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<blockquote data-quote="briggart" data-source="post: 7135212" data-attributes="member: 6805135">I personally would not play it this way. IMO the statement &quot;it always obeys your commands&quot; means that for practical purpose the familiar is a bot lacking free will. If the player is not on board with the familiar having a personality of its own, the only thing that a DM would get from exploiting the gray areas in the interactions between the familiar and the warlock, is that the next time the player will give a more elaborated and detailed command to make sure the familiar actually obeys the given command in both letter and intent. At which point the DM can either look deeper for additional leeway and start an arms race, or drop the issue altogether, in which case I feel it's better not to start it in the first place. Another reason while this to me feels like a &quot;gotcha&quot; moment, is that players don't have any actual experience of the familiar, while the warlock lives with it 24/7 and likely has a good understanding of its peculiarities, idiosyncrasies, pet peeves, etc. and should be able to adjust its interactions with the familiar accordingly.If the player is on board, there is a lot of potential for RP in the interaction between a familiar and its master, but the couple of times one of my players had a special familiar, I was happy to let them treat it as an extension of their character.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="briggart, post: 7135212, member: 6805135"] I personally would not play it this way. IMO the statement "it always obeys your commands" means that for practical purpose the familiar is a bot lacking free will. If the player is not on board with the familiar having a personality of its own, the only thing that a DM would get from exploiting the gray areas in the interactions between the familiar and the warlock, is that the next time the player will give a more elaborated and detailed command to make sure the familiar actually obeys the given command in both letter and intent. At which point the DM can either look deeper for additional leeway and start an arms race, or drop the issue altogether, in which case I feel it's better not to start it in the first place. Another reason while this to me feels like a "gotcha" moment, is that players don't have any actual experience of the familiar, while the warlock lives with it 24/7 and likely has a good understanding of its peculiarities, idiosyncrasies, pet peeves, etc. and should be able to adjust its interactions with the familiar accordingly. If the player is on board, there is a lot of potential for RP in the interaction between a familiar and its master, but the couple of times one of my players had a special familiar, I was happy to let them treat it as an extension of their character. [/QUOTE]

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