Shovel (familiar)

Shovel is a unique quasit and summonable familiar that can be summoned via the Find Familiar: Cheeky Quasit spell. Unlike regular quasits, Shovel has unique dialogue, and can be interacted with after summoning her.

Shovel
Role	Familiar
Voiced by	Ellie Heydon
Information
Race	Quasit
Stats
Size	Small
Type	Fiend
Armour Class	13
Hit points	7
Initiative	+3
Ability scores
STR DEX CON INT WIS CHA 5 (-3) 17 (+3) 10 (0) 7 (-2) 10 (0) 10 (0)
Proficiency bonus	+2
Saving throws	Str -3 Dex +3 Con 0 Int -2 Wis 0 Cha 0
Features
Darkvision	Can see in the dark up to 12m.
Opportunity Attack	Automatically attack an enemy moving out of your reach.

Her name can be changed to Fork or Basket through dialogue.

“	Shovel is bored! Shovel wants to murderise!	„
	— Shovel

Overview

Shovel is a carefree and upbeat fiend that finds joy in murder, arson and eating babies. She is impatient, and very easily gets bored. In spite of her irreverent demeanour, Shovel can be deeply loyal, even when denied the many pleasures of violence. Shovel is afraid of storm sorcery and wild magic sorcerers, stating she says she doesn't like their "thunder magic and pain". Shovel also loves dragons, and as a draconic bloodline sorcerer, convincing her you are a dragon will make her very excited. Should you not convince her you are a dragon, she will react disappointed and call you a "fake dragon", but she will not be afraid.

Summoning Shovel

There are two ways of summoning Shovel:

• The Scroll of Summon Quasit found in the Apothecary's Cellar.
  • This scroll can also be scribed by wizards, adding  Find Familiar: Cheeky Quasit to the wizard tab in their spellbook.
• As a permanent spell by speaking to Shovel with a Warlock, Wizard or Sorcerer after summoning her with the scroll (or by a wizard who scribed it). This spell is not lost on respeccing. See #Permanently acquiring Shovel.

Permanently acquiring Shovel

To permanently gain Shovel as a summonable familiar, take any character that has no levels in Storm Sorcerer or Wild Magic Sorcerer, and summon her either with the Scroll of Summon Quasit found in the Apothecary's Cellar or by a wizard scribing the scroll and casting  Find Familiar: Cheeky Quasit. The character who summoned shovel will then automatically initiate dialogue with her. Here you have to do the right dialogue options - choosing the first one every time will work unless you are a Draconic Bloodline Sorcerer. After finishing that dialogue go to the character who you want to be able to resummon Shovel with, and start a new dialogue. If that character is a Warlock, Wizard, or Sorcerer, Shovel will call them a "spell shite" and the spell will be added permanently to that characters common tab. Respeccing does not remove the spell.

By scribing the scroll on a Wizard, and talking to shovel with another eligible character you can learn the spell on two characters.

Patch 6: As a storm sorcerer I, surprisingly, no longer got the storm sorcerer unique dialogue. When I summoned her from the scroll my sorcerer automatically learned to summon her, no matter what dialogue options I took. If another character summoned her from the scroll my sorcerer could learn the spell by talking to her ("spell shite") on the condition that the character who summoned her hadn't changed her name. All this was done in A3, in case that matters, it may explain the lack of Illyn dialogue options.

The alternate character method also works for Wild Magic sorcerer, by following the first dialogue choice, then speaking with the sorcerer after the mirror.

This needs more testing. New method of learning? Other classes? No more unique storm sorcerer dialogue? ^{[Needs Verification]}

History

Shovel was owned by the necromancer Ilyn Toth, who was a cruel and neglectful master. He would often verbally and physically abuse her, and often forgot to feed her. In spite of this, Shovel enjoyed working with her former master.

Attacks and abilities

Similar to other Find Familiar summons, Shovel excels at providing chip damage and harassment in battle. Defensively, her fragile body is at best a distraction against most enemies. Her Invisibility skill is particularly useful for scouting out enemy positions and initiating fights via Surprise attacks.

•  Claws
  • Attack roll +5
•  Invisibility
  • Duration: Until Long rest
•  Scare
  • DC 10  Wisdom saving throw

Unlike ordinarily summoned quasits, Shovel has her own unique lines when using her actions.

Just like all Familiars, Shovel can drink elixirs, but increasing her Strength doesn't help her since her attacks always use Dexterity.

Footnotes

External links

• Ilyn Toth on the Forgotten Realms Wiki