SOURCE: Strixhaven; A Curriculum of Chaos

Rating the Benefits of Strixhaven Mascot

Benefit #1 – 

A character with this feat learns the Find Familiar spell, which must be cast as a ritual.

When summoning a familiar, it can take one of five special forms, based around the Strixhaven College the character chose for their Strixhaven Initiate feat. 

Familiars can be incredibly powerful additions to a party, especially when it comes to scouting and exploration. 

Some Strixhaven familiars come with abilities simply not available for any other option. Making the choice can be complicated. This guide goes in-depth on what you need to know.   

Benefit #2 – 

When taking the attack action, a character can instead substitute one of their own attacks for an attack from their familiar. 

Several of the Strixhaven familiars, as well as other familiar forms, have attacks that have added conditional effects. These attacks tend to be strong early, but normally don’t scale into the game so can’t be something to rely on. There are ways around this, though. More later in the guide. 

Benefit #3 – 

By using an action when their familiar is within 60ft, a character can teleport, switching places with their familiar. This can be done once per day for free, with further uses costing a spell slot of level 2 or higher.  

Teleportation is a very strong ability, especially as early as possibly level 4. Many of the Strixhaven familiars have special movement abilities and can get to places a character couldn’t, making this an incredibly powerful mobility tool. 

Mechanics and Requirements

Understanding How This Feat Functions

The Strixhaven Mascot feat is all about its unique familiar. It’s also important to know that you cannot take this feat unless you’ve also taken Strixhaven Initiate first. 

The Five Strixhaven Familiar Forms

The major benefit of the Strixhaven Mascot feat is the ability to choose a unique form for your familiar when you summon it:

• There are five familiar forms, but the choice is locked to the Strixhaven College you choose when taking the Strixhaven Initiate feat. This is important if you know you’re taking this feat for the familiar form, as it means your college choice is locked. 
• The form is optional. Resummoning your familiar by casting Find Familiar again allows it to take any of the other forms currently available to it. This matters if you, for example, want a movement form like flight, that some Strixhaven options don’t have.   

Spirit Statue (Lorehold College)

Appropriate for Lorehold, their familiar form is a statue of some renowned (or infamous) historical figure. Appropriately, the familiar comes stock with proficiency in three widely used skills; Arcana, History, and Perception. It’s legitimately good at them, as well, around as skilled as a proficient level 1 character. 

As a form, though, the spirit statue could be better. Despite having highish AC and HP, especially for a familiar, you’re going to want to keep this out of combat. It has a single, poor melee attack, and a terrible burst of damage when it dies that’s never going to achieve anything. Importantly, you’re also being followed around by an animate, medium-sized statue that has no mobility options besides walking. Expect to disappear this thing whenever you’re not calling on its skills. 

But it’s worth calling on. The biggest ability of this form is Counsel of the Past, which is +d4 to an ability check, twice per day. Importantly, this is a unique bonus, so stacks with other skill benefits, like Guidance. (The sharp-eyed might have noticed this ability is exactly the same as Guidance…) That’s a massive boost to skills; an average of +5, which will outweigh Expertise for most of a character’s career.  

Choose If: You want a familiar that helps to fill the function of a Bard, adding flexible skill boosts to a party comp. 

Fractal (Quandrix College)

Just the image of a creature made from fragments of animate light is awesome, but the Fractal has far more to it than that. 

The first big thing the Fractal brings is the ability to freely shift its size, anywhere between 1ft in size, and Huge. It takes an action to shift one size up or down, which means that a creature that fits in your backpack could, 30 seconds later, be large enough for an entire party to comfortably sit on. 

Shifting size also shifts the stats of the familiar. A small Fractal has advantage on attack rolls and Dex checks (Stealth is a Dex check…) and a large one gains more attack damage and advantage on Strength checks, which can make a Huge Fractal a reasonable grappler. 

The second big thing about the Fractal is its Relative Density ability. This lets the Fractal freely move through creatures and objects as if they were difficult terrain. With its movement of 30ft, a Fractal can Dash through up to 30ft of any intervening terrain without issue. Remember that in 5e, walls are objects, so yes, your new friend can ghostwalk through walls. 

Choose If: You want a familiar that can get almost anywhere, then shift that mobility onto you, you want a familiar that can meaningfully contribute to combat, or you want something incredibly cool. 

Inkling (Silverquill College)

Silverquill’s familiar form is a literal, animate pool of ink. Atop being incredibly thematic, having a pool of liquid as a pet comes with multiple advantages. Firstly, despite having low AC and HP, the Inkling is hard to pin down. Innate flight is one of the best movement abilities available to a familiar, especially paired with the ability to hover. 

As an ooze, Inklings can fit through tiny spaces, as small as an inch across. Inklings can also hide as a bonus action in any dim light or darkness, so tracking an Inkling down can be surprisingly difficult. 

