all argue about at once. So I went through the Reddit trenches, a couple of the big owl-complaint threads on r/DMAcademy, the rules arguments, and the cursed corners, and I sorted it into four buckets. Real uses that run on the text. Cheeses that are clever and mostly legal. Questionable stuff that lives or dies by your table. And the deviant stuff, because this spell summons a cow at one table and I am not going to pretend it doesn’t.
Everything here is pulled from threads I read, cited as we go so you can check my work. Where an idea comes from the rules instead of a thread, I say so. Fight me in the comments, but bring receipts. We start with the boring-good stuff and we build, so stick around for the cow.
REAL USES
1. The owl Help loop, the one that started all of this. Owl stats, from the 2014 Monster Manual: fly 60, one hit point, and a trait called Flyby that says it doesn’t provoke opportunity attacks when it flies out of an enemy’s reach. So the owl drops next to the target, takes the Help action, and flies back to the ceiling for free. Your rogue now has advantage on the next attack against that target, and advantage means Sneak Attack. Walk the numbers. A level 5 rogue with a plus 7 to hit swings at a hobgoblin, armor class 18, needs an 11, a 50 percent shot. With the owl’s help it’s two dice, 75 percent, and the hit carries 3d6 extra. That is a first-level ritual and ten gold of incense doing the job of a subclass feature, every round, until somebody spends an action on the bird. One Reddit writeup laid it out as a recipe: on the owl’s turn it “flies over the target enemy and executes help action, which gives you advantage on your next attack. Owl uses its flyby ability to continue its flight to safe spot,” then repeat, then win. Because the owl rolls its own initiative, you may need to ready your attack for its Help, or have it ready the Help for your turn. “One of the ways I do it with my AT is to hold my action until my owl, flying safely above, uses the help action.” And a DM in the big complaint thread put the counterweight on it: the spell is already amazing for scouting, and “Getting to Help action with it in combat, much less doing it with an Owl that Helps, then flies away OA-free” is “icing” on top, which is why, his words, a fair few DMs don’t like how “cheesy” that feels. (u/Lobotomist, r/dndnext ; u/ImaNerdBro, r/dndnext, r/dndnext ; u/i_tyrant, r/dndnext, r/dndnext)
2. You don’t even need the Help action for Sneak Attack. The 2014 Sneak Attack rule says you skip the advantage requirement if another enemy of the target is within 5 feet of it and that enemy isn’t incapacitated. A familiar is an enemy of the thing it’s buzzing. So, as one player pointed out, “Have your Owl ready it’s movement, and on your turn have it fly within 5ft of the target then fly away using Flyby. You won’t get Advantage, but you still get the Sneak Attack.” In 2014 that was a reading of “another enemy of the target” that most tables accepted. In 2024 it’s in the spell, which now says flat out “The familiar is an ally to you and your allies,” and the new Sneak Attack text keys off “at least one of your allies” within 5 feet. The book closed the argument. (u/Phoenix4264, r/dndnext ; 2024 text from the local Player’s Handbook data.)
3. Scouting, with the 100 foot leash enforced. The intended use, and the one that makes DMs sigh. A spider goes under the door, an owl flies the corridor, a rat checks the room past the portcullis. The leash is that you can only talk to it and look through it within 100 feet, and a lot of tables forget that. As one DM put it, “A significant point to the concept of the scouting familiar though is the 100 foot limit on being able to look through its eyes. That is not a lot once you get down to it,” and they blame a certain streaming show for the drone idea. A hundred feet is still most of a dungeon level, one room at a time. (u/KoalaKnight_555, r/dndnext)
4. The rat beats the owl in a city. Owls are the best stat block and the worst disguise. “any guard with half a brain that sees an owl suddenly flying about the castle will know that SOMETHING is wrong. Rats are ubiquitous. Nobody gives a fuck if they see a rat.” Somebody in the replies argued the spider is strictly better, smaller and it climbs ceilings, and the bat gets the same pass in caves. Pick the animal that belongs where you’re sneaking. (u/halfhalfnhalf, r/DnD ; u/King_Owlbear, r/dndnext, r/dndnext)
