Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Should familiars be more useful?

Hi folks, I've not been around for a month or so for health reasons, so my apologies if there's been some discussion of this already that I missed.

But I'm wondering what people make of familiars in the full release. I've found them disappointing, and specifically the fact that they can't interact with the small holes, or reveal or use waypoints (or, I think, go into new areas). This means they're not hugely useful for scouting, which otherwise could be a fun, optional use for them.

I know Find Familiar is a level 1 ritual so I wouldn't expect there to be anything game breakingly helpful we could do with them, but the fact that they have limitations that don't even seem to make sense is a niggle for me.

Is anyone else underwhelmed with familiars, or have something they'd like them to be able to do that they can't? Or conversely, has anyone managed to find some nice uses for them?

I wanted to give them a try again because I only ever used them in my first run, when I thought Gale might enjoy a summoned cat. (Summoning Tara would be something!) The raven's peck is kind of useful, and at the very least any familiar is another body on the battlefield - but I most fondly remember how delighted child NPC are by the summoned cat (and by Boo) and follow it around. Not entirely useful, but very cute.

True, I do like the reactivity of NPCs to summoned familiars, even if it's a bit wobbly. Though I didn't see anything like the issues it caused in early access in the full playthrough, just the odd cosmetic niggle (eg Doni, who can't speak, eg, still had a line popping above his head commenting on my raven familiar). In early access it was possible to distract NPCs with your familiar to enable you to sneak past them, though as I wasn't playing a sneaky character this time I didn't try to see if that's still possible even though reactivity seems to have been toned down. But I'm with you that it's cute enough to be worth it anyway, even if it doesn't always work perfectly!

Boo as an ever vigilant guardian of righteousness recently hindered my sneaky and very unlawful endeavours with his cuteness. One of the newspaper kids followed him around for quite a distance and constantly threw Astarion out of stealth. XD

I mean, they are mostly their DnD counterparts and I'm ok with them. They can scout or do small stuff, I don't need them to be more powerful to be honest.

BTW: I'm glad, you're back, Queen and I hope, you are feeling better.

Iits great to have you back, Queen!

I think they should be able to interact with those small holes for sure. Being able to cast spells through them would have been cool too.ainly I just wish there were more familiar options available for warlocks of various flavors other than fiend. But yeah, besides those things I'm not roo down on familiars.

I understand why they can't trigger waypoints, but I agree that it would be nice if they could interact with objects/holes.

Some of them are pretty nice. For instance, you can use the cat to gather people into one spot. Gimblebock, as an example, and his crew. A cat familiar can go under the stone block and meow, calling everyone over. Then you can shoot the rope and drop the block, killing all four enemies at once.

Familiars are okay. Well... Some of them.

Birb can be useful to occasionally get a Blind on an enemy (Works well with Beastmaster Ranger also using the Birb companion. Just have a murder of crows pecking at enemies)

Imp/Quasit/Shovel is really good because permanent invisibilty means it can run around the battlefield with impunity, ignoring turns and just sit next to targets to let Rogues sneak attack them.

Besides that... Ehh...

They can scout, but they won't trigger scripted ambushes (Like the Beholder in the Underdark) and combat triggers are janky and they can sometimes put your party into combat while way out of position.

They can activate switches... But besides that one in Grymforge by the Shar statue most levers are placed so a ranged attack can use them (Also, familiars don't have Perception so can't find hidden switches like the one that opens the walldoor in the Taxhouse)

Something that could be nice is if they could be used as the vector for spells. Being able to Thunderwave from a birb that's flown around to an enemies flank. Or using Shocking Grasp without having to run your squishy caster into melee. Or a Imp dive bombing into a group to cast Arms of Hadar...

Being able to reveal waypoints sounds potentially gamebreaking, especially combined with invisibility.

If you want to buff familiars, they could implement this part of the spell which is missing from the 5e counterpart:

Removing the short rest restriction on Find Familiar will likely give a lot more usage to the spell. Summoning something like a rat or crab that will simply die when its highly intelligent AI walks it onto a fire surface does nothing to incentivize summoning it in the first place.

My two cents concerning familiars is roll it back to 3.5e, or PF - summoning a familiar creates a non-combat creature that gives a small passive bonus to the caster. Raven familiar gives +1 to Perception checks, rat give +1 to CON saves, stuff like that.

At present, summoning a <=10 HP creature with stats equating to a level 1-2 combatant has far too niche of an application to hog a prep slot and be restricted to one per short rest.

Speaking of which, Wizards should be able to cast ritual spells without having to prepare them (wizard class features). But with BG3 allowing you to swap prepared spells at any time you can summon your familiar and then swap the spell for something more useful

I used them for a while with Gale but in the end there are more important spells for the restricted slots. I'm ok with the normal familiars.

But nor with the two stronger Warlock ones. They are nice at lvl 3 but later more if a joke. The Warlock is not one of the strongest classes and could need some stronger summons at lvl 10. If nor like the strong lvl 6 Cleric or Wizard summons (too strong), rhen like the lvl 5 ones.

Step 1 to making a Familiar more interesting for me would be to introduce cosmetic options for their visualization. Basically we need some form of character creation option here, or it's always going to seem sorta lackluster.

Like let me choose a color and a name for them, then, even if they're not mechanically useful, I'm suddenly way more attached to whichever specific Familiar.

Currently the familiars feel like generic summons, and it feels the same for every character. What if I want a blue wizard to summon the Blue Frog? Or I don't know, but something along those lines. Maybe find familiar Rat becomes more interesting when I can give 'em names like Templeton or Mrs. Frisbe and that displays when I cursor over the character.

I also think any familiar is going to need something like the Help action to make them worth bringing along. The basic actions Help/Dash/Jump/Hide etc. They should be at least as good at causing a distraction as minor illusion.

Right now Scratch feels like the default Familiar/Animal companion but he is very much a set character with an established visualization and a name. I'd like something custom where I can say pick a breed/basic phenotype, perhaps choosing a bark set, a coat color (major and minor, perhaps some spots or stripes) and then a collar color ROYGBIV. When they do stuff like that the familiar feels like part of the overall Character concept for a PC, rather than a summoning spell.

There are so many Animals in this game, many with personalities, and it would be cool to befriend any of them to slot into the role if the character wants to RP along with the story rather than doing the invention thing, but for custom Tav concepts then custom familiars would be best - complete with the magic mirror - I mean right? That's something I could get into.

ps. Also hope your health is ok and feelin' on the mend! Happy Lupercalia!

Whenever I play as a Warlock I find that Imps are very useful especially in Act 1.

Also agree it would be nice if the smaller familiars could access the holes etc.

I find that the only useful familiar is the Raven due to its blind spell and for tanking a hit from the enemies.
Other than that they feel really lackluster and not worth the spell slot unless you are RPing.

Maybe the familiars could scale slightly like the Ranger's summoned beasts at specific levels of the Summoner, nothing major just a few stats (HP, hit chance) to keep them relevant.

Agree on choosing color and name, this would be a great way to add a little personality to your Familiar.


Agree the developers should remove the short rest restriction and give the Familiar a small passive bonus to the caster.