Nosoi Psychopomp questions

[John Davis 2]

I have a couple of questions about Nosoi Psychopomps taken as Improved Familiars:

1) Their languages are listed as Abyssal, Celestial, Infernal. Can they learn any others, and if so, how?

2) They have an innate Speak With Dead ability (3/day at 12th level), which sounds really interesting. However, since this is language-dependent, isn't it almost useless? They can't even employ an interpreter or use their ability to let someone else speak with dead, so they can only speak with dead creatures which speak Abyssal, Celestial or Infernal, which must be a very small group indeed...

Thanks in advance,
John

[Kalindlara]

1) I would assume that, as their Intelligence increases, so would their languages. Which ones they can take isn't defined, so I'd leave that up to the GM. In Society, they might not be able to learn any in this way.

2) Probably an oversight. Many groups allow anyone to ask the questions allowed by the spell, but that's not RAW.

[thekwp]

Putting skill ranks into Linguistics would allow learning additional languages, of course. I have always treated it that familiars got the full benefit of a skill their master had (with the caveat that having a skill doesn't mean you can make full use of it, e.g. Craft (Alchemy) does not mean your snake familiar can make antitoxin in your down time). So, if you had ranks in Linguistics and chose a specific language, your familiar got that language as well (and not another).

However, you are right that, RAW, their Speak With Dead ability is moderately useless in most situations.

For my campaign, I would just have the psychopomp's affinity and relationship for the dead trump the normal limitations; that is a flavor and style judgement call only. It is clearly not RAW, and will not get you very far in a Society game.

[Ridiculon]

thekwp wrote:

Putting skill ranks into Linguistics would allow learning additional languages, of course. I have always treated it that familiars got the full benefit of a skill their master had (with the caveat that having a skill doesn't mean you can make full use of it, e.g. Craft (Alchemy) does not mean your snake familiar can make antitoxin in your down time). So, if you had ranks in Linguistics and chose a specific language, your familiar got that language as well (and not another).

However, you are right that, RAW, their Speak With Dead ability is moderately useless in most situations.

For my campaign, I would just have the psychopomp's affinity and relationship for the dead trump the normal limitations; that is a flavor and style judgement call only. It is clearly not RAW, and will not get you very far in a Society game.

im pretty sure thats how familiar's work by RAW, they get their master's skill ranks unless their's is higher

[Phformian]

For what it's worth, in the Pathfinder Tales novel Death's Heretic, there is part where a priest casts Speak With Dead and another character is the one who asks the questions. As Kalindlara said, this isn't RAW, but does seem to back up the idea that having someone other than the caster ask the questions is a reasonable interpretation of the ability.

[John Davis 2]

Thanks for the help, guys. It sounds like Linguistics is the easiest way to solve the problem.