5. The bat is your invisible-enemy alarm. Bats have 60 feet of blindsight, and the spell lets you borrow any special senses when you look through the familiar. Park the bat on your hat and you have sonar against fog, magical darkness, invisibility, and visual illusions. One DM’s player “had it hang off his hat to see through magical darkness and fog, or to defeat visual illusions,” and a warlock in the same thread uses their bat’s echolocation to “guess” at the content and layout of dungeon rooms beyond a half-open door. In 2014 that costs your action and blinds you to your own senses while you’re in there. In 2024 it’s a bonus action and you keep your own eyes, which is a real buff to this one. (u/WaserWifle and u/WeeabooOverlord, r/dndnext)
6. Deliver your touch spells from across the room. The familiar can deliver any spell with a range of touch as long as it’s within 100 feet of you, spending its reaction. Somebody compiled the full list, and the practical winners are the support ones, Cure Wounds, Spare the Dying, Lesser Restoration, Fly, Invisibility. A cleric’s familiar means the healer never runs into melee, and one chain warlock “used his familiar to deliver a clutch spare the dying from across the battlefield.” (u/Slivius, r/dndnext ; u/DelightfulOtter, r/dndnext, r/dndnext)
7. Shocking Grasp gives any familiar Flyby. Same delivery rule, offensive flavor. You cast Shocking Grasp, the owl touches the ogre with your attack modifier, and on a hit the ogre can’t take reactions until its next turn, so the familiar strolls out of reach without an opportunity attack. “Shocking Grasp is great because it can essentially give your familiar flyby. They can swoop in, hit, and then get back out of range.” Inflict Wounds through a familiar that already has Flyby “can be quite nasty,” 3d10 necrotic in 2014 with your spell attack. The 2024 Inflict Wounds became a Constitution save for 2d10, and the 2024 Shocking Grasp stops opportunity attacks specifically, so the trick still works, the numbers moved. (u/naugrim04 and u/MirrorExodus, r/dndnext)
8. Look through the familiar, then Misty Step to what you saw. The spider crawls under the locked door, you take your action to see through its eyes, and now the room on the far side is a space you can see, which is all Misty Step asks for. “Look through the spiders eyes, Misty Step into the room, unlock the door from the other side.” One player got swallowed by a purple worm and went “Action, look through their familiar’s eyes and Bonus Action: Misty Step out of the worm’s gullet.” Rules note for 2024 games, the senses trick is now a bonus action, and so is Misty Step, so you can’t do both in one turn anymore. Dimension Door doesn’t need sight anyway. (u/matej86, r/DnD ; u/DelightfulOtter, r/dndnext, r/dndnext)
9. The raven is a tape recorder. Ravens have Mimicry, which lets them repeat sounds they’ve heard, including speech, with a DC 10 Insight check to notice the imitation. That turns the 100 foot leash into a feature. “I like to send my Raven out past where I can view through it to spy and have it [come] back and repeat conversations.” A druid in the creative-uses thread runs it the other way, telling the raven what to say so a wild-shaped druid can still talk to the party. (u/bawbbee, r/DnD ; u/dsmelser68, r/dndnext, r/dndnext)
10. Help on ability checks, within reason. The Help action also covers ability checks, and an owl with advantage on sight and hearing Perception is a legitimate second set of eyes on a watch. The DM pushback is “how is a spider helping you pick a lock,” and that’s fair. In 2024 the book did the pushback for them, to assist an ability check you need proficiency in the skill or tool yourself, which, as one player noticed, “really encouraged switching up what animal you summon.” (u/Icewolph, r/DMAcademy ; u/TheMindWright, r/DnD, r/DnD)
11. Cast it on a short rest, swap forms on purpose, and never spend a slot on it. It’s a ritual, so a wizard casts it from the book for free in 70 minutes. Every form change or resummon is another ten gold and another hour, so plan the swaps around rests: “Switch from owl to bat at LV5 once the help action matters less.” One DM summed the whole economy: “Resummoning is costly and time consuming, that’s the only downside of the spell.” Carry spare incense. (u/NaturalCard, r/dndnext ; u/cloud-gamer, r/DnD, r/DnD)
CHEESES (clever, and mostly legal)
