Quote Originally Posted by Poppatomus View Post
Not sure if this is how this works but:

Here, Belkar notes he failed a spot check, which is a dice roll in D&D 3.5 that determines whether or not a character sees something. It is one of the more common rolls players (or their DMs) make during a gaming session, and often if a player rolls (or hears rolled) dice when entering a room or traveling, but nothing happens after the roll, there is a sense that you "missed" something, even though the character should not realize a check was failed.

Alertness is a feat that provides bonuses to listen and spot checks. In 3.5, so long as your familiar was within reach, you gained the benefits of this feat. although meant to be magical assistants/companions for wizards, players would often forget they were around, and so they would "pop up" whenever their abilities were needed, thus giving players a reason to describe their location/activity.

A listen check is identical to a spot check, except that it represents the ability to notice a sound, rather than to see something. It creates the same "dice rolled, but no new information" issue that spot checks create. As noted above, alertness provides a bonus to listen
I can confirm based personal experience that players of Wizard or Sorcerer PCs in 3.X would take a familiar for a minor mechanical benefit (a bonus to a skill, extra hit points, a bonus to a saving throw), and then never mention it again. (I know that my Sorcerer was just as guilty... until my Viper familiar saved my party from a TPK when all of us were paralyzed by a Kopru. I remembered the Viper just in time to argue that it deserved a saving throw as well, which it made. And it kept making saves against the Kopru's attack and it crit on it's bite attack, killing the Kopru with it's poisonous bite. For those unfamiliar with the Kopru, they resemble tiny crustaceans with psychic attacks.)