One of the principle designers/authors for Strixhaven was Amanda Hamon, who worked on Pathfinder. Pathfinder is based on 3/3.5. So there’s one possible reason for the design of Strixhaven Mascot’s prerequisites.

Fractal Mascot + Investiture of the Chain Master could give you a flying huge familiar. With its size at huge even with a 12 STR it’ll have about a 720* ((12*15)*4) lbs carrying capacity, so it should be able to carry a couple of people around for a mount.

Having a level requirement on feats is something they should have done at the start of 5e, it would have greatly curbed Variant human(and later custom lineage humanoid) abuse. Having feat trees is something that should have stayed dead, there just aren't enough ASI at level ups for that to be a worthy consideration anymore.

Find familiar excerpt, emphasis mine: "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.*" Since Blindsight is listed under Senses for the Inkling, I would argue blindsight is a special sense the familiar has, so you should be able to use the inkling's blindsight by RAW.

Quick aside on Death Burst: I think this is an example where natural language directly contradicts what's written. Even if RAW the familiar doesn't 'die' I've heard it referred to that colloquially quite a bit. I think that's how this made it to print. Which means an average reader would get the likely intended interpretation where when a familiar hits 0 HP and disappears (aka "dies") they get Death Burst, although this isn't correct if you read it straight. This is, however, a wording that should not have made it to print, given the explicit "doesn't die" in the Find Familiar spell.

18:40 The Fractal Mascot at Huge Size can carry 720lbs while at Gargantuan ( With the help of Enlarge & Reduce ) can carry 1440 lbs .

I know the mascot familiar attack is weak, but did anyone else envision students having mascot battles akin to pokemon fights?

Fractal Mascot: make Huge, throw some buffs like Sanctuary on it to make it more durable and then use it as cover.

Interesting thing w the initiate feat other than shield and silvery barbs maybe there is goodberry for life clerics, not needing to sacrifice a level into druid can be nice, and the same goes for a few other builds , also anyone can steal bless

I like these feats. I imagine now it'll make sense for a student a Strixhaven to be, say, a level 1 rogue, and not be completely out of place because of their magical inaptitude

I'm running a mounted combatant fractal mascot combo as a rune knight. I'm a large character on a huge mount with advantage on basically everything.

My favorite is also the fractal familiar. Once it gets to its huge state it could out lift a horse I believe, which means you’ll get a lot of ability to lift and move stuff. I love the idea of just using my familiar to pull my wizard wagon and getting some odd looks as it walks down the road.

All I'm saying is a Scribes Wizard with an inkling familiar is tasty 😋

I think it's an interesting way to look at feat progression being adventure/setting based actually. It allows a uniquely powerful character for the setting but, you can also throttle the power creep at least a little bit outside of it. Since my world is homebrew and low magic I would allow the feats but, you need to build a relationship with the faction. Sort of like going assassin prestige class in 3/3.5 if I'm remembering that right.

25:45 1 hour* casting time, but the point stands. Great breakdown of the Strixhaven feats & Mascots, I always appreciate your lawful neutral approach to interpreting the RAW. I do imagine that the death bursts are intended to be when the Familiar's hitpoints drop to zero and not when it dies, but that terminology is certainly a stick in the spokes when it comes to the written word.

Strixhaven initiate giving access to shield is so good... But I'm not sure if it's worth a full feat any more. With a full caster you almost definitely need war caster, maybe resilient con. Fey touched grabbing silvery barbs allows you to maintain casting stat progression while still getting a good reaction spell. The competition for strixhaven initiate is just so tough now

you mention your concerns about the strength(Carrying Capacity) of the fractal mascot in regards to mounting it, that won't be a problem as the "Lifting and Carrying" rules say the carrying capacity( and etc.) is double for each size category above Medium(PHB p176). that means the fractal mascot has a maxam carrying capacity of 720, that's enough to carry a Carriage(600).

As a (sometimes) DM, I welcome this setting book as a toolbox. It will continue to add depth to organizations that exist within our worlds. A trend that began with the Aquisitions Inc. in the exploration of enterprise building, was explored through guild structures in Ravnica, and supernatural/educational vibes with Strixhaven. I hope DM's see the value in these books for what they offer within this domain

I like to think that the fractal familiar’s Small size is its “resting” state, which is why it’s mechanically inferior.

