Bastions are one of the 5.5e ideas I keep going back and forth on.

On paper, I really like them. Giving the party a home base, NPCs, facilities, and something that grows alongside the characters sounds like exactly the kind of thing that can make a campaign feel more grounded and personal.

But in practice, I’m not fully sure how naturally they fit into every kind of campaign.

In my experience, players often like the idea of having a base, a ship, a guildhall, a tower, or some kind of home between adventures. But once the campaign starts moving, especially if the party is traveling a lot or following a more urgent plot, it can be hard to make that home base feel relevant without forcing the campaign to bend around it.

So I’m curious how people are actually using them.

Have Bastions added something meaningful to your campaign?

Do your players care about them and interact with them regularly?

Or do they mostly feel like a cool system that only really works if the campaign is designed around them from the start?

I’d especially like to hear from DMs who tried them for more than a few sessions.

TL:DR >!about half of them.!<

With Magic Initiate: Wizard allowing all classes access to Find Familiar at level 1, I figured I'd look into the familiars' key trait of being able to deliver Touch spells on your behalf.

I was initially concerned with seeing if it continued to be useful as you gained levels, as the wisdom I had gleaned from my previous Familiar post was that it tended to wane in effectiveness as CR rises, but in truth there was still some basic utility to it up to 9th level spells.

Let's dive on in!

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Cantrips

Chill Touch

> While its name makes more sense now, making this cantrip a melee spell attack is a decided nerf from its previous 120 ft range. A familiar lets you undo that nerf.

Guidance

> There are many times where you would wish to support someone without actually being next to them, particularly when you do not wish other people to know that the supported person's skills are currently being augmented with magic.

Light

> A Familiar is already a fantastic scout, but making/giving them a light source is a fantastic bit of hands-free utility.

Mending

> You'd be surprised how often you may wish to repair things that are in awkward out-of-reach positions.

Resistance

> This cantrip is at its best against AoE hazards. Your familiar will typically die in these scenarios, and casting Resistance is less effective than simply not having it be present in the moment. Still, sometimes you need your familiar out anyway, and this is more effective at keeping them alive than Mage Armor

Shocking Grasp

> Turning off a creature's Opportunity Attacks is fantastic for a mage getting out of melee. Doing it through your familiar lets you save your allies as well.

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1st Level

Cure Wounds

So, the obvious comparison here is Healing Word. But as it turns out:

• 2d8×lvl > 2d4×lvl
• 100 ft > 60 ft
• Sometimes you have a Bonus Action to use
• Sometimes you're healing out of combat at range

Heroism

Dispelling the Frightened condition is best done at range. This is also the lowest leveled spell that upcasts to more targets, which raises the following question.

> A Familiar can spend its reaction to deliver the touch of a spell for you. But what happens if you would touch multiple targets? Can you split the touched targets between your familiar and your own hands simultaneously, or does casting through the familiar replace your touch?

> This is unclear to me, but there are several affected spells which improve drastically if this is the case.

Identify

"So, you touch it?"
"Nope."

Jump

As a spellcaster, you usually have good tools for spending spell slots to avoid making traversal checks. In the case where your allies fail this check, it's often better to send a flying familiar down to magically assist rather than spending an additional 2 spell slots crossing and re-crossing to deliver a touch yourself. Faster, too.

Protection from Evil and Good

Dispelling an ally's Charm/Possession is best done from outside their effective range, as is the part where you're granting disadvantage from what are usually melee combatants.

404 error: Spell Not Found

> ^(The spells I deem asynergetic with a familiar will be listed in a comment. I did not forget them. The dividing line is Goodberry, where a familiar is helpful in delivering berries you kept in your pocket, but absurd to consider in the casting of the spell. Whole new meaning to Owl Pellets there, blech.)

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2nd Level

Arcane Lock

Familiars make for fantastic scouts, and this is peak hijinx if you've the material components to burn. Just remember to tell your party the password. Locking a door or window that may produce enemies on an inexcessible elevation is also fantastic.

Continual Flame

If you're ever casting this spell rather than just buying 50gp of mundane light sources, it's because you intend to illuminate something for the long-haul. A familiar would allow you to create ceiling lights in this fashion.

Death Armor

If someone needs advantage on death saving throws and reflective damage against melee, it sounds like they're in a dangerous position and you should keep your distance. However, you probably pre-cast this with Circle Casting to avoid spending an Onyx.

Dragon's Breath

Cast Dragon's Breath on the Familiar to give them an offensive option. You probably already knew this combo, but if you didn't I'm glad to tell you this gets around the attack restriction!

Enhance Ability

This is good for the same reason Guidance is.

Invisibility

If you can split targets when upcasting, this is EXTREMELY good. It's still useful if you can't, though.

