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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Steverooo" data-source="post: 1412381" data-attributes="member: 9410">Scout sneaks up and hides.  Listens to enemies talk...  GM checks notes and sees what they are, and the PC's character sheet, to see what he speaks.  If he knows the language, he makes a Listen roll, and if it succeeds, he overhears what was said.  If he doesn't speak the language, he hears "Blarg, blarg, blarg!", or whatever.The mechanic is simple enough...  Either you speak the language, or you don't.  For Non-Bards (who pay two skill points per language), you might want to include a "half literate" group, for folks who have only acquired one rank, so far.As for making languages more useful, read the section on the Common tongue...  Common is spoken by merchants and traders, and probably Innkeepers, etc.  The common folk probably find Common uncommon.  So, create various languages that the common folk speak, and have most of them use that, with only the trader types speaking Common.  Then the PCs will either have to learn the new language, or speak through an interpreter to gather information, etc.Someone's already mentioned RuneQuest, which has Tradetalk as its Common tongue.  In that setting, only Traders, and Priests of Issaries (god of trade) regularly use it.  You could do the same in 3.xe.In one game I played a PC in, our group had some trouble, and needed help.  We ran into an Elf who claimed to be a Ranger, but didn't seem to like Humans too much...  He offered to take us back to his village, and we followed him, but along the way we ran into some of his "Ranger" buddies.  He told us to "Wait here!", then went off and talked to them, in Elvish.  When he got back, I asked him what they said, but he refused to translate...  This sort of thing went on for a while, until I revealed to the GM that my PC spoke Elven, and I understood every word that they'd said.  He laughed, and told us what was going on, then accused me of being sneaky.In any case, we didn't know if the "Rangers" were good guys or not, or whether they were setting us up for an ambush.  If one of us hadn't known Elven, we could have found ourselves in an enemy village, before we even knew what was what...  Just because our enemies COULD have spoken Common doesn't mean that they would!Also, I assume that Dragons would react a little better to non-hostiles who address them in Draconic, and Lilends prefer speakers of Celestial.  Summoned elemental probably only speak their native tongues, and cannot be commanded by non-speakers.There are PLENTY of ways that you could work languages in (assuming you're the GM).  How do you want to do it?</blockquote>

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