Strixhaven Mascot Feat Guide 5e: Complete Breakdown of Mascots

Last Updated on January 22, 2023

What Is the Strixhaven Mascot Feat?

The Strixhaven Mascot feat allows you to summon a school-specific familiar that’s generally more impressive than most normal options for the Find Familiar spell.

In addition to the normal benefits of finding a familiar, you can allow your mascot to attack and switch locations with it if you’re within 60 feet of each other.

This feat is unique in having a requirement of another feat. There are plenty of prerequisites in other feats, but this is a pretty substantial one.

Rather than needing spellcasting or a certain ability score, requiring you to take another feat pigeonholes you a bit into a specific build.

The prerequisite makes a lot of sense though, as this feat brings a lot to the table for both spellcaster and martial combatants alike.

Find Familiar normally lets you create a weak, small, or tiny beast that can do a handful of helpful actions, where this feat opens up the door to a lot more. 

The abilities of this mascot you create are strikingly similar to that of an Echo Knight’s echo.

Swapping places with your summoned ally and using them as a way to make an attack from across the battlefield is an amazing and interesting way to control the battlefield.

With some tactical planning, you can really do a lot with the second two abilities.

The first ability is nothing to shake a stick at either. These mascots aren’t just fun new names for the same sad stat blocks that Find Familiar brings to the table.

Instead, each mascot has a unique set of abilities well suited to the school.

The intention is that these creatures reflect the spells you receive from the Strixhaven Initiate feat, further solidifying who you are as a student of this magical University.

School Mascots

You can find the full statblocks for these creatures in the Strixhaven: Curriculum of Chaos book. You can purchase this through WotC site here, on Amazon, at DNDBeyond.com, or at your local game shop. 

Below, we’ll just be going over the key points of each creature you might gain access to through this feature.

As far as mascots go, lorehold definitely has an exciting one. Before I even discuss its abilities, I want to discuss what it is.

The Spirit Statue Mascot is a spirit that you call forth to inhabit a statue. Of all these creatures, it is the only one that can speak, with that language being one it spoke in life.

These spirits are called to help mages, some even filling the role of a mentor. This makes Lorehold’s mascot more than just a familiar in a stat block. It’s an actual character, one you can bounce ideas off of.

In fact, it’s one that should be considerably smarter than you are, or at least more experienced.

So we get that this serves an incredible purpose outside of combat, but even in combat it’s going to serve you decently well.

It can attack when necessary, and if and when it eventually gets reduced to rubble, you get to dish out some extra damage. 

The prismari mascot incorporates prismari’s favor of the elements as an elemental creature with both cold and fire damage attacks.

It definitely isn’t the strongest creature out there, but its versatility makes it extremely valuable when moving into battles.

Typically, a creature with fire resistance won’t be resistant to cold damage, and vice versa.

Captivating Artistry is a pleasant little ability that you might find useful on occasion. As far as power levels go it does just feel like an extra 2nd- or 3rd-level spell slot in your roster.

The only thing that is a bit unfortunate is that the charming doesn’t extend to you. Were this to protect both you and your mascot, it would be an amazing ability.

As it stands, it’s situational at best and might keep your mascot protected when you need it to be.

Of course, we’ve also got the death trigger effect that blinds creatures in the elementals nearby vicinity. This is so perfect if you can put the elemental where it needs to be.

I wouldn’t be surprised if we see people using this mascot for kamikaze runs. As soon as it starts looking low on health, you just put it near some creatures causing problems, and let an AOE spell gain an extra effect. 

With a combination of ranged and melee attacks, elements, and the ability to spread a couple of conditions, the Art Elemental Mascot goes far beyond the normal capabilities of a familiar.

The fractal is an extremely interesting mascot that has a lot going on.

When you first read that its attack deals a different amount of damage based on its size, you might’ve been a little confused as creature sizes tend to stay the same. 

Well, the fractal can change sizes, and it comes with a whole slew of interesting side effects. Essentially, larger makes it stronger, while smaller makes it more dexterous.

The fact that it gains advantage on either Strength or Dexterity saving throws means it has a lot of tricks for staying alive. 

