Speaking through a familiar

[Aaedimus]

A shephard druid has a rat familiar. These druids can speak to and understand animals.
When you take direct control of your rat familiar, can you talk to other rats through the familiar?

This is probably opinion more than anything, but I'm just curious what you all think about it.

My opinion, only if it's realistic. A spider couldn't talk to a rat but a bunny or even a dog probably could

[JackPhoenix]

No. You can't "take direct control" of a familiar. You can use it senses, and you can communicate with it telepathically, but it still acts on its own. And while you can communicate with the familiar to order it to interact with the rats, and rats are social animals, they don't "talk" amongst themselves as human(oid)s do. If you want to use magic to talk to them, you'll have to do it personally.

[RSP]

I’d say a PC could have their familiar socialize with other animals of the same kind, to the extent that type of animal regularly socializes.

For a rat, I’d imagine they can get a general feel and learn if other rats are scared, or hungry or similar, very simple ideas.

I wouldn’t allow any greater communication than what two kinds of that animal could generally do in real life.

[BurgerBeast]

This strikes me as setting dependent.

I can understand a modern, scientific understanding of animals leading to the notion that most animals communicate on limited ways, and imposing these limits on the Druid in this case.

But I can also get behind a fantasy world in which all rats do communicate with each other in an anthropomorphic way, and have a secret but complex society which is entirely unknown to (most) humans. The extent of inter-species communication could plausibly vary between campaign settings, as well. For example, rats may only speak rat in one setting, but all forest animals may speak the same in another, or all mammals in another, etc.

[Azgeroth]

only pact of the chain warlocks can speak through their familiars. and if your a forest gnome PotC warlock, you totally can talk to rats through your familiar..

otherwise, your going to need speak with beasts, cast it on your familiar, it can now talk to rats and other beasts, but its going to be a bit of a pain, as only your familiar can talk to them. as for if you can understand them when perceiving through their sense, DM fiat.

[VonKaiserstein]

It's a bit of a workaround, but if your druid can cast minor illusion, then they could originate the conversation from the familiar, as long as it was within 30 feet of them. They could hear through the druid, while using illusion to produce their speech.

Druidcraft can do the same thing with the sound of a small woodland animal- woodland animal speech would by definition be the sound of a small woodland animal, however it doesn't grant fluency in it. If they can understand it, they should be able to do the same thing with the speech of small animals. Far more limited, but every druid at least has access to the cantrip.