Re: the Pest familiar having a damage-on-grapple ability - isn't there a sport in Strixhaven that's basically capture-the-flag but with mascots? Witherbloom must win a lot of games if their mascots damage the players trying to carry them back to base.

An interesting note with the familiar teleport swap is, unlike the attacking rule, it does not specify that it has to be in one of the strixhaven forms to do the swap. For the inkling familiar, I would rule that blindsight is a 'special sense', which per the wording of find familiar, you gain the benefit of. A funny use for the pest mascots regeneration is setting up a dhampir's bite bonus out of combat. Need a boost? Just snack on your familiar!

Would all the normal rules for Find Familiar apply to these mascots? Example: Can you temporarily dismiss one of these mascots into a pocket dimension, bring it back within 30 feet on the other side of an opaque barrier, use the teleportation ability to swap places, and then repeat the process of bringing your familiar across?

I could see taking find familiar on a non-caster, use to get advantage with elven accuracy or advantage on all attacks with Kobald pact tactics.

Those familiars scream Pokémon to me. I would be surprised if Strixhaven didn’t have some sort of familiar battle system or event at the school. If it doesn’t, I could see lots of DMs adding it.

Strixhaven Initiate gets Goodberry for Life Clerics and such. That's pretty handy as well.

I know of many groups that give characters a free feat at 1st Level, anyway. I would allow these feats in my games. If you go Variant Human or Custom Lineage, then you could get two feats at 1st Level. It allows for more creativity, and it’s not that big of a deal to increase the power of opponents to create enough challenge.

Many take Ritual Caster (Wizard) specifically to get Find Familiar. While I think that there's a lot more benefit to Ritual Caster than those individuals give credit, I appreciate the option to focus in with Mascots. It doesn't seem overpowered at level 1 nor 4, so I'm unsure of why it has a prerequisite feat and level. I could see either of these Strixhaven feats on a Ranger, but needing both is a hard sell.

given how WOTC seems to love buffing wizards and sorcerers (and warlocks) by giving them new spells all the time, these feats feel like the rare example of a buff that mostly improves clerics, druids, and bards, none of whom have a good way to get shield or misty step or find familiar. this adds a lot of defense and utility. now if only they find a way to give clerics (and druids to a lesser extent) more interesting options in combat, and bring bards up to the new sorcerer number of spells known

I think you are underselling the amount of HP they get considering the HUGE number of temporary hitpoint options that are in the game at this time. A level 4 wizard is going to have around 20-25 hp. A beastmaster ranger companion will have 25ish hp at this same level? The summon beast spell will have comparable hp. A familiar, which is free to resummon for material cost and 10 minutes with 20 hp is 100% a tank up to level 6-8 even - anything that eats 1-3 attacks or abilities that would otherwise target you, for free, is a tank. Add Treats temp hp or inspiring leader or even something like a heroism spell, and your familiar is surviving multiple rounds, or at least multiple hits. I also think how the wording of these familiars is outlined is fairly dangerous. If your DM rules your strixhaven familiar can be killed, then any time that you recast find familiar after it has died *would summon a new familiar, with new untapped uses per day resources* And what came up on the pest familiar but you didn't take into account with the earlier familiars, is that the attack you sacrifice can be a grapple. And a huge familiar then gets grapple advantages. Additionally, a huge creature has carrying capacity based on size as well as strength score doesn't it? A huge familiar can pick up a big rock and drop it on top of an enemy? For battlefield control, a large or huge familiar can effectively become a 20-30 hp wall for the cost of a bonus action. I really wonder what they were thinking with these new feats and familiars.

Every attack aimed at a familiar is an attack that can't hit a player character.

Having read Strixhaven, the Strixhaven Initiate feat seems to be granted as well via Background, with a given background based on every college, so long as you take the Initiate Spell Selection of your specific college. This is the first time as far as I know that a background supplied anything beyond proficiencies - plus, if we are able to combine this with Variant Human or Custom Lineage, then we could theoretically begin the game with two first level feats, one of which granting extra spells altogether. In addition, each of those backgrounds also adds a menagerie of spells to add to your spell list (for every class involved, should you multiclass), one of which being the college-specific spell, which means any spellcaster has theoretical access to whichever of the spells they want, should they choose the college that spell is in for their background. I think it's also 10 total spells, two per spell level for 5 levels. These backgrounds are incredibly powerful for those reasons alone, not to mention they still supply proficiencies and starting equipment. * Edit - I wrote this just before you mentioned it in the video

The power creep is pretty strong on this one!

