Familiar Companion and Trainable Tricks

[Drakhanis]

So, I might be missing something completely here, but here's the situation:


I have a Fleshraker Familiar Companion, and I wanted to train it (teach it different tricks). My question is this: since my familiar companion is considered a magical beast, and it has an intelligence of 10, can I *not* train it? I mean, with the other abilities it gets (empathic link, speak with master, etc.) is it assumed I can just talk to it and tell it what I want it to do without needing to specifically train it to do something?

I'm only interested for the sake of thoroughness, as I don't know how many tricks I *could* teach it if it is even capable of learning tricks.

If someone could help me out, or point me in the direction of an FAQ on the subject, I'd greatly appreciate it.

[Coidzor]

What tricks do you want to teach it? Most tricks are things that would come naturally to an average person if they were physically capable of doing them and so shouldn't be an issue at all.

If you want to look at the rules of the game articles on the WOTC site, I believe whatshisface talked about that a bit in the mounted combat (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/rg/20050222a) section, and that's the closest to being officially addressed in the rules that 3.X got to talking about intelligent creatures being mounts.

Edit: Silly me. It looks like the DMG talks about intelligent mounts somewhere as well. Must've glossed over that section. x.x

[Drakhanis]

Basically, I want to be able to ride it into combat (my char is a halfling druid). I don't plan on being on it all the time, since the poisonous charger/pouncer/grappler is pretty much screaming "target me before I eat your face!" and my druid is rather squishy if I'm not wild-shaped.

But mounted combat / combat riding, attacking unusual creatures, and maybe a couple minor things like perform. But again, how much of this is pointless since the fleshraker now has an Int of 10?

As for the DMG entry, it says that magical beasts can be trained, but doesn't say how many tricks they can learn. it just says that the time it takes to train them is the same as in the PHB under "Handle Animal"

[Coidzor]

Basically, I want to be able to ride it into combat (my char is a halfling druid). I don't plan on being on it all the time, since the poisonous charger/pouncer/grappler is pretty much screaming "target me before I eat your face!" and my druid is rather squishy if I'm not wild-shaped.

But mounted combat / combat riding, attacking unusual creatures, and maybe a couple minor things like perform. But again, how much of this is pointless since the fleshraker now has an Int of 10?

As for the DMG entry, it says that magical beasts can be trained, but doesn't say how many tricks they can learn. it just says that the time it takes to train them is the same as in the PHB under "Handle Animal"

Perform what?

Yeah, it shouldn't have to have a trick learned to attack unusual creatures any more than your druid has to have a trick or feat allowing it to punch beholders in the anti-magic eye.

Magical Beasts that are sapient don't count for that, as I recall.