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From what I know on the subject of familiars, they're pretty much magical creatures with higher intelligence, that are allowable to wizards and sorcerers.

However, I have seen a trend recently where priests, fighters, and what have you seem to share telepathic links with their pets, can understand them clearly, and the pets themself are capable of higher brain functions well beyond the norm for what they are - putting them somewhere in the range of a wizard's familiar.

Are these things allowable? I understand rangers and druids may have a wild animal compaion, but in general can normal, bought pets (renamed or otherwise) develop empathic and telepathic links, the owner develop a complete understanding of a language they don't already know, and the pets gain reasoning and intelligence on par with a human (/elf/halfling/gnome/whatever)? Can priests, fighers, thieves even gain familiars? Or is this type of roleplay something that should not be happening?

Speaking as a player of a long term wizard (love my little wizard ), I always thought companions/familiars summoned by skill or spell to have that connection with their two-legged counterpart because they took the time to study and train the skill/spell needed for that link. As for run of the mill store bought pets, I like to think my cat sitting next to me while I'm typing this knows what I am saying and what the little markings on the screen are, but I am fairly certain she doesn't. Same would apply of the mud, I would think. A horse I just bought or a pet bird from the local pet shop would not have a special link with me and would just look at me with a 'And what should I be doing now?' stare when spoken too. It is true that long term relationships with normal pets would gradually create certain basic tricks and commands between the pet and the owner, thats training and not some special link, nothing nearly as complex and clear a relationship as a familiar (wizards) or animal companion (rangers/druids) would have. This is only my thoughts on the idea. House rules are always right when I am concerned...

N.R.

Well, speaking from a strictly real life position, the question of animal intelligence (by the way, humans are animals) has long been and continues to be debated. Because animals cannot speak as humans do and because humans are an arrogant species that believe themselves to be "special" (whether as the pinnacle of evolution or made in the image of the creator), it's very difficult for us to determine just how much pets can understand.

Pets, unlike cattle and other livestock, were bred specifically to be companions to humans. We chose those most like us and domesticated them, breeding out the qualities we didn't want and breeding in the ones we did. Is it so surprising that we could learn to understand our pets and vice versa? Particularly after a pet and owner have been together for some time? No, it is not.

Additionally, in the game we have the comprehend languages spell, enabling those using it to understand the language animal as well as drow, elven, gnome, etc.

Unless people are having their pets do something truly outrageous, ie playing "Rhapsody in Blue" by walking along a piano keyboard or picking a lock with its claw or something equally outrageous, there is nothing wrong with a pet and owner establishing a bond - for it is the pet/owner bond that facilitates understanding in both directions. That's why most people can tell their own pet's mood but not the mood of a strange animal.

I beg to differ with Selune in that livestock do not have the personality that dogs and cats do.

You are absolutely right, Mystra. I didn't mean to imply that they are less intelligent or have less of a "personality" than pets. Rather, I focused on traditional pets because of how we, as humans, have actively altered them from their wild forms to live in our "civilized" world. Sorry for any confusion there.

There is a much bigger difference between animals and humans than simply language. While time may create an EMOTIONAL bond for an animal, that animal will never become more intelligent. Most animals do not have a language and they do not understand what a human says to them. They can be trained to react to certain stimuli such as a tone of voice or specific sounds(words).

This means that you are very limited in what you can order a pet to do. Nothing more than things such as sit, stay, rollover. If your family dog can do it then your pet on the mud can do it but no more. Note that companions of druids and rangers are no more intelligent than other animals of their kind and the link they share with their owners is no greater than that of a man and dog.

Familiars however ARE more intelligent than others of their kind and they are bonded with an empathic link to the spell caster. You could say that at higher levels the link grows to include the senses and possible telepathy.

Tyr

I like to think that no matter the PET, depending on the amount of time spent in each other's company, they can each pick up on one another's moods and perks... having better senses than humans might help in this respect, as we have intelligence on our sides... some more or less than others of our kind... it being a degree sort of thing, if you get my drift. As for familiars, yes, I would think they would tend to be more intelligent and seeing as it's a magical FINDING that there would be a degree of mental bonding in the process. I really do think that any animals that spend time with humans and vice versa, will develop SOME kind of empathy. The Horse Whisperer keeps popping up in my head for some reason...
As for ranger and druid companions... I think there IS a bond, but it's an empathy thing... Uhm, I also think that animal handling should be a factor when discussing this, too. If you understand animals, then in a way, you ARE communicating, right? And isn't there animal empathy? I think that would be a more involved kind of bonding than handling animals.. but it's the degree...I hope I'm making sense with this.. if not.. just ask for a clarification, I'd be happy to respond

I think Tyr pretty much got to what I was trying to say I hate it when I can't find the right words.

