Communicating with Fiendish Animals

[NecessaryWeevil]

Fiendish Animals have an Int of 3, which means they're like incredibly stupid humans. Can they be directed or communicated with, if you summon them? Would you need a handle animal check or a tongues spell or something?

[Psyren]

They still don't have a language, so speaking with them won't work and you can't use Handle Animal anymore either (they are magical beasts.) For the most part you're stuck with "it attacks your opponents to the best of its ability", at least early on, which pretty much means only obvious threats. Tongues generally won't work either.

A familiar of the same kind using "speak with others of its kind" can relay your instructions;. later on you can use mental communication that bypasses language like telepathic bond.

[NecessaryWeevil]

Hmm. So when people suggest, for example, using a celestial monkey as a literal trapmonkey ("It has hands! It can open doors and chests!"), they're wrong?

[Karl Aegis]

A celestial monkey with class levels can potentially invest in Disable Device. Most celestial monkeys don't have enough skill points to invest in Disable Device.

[Psyren]

Hmm. So when people suggest, for example, using a celestial monkey as a literal trapmonkey ("It has hands! It can open doors and chests!"), they're wrong?

I think those folks may have been referring to the Druid's SNA monkey, which can be commanded with Handle Animal.

As for celestial monkeys - again, at mid/high levels you can slap a telepathic bond on it as a standard action and it will be able to do those things. At those levels, you have more 1st-level slots than you know what to do with, so using them to create literal trapmonkeys is as good a use as any. But yeah, I'm not sure how that will work for low levels.


A celestial monkey with class levels can potentially invest in Disable Device. Most celestial monkeys don't have enough skill points to invest in Disable Device.

I believe the idea wasn't to have them use Disable Device at all, the idea was to have them simply open the chest and trigger whatever trap may have been in it. (With the caster and his party standing well outside the potential blast radius.)

[Thurbane]

They still don't have a language, so speaking with them won't work and you can't use Handle Animal anymore either (they are magical beasts.)

I can't find the rule to cite, but I'm pretty sure it says somewhere that any creature with int 3+ has some form of language, and from memory, Fiendish creatures get Infernal or Abyssal, and Celestial creature speak Celestial.

[atemu1234]

I can't find the rule to cite, but I'm pretty sure it says somewhere that any creature with int 3+ has some form of language, and from memory, Fiendish creatures get Infernal or Abyssal, and Celestial creature speak Celestial.

If not it would make sense.

[NecessaryWeevil]

I can't find the rule to cite, but I'm pretty sure it says somewhere that any creature with int 3+ has some form of language, and from memory, Fiendish creatures get Infernal or Abyssal, and Celestial creature speak Celestial.

Haha! Yes! It took some finding but:


Intelligence

A creature can speak all the languages mentioned in its description, plus one additional language per point of Intelligence bonus. Any creature with an Intelligence score of 3 or higher understands at least one language (Common, unless noted otherwise).

It's under "Reading the Monster Entries." Now to find where this is in an actual rulebook...

[Psyren]

Ah, I forgot that line - that would indeed solve it if they can understand Common (even if they can't speak it.)

As for the rulebook location, it appears to be MM pg. 7.

[Deophaun]

One of my favorite tricks as a conjurer to get some blasting is to write a bunch of explosive runes and get some celestial monkeys to run up to enemies and read them. Unlike dispel or erase tricks, it has the benefit of needing no DM adjudication to figure out if they all go off or if the first one destroys the others.