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Message: <blockquote data-quote="jefgorbach" data-source="post: 5216049" data-attributes="member: 28278">True. None of the original example Animal Companions, Familiar, or Special Mounts normally have any ability to use/cast magical effects, nor gained any such ability by virtue of becoming an Animal Companion, Familiar, or Special Mount so it wasnt neccessary for RAW to say they couldnt.What it /DOES/ say is the Master/Creature "can communicate empathically" which Merriam Webster defines as "the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another" -- and thus they are able to share knowledge/magical experiences via the link. Further, its states "A master and his familiar can share spells even if the spells normally do not affect creatures of the familiar’s type."Therefore if we are going to allow expand the list of possible creatures to include those WITH such abilities, then we must likewise concide the creature is capable of using those abilities upon its Master, should it desire to. BTW, I house-rule the creature's Intelligence does /NOT/ drop should it already have a higher score than shown on the Familiar's Ablity by Master's level table for any reason. This prevents Improved familiars from losing Intelligence. For example, a 7th level mage summons a pseudodragon using the Improved Familiar Feat. His familiar would normally have Int:9 per the Master:Familiar table, however the MM(pseuddragon) shows its racial norm is Int:10 and thus remains unchanged. On a related unforessen consequence: the Familiar rules were cut/pasted from v1 which only allowed NPC/PCs to take class levels. Version 3.x changed this, allowing any sentitent creature to advance using class levels. The emapthic link shared by a mage/paladin and their respective creature boosts the creature's intelligence rendering it sentient ... and making it perfectly reasonable under RAW to begin following its own career path alongside its master!</blockquote>

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