Upcomming Language Changes

[Ithildur]

lol, thanks for the poke But realize that going by the guidelines you want, being from that region would make knowing that tongue the same as being from Aglarond and knowing Damaran: common

I'll believe it when I see it. Hurry up and post the FRCS list and prove me wrong.

[Cheatcake]

I'm waiting on confirmation that it's allowed and wanted

PS: But I sent ya a PM

[Ithildur]

Hmm.. looks like the (older) list I had sitting around is very different from the Players Guide to Faerun 3.5 edition, so I stand corrected. Dambrath does seem to have Undercommon available.

*gets ready to eat crow*

[Scarlett]

How so? On what part of the DnD system to you base this judgement? What part of the book of exalted deeds, the book of vile darkness, the fiend folio, the main core rules, the fiendish codexes, or any other book dealing with the planes, or with languages, states this?

First off, there are no angels in DnD, at all. Celestials are just a race of extraplanar beings that serve the deities of good. They are the types of beings found on the good-aligned outer planes. The main celestial template in the monster manual is meant to be applied to all beings from the outer planes from the earth worms, to the horses, to the rest. If you go to Celestia, you will find celestial versions of everything.

Secondly, there is no reason given anywhere, in any printed source material for 3rd edition, that states that the langauges of beings of other planes are any more, or less, complex, hard to understand, or hard to use, than any other languages in use. That means celestial, abyssal, ignan, auran, etc, are all just languages, nothing more, and nothing less. Some are harder than others I would assume, just as some modern and ancient langauges of our world are harder than others but, there is nothing what-so-ever to say that Celestial is any more difficult a language than say ... Draconic, for example. Just because a language is foreign does not make it harder.

Some languages are more secretive than others but that's about it, as far as DnD is concerned. The only reason Thieves Cant is not well known is because thieves don't teach it to non-thieves, that's it. Druidic is not taught to non-druids. They are not more complex, harder to learn, tied to class features/abilties, or anything else. Nothing keeps them from the general public except secrecy. Even then, someone with a parent of that type may well have been taught it growing up even if not a member of that class. If you have two druid parents you may have heard it around the house. Lots of people learn languages native to their parent's culture that way, even when such languages are not used in the place they themselves grow up.

I still don't understand. The person I used to play Bridge with taught linquistics in Spanish and Russian. He also spoke Serbocroatian(sp), English and French fluently, with little accent, and also knew enough to converse in a couple other languages. He taught his son Spanish, Russian, and English, and was working on another one when last I knew the family. English and French are Canada's only two official languages, and you can't learn either Spanish or Russian in Jr. or Sr. high school in the city that man lives in, the one I grew up in, yet his son speaks both fluently. I learned French in school growing up, and Japanese in university. People who want to in our modern, mundane, normal, world will go out and learn other languages, if they have the desire. It generally gets easier after the first couple, unless the new one has really odd grammar or writing compared to the others, like Japanese compared to English.

In the game, we are talking about a magical, fantasy, setting, not the real world and its limitations. So why the big deal over PCs knowing planar languages? Seriously, I am not being sarcastic here at all. So a bunch of PCs all know elven, or celestial, or draconic ... so what? We have wizards casting fireballs, and some fighter speaking Celestial because his cleric mother taught it to him breaks the setting somehow?!? I just don't get it. Why is this such a big deal to people? It is a very standard part of the PnP game in 3rd edition Forgotten Realms, which is what NWN is based on. Why do people want it to be hard, or rare, or not done? What's the big deal here? What is it I am missing?

Intelligence scores higher than 11 are uncommon in the game world. PCs tend to have an average of 12, or higher, in their stats. "The average ability score for the typical commoner is 10 or 11, but your character is not typical. The most common ability scores for player characters (PCs) are 12 and 13. (That's right, the average player character is above average)" (PHB page 7) PnP considers less than that a total of all ability score modifiers of 0 or less to be a non-viable character, which should then be re-rolled (PHB page 8); as the PC would not live as an adventurer. So we know from teh beginning these characters are not your average person.

