Unpopular opinions go here

[MGibster]

For some reason 4e decided Fighters were to be defenders, intended to soak damage while the strikers (Rogues, mostly) gave damage out. In weapon combat (as opposed to magical) Fighters should be both the main damage dealers AND defenders.

Those reasons include World of Warcraft, EverQuest, and perhaps a few other MMORPGs. When I started playing D&D, a tank was just a tough character who could dish out a lot of damage, not a character whose sole job was to get punched in the face so nobody else got punched.

 

[Reynard]

Count me in the camp that thinks the language thing would likely be more of a drag than fun, especially after the second or third scenario where the inability to communicate was a hassle. I am not saying it couldn't be done well, but it would take a lot of work by the GM and buy in from the players.

 

[Thomas Shey]

2. We want the game to be believable. Fair enough. But, again, that level of believability is really subjective. And it gets rather frustrating when people will believe 6 impossible things, but, man, that's 7th. That's just too much. And the counter argument is, "well, you don't have a problem with these other six things, so, howzabout you let this one go too?" But, nope, we're going to use that "it's not realistic" as a huge bludgeoning tool to try to justify personal preferences as some sort of objective criticism.

These two issues are always pulling in different directions.

Well, there's always a couple issues that can come up:

1. As I've noted, people often can accept shortcuts and narrative conceits better in areas they don't know well. The closer it gets to an area of expertise they have, the more likely it is to bother them.

2. People are, on the whole, more tolerant of physical unreality than they are of social, and especially, psychological reality. People who can accept superheroes and dragons are still pretty likely to be bothered by things that don't fit their understanding of how people behave. And to some extent, that carries over to near-humans.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I ran a Hell on Earth campaign set in Little Rock and one of the PCs rapid fired a bunch of questions: How many people are here? How many women and children? How many people of fighting age? How many mutants? Where do they get their food from? I answered each and every question immediately without thinking and she finally said, "You're just making this up right now, aren't you?" I had to answer in the affirmative. Well, before I she asked her question I had already decided there were 5,000 permanent residents.

I usually, when someone gets into that, pretty early ask "Why do you want to know?" Because more often than not they're going to use that information to draw conclusions about something they aren't asking about which may or may not match my conclusions about the same thing, and I might as well cut to the chase. In particular, I'd assume what they really wanted to know was how much of a fighting force you could put together there, and that by itself wouldn't answer that.

 

[Micah Sweet]

When you head out to an area that doesn't share languages with where you come from, you're not exactly likely to turn around and go back immediately, so, yes, that doesn't seem a particularly far-out scenario.

A lot of it depends on how stingy you are with languages in the first place, and how fussy you are about which ones people take. If most people are going to only have 1 or 2 local languages, I don't find it an unlikely situation at all, unless they rarely travel out of the local area--and if that's the case the languages are unlikely to matter in the first place.

Most PCs each have access to several languages. If you do your job as GM and prep who in the setting speaks what, and the players try to spread things out a bit, chances of having a way to communicate in most places are pretty darn good.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Most PCs each have access to several languages. If you do your job as GM and prep who in the setting speaks what, and the players try to spread things out a bit, chances of having a way to communicate in most places are pretty darn good.

At which point it fits my first clause in my original post: its rarely going to matter. For it to matter, it has to come up often enough its viewed as relevant, but not so often its chronically annoying. In all my experience, that's a narrow set of situations to produce that.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I usually, when someone gets into that, pretty early ask "Why do you want to know?" Because more often than not they're going to use that information to draw conclusions about something they aren't asking about which may or may not match my conclusions about the same thing, and I might as well cut to the chase. In particular, I'd assume what they really wanted to know was how much of a fighting force you could put together there, and that by itself wouldn't answer that.

I don't assume people have ulterior motives to the questions they're asking, and in fact actually want to know the answers. Which is why there have to actually be answers.

 

[Micah Sweet]

At which point it fits my first clause in my original post: its rarely going to matter. For it to matter, it has to come up often enough its viewed as relevant, but not so often its chronically annoying. In all my experience, that's a narrow set of situations to produce that.

I'm fine with rarely, but not never.

Seriously, why is everything in these conversations all or nothing?

 

[Aldarc]

Constitution (and all alternate namings thereof) is a pointless stat that should never have been in the game.

 

[CreamCloud0]

if there was more significance placed on languages for communication, what specific groups/purposes would have their own dedicated tongues?

Adventurer's Common: replaces existing common but without the implications that every civilian or city-folk will speak it, but would be the language for 'core NPC' types like tavern owners and city guards that are expected to deal with travellers.
Barter: the merchant's language, used by and for all major trade purposes.
Hightongue: language of high society and nobles.
Ancient: mostly found in dungeons or similar locations, exists more for a doylist reason of hints and puzzles, also lore.
High Arcane: used to discuss things of a magical nature, the language of science for wizards basically.
Scripture: used as the common touchstone language for churches and similar religiously associated individuals.

Thieves Cant, Druidic and all the other existing species specific languages remain.

returning to a concept i mentioned earlier in the thread, using specific languages for their intended purposes would typically grant bonuses to checks made with the people with whom you are interacting, any given city or settlement would usually have 1-2 dominant species languages that the occupants speak but people in specific positions should also have the associated language, so say you've reached an elf city but no-one speaks elvish, you're still going to be able to get a room for the night because the innkeeper will speak Adventurer's common, and you've got a paladin who knows Scripture so you can talk to the people at the church...

there's a few easy pickings languages there for ease of play but the lack of omnipresence of common as 'everybody's language' and bonuses for using apropriate languages in the right situations gives significance to learning nonstandard languages.