12. Dragon’s Breath on the familiar. Dragon’s Breath is a 2nd level touch spell, bonus action to cast, and it lets the target use its action to exhale a 15 foot cone for 3d6 of your chosen element, Dexterity save for half. Exhaling is an action, not an attack, so a familiar is allowed to do it. You hold concentration, the owl is the flamethrower. A sorcerer in one party “figured out they could cast dragons breath on my arcane trickster’s owl, and now we have Strig, the acid belching owl,” and a chain warlock runs their imp as “a stealth bomber,” flying in raven form, firebombing, and flying off. Each breath averages 10 and a half on a fail, and a 1 hit point owl in a cone fight is a dead owl eventually, so pace it. (u/Oso_Gigante, r/DnD ; r/dndnext, r/dndnext)
13. Potion of Fire Breath for the bird. Same idea, no concentration. The potion gives the drinker a bonus action breath, DC 13 Dexterity save, 4d6 fire, three uses in an hour. The touch-spell list thread’s best find: “the owl’s flyby help, and potion of fire breath so it can also deliver 4d6 fire damage at the same time.” Help with the action, breathe with the bonus action, leave with Flyby. Whether an owl can drink a potion is a DM call, the spell only says it takes actions as normal, but it’s a hard one to say no to. (u/tulsadan, r/dndnext)
14. Ring of Spell Storing gives the fighter an owl. Any creature can cast a 1st to 5th level spell into the ring, and the wearer can later cast it as if they were the caster. Cast Find Familiar into it and your barbarian has a familiar. “Well its a little bit off topic, but if you have a ring of spell storing then everyone in the party can have a familiar.” The most upvoted version of the idea is world-building: a city with a low-level wizard in charge where “EVERYONE has a familiar,” 25 owls on the wall, a blacksmith with a crab. (u/Bulkhead, r/dndnext ; u/Desdomen, r/DnD, r/DnD)
15. Pact of the Chain and the imp with a job. The chain warlock’s familiar can attack when the warlock gives up one of their own, the imp turns invisible, and in 2014 the Voice of the Chain Master invocation lets you ride its senses from anywhere on the same plane. That’s a spy with no leash. One warlock had their imp “tail the suspected big bad for a month in game time,” and another built the whole character around Moggo the imp, who “could control the Imp from anywhere on the same plane” and skipped an entire tower with him. One correction from that thread: when Moggo was dismissed to the pocket dimension holding the MacGuffin, the MacGuffin should have hit the floor, the spell says the familiar drops whatever it carries when it vanishes. And in 2024, Voice of the Chain Master isn’t in the book. (u/thisisthebun and u/YourPhoneIs_Ringing, r/dndnext)
16. The imp delivers Inflict Wounds to a sleeping target. Attack rolls against an unconscious creature within 5 feet are automatic critical hits, and in 2014 Inflict Wounds is a melee spell attack. A chain warlock cleric reports, “I use my imp to deliver upcast inflict wounds. Autocrit on an unconscious person, so I delivered 10d10.” Math check: that’s a 3rd level slot, 5d10 doubled to 10d10, average 55, and a 5th level slot would be 14d10, average 77. Two corrections. The same post says “from a mile and a half away,” and that part doesn’t work, Voice of the Chain Master stretches your senses but the touch-delivery rule still says the familiar must be within 100 feet of you. And the 2024 Inflict Wounds is a Constitution save with no attack roll, so the autocrit is gone in the new book. (u/1stOnRt1, r/dndnext)
17. Sorcerer, Ritual Caster, bat, Quicken. Take Ritual Caster for Find Familiar, summon a bat, and pick up Quickened Spell. “Invisible enemy? Take your action to locate it with familiar then Quicken whatever spell you want to hit it with. Darkness? Fog? Afflicted by Blindness? Bat/Quicken combo solves all of those problems.” In 2024 the bat look is already a bonus action, so skip the Quicken and bring a Fog Cloud. One player spelled that version out: drop fog, keep the bat circling, and you’re the only one in the cloud who can target anyone. (u/VarrikTheGoblin, r/dndnext ; u/antauri007, r/onednd, r/onednd)
18. The familiar is a light source with wings. Spells that target an object can ride on the bird. One player took a bat just to make Pyrotechnics work, “having the Bat carry a lantern,” and another flips it: “Pull out a gold piece. Cast darkness on it. Give it to the blindsight familiar.” Now there’s a 15 foot ball of darkness moving around the battlefield on a creature that can still sense through it. (u/spitoon-lagoon, r/dndnext ; u/DakotaWooz, r/dndnext, r/dndnext)
19. The sprite that Helps while invisible. Chain warlocks can take a sprite, and a sprite can turn invisible. “The sprite could perform the Help action without breaking its invisibility, and so it was almost always on call to grant this dapper warlock advantage on his charisma checks.” Help is not an attack and not a spell, so it doesn’t end the invisibility. Whether an unseen helper is “helping” is the table argument in number 23. (u/-grumblz, r/dndnext)