But unless you get it free at first level, when do you actually finish the feat tree. At least one of the asi at 4 or 8 you will probably take an increase in your casting ability. So we talk 12 and the you did not take warcaster? 5e just needs more feat slots to let you choose stuff before the campaign is through.

Regeneration is nice because you don't have to worry about forking over as much gold for using familiars. Tis 10 gold per cast.

Some spells upcast really well, so the ability to use this granted 1st level spell with your other spell slots is a huge boon over magic initiate

Being a wildfire druid Prismari is looking really good right now lol.

I continue to vastly prefer my standard house rule that all characters get a level 1 feat and there are no variant humans. Of course, custom lineage screws with that, but so far no one's tried to abuse it. Gonna have to decide on a solution for that, or else just go all in on the rules from An Elf And An Orc Had A Little Baby. Guess we'll see.

About the only use I can think of for Pest regeneration is using it to gain hit points with Vampiric Touch out of combat. (Possibly with a spare Aid target having boosted its hit points.) Which isn't great, but is interesting on classes without Aura of Vitality.

22:58 When you look at the Magic Card (Token) for the Inkling, it does indeed have eyes :) Thanks for the great video as alyways!

8:05 Well there were also the Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica backgrounds that added spells to your class list (though you still had to pick them up normally).

26:49 it could be the intent that this grapple ability is intended to punish enemies trying to grapple *you* and you can use the teleport ability to switch places forcing the enemy to grapple the familiar instead.

Strixhaven Initiate is a straight upgrade to Magic Initiate if you happen to like the cantrip choices that the feats grant. Specifically, using Strixhaven Initiate (Quandrix) to pick up Goodberry as a Life Cleric with a race that grants a feat at 1st level is an excellent option by comparison: You get Druidcraft, a Druid-unique cantrip with admittedly meager utility, but a fan favorite nonetheless; Guidance, a cantrip you already could've gotten, freeing you up to take one of the more unorthodox Cleric cantrips instead; and Mage Hand, which Clerics normally don't get, and has some great utility throughout the game. It even gives you a free casting of it, so your amped-up Goodberry doesn't have to cut into your regular Cleric spell slots per day - but unlike Magic Initiate, you can cast it again if you run out. I don't know that I'd follow it up with Strixhaven Mascot, but the Quandrix familiar does have the unusual quality of **going through walls**, and the Mascot Feat's teleportation doesn't require line of sight, so you could use it as a teleport through obstacles. It's a cheap teleport, too; compare it to Misty Step at 2nd level, which is shorter, and requires line of sight, though it's a bonus action. I could see that having some worthwhile staying power, but whether it's more valuable than bumping Wisdom to 20 at 8th level, I am uncertain. Clerics tend to lack teleports, so my gut says it could be worthwhile, but I'd probably at least get to 18 Wisdom at 4th level, and wait to get the Mascot at 8th, where I'm facing higher-level challenges that are more likely to need a creature that can... teleport me freely throughout a dungeon. Honestly, the Quandrix familiar is kind of gross. I never agreed with 3.5e's Mountain Hammer Chainsaw Redecorator strategy. I found it a little disrespectful to my DM's carefully-planned dungeon, in the same vein as solving a maze by drawing a straight line through it. Still, for tables whose DM doesn't care (or who is mean enough to hide traps inside the walls for some reason), I think it'd be fine. I just wouldn't use it myself.

Was waiting for this

The art on thr mtg card for inkling token does actually have eyes, so I think the default is that it does have eyes

>Treantmonk throwing back to the 3.x days Aaaah, the old WotC CharOp boards. It was a simpler time, albeit with an infinitely more complex ruleset (“This build works best if you use this feat I found in the back of a tie-in novel”)

14:36 Nowhere in the spell description does it say “it doesn’t die.” All it says is that “When the familier drops to 0 hit points, it disappears, leaving behind no physical form. It reappears after you cast this spell again.” By RAW, this would be saying that it disappears at the same time as it dies.