The Inkling also has constant 60ft Blindsight, which is kinda crazy. The Inkling cannot speak, but the thing can sit in your pocket and tell you if anything invisible creeps by. 

In combat, an Inkling’s attacks are terrible. You can’t get any of these special familiars until level 4, and by then, the Inkling will be outclassed by everything you fight. However, once per day, the Inkling can spray ink at a target, potentially blinding it. At standard, this sucks, but pushing that DC upwards can make the ability a surprisingly effective panic button. More on this later. 

Choose If: You want a powerful, effective, and sneaky scout, especially with the near-unique advantage of 60ft Blindsight. 

Art Elemental (Prismari College)

Small and beautiful, Art Elementals are strange, with a varied list of abilities that don’t really mesh, which is a shame as the thematic elements here are incredible. 

Firstly, combat. The Art Elemental is surprisingly decent, at least at low levels. It has a ranged and melee option, both of which are more powerful than many other familiar forms. It’s probably not something a character will want to use every turn, but it can at least contribute in a meaningful way. 

Amusingly, the form is potentially more useful dead than alive. When it dies, every creature within 5 feet has to take a Con save or be blinded for a minute. That’s a strong effect, especially if you can push the DC up. (More on this later.)

Poison immunity, fire, and cold resistance, and a once-per-day charm effect round out the ability list. The Art Elemental also has the Performance skill, but weirdly, cannot speak. I guess it just pulses with color, and maybe does a cute little dance. 

Choose If: You want a fun, thematic familiar, chosen more for flavor than raw power. 

Pest (Witherbloom College)

The poor, unfortunate pest is the unwanted child of the Strixhaven familiar forms. The good is that it’s reasonably tough, with middling AC and HP, plus regeneration 5, which is a surprisingly strong ability against an enemy that doesn’t just squash it flat in one turn. Don’t expect the Pest to kill anything, but it might just be able to hold an enemy for a turn or two in the early game. 

In terms of raw combat ability, the Pest is terrible. It has a single melee attack option, which does almost no damage, compared to the other familiar forms here. The Pest also deals damage to anything it’s grappling with at the start of its turn. 

However, the form has no inherent bonus to grappling, (it doesn’t even have a positive score in the ability…) You’d expect a familiar with a boosted grapple damage feature to at least check for a grapple on hit, like a lot of monsters do, but there’s nothing here. Overall, the Pest is a disappointment, especially compared with the other four choices. You know this is bad when a standard owl or crow is probably more useful. 

Choose If: You want a familiar that might be able to tank a hit or two in early levels, or went Witherbloom College for other reasons and you have no choice. 

Attacking With Your Familiar

Attacking with a familiar is generally a sub-par option. But sometimes you’re in a position where the only target is out of your range, or your familiar has a condition like Poisoned attached to their attack that you want to try and deliver. 

A character with Strixhaven Mascot can, at any point when taking the attack action, give up one of their attacks to let their familiar take a swing. 

The second, probably more relevant ability to remember is that your familiar can deliver any of your spells that have a range of touch. This is much more useful when your familiar has higher than single-digit HP and won’t die to a light breeze. 

While it’s generally better to deliver healing through your familiar (Cure Wounds is a touch spell. So are Revivify and Resurrection…) options like the Shocking Grasp cantrip, or things like Bestow Curse, are incredibly strong when delivered by your not-so-friendly little companion. 

Familiar Teleportation

Teleportation is an incredibly strong effect in D&D 5e, especially when it’s paired with a familiar that can get into places a character often can’t. 

The list of familiars above already touches on how several forms can get into places a character wouldn’t, either by phasing through solid surfaces, or pouring its liquid form through gaps. 

But this ability extends to any familiar form. The flight of a bird obviously allows it to get almost anywhere, and forms with climb speeds, like spiders or lizards, can easily scale walls and ceilings, which many characters, especially any who can’t cast spells, won’t often be able to do. 

Importantly, even familiars without exceptional movement abilities can use this. As an action, a familiar can be dismissed or recalled from extradimensional space. When a familiar is recalled like this, it can reappear in any unoccupied space within 30 feet you can see. So, as long as you can see through the bars of that jail cell, you can summon your rat into it, and then teleport. 

On top of this, any character with access to spells can recast their teleportation by spending any slot level 2 or higher. That’s a powerful ability to have on hand, more than worth the slot, equivalent to actual teleportation spells like Misty Step, which start to become available at this level. It’s also useful for those times a character accidentally teleports somewhere that they can’t get back from…. 

Key Stats

The Strixhaven Mascot feat doesn’t require stats to function, but it does have several prerequisites. 