20. Milk the snake. The 2014 list has a poisonous snake on it, and a top comment in the giant owl thread did the homework: “Per DMG pg 258 it’s a DC 20 Intelligence (Nature or Poisoners kit) check to harvest 1 dose of the venom which takes 1d6 minutes. Stockpile a few vials of 2d4 poison damage during your rests and coat your arrows in it.” I checked the page, and the numbers are right, with one catch the thread skipped: the DMG says the creature has to be incapacitated or dead, and a familiar at 0 hit points doesn’t leave a body. Your DM decides whether a cooperative spirit counts, which is why this is a cheese and not a real use. A DMAcademy thread runs the same idea with the spider’s DC 9, 1d4 venom and lands on “weak enough to not be broken, but it’s infinite.” And in 2024 the wizard list has no snake at all, the Venomous Snake moved to the warlock’s chain list. (u/Jimmicky, r/DnD ; u/Bed-After, r/DMAcademy, r/DMAcademy)
QUESTIONABLE (check with your table)
21. Does a familiar in your pocket count as an ally within 5 feet? The rules-lawyer version of number 2. If the rat is in your coat, it’s within 5 feet of whatever you’re stabbing, so do you get Sneak Attack? The thread answering this mostly says no unless the familiar is out and exposed. “If your familiar could be targeted for a normal attack, then it should count. Hidden in a pocket is akin to being on the otherside of a wall.” The 2024 “ally” sentence settles whether the familiar qualifies, it does, but a DM can still rule that a hidden ally isn’t distracting anyone. (u/Named_Bort, r/dndnext)
22. Does the advantage stick if the owl leaves? Some DMs rule the owl “has to stay within 5 feet of the target for it to give advantage. They can fly away without opportunity attack, sure, but if they fly away they stop actively helping.” That’s a house rule. The 2014 Help text says that if your ally attacks the target before your next turn, the first attack roll has advantage, full stop, and the 2024 text says the benefit lasts until the start of the helper’s next turn. Nothing in either version asks the helper to stay. Know which way your table plays before you build a rogue around it. (u/palm0, r/dndnext)
23. “How exactly is a spider helping?” The most common DM lever. “You do realize you’re the DM right?” as one reply put it, and another offered the flavor that makes it work: “describe the help action as the spider crawling up their pants or jumping on their face.” The Help action doesn’t require a plausibility check, but a DM asking for one isn’t crazy, and plenty of tables require the familiar to be visible and in the fight to count. (u/Wise_Edge2489 and u/Ycr1998, r/DnD)
24. Can the weasel feed you a goodberry when you go down? A druid’s weasel was carrying berries with standing orders to feed the caster if they dropped, and the DM was not thrilled. One camp: you can sense your caster going down through the bond and “a familiar can feed a berry,” pointing to the ruling that lets you feed a goodberry to a dying ally. The other camp: “RAW you need to use an action to eat a goodberry,” and an unconscious creature has no action. The only universal agreement in the thread was that you tell your DM the plan in advance, not when you’re at 0. (u/GuldGustDM and u/highfatoffaltube, r/DMAcademy)
25. Shoot the bird, and the etiquette of doing it. The rules answer to the owl loop is an arrow. The table question is when. The top advice in the 1,200 upvote DMAcademy thread: “If an enemy notices that the owl is constantly helping the player and has a ranged attack they can just kill it,” and “if they didn’t want it to die then they wouldn’t put it in combat.” A reply adds the grace note, telegraph it, let the first help land, then have the archer ready a shot. And for anyone who thinks that’s metagaming, there’s a thread where a player’s fighter opened a tournament duel by killing the rogue’s owl, the rogue cried foul, and the top reply, 1,600 upvotes deep, was “Kinda answered your own question there, didn’t you.” (u/LoloXIV and u/Zach467, r/DMAcademy ; u/jjames3213, r/dndnext, r/dndnext)
26. Do you actually have the incense? The other DM lever. The components are consumed, so every recast needs ten gold of charcoal, incense, and herbs you physically have, plus, in 2014, a brass brazier to burn them in. “if the DM doesn’t just let them disintegrate 10 gold to resummon their familiar and actually restricts their access to the components that are consumed by the spell, the aspect of it being as disposable is checked at least a bit.” The counter in the same thread is that the game was never balanced around component weight and a DM who wants to play it that way should say so before you build the character. Both true. Ask at session zero. (u/_Ajax_16 and u/RoiPhi, r/dndnext)
