How To Foil Comprehend Languages?

[Krelios]

I'm going to go with Crothian on this one.

"You don't understand why, but for some reason comprehend languages simply doesn't work at all on the writing."

With all of the good suggestions here and the built-in limitations if you simply read the spell, that's just lazy railroading. I'd never do it in my campaign, and I'd walk if a DM pulled that on me. Put some effort into your game.

 

[Primitive Screwhead]

Krelois.. counter to that. Many interesting adventures can be based on the translations of languages. You can have great role-playing around translating of languages.
Key example, Deserts of Desolation. When I ran that many years back, I refused to translate the ancient script and instead gave them a couple ruined signs that had a couple phrases they could figure out and let the *players* figure it out from there.

Railroading? "Put some effort into your game." ?
Sorry, I want my campaign world to feel different.. and part of that difference in the culteral and linguistic challenges. And that means I will put effort into languages and don't want my effort to be wasted by a 1st level spell

Which, BTW, is non-existant in my world.

 

[Tonguez]

If a peice of writing is damaged will comprehend language fill in the damaged peice

so perhaps the message reads something like

"-more - one occa- use plot -uire sages to tran- ten -why - sage wh-est priest -erstan- wr-en or spoken?"

Also what about languages that use graphic symbols rather than written ones so perhaps the text reads

On more than one o I've wanted to use plot pthat require s t written material. Yet why es when the lowest pri can instantly understand anything ws?

 

[Corsair]

Here is another example. Tell me if you can understand what I am writing:

Ths mssg is bng wrttn wth a knd of scrt code. I am attmptng two gv u a weigh too crcmvent cmprhnd lnguagz.


Comprehend Languages, when translating this text, would be unable to give a direct translation of the mis-spelled words, simply because they are not actual words, or they translate to the wrong words. A native speaker of the language however, can decipher the code with no difficulty.

 

[jmichels]

One thing you can try is to have the message encased in something. Perhaps it is embedded in a crystal or maybe written on a piece of paper that is in between two pieces of glass that have been glued together. If the PCs try to pry the glass apart the message will be destroyed.

In my campaign I had an elven secret society (Eldreth Veluthra) pass messages that were in the form of a specially cut emeralds. You would shine a light into the emerald in a certain way and it would spell out words. I guess it was too devious for my PCs because they just sold the gems even though I went into detail to describe them.

 

[Zandel]

Just make the text magicaly immune to that spell. Only use this where it makes sense and not too often.