D&D 5E Help me understand the order of Scribes manifest mind, please!

[fendermallot]

First off, I've posted similar questions on several sites and have gotten so many different answers. I chalk that up to the descriptions being poor.

What I know:
1) it's an object. It can't take actions
2) it has darkvision and it's own senses (sight and hearing)
3) it telepathically communicates what it sees and hears to the wizard.
4) the wizard doesn't have to concentrate on it, like UA archivist, and they don't go deaf and blind to see through it like find familiar

My player wants to use it to look around in stay far back out of harms way. He wants to make perception and investigation checks through it. If the book has it's own senses and is just trusting info to him, can he do that?

The way I am interpreting it, because wizards left it super ambiguous, is that he's basically getting security camera footage. I know some people talk to theirs in roleplay and I thought to add in funny bits when I had the mind report back what he was seeing without understanding.

Has anyone had any experience? Find familiar gets to do it, but I feel at least there's some sort of give and take by being blind and deaf.

Thanks everyone

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Hey Siri! It's a PDA.

 

[fendermallot]

Hey Siri! It's a PDA.

Lol. Ok!

 

[Paul Farquhar]

To answer your questions more specifically, I did have concerns when the original UA came out that this would encourage unfun gameplay, like this:

My player wants to use it to look around in stay far back out of harms way.

It has been nerfed significantly since the UA, and the wording tweaked to indicate that the controller does not see through the drone's eyes. If you look up telepathy in the monster manual, this indicates it that it only sends words, not pictures. It works like speech, but without the unsightly lip-flapping. So the controller cannot make perception checks "through" the drone. Since it is an object, it has no perception ability of its own, ergo, if something is hidden it automatically fails to spot it.