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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 6275588" data-attributes="member: 4937">Languages are something I've been playing around with to make more fun.  I'm not sure I'm quite there but I can tell you where I'm at.In my game there are 'secret languages' that you can't take unless something gives you permission to do so.  For example, the languages of animals - carnivores, herbivores, birds, fishes, serpants, insects, etc. - are secret, and you can't take one without the 'Natural Scholar' feat or being explicitly taught it in game by someone that already knows how (usually an friendly animal spirit that swears you to secrecy).   Your dead ancient language would qualify as a 'secret language', with entry by DM permission only.Currently, all my languages are skills, with 1 to 5 skill points in them.   Each skill point represents a degree of fluency in a language.   With one point, you know how to say "Hello" and "Where is the bathroom?" in a thick accent and can probably work out some words if you are allowed to read the text, but that's about it.   Four points represents being a native speaker or at least able to emulate one.   With five points, you are a true scholar of the language and get a number of minor benefits to disguise, performance, ect.  With 5 points in English and can read Gene Wolfe without recourse to a dictionary, and can speak convincingly authentic Bostonian, Deep South, Austrialian, and Cockney.To get up to 5 points in a language is generally difficult for most PC's because langauge is a cross class skill for basically everything but Bards and Explorers.  Even gaining fluency takes 6 points if you aren't a class that specializes in learning languages.   Conversely, especially with the increased skill points most of my classes get relative to stock 3.X, its pretty easy for a Bard or Explorer to dabble in lots of langauges.Whenever a player with less than 3 points in a language encounters a language, spoken or written, I roll 2 dice - one for vowels and one for consonants.   If you have 1 point in the language, any word that has either the vowel or the consonant in it I replace with another word or a bit of gibberish.   If you have 2 points in the language, only the words with the consonant are replaced.   If you have 3 points in the language, you can speak and understand the language, but everyone can immediately tell you are non-native.   In this way, I can simulate partial understanding.  (I don't keep track of what a character 'knows' in any systematic way, first because its too hard and secondly because I assume that the language they are translating from has like English many different ways of saying roughly the same thing.)The Decipher Script interfaces with this and works on the principle that difficult successes (and lengthy time investment) give you the equivalent of X skill ranks in the language for the purpose of the text you are trying to read.  The theory behind this is that all the languages in my game are supposed to be fairly closely related.   Obviously having some understanding of the langauge or a related family of languages is helpful.It sounds to me like for your 'Ancient Language' you could do roughly the same thing, but perhaps extending the number of skill ranks out to some degree.   Additionally, you could require before you put ranks into the skill that the character succesfully decipher or partially decipher one or more texts between leveling.  As far as metagaming 'learning the language' goes, sure everyone can claim to be learning the language, but because there is an investment that has to be made (skill points) to actually learn it it's highly unlikely that everyone will want to, and if you require successes as proof of the investment only those characters with an apptitude (high intelligence, decipher language skill, existing skill in the language) will be able to improve anyway.   Eventually this will separate out the pretenders from those that are really serious.Alternately, if you don't want to force the PC's to spend resources on the language but give out skill points for free, require like 10 sucessful translations per 1 gain in skill points (and don't let them take 20).  I should note that I don't need a sophisticated explanation for why Comprehend Language doesn't work.  The Comprehend Language spell in my game doesn't automatically let you understand a langauge anyway.  It just temporarily makes you good at deciphering languages  (+5 enhancment bonus, 10 minutes of understanding per round of study, verbal as well as written, and you may subsitute your Scry skill for Decipher Script skill).   A great many spells have this sort of transformation in my game, going from an absolute effect to a short term boost to how you interact with the skill system.  The idea is to prevent spells from fully replacing skills, or to force spellcasters that want to be skillful to spend points on the skills.</blockquote>

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