Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 xirr2000 Feb 04, 2015 9:16:04	So my warlock has a familiar and I'm wondering how smart they are.  The description on the find familiar spell is vague.  Implies they are not just an animal, but does not specify how clever they are.  I'm wantng to use my familiar to spy on things and my DM is asking just how clever it is.  Any feedback on the intellectual limits on familiars?  FYI, my familiar is not an imp or special familiar just a standard one.
#2 Nevvur Feb 04, 2015 9:28:02	xirr2000 wrote:
#3 AaronOfBarbaria Feb 04, 2015 9:35:25	The find familiar spell specifically says "the familiar has the statistics of the chosen form, though it is a celestial, fey, or fiend (your choice) instead of a beast."   That means your familiar has the Intelligence listed in its stat block.   However, you can communicate telepathically within 100 feet and the familiar always obeys your commands, so you can tell it to do things it is capable of doing (can't get a cat to do something that requires thumbs, for example) and it will do those things. This means you have at least enough ability to communicate that the familiar could relay what it saw, though it would likely do so from the perspective of it's own form (such as saying many big creatures in that room, but "big" likely not meaning bigger than you are).   If there is a question as to a more precise level of intelligence, then it is something that your DM is meant to resolve by design since not every possibility can be accounted for by the developers - and if you need the familiar to be better in some way than it is decided to be, think about inventing a higher level spell called something along the lines of familiar enhancer (AD&D had a whole line of such spells- each with a potential improvement of intelligence, and granting of special powers)