Best Touch Range Spells for Familiars in D&D 5e
by Sam West, Twitter:@CrierKobold
One often overlooked element a familiar brings to your character sheet is this little line of text-
“... when you cast a spell with a range of touch, your familiar can deliver the spell as if it had cast the spell. Your familiar must be within 100 feet of you, and it must use its reaction to deliver the spell when you cast it. If the spell requires an attack roll, you use your attack modifier for the roll.”
It can be exciting to think about on a first read- it gives you remote delivery for short-ranged spells, which sounds sweet. In practice, though, there aren’t a ton of spells with range touch out there that you’d even want a familiar to use.
To help line up the best options for your sheet, here are my top ten range touch spells to have a familiar deliver remotely.
10.Warding Bond: One of Warding Bond's biggest issues is its range. With a familiar, you can stick a bond on a threatened ally to pad out their hit points in a pinch to prevent them from going down outright.
I still don’t love Warding Bond generally, but with a familiar, its in-combat potential rises substantially.
9. Gaseous Form: Gaseous Form benefits more with familiars with diverse speeds. A flying familiar, for example, can get to people and places you may not be able to, allowing remote activation of tools you can use to navigate the world.
It won’t come up that often, but a familiar delivery system can dig creatures out of dangerous situations by “poofing” them into gas.
8. Fly: Fly gets marks over Gaseous Form for its expanded flexibility. You can up-cast it to get multiple creatures your familiar touches out of danger remotely. You can sneak into a place alone, perhaps invisibly or with teleportation, then send out your familiar to pick everyone up with a group fly to catch up!
7. Shocking Grasp: Of the two offense spells on this list, Shocking Grasp is the worse, but cheaper option. If you find yourself loving this cantrip and want a remote way to taser people, a familiar offers you just that.
This is mainly a decent option in the low tiers of play, and I’d expect a familiar will become quickly dispatched if it starts electrocuting people. Still, if you want to emulate Pikachu by having a rat familiar have lightning claws, this is as close as you can get.
6. Protection from Evil and Good: Similar to Warding Bond, but generally easier to use, Protection from Evil and Good’s in combat applications become heightened when you can stay out of danger to deliver to somebody in danger.
A paladin surrounded by zombies may want protection- touching them is out of the question, as it puts you in the line of fire, which in turn removes the Protection should your concentration drop. A familiar completely removes this problem so long as you’re okay risking its life instead.
5. Invisibility/Greater Invisibility: Remote access Invisibility plays particularly well on Warlocks. Having an invisible imp, sprite, or quasit sneak in somewhere and grant another creature your Invisibility or Greater Invisibility to get out of a tough spot is a decent upgrade on already excellent spells.
Even on normal familiars, it can be really useful to increase this spell’s range to 100 feet via familiar. Slipping your frog familiar in an ally’s pocket before they break in somewhere gives you a way to remotely turn them invisible in the case of an emergency.
4. Guidance: Guidance already has a powerful effect on most tables- as long as you can touch a friend, they can add a d4 to ability checks. Paired with Find Familiar, this opens up to much larger spaces, or when you’d want a single character to go off on their own.
You can stay behind safely while the rogue goes up to disarm the traps with a lizard on their shoulder providing your guidance for each check they make. It's a handy expansion of both spells’ utility.
3. Inflict Wounds: It does make me a little sad that the best damaging touch spell a familiar can deliver is locked to 1st level, and doubly so that it's not available natively for the classes that get familiars, but if you are determined to kill people with a spider with a touch of death, 3d10 damage is no joke, especially in the first few levels of the game.
2. Goodberry: While Goodberry is kind of cheating, it's such a powerful spell to pair with familiars I felt I had to include it. Sure, they can get you berries from across a river or something, but more importantly they can deliver the berries you’ve made ahead of time to unconscious creatures.
Having a tool on your sheet to deliver Goodberries at no action cost to you is amazing, and a remarkable spell to pair with your familiars.
1. Immovable Object: Before Immovable Object, I wasn’t sold that any spells massively benefitted from Find Familiar’s touch range expansion. Now, all I want to do is have a raven remotely lock a bunch of baddies in a room for me while I make an escape by turning a small chair into an immovable object.
The possibilities this spell offers on its own are already robust. A flying familiar can make an Immovable Object stay put 100 feet above you. Hand it the end of a rope next and you’re set to climb directly into the sky! Out of all the spells that exist in 5e so far, Immovable Object has to be the coolest to pair with a familiar.
Extend Your Touch with These Awesome Abilities
With these spells in mind, go forth into your D&D games, and expand your familiars toolbox even further! Good luck out there!
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