D&D5e — Find Familiar... not on my watch!

And so begins the tinkering.

The D&D5e version of the Find Familiar spell is one with which I have many issues. It not only drastically changes the way that the spell works from earlier editions, but it also messes with the nature of familiar spirits as represented in myth and legend.

It really should be renamed Summon Cheap Little Expendable Reconnaissance Robot. Here's the text of the spell as written on page 240 of the PHB, along with my comments.

FIND FAMILIAR

1st-level conjuration (ritual)
Casting Time: 1 hour
Range: 10 feet
Components: V, S, M (10 gp worth of charcoal, incense, and herbs that must be consumed by fire in a brass brazier)

• Waaaaaaay too cheap. 10gp? Pffft! 

Duration: Instantaneous
You gain the service of a familiar, a spirit that takes an animal form you choose: bat, cat, crab, frog (toad), hawk, lizard, octopus, owl, poisonous snake, fish (quipper), rat, raven, sea horse, spider, or weasel. Appearing in an unoccupied space within range, the familiar has the statistics of the chosen form, though it is a celestial, fey, or fiend (your choice) instead of a beast.

• I can see why people would want to be able to choose the vessel for their familiar spirit, but one of the big things about the old version of the spell was the gamble. You got a toad? Suck it up! Also, I'm inclined to have the magic-user have to supply an appropriate vessel animal to be filled, if they want to be able to choose the form the familiar takes. 

Your familiar acts independently of you, but it always obeys your commands. In combat, it rolls its own initiative and acts on its own turn. A familiar can't attack, but it can take other actions as normal.

• That's OK to a degree, but in my view while a familiar is incarnate, it will keep at least some sense of self-preservation. So if you order it to do something clearly dangerous, it may... be reluctant. 

When the familiar drops to 0 hit points, it disappears, leaving behind no physical form. It reappears after you cast this spell again

• OK, I can live with his I guess, though unlike in the olden days, there's no real down-side to a magic-user losing a familiar, except that they've got to cast the spell again. Quelle horreur! I prefer the old way, in which the death of a familiar actually cost the magic-user a permanent loss of hit-points so that there's an incentive to keep it alive.

While your familiar is within 100 feet of you, you can communicate with it telepathically. Additionally, as an action, you can see through your familiar's eyes and hear what it hears until the start of your next turn, gaining the benefits of any special senses that the familiar has. During this time, you are deaf and blind with regard to your own senses.

• I'd add a feedback penalty here: if the familiar is attacked and damaged while you're linked with it in this way, you take the damage as well due to psychic shock. 

As an action, you can temporarily dismiss your familiar. It disappears into a pocket dimension where it awaits your summons. Alternatively, you can dismiss it forever. As an action while it is temporarily dismissed, you can cause it to reappear in any unoccupied space within 30 feet of you.

• HELL NO! If you don't want your familiar around, find somewhere to hide it. None of this blinking out conveniently bullshit. Also, this is just an excuse to give the thing a free short-range teleport ability.

You can't have more than one familiar at a time. If you cast this spell while you already have a familiar, you instead cause it to adopt a new form. Choose one of the forms from the above list. Your familiar transforms into the chosen creature.

•  I think not. Once you've summoned a familiar, it stays in the vessel you summoned it into until it's released either voluntarily or through the death of the vessel.

Finally, 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 Tit 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.

•  Tchyeah, riiiiight...... by which I mean, of course, FUCK NO! This is a first level spell, for fuck's sake. This ability to redirect one's magic is way too powerful for a spell of that level.

There's so much wrongness here that I may as well just rewrite the whole bloody thing. I suspect that this won't be the only new spell definition I'll have problems with, but one step at a time.