I do not disagree that people can have bonds with animals or pets, but I was talking about characters treating these pets pretty much as familiars - knowing exactly what they're thinking, how they're feeling ("My foot's sore! Oh, Schnookums must have a thorn in her paw!") and be able to talk telepathically with them (PlayerA looks at Pet. smote nods to $pet "You're right, the blue dress is much nicer") and things to the same level.

I agree that animals can be smart, but they won't ever be intelligent - not to an abnormal level that we might start finding comparative reasoning and cognitive processes akin to our own. That sort of intelligence is abnormal and usually the result of magic, hence the find familiar spell.

On a side note, my understanding of the "animal" language was that it isn't something you can recite poems in, but more a basic language of symbols and relational words - ie: "We hunt. Bad fire cause hurt. Two-legged in Stone Den hunt Packleader" - that sort of thing. Is my thinking right, or is "animal" supposed to be used as a fluent language?

It could boil down to sentience, self awareness, and awareness of the outside world. While animals have a notional understanding of their own existance and the environment, by and large they do not, however, have the analytical processes to understand their environment and their place in it - hence Sally thinking she was a cat.

I don't know how many of you might be old enough to remember this but I once read about a wonder horse that could solve mathematic equations. Basically his owner a farmer would write out something like 2+2=? on a black board then show it to the horse. the horse then would tap out the answer in this case four taps meant four. As it turns out the horse was no mathematician, instead what the creature was doing was reading the emotions of his master. The horse would look up at the farmers face and tap until he received the desired emotion and got a treat for the correct answer to the point that he had memorized the correct moment to stop so that either he was right on the money or only off by one or two.

In essence, the horse looked to his master's emotional actions visible in how the master acted and his expressions plus the chance to gain more food or a treat and went about with it until he received said treat. Both a very clever and resourceful animal.

The trick is understanding an animal's actions before hand and not making them something they are not. When I rp with a pet or a mount I take stock of what it is and treat it as a living thing but still an item that can be manipulated to a point but not beyond a point (i.e. a pair of pants will not argue with you so why should a cat?) animals like other pcs are random and enrich situation though with pets you should only bounce things off of them and they should not be able to bounce things off of you (ie. spontaneous kindness bestowed on a person is good if there is reason but if not than expect indifference from said creature.) Most of the time you are smarter than your pet and if there is a function you need it to do mayhaps you need to rp with a trainer to find out what pet is best to you or consider the skills of real life pets before you have a seeing eye frog, monkey butlers, a miniature giant space hamster and/or many attack gerbils protecting you.

In the end it is up to the creature, person and guild. Like in rl treat your pets well and they will love you, treat them badly and you might want to check in your boots before you put them on in the morning

Just because someone looks over and nods at their pet does not mean they have the faintest idea what the pet is thinking. I look at my cat and say things like that all the time. Hold out two cans of soda and say "Rub the one you think is best." And he does, and I say "I thought so too." Like he knew which can was which soda was which. Or I'll ask him red or blue, and he'll look at me and I say "Yeah, red."

~Danica

Hey mele... Found this somewhere...

Are cats colorblind?
No, cats aren't colorblind, but their color vision isn't as discriminating as ours. Cats probably see the world in shades of blue and yellow, much like people who are red-green colorblind. Color vision lets you detect objects, mostly stationary, against a background.

I think the cat would pick the blue one

Ahh, I beleive what Mele is saying, and I have seen this in Rl before, is that the cat has most likely no idea what she is talking about, but she still judges her response off of the cats reactions. It could lick its paw and she could decide it is telling her to take a bath (and I was thinking the Temples would at least have a bath ) or if it meowed it could be telling her something that she was already thinking herself. Not that the animal has intelligence, but that she beleives it does.

I know someone who talks to her plant and reacts as if it is answering her...

I talk to my Siberian Husky all the time. I ask her opinion on things. If she sniffs something and turns away, I'll take it as a rejection. If she sniffs and licks it, that's approval. It doesn't mean that she understands what I showed her. It means that I love my dog and love interacting with her.

However, I have had many experiences that indicate my pets understood more than we thought. She has learned B-O-N-E and P-A-R-K. That does not mean she knows the letters, it means that she knows those sounds are associated with her getting a bone or going to the park. Similarly, she picks up on our moods and responds appropriately, such as coming to me when I am sad and need company or leaving the room if hubby starts cussing the computer. Again, this does not mean she knows I'm sad because the company didn't win a contract and so I won't get the bonus this year. Or that she knows hubby is having trouble getting the computer to detect the new scanner. She just knows something is wrong.

