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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Rel" data-source="post: 4739793" data-attributes="member: 99">That is a pretty interesting idea.  It also dovetails with something else I'm discovering about the granularity of 4e and the way that I've accidentally fixed what I now perceive as a bit of a problem.This came up recently in our game because the players are in a foreign country where none of them speak the language.  They've gotten by ok with interpreters and some use of the Comprehend Languages ritual.  But when they looked at how to learn a new language we bumped up against the rules.You can't learn A new language.You can only learn THREE new languages at once by taking the Linguist feat.  I'm not in any way arguing that it's not a good feat to take.  It just seems a bit weird to me that you can't pick up a single language all by itself.  But that's just the granularity of the system.  If the feat gave you one language probably nobody would ever want to take it because that's rather underpowered compared to other feats.My solution to this problem was already there however due to my rule about "Background Skills".  That's my house rule that lets players pick some skills outside the basic set to add flavor to their character.  This isn't some list they pick from.  They just tell me what they used to do for a living and what they like to do as a hobby and those become their background skills.  The current crop of PC's have skills ranging from stonecutting to calligraphy and cartography to dyemaking.  And every 4 levels (at 4th, 8th, etc) they get to add another similar skill or take Skill Focus in a skill they already took.So I've basically added a (small, simple) subsystem in the game that operates at a finer level of granularity.  People wouldn't take Calligraphy over Diplomacy or Endurance.  But as a Background Skill it works fine.  And that's where the language thing comes in.  You can pick up a single language as a Background Skill.So I think I may swipe this idea and let people take a single ritual that they have been taught as a Background Skill too.  I think it functions on that same level of granularity in being less powerful than a regular skill pick or Feat but not necessarily something I want to give away for "free".Thanks for the idea!</blockquote>

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