Can a mute warlock make normal use of the Voice of the Chain Master class feature?

Question

Consider a Warlock with The Great Old One patron and Pact of the Chain, who is mute because his tongue has been removed. He communicates with most characters through Awakened Mind, granted by the Great Old One.

The invocation Voice of the Chain Master says:

Voice of the Chain Master

Prerequisite: Pact of the Chain feature

You can communicate telepathically with your familiar and perceive through your familiar’s senses as long as you are on the same plane of existence. Additionally, while perceiving through your familiar’s senses, you can also speak through your familiar in your own voice, even if your familiar is normally incapable of speech.

(Emphasis mine.)

Voice of the Chain Master uses the warlock's voice to communicate, but this character is mute and does not have a "voice" in the general sense.

Could this character speak through it's familiar, even if he cannot speak himself?

Answer 1

There likely isn't a RAW answer, but...

Being permanently mute is not a condition that the core rules represent, so any answer here is going to be speculative and highly subject to the DM's rule on the matter.

However, I would encourage a DM ruling on this to allow it, particularly because the character is taking on a significant disadvantage that isn't compensated for anywhere else in the rules. So giving a free "out" isn't exactly letting the character get away with anything.

A more important question for you before you decide to volunteer your character for this disability is how you plan to use spells that have a verbal component. A character who can't speak (due to a gag or silence spell) generally can't use verbal spells, and speaking through your familiar may or may not make up for this limitation, according to your DM.

Answer 2

Per RAW, the situation isn't really covered.

Deferring to reasonable interpretation then...

If your warlock has "lost" his voice, this implies that he did at one time have a voice. Extrapolation suggests that this is the voice he would speak with through his familiar. (See also KorvinStarmast's comment on the question, mentioning how losing your tongue does not actually render the character silent, just limits your "fine control" over speech.)

If your warlock had, instead, been born with the inability to speak, the situation is much less obvious. He is not deaf, so he understands speech, and the ideas behind it. Does he then have a "voice" that he thinks to himself in? Since the communication with the familiar is primarily mental, it could be that his "thinking voice" is what is transferred to the familiar.

Also consider, very few familiars are actually capable of speech on their own, and so there is obviously some magic involved in making them able to speak their masters' words.

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As an aside regarding the issue of spells with Verbal components, perhaps he is only capable of casting them when his familiar is present with him. As he and his familiar are so closely bonded, he has learned to focus the verbal portions of the spell through his familiar. If he sends his familiar off to scout, or loses it in some other way, he would be unable to cast any Verbal spells until it returns, or is recovered.

Obviously, this would require extra bookkeeping and double-checking to make sure that the spell you are trying to cast is not a Verbal spell, while you are under the restriction.

Answer 3

This is more of a character-choice. If your (as approved by DM) background includes a physical impossibility towards speech, you don't have a voice. If you choose to remain silent, you do.

If you have a voice, the familiar has one. If you don't have a voice, the familiar hasn't got one either.

Remove thou tonsils? (Or not.)