Why bother with a pseudodragon miniature?
Pseudodragons are yet another of those creatures which have been around since the beginnings of Dungeons & Dragons. Back in the day, pseudodragons were desperately wanted as a familiar for wizards. These days, it’s a bit more complicated. According to D&D 5th edition’s spell rules for Find Familiar, when you summon a familiar you can choose its appearance, from among the following: bat, cat, crab, frog, toad, hawk, lizard, octopus, owl, poisonous snake, fish (quipper), rat, raven, sea horse, spider, or weasel. You might notice that pseudodragons aren’t mentioned. Also, your familiar isn’t what it appears to be, but is instead either a celestial, fey, or fiend, which you also get to pick. And the familiar can change shape from one of those choices to another, over and over again. Which, to me, makes it more of a longer-term summon creature spell than a true familiar, since the critter keeps on changing, and it is not really what you thought it was anyhow. Plus, you can dump it into a pocket dimension when it’s convenient for you (i.e. you don’t want it around). This familiar is clearly (to me, anyhow), not an animal partner which you have bonded deeply with, but is a kind of fancier version of mage hand that you can send out to do things that you want. I don’t like the taste of it very much. It’s not like familiars which you read about in literature. But hey, that’s just me. But then in walks the pseudodragon. This little Dragon has been around since the beginning and is deeply beloved as a familiar, but it doesn’t tie in with the new rules for Find Familiar (unless you are a warlock with the Pact of the Chain feature). The Monster Manual’s pseudodragon entry on page 254 has a sidebar for a variant rule for a pseudodragon familiar. Aha, here we go! The variant rule suggests that a pseudodragon can become a familiar to a spellcaster, and lists what features the spellcaster would gain from this. It also suggests that the pseudodragon will leave if it wants at any time. It doesn’t state if the Find Familiar spell need be cast, however. It seems like perhaps it’s not needed, since it’s not mentioned, but then if it isn’t needed, why does it only become a familiar to a spellcaster? It’s all a bit hazy. Further investigations lead us to page 347 of the Monster Manual, where there is, after the Mage stats, a sidebar titled Variant: Familiars. This sidebar states that any spellcaster which can cast the Find Familiar spell is likely to have a familiar, and that familiar may be one of the creatures listed in the spell or may also be “some other Tiny monster, such as a crawling claw, imp, pseudodragon, or quasit.” The section on the quasit has a sidebar about what features it gives the spellcaster, the section about the imp has no sidebar but mentions that they can serve masters, and the crawling claw’s section has no sidebar or mentions of it as a familiar, but it does state that crawling claws must follow orders of their creator. So, this adds a few more options to the mix, but it doesn’t really clarify how the rules work with these fancier exceptions. Lead designer Jeremy Crawford has publicly stated, “If a monster has a variant rule for being a spellcaster’s familiar, that variant is in the monster book that contains the critter….Those variants have no bearing on the find familiar spell.” Which makes it clear that they don’t follow any of the Find Familiar spell rules, nor does a spellcaster need the Find Familiar spell to befriend one of these special familiars, but it would have been nice if that had also been spelled out in the rule books. So, I guess the short answer is, your dungeon master will have to approve it and figure out their rules for dealing with it. Having Thing from the Addams Family as a familiar does sound fun though. For me, I disliked the 5E Find Familiar rules so much that I made a homebrew version though, and I suggest you do something similar of you’re bumping into people wanting an Old School familiar (or even if you’re not, if the rules annoy you as much as they did me).
What about this mini?
This unpainted mini pack consists of miniatures for three different familars: the pseudodragon, a firebat, and an imp. The fact that the pseudodragon is tiny sized like it should be makes me very happy. This mini is made by WizKids as part of their Nolzur’s Marvelous Miniatures line: Familiars #72563. It’s a nice sculpt, and is incredibly tiny. No complaints from me.
How useful is this mini, really?
Pseudodragons are included in 6 published Dungeons & Dragons 5th edition books:
- Explorer’s Guide To Wildemount
- Ghosts Of Saltmarsh
- Monster Manual
- Tomb Of Annihilation
- Waterdeep: Dungeon Of The Mad Mage
- Xanathar’s Guide To Everything
That’s a decent number of the published books, if you play the published campaigns. Even if you don’t, the whole familiar thing is potentially an option as well. It’s probably a good option to buy this set, since you also get an imp in it (as well as a firebat, but there are no firebat stats for 5th edition). You do you though. If you don’t want to deal with the whole headache of the confusing familiar situation, then feel free to avoid this miniature like the plague instead.
But why are you doing this?
As usual for these videos, my aim is to provide good views of all angles of the miniatures featured, along with accurate sizing information for them. As I already pointed out, the pseudodragon miniature is on a tiny size base as it is meant to be. In addition I would like to thank wildlife artist Sherrie York, the incredibly skilled reduction linocut artist, for graciously allowing me to use one of her reduction linocuts, Shivano Sunset, as the backdrop for my miniatures in the video. Check out her other reduction linocuts; she is likely the best linocut artist of our generation.