From an article found here on training dogs to sniff out cancer in patients:

Past cases led the Cambridge researchers to think dogs would be up to the task. As detailed in the British medical journal The Lancet in 1989, a border collie-Doberman mix belonging to a British woman repeatedly sniffed a mole on its owner's thigh and once even tried to bite it off. The constant attention prompted the woman to have the lesion examined and she learned it was a malignant melanoma.

and

In another case, a pet Labrador named Parker repeatedly pushed his nose against his 66-year-old owner's leg, sniffing a lesion through the owner's pants. When the man had the lesion examined, he learned it was a basal cell carcinoma, a form of skin cancer, and had it removed.

Neither dogs showed any interest in their owners' lesions after they were treated.

Not only were the dogs intelligent enough to tell that they were sniffing diseased skin, they were intelligent enough to know that the human needed to figure it out. One even attempted to excise the cancer itself.

Perhaps pets aren't being played too smart, but familiars aren't being played smart enough?

Glim put it great. I doubt Kori knows what I'm talking about, but when I'm indecisive I ask my cat. When I'm upset, I can always count on him to be right in my face, often licking my tears like a big freak, but hey. When I'm bouncing around, Kori is bouncing around. If I leave the house for work or to go out, he wanders, just crying loudly until I come home, then he settles back down next to me. He has his own chair next to my pc. So he can't use a toilet or feed himself, but I know he feels me and what is going on with me, and reacts. (No wonder he picks pink so much, Cret.)

~Danica

Mele wrote: So he can't use a toilet or feed himself, but I know he feels me and what is going on with me, and reacts.
~Danica

As an after thought and a credit to the growing knowledge of cats there are a few felines capable of using toilets once they have been trained.

Those were some marvelous posts, y'all, and I was going to come in and post about the RP with pets and lo, there some were..hehehe.... I just wanted to say that you CAN RP with pets, people do it in RL everyday...

Just because someone looks over and nods at their pet does not mean they have the faintest idea what the pet is thinking. I look at my cat and say things like that all the time. Hold out two cans of soda and say "Rub the one you think is best." And he does, and I say "I thought so too." Like he knew which can was which soda was which. Or I'll ask him red or blue, and he'll look at me and I say "Yeah, red."

Sometimes people and animals will react to each other... then again, sometimes people just like to ACT like they're having interactions with animals JUST to be silly.... and that animal is probably sitting there saying, "Oh, gods, not again...."

I would also like to note though, that pets are NOT intelligent. Familiars are. While a pet could know your emotions, they couldnt tell you directions or speak to you (big no no with pets). I always thought that familiars had a telepathic link with the mage so that they could speak in a sense. It can communicate like that, and can follow basic orders and directions, more than a pet could. Just remember, familiars are intelligent, pets arent. Pets cant talk, nod to you, follow complex directions, ect.

Marginally off topic here, exactly how smart are familiars supposed to be? It's always irked me to see someone talking to their familiar as if they were another "highly" educated individual, rather than some creature with a basic intelligence or small power of reasoning.

I've never been able to picture a toad familiar performing tasks like, what is 2+3? Or, which tunic is better color co-ordinated to the rest of my outfit? As these are things that a toad usually doesn't have a use for. But he might know what I'm talking about when I ask him to look behind under a tree stump and point at it, and he'll likely understand what I mean by "dinner time", because these things aren't as abstract as other human ideas. Although, about here, the lines of my logic start to get fuzzy...

How does everyone else feel about this?

Echet

Glim wrote: While a pet could know your emotions, they couldnt tell you directions or speak to you (big no no with pets). I always thought that familiars had a telepathic link with the mage so that they could speak in a sense. It can communicate like that, and can follow basic orders and directions, more than a pet could. Just remember, familiars are intelligent, pets arent. Pets cant talk, nod to you, follow complex directions, ect.

As for pets not telling you directions, your slightly wrong there Glim, I once had a horse that I used for deer hunting and I'd get in the woods and slightly lost, turned around more like it, but I could tell this horse at the end of the day to go home, and it'd go back to the barn every time. I didn't even have to hold onto the reigns. I've also got a dog who knows when I'm sick before I do, and knows when my mom is sick before I do. She talks to me, and comforts me when I'm down. Pets are highly intelligent animals, just not everyone plays them that way on the game.

Ainea wrote: Pets are highly intelligent animals, just not everyone plays them that way on the game.

Exactly!