Prerequisite: 4th Level, Strixhaven Initiate Feat
You have learned how to summon a Strixhaven mascot to assist you, granting you these benefits:
You can cast the Find Familiar spell as a ritual. Your familiar can take the form of the mascot associated with the college you chose for the Strixhaven Initiate feat: a spirit statue mascot (Lorehold), an art elemental mascot (Prismari), a fractal mascot (Quandrix), an inkling mascot (Silverquill), or a pest mascot (Witherbloom).
When you take the Attack action on your turn, you can forgo one attack to allow your mascot familiar to make one attack of its own with its reaction.
If your mascot familiar is within 60 feet of you, you can be teleported as an action, swapping places with the familiar. If your destination space is too small for you to occupy, the teleportation fails and is wasted. Once you teleport this way, you can't do so again until you finish a long rest, unless you expend a spell slot of 2nd level or higher to do it again.
Strixhaven Mascot: We’ve Got Spirit, Yes We Do!
Review by Sam West, Twitter:@CrierKobold
Find Familiar may be the best 1st level spell in the game. It's really powerful. Having a summoned ally you can telepathically communicate with and control opens a lot of opportunities otherwise closed to you. Strixhaven Mascot expands that spell out further, giving you more summonable options with new attacks and abilities that can transform Find Familiar to something closer to Summon Beast. That’s a MASSIVE upgrade.
Each option has its own perks. You pick between a spirit statue, an art elemental, a fractal, an inkling, or a pest. You can replace one of your attacks to have your familiar attack, and you can teleport to swap places with it when it's within 60 feet of you as an action once per long rest, or by consuming a 2nd level spell slot or higher. Neat!
The core of each is their new abilities and sizes. Pests are tiny, and come with regeneration and spiny hide, making it a decent combat assistant. Inklings are tiny too, with the amorphous and shadow stealth features making them exceptional infiltrators, and ink spray acting as a save or die blind it gets once a day that is usable both in and out of combat. Fractals are small (a size larger than a typical familiar) and can move through objects with its relative density feature. Augment lets it change its size up by one, eventually being capped at Huge, or alternatively diminish each turn down to tiny, gaining advantage on attack rolls and Dexterity checks and saves. There are all kinds of practical uses for this; it's easily one of the coolest options.
Art elementals are small as well, have a melee and ranged 2d4+1 weapon attack, a blinding death burst (encouraging confrontation), and a 30 ft. range single target charm once a day that can assist in social encounters or infiltration missions easily. Finally, the largest base form out of all of them, spirit statues are medium constructs with a 1d6 radiant damage death burst, a weak slam attack, and a twice per day guidance like effect, empowering one ability check each time. This option reads the weakest to me, but two extra “free” guidances a day is perfectly reasonable on top of having a hearty combatant by your side.
This feat can do a lot of powerful things. It's kind of like getting Find Familiar, Summon Beast (light), and Misty Step all rolled into one package. Each familiar has some neat potential in a variety of builds, especially Inklings and Fractals. I think if you like any of these creature concepts, and are 4th level or higher, this is an exceptional addition to your character sheet, regardless of class or other features.
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