Linguist Talent

[Achan hiArusa]

Okay, I was playing a game where we were playing with the gestalt rules. Everyone had to pick a Modern class and a D&D class to gestalt. But that wasn't the problem.

The problem came in when I my 3/3 barbarian/tough hero dworg (race toned down from Midnight) who knew "modern" dwarvish could not even pick out a few concepts from "ancient" dwarvish. The argument used by the DM and our ancient languages guy (who has studied Greek and Hebrew but the only modern language he knows is English) was that for me to do so would step on the tail of the Smart Hero's Linguist Talent. Of course our ancient languages guy had some argument about how lingustic drift would prevent me from understanding. But I myself know some Spanish and I can pick out a few halting concepts from other Romance languages, also I can also pick out a few things from German and Old and Middle English. I wouldn't have argued if the dwarves spoke Draconic, but they spoke a language related to one I spoke and I still believe that I should have gotten an Int check to understand at least a few fricking nouns or verbs somewhere in there.

I just feel that if the Linguist talent didn't exist I would have gotten something from what they were saying. Its a case of an existing rule getting in the way of common sense. Heck, Champions and Shadowrun have rules about using a different language to determine something about a related language.

 

[JPL]

GM's call, and he made it.

Maybe Ancient Dwarven is...well, REALLY ancient. Latin is not all that old by the standards of the dwarves, who in most campaign worlds stretch back tens of thousands of years.

 

[Achan hiArusa]

Linguistic Drift

As linguistic drift is 10% per 1000 years, that means I would have a 0% chance if it was more than 10,000 years difference. However, the way the campaign is set up, it was not that far in the past when the ancient dwarves had split from the modern dwarves.

As for GMs call, yes I'll accept it because of its his game, but I have never accepted that excuse from anybody, even when I was 8 years old and a teacher told me "because I'm a teacher." But then again, I am a scientist now and I am encouraged to think that way.

 

[JPL]

As linguistic drift is 10% per 1000 years, that means I would have a 0% chance if it was more than 10,000 years difference. However, the way the campaign is set up, it was not that far in the past when the ancient dwarves had split from the modern dwarves.

As for GMs call, yes I'll accept it because of its his game, but I have never accepted that excuse from anybody, even when I was 8 years old and a teacher told me "because I'm a teacher." But then again, I am a scientist now and I am encouraged to think that way.

Thing is, I don't know that your rule regarding linguistic drift would necessarily apply to an imaginary culture. Laws of biology and physics are often different --- why not linguistics, too?

Admittedly, though, one would think that extremely long-lived, tradition-minded creatures would not drift so far so fast.

But I'm a lawyer, not a scientist, and therefore I'm accustomed to having a judge make the ultimate call on all sorts of things, my clever arguments notwithstanding. And the GM is, among other things, a sort of a judge.