Firstly, you have to have the Strixhaven Initiate feat. Secondly, the character must be at least level 4. 

Despite lacking stat requirements, as the Strixhaven feats are heavily spell based, it’s recommended to have at least one high mental stat that can be used for the spell DCs you’re going to end up needing. 

Ideal Characters for Strixhaven Mascot

Top Classes

Warlock – No other class has anywhere near the support for familiars that the Warlock has. Choosing to specialize here adds a ton of absolutely unique power. 

This combo is technical enough that we’ve made space for the intricacies of it, later in this guide. Needless to say, if you’re a Warlock who’s at all interested in the Pact of the Chain and the familiar abilities contained behind it, you should seriously consider this feat.  

Wizard – The Wizard already has access to find familiar and appreciates everything both of the Strixhaven feats offer. 

If it’s available in your campaign, the School of Chronurgy is incredibly powerful. It almost always goes first in combat, can shift rolls of friends or foes multiple times per day, and at higher levels can entrap its spells into a tiny item that can be activated by any other creature. Yes, this means your familiar can hold a tiny marble that contains a fully powered Fireball, and then toss it at your enemies. Suddenly, the Pest doesn’t seem that useless anymore, does it?

Bard – In 5e, Bards are the ultimate generalist, able to be built as primary spellcasting DPS, support and debuff casters, and even ranged or melee fighters, while still handling the party’s skill load. 

Any familiar can provide a huge amount of utility, boosting scouting, skill use, and even combat power. The empowered familiars provided by Strixhaven Mascot are even more powerful, as well as fluffy, entertaining companions to have around, and if you’re a Bard, stylish and cool are probably way up on your list of concerns.   

Race or Subrace Choices

Variant Human – Gaining access to the Strixhaven Initiate feat at level 1 lets you pick Mascot at level 4. Not only does this give a character more playing time to get use out of their magical friend, but the scaling abilities and combat potential of a familiar are much more useful early game. 

Eladrin – A bonus action teleport multiple times per day, plus a whole mess of other useful bonuses, make the Eladrin a good choice for most builds. Interestingly, because the Strixhaven teleport is an action, you could technically teleport twice in one turn with this race combo. 

Fairy – Sometimes, you just wanna soar through the skies alongside your magical companion. Permanent, at-will flight, plus small size and innate spellcasting are a powerful combination. 

Combos, Tactics, and Synergies

Complementary Feats

Inspiring Leader – Familiars can be alarmingly easy to kill. Your familiar understands your speech and is smart enough to be a viable target for this feat. If you have the Charisma, stacking temp HP on your familiar’s teensy HP pool makes them much tougher. As an aside, your party will love you, too. Which is, y’know, nice, I guess. 

Spells that Synergize

Dragon’s Breath – 3d6 damage in a large AOE every turn for a minute is already a strong use of an action. It becomes incredibly strong when that action is used by your familiar, leaving your character free to take full turns. 

Heroism – In early levels, the temporary HP provided by this spell might just keep your familiar alive. 

Flock of Familiars – Yes, it’s not quite official content, but stacking several more standard familiars onto your existing super-familiar is a great use of a spell slot. 

Strategies for Maximizing Strixhaven Mascot Effectiveness

Strixhaven Mascot and the Warlock

There’s a reason we’ve rated the Strixhaven mascot feat strongest on the Warlock class. No other class in 5e has anywhere near the same amount of support for their tiny, magical friends, and everything that the Warlock gains stacks directly with this feat. 

Here are the specific buffs that matter, and how they’ll stack with existing familiar features:

Pact of the Chain

At level 3, Warlocks gain a pact boon that takes the form of a magical book, sword, or some other piece of esoteric nonsense that dictates a lot of the power and options the class has, going forward. 

One of the options is Pact of the Chain, which is entirely familiar-focused. The Pact:

• Allows the class to cast Find Familiar, including as a ritual. You already get that using this feat. 
• The summoned familiar gains several more powerful potential forms. Many of these are worth considering, with very different abilities to the ones the Strixhaven Mascots get. 
• Instead of attacking, the Warlock can substitute their familiar’s attacks. Again, this is rarely going to be your primary strategy, but some of the familiar forms have status effects on their attacks. 

So far, apart from the more powerful forms (which have some exceptional built-in power, including permanent, at-will invisibility) this is a relatively standard, and easy, way to get a familiar. 

Invocations, Your Familiar, And You

Gift of the Ever Living Ones

Any dice rolled to heal while your familiar is close are automatically assumed to be their maximum value. This is nice utility, and great if you have the Invocation slots, but not why we’re here. 

Investment of the Chain Master

Gain a laundry list of buffs for your familiar that automatically apply whenever you summon it. 