Lesser Restoration

While Blindness and Deafness can happen to anyone, Paralysis and Poison tend to happen to frontliners. You also really don't want ANY of these effects and so want to keep your distance

Protection from Poison

This is less flexible than Lesser Restoration, but it's arguments still apply here.

Rope Trick

Rope Trick is a shenanigans-heavy spell, and being able to set the shenanigans Over There rather than Right Here grants great flexibility.

Spider Climb

Apropos to be delivered by an actual Spider and shares the logic of Jump with the split-casting of Heroism

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3rd Level

Bestow Curse

The fact that this is touch is the reason that most people don't take it. Used with a Familiar it becomes the most devastating debuff spell available at this level.

Feign Death

Combo with Charm Person to knock someone out for an hour at range. Combo with a venomous familiar (e.g. Scorpion) for cinema's sake.

Fly

See also: Spider Climb

Gaseous Form

See also: Spider Climb. Also you can save allies who are actively in danger of death with this, so doing this with a greater effective range also provides a great deal of safety to your party.

Glyph of Warding

Plant your trap on the ceiling to make it more difficult for the enemy to see and/or dispel

Protection from Energy

See: Resistance

Remove Curse

Most curses give you time to touch them yourself. However, suppressing a cursed item can end a room's hazard, so clever dungeon makers plant those in places you can't reach.

Revivify

A location where your ally died is definitionally deadly. The tight deadline of this also means that the range and speed of a Familiar is worth even more

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4th, 5th, and 6th Level

Freedom of Movement

See also: Spider-Climb. This one in particular is at its most useful when combined with a highly mobile familiar, particularly in undersea ventures.

Greater Invisibility

See also: Invisibility

Stone Shape

Shaping Stone you cannot reach can provide light, fresh air, or just stop the hazard that's killing you from above.

Contagion

If you're casting this, you want to do so from range. It's also very thematic for certain familiars.

Drawmij's Instant Summons

A familiar is very useful in using this spell to steal something worth more than a 1000 gp sapphire.

True Seeing

In the rare event where you need to cast this in combat, you can't really afford to spend extra turns getting to your target with movement.

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7th, 8th, and 9th Level

Regenerate

If you're casting this spell in combat, it's on a frontliner who is yo-yoing. That sounds a dangerous position to be in, and not one you want to touch.

Sequester

See: Feign Death

Symbol

See: Glyph of Warding

Mind Blank

If you're using this to cleanse the Charmed condition, they've definitely been Dominated at this level, so getting close is probably a bad idea.

Foresight

When selecting a Champion in this way, a familiar lets you have a larger net to choose from.

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So yes, the pool from which to use your Familiar dwindles as levels go up, and the amount of value your Familiar adds requires more niche applications at those levels.

Still, the feature itself maintains potency so long as you are squishy and creative!

One of the more interesting 5.5e changes to me is that subclasses now come online at level 3 across the board.

I can definitely see the upside. It makes early progression feel more standardized, probably easier to teach, and it avoids some classes frontloading too much identity right away.

But at the same time, I’m not totally sure it was the right call for every class. For me, it feels cleaner from a design point of view, but it also makes some classes feel a little more generic at levels 1 and 2 than they used to. On some characters, the subclass is such a big part of the fantasy that waiting until level 3 can make the early game feel more like a lead-up than the actual concept.

So I’m curious where people landed on this after actually playing with it.

Do you think moving subclasses to level 3 improved the game overall?

Or do you think it delayed some class fantasies in a way that hurts the early experience?

And has your opinion changed after seeing it at the table instead of just reading it?

After seeing more people talk about the 2024 monsters, I’m starting to think the bigger question might actually be encounter building.

One of the most common frustrations I had with 2014 5E was that encounter balance often felt more like a rough suggestion than a reliable tool. Sometimes a “deadly” encounter got deleted in two rounds, and sometimes something that looked manageable on paper became way more dangerous because of action economy, terrain, or one bad turn.

With 5.5e, I’ve seen people say the new encounter building rules work much better, especially when paired with the newer monster design. But I’ve also seen DMs say they still have to rely mostly on experience and instinct, especially when resources, rest pacing, magic items, and party optimization get involved.

In my experience, the biggest issue with 2014 encounter building was that I often had to mentally correct the difficulty before the fight even started. If the party had strong magic items, good control spells, or just better action economy, the listed difficulty could stop meaning much very quickly. I could still make good encounters, but it was more because I knew my group than because the system was giving me a really reliable estimate.

So I’m curious how it has actually felt at your table.

Do the 2024 encounter building rules feel more reliable than 2014?

Are combats easier to make challenging without becoming unfair?

Or are you still mostly eyeballing difficulty the same way you did before?

I’d especially like to hear from DMs who have run both versions for the same group.

