D&D 5E - Imp as a familiar seems OP (observations and opinions)

May 2024 ยท 2 minute read
So in one of my campaigns, I play an evil 6th level Halfling Paladin with the Magic Initiate feat and the Find Familiar ritual = Imp (long story behind all that)

But anyway, I have spent a great deal of time playing with this character and it's pretty safe to say that having an Imp as a familiar is a pretty powerful thing. I'm wondering how many other people have been able to play with an Imp familiar and were they as successful with it as I have been? I mean "successful" as a combination of effectiveness and fun.

Here are a few fun things I have been able to pull off besides constant superior scouting and nearly constant advantage on attacks and checks it grants-

1. Casually looting a burning building.

2. Covering the Imp in flamable oils, and then shooting a firebolt at him basically causing a small bomb that took out 5 or 6 enemies at once

3. Trapping people inside a building, setting it on fire, and then my character "saving" them all thus becoming the hero.

4. Smoking out some bandits from the inside so the party could pick them off as they exited.

5. Getting a rich evil Lord thrown in jail by planting evidence on him, breaking into his estate(just the Imp and Halfling), killing all 11 guards inside, mostly picking them off one at a time, and never fighting more than 2 at once, and seriously robbing the place. Breaking him out of jail, getting paid by him to find who set him up and robbed him, framing two random criminals for the whole thing while obviously robbing them too in the process hahaha

6. There have been a few other "encounters" that ended up being practically solo missions for the Imp.

So yeah, I know the familiar doesn't scale at all so it potency will diminish as we level but geez it just seems so powerful so far.

I'd love to hear others' thoughts on the "improved" familiars.

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