[CoC] Question about Languages

[Brown Jenkin]

I am starting to run a COC campaign for the first time and have a rules question to throw out about languages. Please forgive me if this has been asked before or if it is in the rules and I just missed it.

All Investigators recieve thier native language for free and bonus languages based on Int. Unlike D&D where starting with a language or spending 1 rank on a langugue gives you full fluency CoC allows/requires spending additional skill points in a language in order to read high level works. This is for Mythos texts that require a DCXX role to comprehend.

Questions:
1. Does the native language need skill points for comprehension roles or is this automatic?

2a. Do other begining languages also have full comprehension?

2b. If no does the investigator start with 0 ranks but ability to use it, or 1 rank in the skill.

3. In languages with ranks does the Investigator need to make each language a class skill individually or is Speak Language (Any) all that is required.

I am looking forward to getting started this Saturday and driving my friends insane.

 

[Olive]

1. Does the native language need skill points for comprehension roles or is this automatic?

2a. Do other begining languages also have full comprehension?

2b. If no does the investigator start with 0 ranks but ability to use it, or 1 rank in the skill.

3. In languages with ranks does the Investigator need to make each language a class skill individually or is Speak Language (Any) all that is required.

this is how i'm intending to play it:

you speak fluently (no check needed) one + your INT bonus languages. So an INT 18 character speaks 5 languages fluently.

Any other languages you buy with points. i'm not sure what we'll do in terms of other languages, but we'll probably only play a few games so it won't matter too much will it?

 

[nsruf]

If I am not mistaken, you do not get additional beginning languages for high Int. The entry for "bonus languages" coming with the Int stat description seems to be an error (they just pasted in the SRD). So any other than your native language requires ranked skill.

But while this is true to the original game, I don't like it very much - elaborate language rules are too complicated to bother with. I haven't done it in my campaign, but house-ruling that you use standard D&D language rules and either skip the comprehension roll altogether or replace it by Knowledge(occult) or somesuch is probably a good idea.

 

[Olive]

ya see i wondered about that bonus languages thing.

thats kinda wierd tho. i don't mind the complexity, but surely if you've been a professor of latin you should get better than 4 ranks to start with...