Those spells affect animals, magical beasts, and monstrous humanoids as if they were humanoids who understand your language (not as if they speak it). So I would probably rule that they understand what you speak through message, but you won't understand their replies unless 1. they can speak a language you understand or 2. it's a reptile and you're using serpentfriend. But in both those cases, you would almost certainly be able to speak with them perfectly normally anyway.
I'll need to keep this in mind for my own serpentine sorcerer, if he ever decides to change any his cantrips or learns a new one.
Message is language dependent but says it doesn’t confer understanding of the casters language.
"doesn't confer" just means that the recipient of the Message does not magically learn the necessary language to understand it, i.e. the recipient needs to know the language to understand the Message.
However, the Serpentine bloodline arcana does exactly this: It magically gives beasties the ability to understand your language on language-dependent spells.
This means a few things:
1) Animals, Magical Beasts, and Monstrous Humanoids automatically understand your Message (and similar spells).
2) Everyone else (Humanoids, Outsiders, ...) does not automatically understand your Message, unless they understand the language anyway.
3) Everyone can whisper a reply, IF they are able to speak at all.
4) You do not automatically understand the reply, unless you are either A) able to understand the "language" of the whispered reply, or B) an Animal, Magical Beast, or Monstrous Humanoid yourself.
Fun find.
My Serpentine Sorcerer already has Message, too.
The Serpentine Arcana states that your mind effecting, or language dependent spells effect animals, magical beast and monstrous humanoids as if they were a humanoid who understand your language. The or is actually important because message is not a mind affecting spell, but it is a language dependent spell. But one thing to keep in mind is that your arcana does not change the way the spell works on you in any way shape or form. Since the spell specifically state that it transmits sound not meaning you cannot understand when a creature replies.
Another thing to consider is that even though the spell can convey your meaning it does not change their mental capacity in any way. So unless the creature you are communicating has enough INT you are not going to be able to do much. It also does not give you any special control, so unless you already have some way to control the creature it will not do anything. You are still going to need to have the skill handle animal to get an animal to do anything.
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So that's how parseltongue works. Huh.