Now that people have had some time to read and actually play the revised rules for Dungeons & Dragons 5.5e for a while, I’ve noticed that a lot of discussions still come down to people interpreting the rules in very different ways.

At my table and in online discussions, some rules seem to be misunderstood or misapplied pretty often. Sometimes it's because the wording changed compared to Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition, and other times it's because the new mechanics interact with older assumptions.

Some examples I’ve seen people get confused about:

• how weapon masteries actually trigger and when they apply
• the revised exhaustion rules and how punishing they really are
• hiding and stealth, especially when a creature can attempt to hide in combat
• changes to certain spells and how their wording affects old tactics
• class feature updates that work differently than they did in 5E

I’m curious what others have run into in actual play.

What rules in 5.5e do you think are currently the most misunderstood?
Have you had to correct something at your table that people assumed worked the same as it did in 5E?

Bonus question: was there a rule you initially misunderstood yourself until you saw it used at the table?

Thus far, there are 33 potential Familiars printed into 5.5e: 1 in the DMG, 8 from Pact of the chain, and 24 cr0 Beasts printed in both the PHB and MM.

Oddly we haven't had any new entries printed since then, though I did include the more recent offerings in my search.

Obviously, not all of these are created equally, and so I've split them into seperate discussions.

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Flavor Picks

Not all of these are as bad as each other, but if you land in this category you're merely unoptimal. You grab them because you're excited about the story you want to tell despite the stats in the book, not because of them. You can still have great success, but they're far less likely to be useful in combat.

• Eagle
• Baboon
• Crab
• Cat
• Lizard
• Jackal
• Scorpion
• Spider
• Hawk
• Piranha
• Frog
• Seahorse

Even among these, there are choices I adore and almost made it into other categories.

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The Mounts

These familiars can be ridden!
A smaller subset can even be ridden with speeds your PC might not otherwise have.
Three of them are even rideable into combat!

• Giant Fly ^(DMG 261). 4th highest HP overall, highest survivability without Pact of the Chain, and is capable of being ridden by Medium and smaller creatures, this is the mount you'd want to use in Combat.
• Deer. The Agile trait getting you out of melee without an opportunity attack is doing some real heavy lifting here, and is worth being a Small PC for.
• Vulture. Less survivable than the Giant Fly, but a much better Scout. Worth considering as a Small PC.
• Skeleton Theoretically rideable by a Small PC, but we'll get to it in another category.
• Goat. Hey, at least it's got a climb speed.
• Hyena

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Noncombat Toolboxes

You're not taking these with any intention of using them in combat, but they're sufficiently strong outside of combat not to be judged on that insufficiency.

• Badger. Burrowing Speed makes for unique exploration opportunities, even if it's slow.
• Raven. Unironically a fantastic choice with Investment of the Chain Master due to the confusion a clever mage can make with Mimicry.
• Slaad Tadpole. Easily the worst of the Chain Pact options, but it's also a faster-burrowing and healthier/resistant Badger option.
• Weasel. It's proficient with 3 skills, which means it can take the Help action on those 3 skills. Stealth and Perception are easily come by, but getting advantage on Acrobatics is very nice indeed. It's also got the highest stealth of any familiar that can't turn Invisibile, which is nice.

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Combat Toolboxes

Unlike the previous category, these toolboxes have enough wherewithal to be able to be a force in combat as well, though not offensively.

• Bat. 60 ft of Blindsight sets up fantastic combos, such as with the Darkness or Fog Cloud spells, and also hoses the Invisibile condition.
• Giant Fire Beetle. Half the blindsight radius of the Bat, but it's also a hands-and-concentration-free Light Source. Every party has at least one nightblind fool in it, and between the blindsight and saving yourself a Cantrip choice makes this a strong choice.
• Octopus. If you're going to be underwater, Ink Cloud, Compression and Stealth Expertise make this a formidible choice for delivering spells safely.
• Owl. Sure, it's got a hit point, but the 60 ft flyspeed and Flyby mean that some enemy's got to bolt the bird. And with expertise in Perception & Stealth, and with 120 ft of darkvision, this thing is a house out of combat as well.
• Quasit. While its pile of resistances and immunities couple with the highest HP in the category to make this the hardest familiar to kill, it's also in this category for its ability to keep 1 enemy poisoned round after round, and for that phenomenal Scare ability. It's also one of three scouts that can go fully Invisibile.
• Rat. The tiny size meaning it can share spaces with medium creatures coupled with the Agile ability mean that enemies really have to go out of their way to kill this thing. And while Owls are frequently targeted by ranged attacks for being in the wide-opened sky when they've proven annoying enough, Rats frequently have full cover from such targeting due to being terrestrial.
• Sprite. The king of scouting, and the absolute most reliable choice for delivering touch spells to the enemy. Invisibility + Stealth Expertise + Flight goes crazy. Heart Sight is also a surefire way to see through shenanigans that are hidden even from Blindsight - the Sprite can figure out who's Hostile, who's Illusory, and who's Extraplanar. Also, while Charming Bow isn't good, it still makes the sprite one of only two familiars with a ranged attack. Out of combat, it also has the most language proficiencies, making it excellent at observing conversations and reporting back without you needing to be paying attention at the time.

