Familiar Skills and Assistance

[Herremann the Wise]

Hi Everyone,

Just a question about a wizard's raven familiar

From the SRD:
"Skills: For each skill in which either the master or the familiar has ranks, use either the normal skill ranks for an animal of that type or the master’s skill ranks, whichever are better. In either case, the familiar uses its own ability modifiers. Regardless of a familiar’s total skill modifiers, some skills may remain beyond the familiar’s ability to use."

A raven familiar bestows a +3 appraise bonus upon it's owner and can speak a language of the owner's choosing.
However, from this, if the owner has let's say 8 ranks in Appraise, this seems like the raven would also have 8 ranks in appraise - giving it a modifier of +9 if it's intelligence was 12. Could it then assist the wizard (+2 bonus) in appraising items - assuming it will automatically make it's DC 10 assist check?

Could this assistance also apply to other knowledge, spellcraft, decipher script checks that the wizard has ranks in or am I reading this ability all wrong.

Best Regards
Herremann the Wise

 

[PallidPatience]

You are correct, and have stumbled onto one of the things that makes the risk of having a familiar along worthwhile.

 

[Saeviomagy]

You are correct, and have stumbled onto one of the things that makes the risk of having a familiar along worthwhile.

Druid/rogues with rat armies used to be extremely good at finding traps too...

Aid another would give you roughly a +4 to search for each level of druid you took...

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

<nevermind>

 

[Tyrol]

Druid/rogues with rat armies used to be extremely good at finding traps too...

Aid another would give you roughly a +4 to search for each level of druid you took...

LOL, that's rather amusing. I had not heard of it before.

 

[Saeviomagy]

LOL, that's rather amusing. I had not heard of it before.

I did it. It was actually a rogue/cleric of rats (trickery and animal domains) who took 1hd of rats and 1hd of dire rats each level.

Still ended up with some ludicrous quantity of rats hanging about all the time. I'm glad the GM didn't make me keep stats on them all (we basically came to an agreement that if it sounded like it was a relatively normal task, that I'd trained most of my rats to do it, and if it was a specialist task, I only had one rat with it).

Shame you can't do that any more.