Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Nyeshet" data-source="post: 3112097" data-attributes="member: 18363">Personally, I think there should be a rule about reading - specifically that a PC with an Int lower than 8 cannot read unless they insist upon using 1 skill rank for learning the language (as with barbarians, but for a PC with a negative Int mod potentially far more costly). For a more realistic approach, languages should be made into normal skills. If languages were skills (with the home region language - or Common, if you prefer) having a +8 competence bonus to speech and a +4 competence bonus to literacy (Barbarians having a -4 compentence penalty, thus resulting in a net competence for literacy of 0), and requiring numerous ranks like ordinary skills, then I would suggest that every point below 10 place an automatic extra -1 incompetence penalty to literacy and every 2 points below 10 place an automatic extra -1 incompetence penalty to speech. Add to that a ruling that - outside of the Int modifier, if modifier result in 0 or negative for the speech or literacy, and if the PC has no ranks in the skill, then they cannot make use of it. Then the Int 6 PC would have a net 0 modifier for literacy (and, even if they were allowed to attempt reading, a -2 to their roll after the Int mod was applied), and only a +4 added to their roll when making Speech checks (+8 (comp) -2 (incomp) -2 (Int)). This would more closely approximate the extreme difficulty in communication one of that low level of Int would and should have.</blockquote>

Verification