Racial languages, learnt instantly?
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Hello everybody.
Sorry from the long post. This is all in In My Humble Opinion. no flaming or direct attack anyone meant.I quite often get feeling that people "insta-learn" racial language, when there is possibility to meta-game and get some sort of benefit from it.
When actually asked that how they have learned specific racial language, various explanations are provided:
"I learned it from slaves"
"I had good teacher"
"I studied it from books"
"I grow up among X-race"
"My best friend is X-race"
"I remember all unknown words and afterwards ask them from my friend. That way I get to understand your language little by little"I admit that some reasons sound logical ways to learn racial language, somehow I just get feeling that since racial language is purely enforced by RolePlaying it, it gets meta-gamed. A lot.
How the actual server rules state about learning the language?
Will it be during character creation, that every positive INT -modifier grants you one pick of extra language (if there is some reasoning behind that). OR can you actually learn languages by merely attending some scholars lessons and reading books, without having proper INT modifier in place?? What about INT-boosting enchantments or spells, does their bonuses grant you such bonus languages during their effect?
I did some searching and found some suggestions and solutions for this:
In game language masking
http://www.narfell.us/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&t=29703&highlight=racial
Language and Illiteracy Tokens
http://www.narfell.us/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&t=26870&highlight=racialWhile I like speaking racial language at town's campfire mainly because it offers other players (not their characters) amusement and it serves as little roleplay purpose as well. It however gets bit annoying when your plans to visit some forest hermit to extort money (planned using racial language) gets you followed by bunch of characters, who somehow are fully aware of your plans because of assembled crowd understood your every word…
Is only way of preventing racial language from being meta-gamed to stop using it completely and pass written notes between others or go in completely secluded alley to plan?? I like to tell other (players, not characters) that what my character is up to, because it IMHO hopefully gives amusement for other players.
Is there any suggestion how understanding languages can be put in check or is this purely maintained by personal level through own discipline about when to understand and when not??
Cheers everyone and relaxing starting year. Lets keep Narfell crowded and best place to escape Real-Life horrors:)
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Now as far as in game training in language goes, is that the only way?
Caelian is about 25 now, and is also a Human (Which most people tend to not know. :-P) He came to Narfell knowing only Common, cause he grew up alone with his family in the forest. He gained Druidic once he became a Druid.
He knows one more language. I put 2 skill points in for Sylvan, and RP'd that he has spent a lot of time talking to the creatures that frequent the druid glen, and learning from them, such as dryads, fey, that sort of thing. Sylvan isn't VERY common, so it would be hard to find an ingame "Tutor". Caelian knows he hasn't been speaking it for long, so he RARELY speaks it, and never for long periods of time. Is this acceptable?
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If any DEV is whiling to put such tool/item IG, please send me a PM.
I´ll gladly tell you in what server i saw the language Item i talk about in my previous post and i even happend to be in the possession of the Email of the guy that created it
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While I know many players here do their best not to know what's going on behind the language barrier, metagaming, even to the slightest degree, can happen. I know, I know, you all try your hardest not to
but I think this language script would make it more difficult for another adventuring group to follow a bunch of Half-Orcs speaking Orc. It'll knock away the vague "We just happened to be in the area" that occasionally happens after hearing the Orcish conversation about raiding Norwick and killing the elvish population.Light-hearted examples aside, I'm on the fence about it but I am leaning towards having it.
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From time to time i like to visit other RP and PW story servers and check out what they have new.
Theres this server that uses an racial language item, that after activation (it can be activated once per reset if im not mistaken) the PC can speak its racial language and only those PCs that have the same racial language item can read what he is saying. Th eothers that dont have that item just read " rjkghf+ºofih ºpifhj pºwfºhjf "
I´ve done some poking, and that does not spams the DM channel like similar items.Pretty mutch it works alittle somethign like this:
1 - Activate the item
(and you get this message: you are speaking (insert PCs race here) write what you want to say by using < insert here what you wish to say >2 - you speak what ever you PCs race is and all others dont understand what you say becouse all they read is: ghjgtdf ldhfl kjfh
I found this little usefull item pretty cool.
I spoke to a DM there and he confirmed me that the items doesnt spam DM channel.Neat!
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@c03416b9da=Zyphlin:
As I said, I may be wrong
I don't have books on me but its been a number of years since PNP and god knows sometimes house rules are so ingrained in you that you think they're actual rules. I'm sure you two have the right answer on this one.
I figured out what you were thinking of. It was in 2nd edition AD&D. Speaking a language cost one non-weapon proficiency, and being literate in that language cost an additional proficiency.
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@e0455957f1=Dorakhan:
Ah yes…. I meant to say "new language" not "new bonus language." I stand corrected.
Sorry Dora, that wasn't actually a stab at your grammar lol. I was trying to make the point that bonus languages you take on creation have to be chosen from a list in the FRCS. I incorrectly put emphasis on the wrong part of the sentence :lol:
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@fbd0414dca:
Reading books certainly works - assuming you have access to "A beginning primer on Elvish for the Common speaker" or the equivalent - of course, that gets you only the written language not spoken, and I know of no such books currently IG.
