6

I am playing in a campaign as a level 4 Artillerist artificer from the May 2019 UA. I am thinking of taking Magic Initiate (wizard) as my feat, and learning the find familiar spell with it. I am curious about one thing in particular.

The plan right now is to have the familiar take the form of a weasel/rat that will ride on my turret's back. Would the familiar be able to take the Help action to, for instance, grant my ballista turret advantage on its attacks?

V2Blast
  • 49,864
  • 10
  • 220
  • 304
Ryan Gress
  • 180
  • 4

1 Answers1

14

A creature can't Help a turret

The Help action states it is used to aid creatures (emphasis mine):

Alternatively, you can aid a friendly creature in attacking a creature within 5 feet of you.

And the artificer turret is not considered a creature, but an object:

The turret is a magical object that occupies its space and that has crablike legs.

Being an object and not a creature, the turret does not interact or benefit from anything only related to creatures. Therefore, the help action can't be used to aid a turret1.

Another issue with your plan, even if the DM in your game chooses to ignore this limitation is that you want the familiar to ride on your turret. However, the familiar needs to be within 5 feet of the intended target to take the Help action.

1. As noted by NautArch, the turret also does not have access to general actions that creatures have, such as benefiting from opportunity attacks (see this Q/A)

Sdjz
  • 36,378
  • 15
  • 169
  • 234
  • I was afraid of this! I knew of the limitation for being within melee range, but I wasn't sure if the turret could be considered a creature. This is mostly for flavor anyway. Thanks! – Ryan Gress Aug 07 '19 at 16:42
  • @RyanGress For what it's worth, your attacks deal more damage than the turret's, so you would generally prefer to help yourself or another PC. – Ryan C. Thompson Aug 07 '19 at 19:08