"Now in terms of other people like climbing on the huge familiar and riding it around just note this familiar has a Str of 12 thats good for a familiar, *but I don't think you will find the carrying capacity is thousands of pounds* " Are you calling me fat?

It says you gain the benefits of any special senses your familiar has. So for the inkling you should get it's blind sight

I'm running a new campaign starting this weekend. No one has chosen to take the backgrounds and accompanying feats but I am hoping one of them does. I like them and would love to see them in action.

The mascot feat is interesting but I’m not sure it’s good enough to justify its prerequisites. If your mascot scaled with you I could see it working but as it stands it’s just ok. Investing 2 whole feats into a buffed familiar is really expensive when a standard familiar is already available through a both Magic Initiate and Strixhaven Initiate.

Can the mascot feat allows familiars to make weapon attacks? Is there anything that prevents familiar from using weapons, other than Find Familiar not allowing them to make attacks normally? This would open up the use of poisons as well as Nets.

This is a decent way for the Sorcerer to get access to 'Find Familiar'

Quandrix Initiate as a Rogue is solid AF. Guidance and Mage Hand? Uhh, yeah.

Plasmoid player race and Inkling Mascot is sounding really interesting! 😅

RAW the inkling does have normal vision. Creatures that only use blindsight and are blind have a notation next to the blind sight that reads Blindsight 60ft (blind beyond this range). So yes RAW as written you see through its senses you can see and hear as normal and you get the familiars special senses IE blindsight.

The fractal mascot reminds me of Animal near the end of the Muppet Movie. If you know, you know.

The benefit of being "small" fractal is the flexibility of going up or down a size within one turn.

If that second piece of artwork is the special edition of the book. It reminds me of Mage from WhiteWolf. Bet it looks fancy of they foiled it like special Van Richten book. The new familiar forms sound odd without artwork to give visual ideas, bit interesting actions overall. We all know the inkling has googly eyes. lol

Fractal is odd in that it has two abilities that seem to stack. I don't see the full text, but can I Augment twice, Diminish once and get a) only Diminish's benefit at medium size b) get both Augment and Diminish because neither state ends the other?

22:41 "gaining the benefits of any special senses the familiar has" any DM that doesn't let you get the inkling mascots blindsight is being intentionally obtuse.

Just a small thing that I didn't hear you mention (sorry if I missed it). Magic initiate doesn't let you cast the spell using your own spell slots (unless you belong to that class). Which I think is a big win for these feats over Magic Initiate

The fact that these familiars have a death burst would seem to imply that familiars are, in fact, said to die when they hit 0 hit points.

Inklings are with their senses, the ability to hover and the fact that they can squeeze through very narrow openings the best bet, when it comes to utilizing the switcheroo part of the feat.

I actually got very excited for this to be a way for shillelagh to be cast with intelligence, only to go back to see that it's not on the spell list. I've been trying to make a SAD Ghostslayer Blood Hunter work for awile and 3 into Artificer is very steep.

Re: carrying capacity of fractal familiar. Its doubled per size greater than medium, so at huge its quadrupled, at a raw baseline of 15 pounds per point of strength. Thats 180 at 12 strength basline, doubled to 360 at large, and doubled again to 720 at huge. Is it carrying thousands of pounds? No. But you and a buddy or two depending on carried gear could totally ride around on it. Pretty fun for a college mascot.

Jeremy Crawford tweeted (can't find it now, it was replying to MM ruling against paladin auras stacking) that ONLY spell effects dont stack. Other effects DO stack, such as the fractal size boost (or paladin auras)

I’m really excited for strixhaven to come out. I have a self insert artist wizard that would fit the setting perfectly :D

I think feat prerequisites are great

Guidance and entangle on warlock.

Qaundrix to get guidance+find familiar better than magic initiate to get my 2 favorite spells.

The Familiar does and attack causing the enemy to attack and "Kill" the Familiar activating the death Burst

“And gain any *senses* the familiar has.”

