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Game systems

What Familiar does on the system you play

Familiar is built deepest for D&D 5e, where it referees the rules outright. Everywhere else it does the other half of the job. This page is the honest account of which half that is, before you pay for anything.

Three tiers, and yours is one of them

There is no single yes or no answer to "does it work with my system", so here are the three real ones.

  1. D&D 5e (2024)

    Everything, including the rules engine. Familiar checks each action against the 2024 rules and refuses the ones that break them.

  2. Every other Foundry system

    Everything except refereeing combat. Familiar names your system in its first reply, reads rules out of your own compendium and journals instead of quoting D&D at you, and reads your characters the way your system stores them.

  3. Native sheet reads, per system

    Planned, not shipped. Reading your system's own sheet fields under their own names, starting with Pathfinder 2e. Today those fields come through untranslated instead.

Where the line falls

Refereeing the rules is D&D 5e (2024) only. In combat the tracker, the turns, and the tokens still work; the rulings stay yours.

One setting to change: turn the combat auto-pilot off in Familiar's settings. It drives NPC turns through the 5e engine, so it does not know your system.

What Familiar does, by tier
What you are asking forD&D 5e (2024)Any other system
Story, NPCs, scenes, lighting, weather, audio, voices, images, transcription, campaign memory, your own compendiaYesYes
Reading your charactersThe full sheet: abilities, AC, saves, spell slotsYour system's own sheet, passed through untranslated, with hit points where the sheet keeps a pool Familiar recognises
Refereeing combatEvery action checked against the 2024 rulesNo. The tracker, the turns, and the tokens still work; the rulings stay yours

Verified on real Pathfinder 2e and Dragonbane worlds, on Foundry v14.

Systems with their own page

  • Pathfinder 2eThe system automates its own combat, and does it well. Familiar takes the half it does not: the story, the NPCs, the scenes, and a memory that outlasts the session.

Your system probably has a starter waiting

Familiar carries a Table Rules field per world, and it offers a starter template written for the table culture of the ten most-played Foundry systems. Yours is offered first when Familiar sees your world. Anything outside that ten gets the generic starter with your system's name already filled in.

A starter is a starting point, not a ruleset. It sets the terms your table uses and leaves slots for your setting, your tone, and your house rules.

  • DragonbaneVerified on a real world. No tailored starter, so it gets the generic one with the system name filled in, and characters read through the generic adapter.
  • LANCERStarter written for it: pilots and mechs, Heat, Structure and Stress.
  • Pathfinder 1eStarter written for it: iterative attacks, CMB and CMD, the three saves.
  • Warhammer Fantasy 4eStarter written for it: percentile Tests, Careers, Fate and Fortune.
  • Call of Cthulhu 7eStarter written for it: percentile skills, Sanity, pushed rolls, the Keeper.
  • Cyberpunk REDStarter written for it: Role Abilities, Humanity and cyberware, NET Architectures.
  • DaggerheartStarter written for it: Duality Dice, Hope and Fear, domain cards, Adversaries.
  • Savage WorldsStarter written for it: trait dice and the Wild Die, Bennies, Wild Cards and Extras.
  • ShadowdarkStarter written for it: light timers, gear slots, spellcasting checks, Luck Tokens.

Your system is not on this page

Then it behaves like the second tier above, and that is a real answer rather than a hedge. Dragonbane was the test case for exactly this: a system outside the top ten, no tailored starter, nothing configured. Familiar named it, read its characters, answered out of the journals that world had imported, and said so plainly when the answer was not in them.

A page here has to earn itself. A system gets one when there is something true about it that is not already true of a system listed above, otherwise it would be the same page with a different name at the top. If you play something not listed and want it covered, the Discord is the fastest route to me.

Fourteen days free, and no key needed if you already pay for Claude, ChatGPT, or Gemini. Try it on your own world and see which half it takes off your hands.