Owlbear Cub (Find Greater Familiar)
Owlbears are a low CR classic, and like regular bears before them, seem like they ought to be more friendly than they are. How is something that fluffy mean? It’s truly one of the great tragedies of our age. Luckily, we’ve concocted a solution; just conjure a baby one. Think of it as the (comparatively) friendly corollary to our other owlbear creations.
We’re excited to share more of our series of greater familiars, both for their own sake, and so we can share the wonderful artwork of them made for us by @kimbohpeep! If you want to see all of them, you can at the end of this month in Dazzleboot’s Index of the Strange and Familiar, where these and many other monsters will have been lovingly recorded and restored in one convenient package. To get the Index as soon as it comes out, you can join our Patreon at the $7 tier, and you’ll be one of the first to get all those new familiars. And, if you want to take the chance to demand we remaster a particular monster for the compendium, yell at us on Discord, and we’ll see if we can fit it in!
Owlbear Cub
Small Monstrosity, Unaligned
Armor Class 13 (natural armor)
Hit Points 38 (7d6 + 14)
Speed 30 ft.
STR 16 (+3)
DEX 12 (+1)
CON 14 (+2)
INT 3 (-4)
WIS 12 (+1)
CHA 7 (-2)
Skills Perception +3
Senses darkvision 60 ft., passive Perception 13
Languages —
Challenge 1 (200 XP) Proficiency Bonus +2
Keen Sight and Smell. The owlbear has advantage on Wisdom (Perception) checks that rely on sight or smell.
Multiattack. The owlbear makes one Beak and one Claw attack.
Beak. Melee Weapon Attack: +5 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 6 (1d6 + 3) piercing damage.
Claw. Melee Weapon Attack: +5 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 8 (2d4 + 3) slashing damage.
Find Greater Familiar
3rd-level conjuration (ritual)
Casting Time: 1 hour
Range: 10 feet
Components: V, S, M (30 gp worth of charcoal, incense, and herbs that must be consumed by fire in a brass brazier)
Duration: Instantaneous
Classes: Wizard
You gain the service of a powerful familiar, a spirit that takes a form you choose: grick wormling, griffon fledgling, hellpuppy, jackalope, kindled fire beetle, mimicling, mossback newt, or ooze droplet. 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 its normal creature type.
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.
When the familiar drops to 0 hit points, it disappears, leaving behind no physical form. It reappears after you cast this spell again. As an action, you can temporarily dismiss the familiar to a pocket dimension. 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. Whenever the familiar drops to 0 hit points or disappears into the pocket dimension, it leaves behind in its space anything it was wearing or carrying.
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.
You can't have more than one familiar gained from this spell or find 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.
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 it 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.
At Higher Levels. When you cast this spell using a spell slot of 5th level or higher, you can choose one of the normal forms for your familiar or one of the following additional forms: hydra hatchling, mantikitten, owlbear cub, or wyvern chick.
