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Message: <blockquote data-quote="niklinna" data-source="post: 8442353" data-attributes="member: 71235">Number of languages spoken is much more a matter of experience and (generally childhood) exposure than mental ability. Unfortunately, as I hinted at earlier, D&D just doesn't handle this aspect well, so you might be stuck with it. Maybe you could tie this in to backgrounds or custom culture or something.Again the hierarchy is language group (actually family) > language > dialect. You don't have dialects as direct members of a language group. Those three above should be languages, full stop.No, no. (Neighboring) dialects are generally mutually intelligible. Also don't make ability checks required for potentially common situations, that's why people generally bin this whole topic and use a common tongue or universal translator in games. At most, people speaking different close dialects should have no trouble communicating information, but they recognize the other's dialect (without a Deception check of course)—which may color NPC attitudes for Persuasion and other such checks.If you want to get into dialect continuums, you can give a threshold past which dialects in the continuum impose disadvantage on communication of information, and past which dialects are no longer mutually intelligible, with a small (like, -2 tops) penalty to language checks for dialects that are 2–3 steps apart. Again, a distance of 1 should not be a problem. (Defining dialect distances is up to the setting designer!)This should probably be topical. Common would be a great language for general commerce, travel, and such, with no penalty. But Common would not be a good language for nuanced diplomatic negotiation (which opens another sub-area of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prestige_(sociolinguistics)" target="_blank">prestige languages</a> and the influence that might have). [USER=30538]@Davies[/USER] made good suggestions.Minor but very colorful. A good combo for language bennies.Slight potential for min-maxy abuse, but also very colorful.I thought Draconic was the language of magic? Fey is all about enchantements and illusions.Very colorful.Ability to speak loudly—assuming a language falls into the usual parameters of pulmonic production—is more dependent on physiology than the speech sounds of a language. But, have you heard of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whistled_language" target="_blank">whistle speech</a>?Also, most reptiles & lizards don't have particularly loud vocalizations. Mammals & avians (especially <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lLO5ecZXYdg" target="_blank">parrots</a> and the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvK-DujvpSY" target="_blank">white bellbird</a>), on the other hand....</blockquote>

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