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Firepower

These are all gotten from Pact of the Chain, and all of them are decent offensively in addition to any out-of-combat effects they may have.

• Imp. The final creature that can turn invisible, the Highest DPR, barely behind the Sprite as far as delivering touch spells, the 3rd hardest to kill, and throw in the Bat's ability to combo. The Shapeshifting feature is also useful for plausible deniability when you want to show you have a familiar but not what variety.
• Pseudodragon. Sadly, the Multiattack feature doesn't work with Investment of the Chain Master. Fortunately, the Sting ability certainly does, and knocking a creature unconcious as the familiar's action is worth the risk of bringing a 10 HP creature to a fight even at later levels. Also, it doesn't even technically count as an attack, so you still have your Bonus Action available for other things.
• Skeleton. Highest damage Ranged Attack among familiars, and most DMs will let you improve the skeleton by swapping out its Gear.
• Sphinx of Wonder. 2nd hardest to kill & 2nd highest damage by 1 hp and 1 average damage apiece, more Helpful than the Weasel due to having proficiency in Arcana, Religion, and Stealth, and of course Burst of Ingenuity. This guy is better than a full party member until Tier 2, and is a valuable companion for a long time afterwards.
• Venomous Snake. 8 expected damage is decent, and 10 ft of blindsight is worth mentioning. It belongs in this category, but barely.

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I hope you enjoyed this conversation starter, and I also hope you can see why I didn't make it a Tier List.

So I’ve started running a campaign with friends (we’re two sessions in) and things are going pretty well. It’s the first time I’m DMing so as expected there are a few teething issues. Are people able to help give me any pointers on the below?

- When combat is started and people roll initiative there’s always a few awkward minutes of silence when I’m writing down the order of combat (getting people’s initiatives etc). Is there a fast / streamlined way to do this? Maybe even like a standard table format I don’t know about to keep track of combat etc?

- Any tips on making travelling less dull? When the characters are walking to somewhere often I say “what are your characters talking about” etc. and potentially throw in a random goblin or something. But if nothing catches it just ends up that “they get to where they’re going”…

- My players are REALLY fun to play with but they’re not always the easiest to get roleplaying in character as their characters. Any tips to encourage this?

- When you’re running sessions what material do you have in front of you as a DM. Behind my screen I’ve got the book with all the notes on my world and cities etc, a monster manual to help with combat, a notepad to note down combat and any important things, on a separate chair I’ve got a DM guide and the PHB and some battle maps if needed. Clearly seems like too much so how do you guys do it?

- I’ve got an artist friend to draw me a world map for my world. Should I get the same done for cities or is this less important? Can it be done online anywhere (or is theatre of the mind better for this?)

One 5.5e change I keep going back and forth on is Origin Feats and the new background structure.

On one hand, I think it gives characters more identity and customization right from level 1, which is fun. It also feels like a cleaner way to make backgrounds matter mechanically instead of just being mostly flavor.

On the other hand, I can also see the argument that it makes character creation feel a bit more gamey, or that it pushes people toward thinking about background as a package of stats and feats first, and a story element second.

So after actually seeing it in play, where do you stand on it?

Do Origin Feats make character creation better in practice?
Or do they make backgrounds feel a little too mechanical?

And for DMs, have you found the new background setup better to work with at the table?

A lot of discussion around 5.5e usually ends up being about balance, buffs, nerfs, and what is technically stronger than before, but I’m more curious about something a little more practical:

What change has actually made the game more fun at your table?

For me, one of the biggest ones is that martial turns feel less repetitive now. In a lot of 2014 games, martial combat could sometimes slip into I walk up, I attack, I end my turn. In 5.5e, things feel a bit more textured. Between weapon masteries, cleaner class design, and some subclasses feeling more active, it feels like there is more going on from turn to turn without needing to overcomplicate the game.

That has probably been one of the biggest quality-of-life improvements for me. Not necessarily the flashiest change, but one that makes actual play feel better.

So what about you?

What change in 5.5e has genuinely made the game more fun in practice, either as a player or as a DM?

It could be:

• a class that now feels smoother to play
• a mechanic that makes combat more satisfying
• a rule that speeds things up or reduces confusion
• a DM-facing change that makes encounters easier to run
• a feature that looked small at first but ended up improving the feel of the game a lot

And on the other side, was there anything that sounded great when you first read it, but ended up being less fun at the table than you expected?