Need Help With A Player's Character

Hello, I need some help with a problem Im having involving a Player's character.

Recently me and my school's DnD Club have been preparing for a new campaign that is fairy tale/fable themed, and as part of that, we made it so that all the PCs had to be from a fairy tale, fable, nursery rhyme, what have you.  So one of players, who I'm not gonna name, decided to make a ranger based on the Japanese fable Momotaro. This is where the problem is. You see, as part of that story, Momotaro has three animal companions, being a dog, a monkey, and a bird. That part is fine, he's a ranger, but this player heard somewhere that apparently in one version of the story, the monkey has psychic powers and is now begging me to let him have a telepathic monkey. I've been trying to explain to him that I can't give him a psychic monkey cuz of stuff like stat blocks, but it's been flying over his head and he keeps asking me. I understand this player has Autism so its hard for him to get some cues(Im also on the spectrum), but I need to get this out of the way so I can help the other club members with their characters. 

Does anybody have any tips/advice on what I should do here?

I think it would be fine to just give him a monkey stat block with 30 feet of telepathy. It shouldn't seriously unbalance the game and it could easily lead to many great moments with the group, which is what many people play for.

If you still don't think that the player should have that, it's okay to tell him that and draw a line. It's your game, and you are the one running it. If you say that it won't work, then he needs to understand that, and you can have a straight talk with him, not just dropping clues.

Just out of interest, what level are you playing at?  

I don't see too many issues with this - mechanically the ranger will have his primal beast at level 3 and can summon another animal at level 5.  As far as the 3rd animal goes, you're not going to overpower him by allowing him to replace a spell with Find Familiar and flavor that as a monkey - they get a form of telepathy with the player anyway. Or homebrew him a figurine of wondrous power that is a monkey with telepathy - it really won't break your game.  The only real issue is whether you let it attack in combat - but as he'll be using his concentration on Summon Beast, I don't see it being too much trouble as long as its attacks are not op.

I'm not any kind of expert, but from a quick look on Wikipedia, Momotaro picked up the animal companions on his journey so that could play really nicely into a campaign and will motivate him to collect all his pets. 

Could actually be really fun.

I mean there's no harm in having the monkey be telepathic, but only able to communicate with the PC in question. 

Realistically, and the horse has kinda already bolted on this one: the premise of the campaign needs an experienced hand to make it work. If they are occupying the part of the spectrum where the player in question tend to take things very literally, then this is sadly a result of trying to fit the star shaped characters into the square shaped campaign. So the follow-up I have for you here is if you've discussed that the characters need to be 'inspired by' the fairy tales or what have you, or have you said that the characters must be the ones from the tales in question. There's a world of difference between those two aspects.

D&D is great for characters 'inspired' by other media, but absolutely awful for porting whole characters into without massive levels of extra work and homebrew. For that reason my approach would be to say that I mis-spoke and intended the characters to be 'inspired by'  but that of course they had to fit within the rules and mechanics of the game we're playing. To do otherwise would create unreasonable levels of work for the DM and risk the entire adventure.

If as I suspect we are talking about a literal part of the spectrum, I suspect the clarification would be more helpful. It's possible that the loop being considered by said player is as follows:

- DM told me I needed to have a character from fables
- I chose such a character
- These things are part of who this character is
- The DM won't let me have them
- Why did the DM allow characters who can't be played if they're against the rules?

To break this kind of cycle of thought in a literal thinker, it is important to own our mistakes in communication. I say this occupying part of the spectrum too. By 'correcting' earlier parameters it is potentially possible that the player will be able to better understand what you intended.

That's all a guess of course.

Do it as an buffed mage hand

Quote from naylortristan79 >>

Do it as an buffed mage hand

 That’s telekinesis.

My advice? Like Wolfe said, monkey stat block plus 30 feet of telepathy works perfectly fine. If you want full Psionics, give him the ability to cast Mage Hand 3 times a day or something like that.

Looking up the character in Wiki https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Momotarō#:~:text=Momotarō (%E6%A1%83%E5%A4%AA%E9%83%8E%3B%20Japanese%20pronunciation%3A%20%5Bmo.mo%EA%9C%9C.ta.%C9%BEo%CB%90%5D%2C&text='Peach%20Boy')%20is%20a%20popular,a%20common%20Japanese%20given%20name.

Nothing about telekinesis or telepathy.  Where did this person come across  telepathy as a feature?   Not that the player made it up , but could it be some just added because they could and the telepathy has nothing to do with the actual fable?