• The familiar gains a fly or swim speed of 40ft. This is very useful, as many of the forms granted by this feat don’t have either of these, and the movement choice can be shifted to what’s needed whenever you resummon your familiar. 
• The familiar’s weapons are considered magical when attacking creatures with resistance. Past the early levels, you’re probably not going to want your familiar attacking, as their damage is bad, but this is still cute. 
• If the familiar takes damage, you can spend a reaction to give it resistance against that damage. This is a solid defensive buff, and while it’s not going to let your familiar go toe-to-toe with appropriate CR encounters, it might save its life if it’s scouting for you. 
• When your familiar forces a creature to make a save, the DC is the same as your spell save DC. Many of the forms granted by this feat can apply strong conditions, that are only held back by an awful save DC. This feature is amazing, especially if the poison or sleep from the Chain familiar forms go through. 

Voice Of The Chain Master

The telepathic communication range between a character and their familiar is extended to anywhere on the same plane of existence, and the master can speak through the familiar using their own voice. 

While it’s not overwhelmingly broken, there’s a lot of use packed into this seemingly unassuming ability. First off, this extends the scouting range of your familiar to essentially infinite. Choosing something stealthy, like the Inkling, or the Imp from the Warlock’s Chain forms, lets a party scout out ahead of themselves in near-complete safety while the Warlock checks out the lie of the land through their familiar’s eyes. 

Secondly, for social or intrigue campaigns, a second pair of eyes might be an incredibly powerful tool. Examples that spring to mind are: Leaving your familiar as a warden to watch over someone suspect in a town when you leave. Sending them to the next town to deliver a package or call for aid. Or even sitting on the corner of your employer’s desk, relaying messages back and forth through their senses like a medieval version of WhatsApp. 

It’s entirely possible to have the Strixhaven Mascot feat and both of these Invocations from as early as level 4. While that may seem like a lot of power to invest in a familiar, the amount it will bring to most parties, and most campaigns, is more than worth it. 

Familiars and Exploring

Any familiar can be a lethally effective exploring tool, but the Strixhaven familiars are in a league of their own. 

Two in particular stand out. The Inkling, and the Fractal. 

The Inkling, being a tiny little ooze, can squeeze through spaces as small as 1 inch across, and has a 30 foot fly speed. Plus it has the stealthy ability to hide as a bonus action in dim light or darkness, so it can sprint around a dungeon while remaining hidden. 

That’s a lot of flexibility in how and where it goes. Through open windows, down chimneys, under doors, up a creature’s nose… All of these are perfectly legal places for your Inkling to explore. 

The Fractal is even more powerful. Almost too powerful, in how it moves around. The Fractal familiar can already shift its size as an action, anywhere between size Huge (that’s 15ft across and 32ft tall, or 3×3 squares, which is an absurd size for what is normally a slightly magical pet,) and size tiny. 

Yes, this means you can ride around on it one minute, then slip it into your pocket the next. Hell, the entire party can probably ride around on a Huge Fractal. But it’s where that ability combines with the Fractal’s Relative Density ability, which allows it to move through creatures and objects, that this becomes silly. 

Is the party facing down a locked door? Who cares. Send your familiar walking through it. 

Stack that with the standard familiar ability to look through its eyes, and you’ve got a superlative scout. The real intricacy comes when you consider that you can switch places with your familiar by teleportation, allowing you to get anywhere it can, as long as you can see it. 

One last thing that’s good to know here is this: A familiar can be dismissed as an action. When your familiar is dismissed, it disappears into a pocket dimension. That means that, no matter what is risking your familiar, you can always save it, and if the worst should happen, it only costs 10g to replace. 

Familiars and a Helping Hand

Even when not making actual attacks or casting spells, a familiar can still provide use in combat by using the Help action. 

The Help action provides advantage on the next attack a character makes against a creature within 5ft. Advantage is a powerful buff by itself, but this also puts the monster in a dilemma;

Do they attack the character attacking them, and leave the familiar be? Or do they attack the familiar to stop it from handing out advantage like candy, and not put any damage into real, threatening targets? 

Often, even losing your familiar is a worthwhile trade, especially considering it only costs 10 gold to resummon. Essentially removing a big enemy’s turn is more than worth a handful of gold. 

Final Thoughts on Strixhaven Mascot

A familiar adds a lot to a character, and not just mechanically. Having a thematic, intelligent pet hanging around can also add a ton of characterization and RP opportunities. 

But more than that, the abilities added by the Strixhaven Mascot forms can be incredibly powerful, and include some near-unique powers that can’t be gained anywhere else, at least until character levels hit double digits. 

Getting the most use out of this feat requires a little more thought than something plug-and-play like Great Weapon Master, but that doesn’t matter. If you’re leaning towards using a familiar, and you’ve got space in your build for the feats, Strixhaven Mascot is potent, effective, and fun.