Is Speak Language a useless skill?

[Zappo]

Only as much as Jump and Climb skills become pointless because of the Jump and fly spells.

There is a huge difference there. With Climb, Jump, Swim and similar, in many situations you need the entire party to climb, jump or whatever, and making the entire party fly is relatively tough. Making the entire party fly permanently is impossible, unless you are well into high levels, and even there it takes a lot of resources. The skills are always available.

OTOH, a single Tongues spell cast on the charismatic member of the party takes care of all language problems in 90% of the situations. And when the party caster is 11th, he can permanency it. No need for "magic items shops" or whatever, but if you have one handy, you can buy a helm of comprehend languages for several times less than an item with permanent flight, though it only allows for understanding of any language.

IME, players take their bonus languages from high Int, then some casters take some outsider or elemental language, and that's about it. The reasons are that the bonus languages from high Int coupled with the racial free languages are enough to cover all common languages. In campaigns with lots of languages, I've noted that the skill becomes even less useful, and the result is that players just invest in tongues and comprehend languages magic.

 

[green slime]

There is a huge difference there. With Climb, Jump, Swim and similar, in many situations you need the entire party to climb, jump or whatever, and making the entire party fly is relatively tough. Making the entire party fly permanently is impossible, unless you are well into high levels, and even there it takes a lot of resources. The skills are always available.

OTOH, a single Tongues spell cast on the charismatic member of the party takes care of all language problems in 90% of the situations. And when the party caster is 11th, he can permanency it. No need for "magic items shops" or whatever, but if you have one handy, you can buy a helm of comprehend languages for several times less than an item with permanent flight, though it only allows for understanding of any language.

IME, players take their bonus languages from high Int, then some casters take some outsider or elemental language, and that's about it. The reasons are that the bonus languages from high Int coupled with the racial free languages are enough to cover all common languages. In campaigns with lots of languages, I've noted that the skill becomes even less useful, and the result is that players just invest in tongues and comprehend languages magic.

Just as easily for one player to have boots of flying, and fly backwards and forwards across the canyon, carrying his companions? Or a paladin to have a flying mount, or wings of flying, or gloves of climbing and swimming, or a spell of free action, teleport, dimension door,....

It is up to the DM to create situations where one character is eligible to communicate and the others are hindered. Just as most locks become minor hindrances with the arrival of the knock spell or a chime of opening.

 

[Zappo]

Just as easily for one player to have boots of flying, and fly backwards and forwards across the canyon, carrying his companions? Or a paladin to have a flying mount, or wings of flying, or gloves of climbing and swimming, or a spell of free action, teleport, dimension door,....

Boots of flying cost 16k. Wings of flying cost more than 50k. The gloves only give you a +5 bonus, and occupy the valuable gloves slot. Not all parties have paladins, and few paladins have a flying mount (they aren't even core). The spells are 4th level minimum, preventing many uses in the same day as it usually happens. Better not have horses if you're looking to ferry people around.

Comprehend languages is 1st level. Tongues is 3rd and it ends language-related problems; it doesn't give a +5, you don't need to carry people around, or to have a paladin with flying mount. Besides, with climb you climb everything, with speak language you can and will meet people whose language you don't know.

Now, I'm not saying that the movement-related skills are as good as Spot. They aren't the most useful skills, and enough magic will make them useless in many situations (in D&D, that's true of just about anything). However, that is hardly comparable to the almost total uselessness of speak language.

It is up to the DM to create situations where one character is eligible to communicate and the others are hindered. Just as most locks become minor hindrances with the arrival of the knock spell or a chime of opening.

I agree. Undoubtedly, the DM can make speak language useful by crafting an appropriate situation. That's not a proof that speak language is a useful skill. More the opposite, IMO.

 

[Rassilon]

Greetings All,

I run a Realms campaign, and I also wanted to "add value" to the language skills, without the incredible complication of removing common. Simple Solution: Comon is a trade/travel language only. No one writes notes, books, poetry - or prophecy in common, because there is basically no written common past trade notes or trail markers. Also, no one speaks Esperanto (who remembers Esperanto ?) at home rather than their own language - same with common. My PCs can effectively adventure, and have taken the trouble to be fluent and literate in some regional / civlized lnguages.

