Battle Familiar: Spell Optimisation Guide for D&D 2024 (5.5e)

Just how good is this combat-ready familiar spell from Arcana Unleashed?

How does battle familiar work?

First off, a few details about the spell:

Level 2 Conjuration (Druid, Warlock, Wizard)

Casting Time: Action
Range: 10 feet
Components: V, S, M (a diamond worth 25+ GP)
Duration: 1 hour

The spell itself summons a battle familiar that can take on different forms and capabilities. These forms are:

• Brute: Higher resilience
• Flyer: Doesn’t provoke opportunity attacks
• Stalker: Can move and hide instead of an attack

This spell doesn’t require concentration (which is one of the reason’s it’s so great), but you can still only have one familiar at a time. However, if you have a familiar from the find familiar spell, then this layers on top of that familiar, granting it temporary hit points and some other potential boosts like AC, extra damage and so on.

Who can use battle familiar?

Anyone can, but for some it’s easier than others. Here’s how you can access this spell:

• Have it on your spell list: This covers druids, warlocks and wizards (the 3 main familiar casters).
• Magic connoisseur feat: If you take this feat, you can choose a level 1 and 2 spell from the same spell list as your cantrip from the magic initiate origin feat (which is a prerequisite for this feat). That does mean you’ll have to have taken mage hand or produce flame as they’re the only conjuration cantrips.
• Take the warlike familiar feat: You’ll need the familiar friend origin feat to take this, but will mean you have both find familiar and battle familiar available and able to be cast without a spell slot.

Magic connoisseur, familiar friend and warlike familiar are all feats from Arcana Unleashed. I’ve covered all the feats from Arcana Unleashed in my guide where you can learn a bit more about them all.

Battle familiar tactics

There’s a decent amount of complexity here so I’ve broken down some ways you can use battle familiar to get the most out of it:

Summoning a strong battle familiar

• Combine with pact of the chain: Warlocks with pact of the chain as an eldritch invocation get an enhanced bunch of familiars of up to CR1. For example, a quasit has 25HP. Add on 30 temporary hit points from a brute battle familiar and now you have a 55HP summon. You will have to cast both find familiar and battle familiar to make this one work.
• Play as a conjurer: Conjurers have more durable summons from level 6, adding twice their wizard level as temporary hit points to their summoned creatures, including battle familiars. Just be aware that splintered summons doesn’t work on a familiar as it isn’t a spirit, so no doubling up on battle familiars. You should also be aware that if you add battle familiar onto an existing familiar, then the temporary hit points from the 2 sources won’t stack.
• Play as a necromancer: Necromancers also get access to the find familiar spell and an enhanced familiar with skeletons and zombies as options. This means base hit points of up to 15. From level 10, the necromancer will summon their familiar with an increased hit point maximum (intelligence modifier + half wizard level). They can even add temporary hit points to their battle familiar once its run out of its initial temporary hit points with bolster undead and can heal their familiar when casting necromancy spells.
• Upcast the spell: When you upcast battle familiar, it is summoned with more hit points, a higher AC, can make more attacks and deals more damage with each attack so upcasting can be worthwhile.
• Familiar feats: Most of these, I don’t think are worth taking other than 2; familiar friend and warlike familiar. Familiar friend is great for getting access to he find familiar spell and will grant extra hit points and can give advantage to allies sometimes. Warlike familiar gives you the battle familiar spell and it can use it’s reaction to protect an ally. Both are excellent. The other familiar feats enhance your familiar in a few ways, but I mostly don’t think they’re that great (though otherworldly familiar is alright).

Using your battle familiar in combat

• I don’t really like the idea of the stalker battle familiar. Unless you’ve upcast, you’re going to be hiding half the time and not even attacking. In reality, most summons should really be some form of meat shield, though some battle familiars can provide support too. I’d ignore that option.
• If you want to go for a hit and run approach, flyer is good for this.
• However, I’d seriously consider the brute because it’s just more resilient than the rest and you likely want it to be drawing attacks.
• If you can, it’s worth casting battle familiar ahead of combat as it has a 1hr duration, saving yourself an action for something else when the battle starts.
• The rest of what you do depends on your familiar feats and the capabilities of that familiar. You can check out my familiar guide for more on using familiars more generally.

How powerful is battle familiar?

The main reason that battle familiar is so strong is that it doesn’t require concentration. For a level 2 spell slot (and maybe a level 1 spell slot too), you now have an extra meat shield and at least 1 extra attack. That also means you can summon something else to aid you in combat too. No other spell allows for a decent hit point summon without concentration. That’s pretty huge.

Add into that the ability to upcast (upcasting to level 4 gets you 2 additional attacks per turn) and feats and subclass features to enhance your battle familiar further, and this becomes even better!

We can actually compare battle familiar to another level 2 summon spell in summon beast. I’ve made a comparison table to show how they both compare:

Attribute	Battle Familiar	Summon Beast
Concentration	No	Yes
Level	2	2
Duration	1hr	1hr
Component cost	25gp (not consumed)	200gp (not consumed)
Armor Class	11 + spell level (+2 for brute)	11 + spell level
Hit Points	20 or 30	20 or 30
Damage	1d8 + 3 + spell’s level force damage	1d8 + 4 + the spell’s level piercing damage
Immunities	Charmed and frightened	None
Movement speed	40ft, fly 30ft, swim 30ft	30ft, climb 30ft (land only), fly 60ft (air only), swim 30ft (water only)

There are a few other points to consider like better physical stats for summon beast but better mental stats overall for the battle familiar. Summon beast has darkvision and the land beast has pack tactics for easy advantage on attacks whereas the brute gets boosted HP and AC.

Standard movement is better on the battle familiar and all forms have flight, though the flying beast does have faster flight. And while the battle familiar deals slightly less damage, they do so with the best damage type in the game; force.

All of this equates to 2 spells that are fairly even in power, though I almost feel like the battle familiar edges things. However, battle familiars can gain more buffs from other features and feats than summon beast can making it easily superior for certain builds.

But this is all without concentration. We now have a spell that’s roughly equivalent to summon beast, which is decent enough as a low level summon, minus the concentration demand. You’d normally expect that without concentration, that battle familiar would be discernably weaker than summon beast. But it isn’t. So now you can have 2 summons available and the concentration-less one isn’t particularly weaker.

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Battle familiar doesn’t break the balance of the game, but it certainly leans on the more powerful side and represents a bit of power creep coming through. To some extent, it is one of the most powerful level 2 spells in D&D 5.5e which makes it difficult to ignore on an optimal build.

But it is also a fun addition to build with and has lots of options and combinations makeing it one of the more interesting spells in the game, even if it perhaps should have required concentration.

More on spells in D&D 5.5e