The Fractal Mascot is honestly almost an upgrade over Find Steed, if you have Mounted Combatant. Since it can be Huge, it can grant advantage on anything Large or smaller, which is a lot of things. Definitely more of a meme than super optimized, but I'm sure I'd have a whale of a time riding around on a giant fractal snake with a lance

As someone making a dhamphir mercy monk with some plans to be a witherbloom wizard's tower player, most everything here is especially interesting for that character's mechanics!

Inkling familiar you say? Woomy!

A lot of the familiars seem like they could be an alright emergency tank for like one level. The pest and fractal could reasonably survive 1-2 rounds as a tank when the party is level 4-5. Even then, it gets really hairy with lots of creatures or one really strong one.

Strixhaven Initate. Wizard takes healing word. Now the wizard class is unbreakable and unstoppable at all levels.

2:41 “Special senses” includes blindsight.

I'm likely not going to get this book unless my players want to do a Owl House / 90s college party movie combo adventure. I like the feats at level 1 as part of your background. It's similar to what I currently do, which is use the Talents from Dams Guild

An Inkling obviously has eyes...just look up the magic tokens.

I know the familiar damage is still kind of low, but one can do force and one can do psychic. Not the best equalizer, but if you are dealing with odd resistances or immunities, it may be one way to get around that.

Re: Fractal Mascot. As you presented it, I'd assume every such mascot should use their 1st two bonus actions of existence to Augment and Diminish? Are the boosts to Strength or Dex checks/saves tied to specific sizes, or just tied to having used the ability?

Hi treantmonk, what would happen with investment of the chain master? Would the features mix or is it only for warlock familiars?

@23:00 Inklings have eyes on their MtG cards.

Im excited for the plot and running this book as an adventure! The options however? Debatable.

This is basically just a spin off game. Maybe a bit hyperbolic but you can see their efforts to do a tie-in are bumping the genre in that specific direction with the features they laid out. Wouldn't it be nice if they could that for something other than hyper high fantasy for once?

Combine this with the chain master's investment invocation out of xanthar's that lets you as a bonus action command your familiar to attack on their turn (which is right after yours is how I rule it, but a separate turn) my player had a psuedo dragon and it took down a feral vampire (the party of 2 level 4s) did because it failed almost immediately into unconsciousness and they used that to get a lot of extra damage and that indefinite poison, but hey here you could get a little extra damage out of it for your bonus action. But that's a build , a specific build, not a general rule like you were talking about for this Art Elemental at 16:00.

Holy smokes, the level requirement is back! :o

With familiars medium, or larger, what happens if we use it as a mount? A small Paladin, with a Spirit Statue as a mount can share spell effects with the mount. That sounds like it should improve the survivability and still get the benefit of the familiars special ability. I’m probably missing something.

The Spirit Statue Mascot can also boost Dispel Magic or Counterspell rolls.

Question with the statue mascot. What would prevent you from putting armor on it for better AC? It doesn't cast spells and presumably is a construct in humanoid form.

Spirit Statue seems to almost be a follower instead of a familiar. With mental stats and a physical form suited to interacting with equipment and objects like a humanoid, by RAW is there a prohibition on decking out the statue with armor etc?

Finally I can use vicious mockery using intelligence :p

Still an imp that can poly and invis itself and not poof is hard to beat. Esp when it can hold the magic lamp.

Big cosmere energy

Feels like burst from red mascots intended on work when they drop to 0, but this book's designer just didn't knew/didn't remembered that familiars technically can't die except for very few circumstances

The huge familiar can carry 720lb, so being a mount for 1-2 players is not out of bounds x)

I’ve seen some people worry about the Fractal messing up dungeon exploration with its size and movement through walls. Ghosts, the quintessential intangible creature, have flight that helps them make the most of going through walls. Nothing about intangibility itself allows swimming through matter, though obviously it doesn’t hurtle off into space or fall to the core when it passes through objects - can a fractal fly when in objects or is it somehow limited to the height it entered at?

Choosing Shield over Silvery Barbs (as written so far) is absolute madness. Objectively.

How would you say the strixhaven familiars work with the druid optional feature in Tasha's (wild companion)? Could you summon your fractal twice a short rest for free? Could you change the creature type to fey? If you could would It then gain the benefits of something like the Shepard druid? I really want to build around fractals because I love them in the magic card game but I don't know if it works that way.