Rassilon.

 

[grodog]

IME, players take their bonus languages from high Int, then some casters take some outsider or elemental language, and that's about it. The reasons are that the bonus languages from high Int coupled with the racial free languages are enough to cover all common languages. In campaigns with lots of languages, I've noted that the skill becomes even less useful, and the result is that players just invest in tongues and comprehend languages magic.

Zappo's comment strikes me as pretty insightful: in the GH game in which we're playing 5th and 6th level PCs, languages play an important role in the campaign. That said, however, I don't think that any of our players have invested skill points into languages for their PCs; rather, all known "extra" languages have resulted from high INT bonuses.

Fact check: has everyone else thought about that? When we've all been talking about PC language usage and "skill point" investment, I've been thinking all along that our game fit the mold of those who advocate Speak Language as having a place in the game. However, if you strip out our PCs' high INT bonuses, we've spent nada on Speak Language....

 

[Sejs]

In the game that I run, PCs ... and only PCs, and then really only for sake of convienance... speak Common and whatever regional language is native to where they are from; Elvish, Halfling (Lem), any of the various human languages, etc. Half-X races get the benefit of 2 native languages.

Pretty much everyone else in the world speaks just their native language. If they have a positive int mod, or skill points to use to that end, then Common is a er.. common choice. But that int 10 innkeep in Sundolund - he doesn't speak Common. Neither does any of the staff there. Or any of the normal joe average patrons. They don't travel to other countries, and they've got more important things to spend their points on.. like handle animal and profession.

Speak Language is a worthwhile skill to have in my game, if you ever plan on leaving your home region.



As has been said above, the usefulness of Speak Language as a viable skill really depends on the DM.

 

[MerakSpielman]

Sounds like you're making common a language you need to spend skill points on for most of the population, except the PCs get it as a free bonus. Sounds ok to me.

 

[ergeheilalt]

As a DM, I have yet to really consider Speak Language. If anything this thread makes me want to go and revisit my language section and brew some up.

As a player, however, I usually don't bother with having an excessive number of know languages. I had a rogue at one point in time who had half of the list of languages in the PHB memorized. But most recently, it's been my Grey Elf transmutter/ek who has become a language fiend. Even with comprehend languages, he's managed to learn a few dead tongues, the racial langauages of the surrounding evirons, a few elemental languages (this guy is part of an elemental guild), and the halfling tongue to communicate in private with the party necromancer .

I look at languages as a flavor element. Naturally, your fighter types arn't going to place all their extra skill points in speak language, but I've found it useful for Bards, Rogues, and spellcasters to know a few extra languages from time to time.

Erge

 

[Turjan]

I don't have problems with Comprehend Languages. You cannot overhear conversations with ths spell, as you have to touch the creature you want to understand. Thus, no listening to goblin plans, or the wizard has to go upfront and shake hands with them . You cannot have conversations, because the spell does not allow you to speak the foreign language. This means, this spell is very limited in its use.
Of course, Tongues gets rid of these difficulties...

 

[Davelozzi]

Speak Language is not useless in my game. Like many others, I scrapped Common* and use a homebrew system for languages. It's fairly simple. You take ranks in languages but don't usually make skill checks. Here's the breakdown:

Speak Language:
1 rank - just the basics (where's the bathroom?)
2 ranks - can say most things, but conversations are slow and accent is heavy.
3 ranks - fluent, but you still have a slight accent if you're not native speaker
4 ranks or more - increased eloquence and loss of accent

Read Language:
1 rank makes you literate in that language at whatever level you can speak it.

Both skills are considered class skills so a rank is always one point. All characters start with free language-only skill points equal to twice their intelligence bonus.

*like Psion, I often treat "Common" as a placeholder for whatever the predominant local tongue is.