Yolande has one for Dwarvish, though I may have given it to Drelan before she retired. Regardless, it was an item on her character sheet, and actually had content.
As far as RP goes, for many of my characters it's been more fun NOT to understand. Maya only knows common, Uthgardt, and a smattering of Damaran. If friends in a party started talking Elvish discussing matters, she would often walk away as she considered it very rude.
I still wish a token system were viable. Yes, you miss out on some of the funny comments made in other languages, but you should.
"Varak a kol …."
"Net, varak ki marr ohlar vik torr, ki Maya!"
sidelong glance at Maya and snickersPersonally, I think the above is far more fun than actually understanding what was said if you don't know the language. A system with language tokens would enforce it.
As far as training goes, someone can spend the time to learn other languages. I think that's perfectly reasonable. However, let them put the two points into it rather than Discipline or Stealth, because they're busy learning Orcish rather than practicing with their weapon.
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As I said, I may be wrong
I don't have books on me but its been a number of years since PNP and god knows sometimes house rules are so ingrained in you that you think they're actual rules. I'm sure you two have the right answer on this one.
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It is 1 rank for spoken and the rules state that any literate character who learns a spoken language automatically learns the written form.
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I don't think I ever read in 3e about 1 rank for spoken language and 1 rank for written form.
From what I've known it's a "class" skill for bards (1 point per rank = 1 language) and "cross-class" for everybody else (2 points per rank = 1 language). Barbarians are illiterate unless they multi-class or spend 2 skill points. Literate characters can read and write any language they can speak.
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-edit- Appears I was wrong. Curse house rules and inability to PNP for a long time -edit-
In regards to why Dwarven and Elven are common…look at the adventuring population of Narfell. There are an exceedingly large amount of Elves and Dwarves. Don't forget for older characters too, there was an Elven outpost. And there is a dwarven stronghold. Out of all the demi-human races, it makes perfect sense that adventurer's that speak other languages would want to know these. In all my time of playing D&D these were two of the most commonly taken languages as well. Want an IC reasoning why adventurer's would learn these languages aside from trade and other such things...how many times do races try to talk in their tongue behind peoples backs for mundane or more serious things?
Remember, adventurer's tend to be the exception to the rule. While most commoners likely don't know more than one language, its not uncommon at all for adventurer's to know at least one other.
In regards to Orcs, again, this makes some sense for the same reasons above to a lesser degree. For older characters it makes a ton of sense, due to the fact that at a time there was an exceedingly large Orc population present in the southern part of Narfell (and now seems to be one growing in the north
). Its good to know the language of your enemies.This is also why, from what I've been able to tell, goblinoid seems to be up there as the "most common" monster languages because its spoken by the three forms of goblinoid (Goblin, hobgoblin, Bugbear) which previously covered almost 2/3rds of the server.
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Exactly
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good discussion.
I think we (or at least me;) have been enlightened by these replies. Racial,area and bonus languages are gained in the beginging. Totally new languages can be learnt, if skill points are spent into "useless" skill and roleplaying the actual learning ingame is encouraged (instead of forum rp)
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@a4af550b9e=leinad888:
And no, Bards are not the only class that can take additional languages as they progress. The skill is only a CLASS skill for Bards, any other race can take it (I think, possibly not Barbs [dont have a PHB nearby atm]) they just have to spend 2 skill points per language rather than 1.
I don t really know if only bards can learn new languages or not, but it truly would make no sense, since learning a new language can be done even from listening (for some time, of course, not at once) to native people speak, and other ways too…
I believe that the token system would be cool, but the way it works now should suffice, let s trust other players
and make the game fun.
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Yes I also find it a bit annoying since the ICC grow almost every party seems to have someone who can understand and speak orcish perfectly.
I do wonder who teached them or why I do not see those hanging around in a library and when I review their character descriptions there is no clue of how they could have learned it.
Dilinus Gest for example made it very clear (in his character description) why he can speak hin. He lived about fifty years in a monastary together with halflings. From his everyday contact with them he learned to speak it fluent over the years.
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or Orcish for that matter….
Everytime halfer speak among eachother in orcish theres always some wise guy nosing in... :x
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@fa47e277c1=M_O_B:
What irks me a little is how almost every character seems to be able to speak each and every language they know without a single mistake >.>
Or how it seems every character knows elven and dwarven.
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What irks me a little is how almost every character seems to be able to speak each and every language they know without a single mistake >.>
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I'm not keen on the idea of PCs learning skills during downtime. Yes the system allows for it with all skills, but from an RP standpoint, it leaves a lot out.
For learning languages, simply listening to native speakers (without having an active tutor) works, assuming you have a few years - adults learn in that way much more slowly than children.
Reading books certainly works - assuming you have access to "A beginning primer on Elvish for the Common speaker" or the equivalent - of course, that gets you only the written language not spoken, and I know of no such books currently IG.
Having a tutor works best - and RPing that with another PC can be a lot of fun. I'd rather see PCs do that than magically know a new language after leveling because they spent a couple of skill points and "leaned it during their downtime."
