Speak with Animals spell and Familiars

[Gray Warden]

Pretty simple: can you use the Speak with Animals spell to speak with your familiar (not a raven/parrot and below 5th level)?
This is for PFS.
Thank you all :)

[SlimGauge]

Here's the spell

Speak with Animals

I note that the target is YOU, not the animal you wish to speak with. I also note that the text does not directly reference creature type. This leads me to believe it is using the word "animal" in the generic english sense, rather than meaning "a creature with the type 'animal'".

Here's some rules about familiars

PRD wrote:

Familiars

A familiar is an animal chosen by a spellcaster to aid him in his study of magic. It retains the appearance, Hit Dice, base attack bonus, base save bonuses, skills, and feats of the normal animal it once was, but is now a magical beast for the purpose of effects that depend on its type. Only a normal, unmodified animal may become a familiar. An animal companion cannot also function as a familiar.

While your familiar is treated as a magical beast in many respects, it is also still an animal. Let's look at what the rules for "creature type" say.

PRD wrote:

Creature Types

Each creature has one type, which broadly defines its abilities. Some creatures also have one or more subtypes. A creature cannot violate the rules of its subtype without a special ability or quality to explain the difference—templates can often change a creature's type drastically.

There is both an "animal" type and a "magical beast" type.

PRD wrote:

Magical Beast

Magical beasts are similar to animals but can have Intelligence scores higher than 2 (in which case the magical beast knows at least one language, but can't necessarily speak).

Now, I'm not a Venture Captain, so I can't explicitly speak for PFS, but it looks to me like it should work just fine.

[Wheldrake]

Even if a familiar is considered to be a "magical beast", and not exactly a fox, owl, ferret or toad of the "animal type", I'm willing to bet that they still speak the same language.

So the spell Speak with Animals ought to work just fine with your familiar. Anybody who objects on the grounds that your familiar is no longer of the "animal type" should ask himself just what language he thinks the familiar does speak.

This of course side-steps the question of whether animals actually communicate using a language as such. I think we attribute sufficient human characteristics to animals in our fantasy games that anthropomorphizing them to this degree won't be a problem either.

[Gray Warden]

Correlated question: if I want to use a wand of Speak with Animals with a Bard, without UMD, can I use the 1st-level Druid-version or should I buy 3rd-level Bard-version wand?
Again, this is assuming PFS rules.

[Ascalaphus]

PFS wands/potions/scrolls are considered to be made by wizards, clerics, druids or psychics if the spell is on any of those lists (and the lowest if multiple classes have it), and otherwise by the class on whose list it's lowest.

So you actually cannot buy bardic Speak with Animals wands.

However, that's not a problem, because PFS also waives the arcane/divine/psychic requirement for wands and scrolls, meaning a PFS bard can use a druid wand as long as the spell is also on the Bard list.