This is a mascot for someone looking to be very creative and strategic with their familiar. Get it into small places, move it through objects and creatures, and maybe even deal a little bit of damage while you’re at it.

You’re definitely going to have an excellent ally with this one – an ally that becomes more powerful the wiser of a tactician you become.

Inklings are rather underwhelming as combatants, but they make excellent aids, especially for more stealthy Silverquill students.

You’ll be mostly leaning on the normal abilities that a familiar has with the added bonus of the inkling’s slippery tendencies.

The fact that an inkling can get through a hole as small as 1 inch wide without squeezing is amazing. That’s probably the smallest hole something can get through, and an inkling doesn’t even have to treat it as difficult terrain.

This even sets up the possibility of sending an inkling under doors or through keyholes and cracks in walls, and you don’t need to be very creative at all to put your inkling exactly where you need it to be.

The inkling also automatically hides when in the dark, and with a +5 on stealth rolls, you’ll have an aid that’s virtually undetectable.

The pest mascot is little more than, well, a pest. It will certainly be hard to kill for anything that can’t cut through 22 HP in one hit, but aside from that, it has painfully little going for it.

With an 11 Strength score, I can’t see these tiny little monsters grappling much at all, and you’d have to be in a very strange mood to want to pick one of these up. 

Were the spiny-hide feature attached to a more common occurrence, like say, being attacked by a melee weapon, then we might have a good creature on our side.

As it stands, you’re better off with an owl as your familiar – at least they can fly.

Who Should Take Strixhaven Mascot?

Obviously, Strixhaven Mascot should only be taken by people with the Strixhaven Initiate feat, since it is a prerequisite. After that, it really comes down to which school you’re in and how much you might benefit from a familiar.

The best school mascots definitely sit in Lorehold, Prismari, and Quandrix, with the other two just feeling like sad leftovers.

Of those schools, Lorehold is probably the only one that has a mascot that is universally helpful for just about any build you can come up with.

It feels like an entire support character that you just get to ritual summon when the need arises. 

Prismari students who are heavily focused on dealing damage and getting the better of their opponents can pick up this feat and benefit easily. The elemental has the strongest attacks and the option of melee or ranged, fire or cold.

On top of that, it’s got some good conditions to dish out. Prismari builds based on support won’t benefit quite as much, so only go for this if you want to maximize your damage.

The Quandrix school’s fractal mascot is an extremely well-designed creature that feels entirely unique. Just like choosing Quandrix, you’ll only want to use this mascot if you understand that “math is magic.”

The abilities it has aren’t immediately helpful, but add even a small does of strategy, and you’ll take control of the battlefield.

The inkling can be used for rogues or warlocks, shadow sorcerers, or any build that’s really focused on subterfuge. After that, it’s pretty much useless.

Finally, Witherbloom students shouldn’t take the pest unless they have absolutely no other feats that would help their build and can’t improve upon any of their ability scores.

Since that’s virtually impossible, maybe just forget that Witherbloom even has a mascot.

How Good Is Strixhaven Mascot?

The Strixhaven Mascot is an excellent feat, even if it varies for the individual schools that offer it.

Its ability to vastly improve upon the Find Familiar spell and leave us with an actual ally and not just a cute little pet is astounding and very creative.

One huge problem with this feat is that WotC has put it behind the locked door of the Strixhaven Initiate.

It seems the intent here is that only players fully immersed in a Strixhaven campaign will benefit from these feats, but they should really be more accessible.

Having an improved familiar, one you can rely upon to do more than just spectate in actual combat, is something a lot of different builds can benefit from.

It’s something 5e has even tried to make a few subclasses out of, with variable success. Introducing a feat like this and saying you can only take it if you take an entirely separate feat vastly limits the builds you can approach with this.

That being said, the prerequisite can be written off with a simple nod of the head by a DM.

I say, even if everything else Strixhaven has brought to the table isn’t allowed at yours, let this feat in. Let your players bond with a familiar that can actually do some amazing things, and don’t force them to be a ranger to do so.

I hope this has cleared up what exactly a Strixhaven Mascot is and just how incredible they have the potential to be.

As always, happy adventuring.