27. Tressym, flying monkey, almiraj, and the “other forms at the DM’s discretion” clause. The spell list is closed, but several adventures flag extra creatures as familiar options, and the 5e data carries a note that more forms may be available at the DM’s discretion. The flying monkey from Tomb of Annihilation is the fan favorite because “it has hands and can therefore use tools,” and the tressym from Storm King’s Thunder is a flying cat that can see invisible things. One reply is the whole caveat: “Tressym are not a standard familiar, it’s just something suggested to the DM.” Ask, don’t assume. (u/CompleteJinx and u/Humpa, r/DnD)
28. The bag of holding planar cannon. A wizard summons a fiend familiar in octopus form, stuffs a frenemy into a Bag of Holding, hands the bag to the octopus, and casts Banishment on his own familiar, which, being a fiend, gets sent off for good if the spell runs a minute, bag and passenger included. The thread mostly agreed it’s rules-legal if the passenger is willing and the DM agrees a summoned spirit is native to another plane, which is the whole argument. The bag holds ten minutes of air, so the passenger has a clock too. This is a thought experiment, please don’t do this to a real player. (u/PreBurntNails and u/Chameleonpolice, r/dndnext)
DEVIANT, FUNNY, AND CURSED
29. The Staff of Old McDonald. A DM handed a level 3 wild magic sorcerer a quarterstaff that casts Find Familiar once per day, except the familiar is always a cow named Ol’ Bessie who only obeys on a Persuasion check. The thread’s plan for her: “If you have Dragon’s Breath from XGE, that gives an offensive ability which does not require taking an attack action and thus is usable by a familiar,” and, several hundred upvotes deep, launching her with a catapult like the French in Monty Python. (r/dndnext)
30. The skunk. Not on the list, never will be, still the best argument in a 4,900 upvote thread. “I’m a damn wizard bro, I can fly my own magic ass around. And I sure don’t need no owl to see in the dark for me. But nobody, nohow is gonna mess with the guy holding a skunk.” (u/Blear, r/DnD)
31. Octopus, bucket, Catapult. The most creative use of the spell one player had ever seen, quoted in full: “Octopus, in a bucket, catapult said bucket.” The reply: “Awfully intricate way to kill your familiar, but sure.” (u/calsonto and u/Logtastic, r/dndnext)
32. The chain warlock who pretended to be a cat. A tabaxi warlock summoned a cat familiar matching their own fur, then followed the party around for a session pretending to be their transformed friend while the party gathered ingredients for a ritual to change them back. “They gathered the ingredients and brought them back, only to find Stirred Pot the tabaxi warlock lounging in a hammock.” It extended a short campaign by a full session. (u/Snaccidental, r/dndnext)
33. The Tactical Badger Naval Cannon. A player’s case that badgers are the most underrated familiar because a burrowing animal “entirely under your command” can dig you a tunnel, and then the post escalates into a buried artillery piece. The first reply: “A badger burrows, but it doesn’t create a tunnel.” Badgers weren’t on the 2014 list, which is why nobody took the author seriously, but they’re CR 0 in the 2025 Monster Manual, so in 2024 the badger is legal and the cannon is your problem now. (u/joaosturza and u/GTS_84, r/dndnext)
34. Owl squads for the bad guys. The best DM answer to a party that leans on owls: “Enemies can have familiars too.” The reply imagines the enemy faction watching the tactic and standing up “an owl raising and training team,” so the party starts fighting “Owl squads that hinder you with their owls.” Every cheese on this list works on your players, and the one hit point bird flies both ways. (u/chefpatrick and u/QuickerandDeader, r/DMAcademy)
So there it is, the owl loop, the sneak attack reading, the spell courier, the flamethrower bird, the venom farm, the goodberry weasel, the planar octopus, and a cow. For your next session: enforce the hundred feet, carry spare incense, and shoot the bird when it earns it. What’s the best thing a familiar has done at your table, and what did your DM do to it afterward? And the eternal question, owl or rat? Let me know in the comments below, and until next time, roll high and stay ridiculous.
