Pact of the Chain
Review by Sam West, Twitter: @CrierKobold
Find Familiar is a 1st level spell that has no business being anything short of a class feature. It gives you a pet you can control, sense through up to 100 feet, and take actions as you will. You don’t even need to spend actions or bonus actions getting it to do things; you just give it mental commands with your telepathy, and it’ll do them. The only real “limitations” the spell has are the limitations of the beast stat blocks they use.
Pact of the Chain throws those limitations out the window.
When you select this Pact Boon, you get access to four new forms you can have your familiar take: imp, pseudodragon, quasit, or sprite. Each comes with a robust new suite of tools that will dwarf what some player characters are able to do at this level when it comes to exploring the world. Plus, because Pact of the Chain lets you forgo one of your own attacks for letting your familiar attack with its reaction, you can actually leverage some of their attacks in some interesting ways.
Imps have four skill proficiencies, matching most characters, with a +4 Deception, +3 Insight, +3 Persuasion, and +5 Stealth. They’re resistant to cold, bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage dealt from all non silvered weapons, are immune to fire and poison damage, immune to the poisoned condition, have 120 ft. darkvision, have Devil’s Sight (meaning they can see in magical darkness), and has advantage on saving throws against spells and other magical effects. That's just the list of passive abilities it has because yes, there is more.
Shapechanger lets them at will transform into a rat, raven, spider, or back to imp. It uses the same statistics outside the noted speed changes (notably, raven gets it an improved fly speed up to 60 ft from 40). If that’s not enough tools for subterfuge, consider also that it can basically cast Invisibility on itself at will. Imps are incredible. They are next to impossible to lock down mundanely, have a huge array of tools to hide in plain sight and out of it, have robust layers of protections to keep them from dropping to a single hit, can fly, speak two languages, and more. There will be real player characters at 3rd level who will feel outclassed by this thing, and it's your FAMILIAR.
Their attack isn’t amazing, and likely gets outdone by your cantrips in the mid to upper tiers, but early in the game, a Sting dealing 1d4+3 piercing with a 3d6 poison bonus damage on a Con save (half on pass) makes it a reasonable weapon if you’re willing to risk the health of your imp, or just don’t have a better option when you get jumped.
Quasits get a bonus resistance compared to imps (lightning), have a similar Shapechanger feature giving them access to a 40 ft. swim, fly, and climb speed, share a Darkvision range, and share the Magic Resistance trait.
New toys they get are their Scare ability (which is only DC 10, but still a free once per day fear effect) and their Claw attack. Their Claw acts similar to the Imp’s Sting, but in place of 3d6 damage on the save, it offers a 2d4 damage and poisons the afflicted creature for a 1 minute should it fail.
Sprites have a +8 Stealth, which when paired with their Invisibility trait, makes them better than your rogue probably is at hiding. They are incredibly fragile, with no durability features to mention beyond their hiding abilities, but instead come with Heart Sight, a nifty little alignment and emotion detector, and a ranged weapon attack with a 40/160 ft. range that acts primarily as a repeatable way to impose a DC 10 con save to poison a creature for a minute, with no subsequent saves should it fail. If it’s total on the save is 5 or less, the hit creature also falls unconscious. This is incredibly unlikely to happen against the vast majority of creatures, but does offer a new way to engage fights that can potentially remove creatures from an encounter before it begins. You probably don’t want to be using this in the middle of a fight (that is, unless you can do it easier, which you can with some invocation help), but if you have an opportunity to ambush, using a Sprite to pick off enemies surrounding the area before they notice can be genuinely powerful in the early tiers.
Finally, there are pseudodragons; this is the only option without Invisibility, has a Sting attack that mirrors the Sprite’s Longbow but only at melee range, and has the same Magic Resistance trait Imps and Quasits have. The reason you consider it over the other competitors is for its Keen Senses trait (getting advantage on sight, hearing, or smell based Perception checks), its 10 ft. Blindsight, which will be moderately useful at detecting weird and magical stuff, and its Limited Telepathy feature. Limited Telepathy paired with a familiar can functionally open up the telepathic communication you share with it to the entire party, making the pseudodragon a hub for discrete communication. It’s likely the worst of the bunch, but still a fun and unique option to consider.
Pact of the Chain has a few invocation offerings you can take to empower these familiar’s further.
Investment of the Chain Master lets you upgrade your familiar’s saves to use your spell save DC and lets you attack with them using a bonus action which is CRAZY when paired with Sprites. Quasit’s Scare getting an improvement here is also pretty big; for the most part, though, you don’t want your familiars in damage range, as resummoning them takes a while, and they are very fragile, so the bonus attack stuff isn’t particularly powerful on the melee familiars.
Voice of the Chain Master upgrades the range on your telepathic communication and sense sharing to anywhere on the same plane. If you’re finding that element of your familiar to be lacking, this can be an excellent upgrade.
Chains of Carceri is potentially a bananas good 5th level spell at will with the caveat it only hits extra planar stuff. This is one of my favorite invocations that can feel amazing to use should you get there.
Finally, there is Gift of the Ever-Living Ones, which is pretty terrible. Healing is in no short supply in 5th edition. You won’t ever need this.
Pact of the Chain takes an already broken spell and turns it up further past 10 from 11 to 12. We’re way over the bar for “fair” abilities, especially at 3rd level. These familiars can warp how your DM navigates the world, especially given how slippery they are. Invisibility, Shapechanger, and high stealth scores all take the primary weakness of familiars (their fragility) and heavily mitigate it. If you don’t know what Pact Boon to take and don’t intend on making a lot of weapon attack rolls, Pact of the Chain is probably your best bet.
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