It's been a thunder spell from the druid both times.
I gave her owl stats but flavored her as a very small dragon who has a fondness for polyhedral gems. Yep, she's a dice dragon.
I guess that makes my familiar my self-insert character.
Because 5e has no mechanical incentive to keep familiars alive I made it a running joke to repeatedly kill my familiar with my AOE spells. It dies every combat session and normally to my own fireballs or lightning bolts. My familiar hates my wizard but is contractually obligated (magically bound) to obey my orders. When it glares at me I'll yell "you don't have a union!" made the GM laugh and the Ranger gasp the first time lol
But I think the GM is making a familiar union will my owl familiar as the founder.
Well the mechanical inscentive is the time and money it takes to revive them. It’s pretty negligible eventually, but it’s a pretty big deal at low levels.
Yeah an hour and a few gold isn't really a penalty at all in 5e with how easy it is to get money. Even at low levels imo. I've been doing this gag since level two (we're now level fourteen) and the cost was a joke then too.
In this campaign and another one where a different pc had a familiar, the DMs incentivized not killing them off by limiting the places you could find material components. I'm stocking up next time.
When I DM, I always keep the idea in my back pocket that an enemy that has been distracted by a familiar too often will ready an attack to get rid of it the next time it is in range.
It'll still eat their action, might miss, and I telegraph it sufficiently that an attentive player might adapt their familiar's behavior, but it's a thing that can mix up combat and keeps players on their toes.
This is the other reason I chose owl, fly-by is very convenient for not getting offed. (or would be if she ever lived long enough to try it.)
Fly-By helps against opportunity attacks, but not against readied attacks.
Which, to me, is fair, because readying attacks requires the foe to sacrifice their main action and reaction.
If I've got intelligent enemies with ranged attacks they're absolutely going for that thing once it makes its utility known. Though it's not like they generally do much with their reactions anyway.
A smart player will try to keep the owl out of LoS during most of the round, so sacrificing action + reaction for "I attack it once it comes out of cover" is the best most NPCs can do.
My pack of the chain pseudodragon has been getting fucked by aoe recently, makes me sad