Most adventuring types die in their first one or two forays. The ones who do live are all exceptional beings. Many are very exceptional. The older DnD editions actually gave suggested stats that said about 90% of adventurers died in their first year, and that to live and make a living as an adventurer was the mark of a rare and exceptional being. If adventuring were easy there would be a lot of high level characters all over. But if you look at the number of beings over level 5, vs the total population, the numbers are exceptionally small. There just are not that many of them out there.

By surviving long enough to even reach level 10-12 (where you were supposed to retire in first edition, and hit "name-level", which also meant you were famous enough to be known throughout the land for your deeds) the PCs show themselves to have beaten the long shot. They have shown that, by population, they pretty much are 1 in a million, or about 1 in 100,000 using the lower population demographics in 3rd edition Forgotten Realms. So, after going to such lengths to show how different from the average person all the PCs are from demographics in DnD give us ... small wonder many of them can speak an extra language or two that some common folk who only work in a bakery all day don't use...

I am not trying to be a jerk, nor do I mean any disrespect of any kind to anyone here, in any way. I just can't figure out why suddenly all these languages should be hard to understand, or learn, or use, when they aren't in the real game? Why intelligent PCs understanding lots of languages is an issue, when many intelligent and educated people in the real world know more than one language too, if they want to. It just seems so odd to me that this is even an issue.

Not sure if I'll ever understand it,

Kuroboshi.

I'm basing it off of common sense. Not of something that's DnD or PnP. Seeing as both the afromentioned hardly make sense sometimes, it might be wise to look else were for a solution to the language issue. :-/

I think it should run down like this...

-Up DC's dramatically for lore, more for some languages and less for others.
-Have some languages usually unlearnable unless you're a super intelligent wizard. I always had this idea that the tongue of an angel or a devil was sacred, and a mortal can't just go into a book and learn it. You would have to go to great lengths to speak such languages, among others.
-Remove lore check for cant and drow SL. No amount of lore should tell you that a wink means ''go stab someone''. Haha.

Then go along with Illithdur posted about the basic workaround.

[Cheatcake]

-Have some languages usually unlearnable unless you're a super intelligent wizard. I always had this idea that the tongue of an angel or a devil was sacred, and a mortal can't just go into a book and learn it. You would have to go to great lengths to speak such languages, among others.
-Remove lore check for cant and drow SL. No amount of lore should tell you that a wink means ''go stab someone''. Haha.

Uh I think you might be taking the angel and devil part a bit too literally They are languages like any other, just harder to come by because we play in a material plane. If we played on a planar setting they would be as common as elven and dwarven Celestials, demons and devils are just another race. A lot more powerful and some closer to the deities, but still just a race

But I agree about Thieves' Cant and Drow Sign Language, just adding the Druids' language to that. Those are the you-know-it-or-you-don't kind

[Scarlett]

Thats basically what I'm getting at. How many angels and devils are in the material plane, opposed to say...elves?

[Cheatcake]

You don't wanna know

Seriously, very few regions have those languages open and they make sense, you don't have to worry Celestial for exemple is open in Muhlorand because of their background of real gods living among them. Infernal and abyssal are reserved for places with a past of demon activity or where demons are "commonly" summoned like Thay

[Scarlett]

Ahh, neato...though I have an other reason my PC knows Celestial. It's a pretty good one too I'd say.

[GodBeastX]

I didn't read the whole thread, but as of today, we are still deciding how to go about languages. The only thing we know for certain is:

DC for listening to other races will be higher and Ebonics won't be in.

For the most part, most language uses have plausibility to people.

[Kuroboshi]

I'm basing it off of common sense. Not of something that's DnD or PnP. Seeing as both the afromentioned hardly make sense sometimes, it might be wise to look else were for a solution to the language issue.

But what is common sense to one person, is not to another. Each has their own version. The DMs have indicated that they are using the Forgotten Realms setting as their base, and then tweaking it to make it their own. DnD is a fantasy game, and only needs logic internal to the system and setting to make the setting hold together, not follow our real world views on things. In DnD languages are just languages, nothing more.

-Have some languages usually unlearnable unless you're a super intelligent wizard. I always had this idea that the tongue of an angel or a devil was sacred, and a mortal can't just go into a book and learn it. You would have to go to great lengths to speak such languages, among others.

