| sidewaysmonkey |
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This is an issue that has come up in some of our games, so after looking into it I wanted to share my thoughts on the subject.
The primary argument against familiars gaining the bonus languages from the master’s linguistics ranks seems to be that the ranks gained from the master do not count as “real” ranks for the familiar because they are only “borrowed” from the master rather than gained by the familiar through the course of leveling up. Although the CRB never makes a functional distinction between ranks gained through “level up” versus the ranks borrowed by the familiar, and it likewise does not allow for partial skills (the 28int wizard with 1 rank in linguistics gains 1 language from the skill, as does the 6int barbarian with 1 rank), some people are reading the linguistics entry where it states “whenever you put a rank into this skill, you learn to speak and read a new language” and creating a functional distinction where there is only one of origin. I would suggest that a close inspection of the rules does not support any functional difference in skill points, regardless of their origin.
Firstly, in the skills entry under the familiar heading we find the rules detailing the skill rank “borrowing”, but what I focus on here is the following list of familiar class skills. Since familiars do not level up and therefore never gain skill points to put into those class skills there is absolutely no reason to list class skills here. In this case I can only make the assumption that the author’s intent was to allow the familiar to benefit from a +3 bonus to said class skills, provided that:
A. The familiar has not already gained the bonus from its prior life as an animal
B. It gains a rank in the skill from its master by “using ranks of master”
Now, if you look at the skills chapter in CRB (p86, left column, 1st paragraph under acquiring skills heading) you will see that the +3 bonus can ONLY be gained by “putting ranks into” a skill, the same language that we find regarding the language gain from linguistics. Specifically, “You gain a +3 bonus on all class skills that you put ranks into.” Because the written language is the same we can’t apply it in one instance but not the other. If the familiar is, in fact, granted any +3 class skill bonus to any class skill based on a skill rank “borrowed” from its master, then that skill is considered by CRB to have had ranks “put into it” and it must also be granted any languages that the master has learned from the linguistics skill. The alternative would be a familiar that did not gain additional languages and could literally never gain a class skill bonus by any means other than one that it may have begun life with as a natural animal.
Based on this, I can only judge that the skill points gained by a familiar from its master do not and are not intended to function any differently than a skill point that it acquired on its own.
Next, for a more concrete example, I refer you to the “Borrow Skill” spell in APG. This is a very specific example of a borrowed skill and it does grant the +3 bonus if the borrowed skill is a class skill for the borrower. By allowing the borrowed skill ranks to grant the +3 class bonus, the skill is clearly considered by CRB to have had ranks “put into it”, in this case for the duration of the spell. By extension, if the skill in question here is linguistics, the borrowed ranks have been “put into” the linguistics skill by the borrower and therefore according to the language of the linguistics skill, the borrower gains all of the languages known (due to linguistics ranks) by the one from whom the skill was borrowed.
As a third and final point, keep in mind that other things would be affected as well. In this case the most obvious example is the headband of vast intelligence that is keyed to the linguistics skill. As the player is only “borrowing” those skill ranks from the headband, there will be no associated languages gained.
We have two clear examples of borrowed skill ranks functioning identically to a level gained skill rank, the first based on a widely made assumption that familiars can gain class skill bonuses, the second taken directly from the text of APG. With that much given to us, and the absence of any rules that detail how an individual skill rank may function differently from another depending on where it came from, it seems clear that the distinction between “putting skill points into” versus “using ranks of master” and in a broader sense, the differentiation of how individual skill points may vary in function based on their origin is not a distinction that the writers had originally intended.
As a final note, I would rule that the familiar could never speak the languages, but with appropriate sensory input (eyes or ears) could read and understand, hear and understand, or both. Yes, the raven too.