Way to counter Blindsight with scouting Familiar?


Advice


Is there any way to prepare Familiar (feats, evolutions, spells, magic items), so she can scout without fear to be found (and captured / killed) by creatures with Blindsight?

I know about Dampen Presence, but am unaware of mechanism for Familiar to get it.


If you're really worried about it, my recommendation is not to use your familiar as a scout.

As a GM, I don't mess with familiars that are otherwise sitting on their master's shoulder, but a familiar alone that happens to get noticed will be dead. Same as a rogue scouting alone.

You also need to worry about things like scent.


Depending on what your familiar is and what the thing with blindsense is it might ignore the familiar


Non-detection, stealth and avoid the line of effect.

Sovereign Court

Well consider what blindsight does, and what it doesn't do. It allows you to see in the dark and through fog and illusions.

It shouldn't allow you to see through concealment created by dense plant growth. And it does nothing about cover at all.

Now, you can use Stealth whenever you have some cover or concealment to hide behind. Less things provide concealment against blindsight, but there's still some. So use the bonus for being Tiny or even smaller to good effect!

Other counters: blindsight tends to have a maximum range, typically 40-60ft, so don't try to sneak up too close on creatures.

Also, your familiar can try to act just like a natural animal, one not worthy of attacking. One raven among a hundred feasting on the battlefield. By the time your enemies start getting blindsight, your familiar could have Speak With Animals Of Its Kind, so it could even try to gather a posse of similar animals to blend with.


Natural 1s wrote:

Is there any way to prepare Familiar (feats, evolutions, spells, magic items), so she can scout without fear to be found (and captured / killed) by creatures with Blindsight?

I know about Dampen Presence, but am unaware of mechanism for Familiar to get it.

Get a higher-HD-than-usual homunculus made to be your improved familiar (3+ HD) and have it take Skill Focus (Stealth) and Dampen Presence for two of its feats, using your 5+ ranks in Stealth to qualify for Dampen Presence so it doesn't need 5 HD.

I should note that some people think only a normal homunculus can be taken as a familiar. If your GM is one of them, just have the homunculus made anyway, don't take it as a familiar, and use it for scouting anyway---the telepathic link is great! And this method doesn't require you to be CL 7th, though you do need to give the homunculus at least 5 HD to get the Stealth to qualify for Dampen Presence. The price is 2050 gp for the first two HD plus 4000 gp for each extra HD, so at least 14,050 gp total, or 7,050 if you can craft it yourself.


Etheral Jaunt


It wasn't my familiar I kept an eye on but the party rogue when he was scouting. You have a built in empathic link, keep the familiar within the range necessary. I used, and eventually you could as well have a permanent Telepathic Bond. The familiar is intelligent ... if it thinks it is particularly dangerous it can back off and you send in Arcane Eye, Prying Eyes, other divinations or temporarily boost its stealth and/or defenses with other non-24/7 spells (Blur, Displacement, Greater Invisibility, or against the particular threat whether it is Blindsight, Scent, True Seeing or just plain keen but normal senses i.e. a high Perception.). Basically the familiar isn't ever really alone or unsupported any more than, hopefully, any companion acting as a Scout would be.

Make the familiar the target of one of the charms on a Bracelet of Friends.

Much as noted above about Blind Sight's usual range almost all special sense have a limited range. Distance alone will avoid many of them as well as make their Perception roll vs the familiars Stealth more favorable.


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Ascalaphus wrote:
Also, your familiar can try to act just like a natural animal, one not worthy of attacking. One raven among a hundred feasting on the battlefield. By the time your enemies start getting blindsight, your familiar could have Speak With Animals Of Its Kind, so it could even try to gather a posse of similar animals to blend with.

Here is a classic example: Order of the Stick #154.

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