Again angels don't even exist in the the setting, or the NWN 2 information or Wiki. You are drawing comparisons to real world religious figures that do not appear in the PnP or NWN games.

You have this idea that they should be some sacred, hard to learn thing. I accept your right to your own point of view, but my own is exactly the opposite and could not be more different. There is nothing at all in any of the game materials, online or offline, PnP or NWN, that indicates that the langauges in question work at all as you are presenting them.

My point is that when the views of different individuals conflict, then it is to the original source material we should go to resolve the issue in the specified setting. If you were making up the FR setting, then I would accept you to be right for the setting you make. Here, the setting is a published known one. The NWN game is based on it, and this server is based in FR. Unless the DMs tell us they are changing things, then the ultimate recourse is the published material.

A normal PnP character could find anyone who knows a language, spend the skill points at level up on the "Speak Language" skill, and learn any language in the game. They all have exactly the same difficulty to learn and all that matters is finding a teacher if the language is not one taken during character creation. There is no reason given anywhere in 3rd edition PnP or NWN, that I have ever seen, that indicates one language is any harder to learn than any other.

-Remove lore check for cant and drow SL. No amount of lore should tell you that a wink means ''go stab someone''. Haha.

That I agree with entirely. Other than a few words and phrases picked up here and there, languages are generall something that one knows or does not know. Specialized langauges like that, should not have a lore check. Especially Cant, which is made specifically for the purpose of passing extra information in a conversation while being observed and overheard and yet not having any of that extra meaning detected by those watching and listening to the conversation. Drow sign is something that would be harder to guess the meaning of, but like military sign codes some things may mean what you think and others could mean just the opposite. So trying to guess the meaning may help or may hinder you.

Uh I think you might be taking the angel and devil part a bit too literally They are languages like any other, just harder to come by because we play in a material plane. If we played on a planar setting they would be as common as elven and dwarven Celestials, demons and devils are just another race. A lot more powerful and some closer to the deities, but still just a race

But I agree about Thieves' Cant and Drow Sign Language, just adding the Druids' language to that. Those are the you-know-it-or-you-don't kind

This is the kind of point that I was looking for and pretty much what I agree with. They are less common, but no harder or different than any other racial language.

Thats basically what I'm getting at. How many angels and devils are in the material plane, opposed to say...elves?

Uhm, lots. Mulhorand is a country where the gods walked the land and interacted with the people. Half-celestials were common and so are half-fiends. In Calimshan Efreeti, and others, ruled there for a very long time, many centuries if not millenia, and half-elementals were common. Genasi, particualarly fire, are still quite common there.

Celestials, infernals, elementals and other extra-planar beings are summoned to this plane on a regular basis by a goodly number of clerics, druids, wizards, sorcerers, and other magical types. Some are bound to serve in various ways, some are entreated for knowledge or service, some are summoned for a short task like the Summon Monster spells, some are bound for longer tasks or until they yield the information the summoner wants; regardless of why or how, there are a fair number of them around and being summoned/used at any given time. They also leave hints around for weaker spellcasters to "summon" them, and then dominate, and use ,the weak fool who chanced across the information.

With the Elven Retreat to Evermeet, the elves still on Faerun pulled back to only two major cities, one of which is Silvery Moon with the last remaining properly functioning elven Mythal. The demographics of most areas give them as a very small percentage of the population. Further, even for those places, they are not evenly spread out. They stay to small communities in wooded areas, and a few small parts of a big city or two like Waterdeep or Suzail. Many rural farmers and other small communities have never seen an elf and until recently, never would. Now that the Retreat has ended some elves are coming back to Faerun, but not that many yet. Within the current human generation, a large number of humans have likely never even seen a real elf, only heard tales of them.

As well as Cheatcake says here:

Seriously, very few regions have those languages open and they make sense, you don't have to worry Celestial for exemple is open in Muhlorand because of their background of real gods living among them. Infernal and abyssal are reserved for places with a past of demon activity or where demons are "commonly" summoned like Thay

Can't say it any better than he did.

Just my two cents worth,

Kuroboshi.
((Smileys in quoted text have been removed to comply with forum image limits, not to try to change the intent or meaning of the original posts quoted here.))