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Message: <blockquote data-quote="wingsandsword" data-source="post: 2203619" data-attributes="member: 14159">I'm quite proud that I've managed to make languages quite useful in my game, and encouraged PC's to actually buy ranks in Language skills.First, I made extensive use out of the "Regional" languages of Forgotten Realms; Midani, Chondathan, Damaran, ect.  Everyday conversations are normally spoken in these languages, locals, rulers, guards and such will use this language first unless they have reason not to."Common" is a mish-mash pigdin of some interrelated regional human languages, with loanwords and expressions copied or translated from various other languages, and largely "dumbed down" with a relatively small vocabulary set.  It's used by travellers, traders and such when there is no other common language, but nobody speaks it as a first language or if there is a better language to use.Then there are the planar languages, like the 4 Elemental tongues, Celestial, Abyssal, Infernal, which are spoken on the outer planes and are the same everywhere, including other material worlds.  Racial languages like Sylvan, Elven and Draconic are also largely standard thanks to racial deities and outsiders who maintain some central unity, although they have a lot of local dialects and accents.The PC's need to know local languages to fit in seamlessly.  If they want to address the Court of a kingdom, they better do it in the local language, or there's a -4 penalty on interaction checks for the faux-pas (and a -2 penalty for using Tongues, see below).  If they want to pass themselves off as a local, or infiltrate a base (like they tried in their last adventure), if they don't know the local language it's going to be trouble.  They can speak in Common and be understood, but instantly give themselves away as foriegner.I assume the Tongues spell works effectively like dubbing a movie or TV show, you hear what they are saying in a similar voice that is well translated, but the lips don't sync up and some fine points of language might be lost if the concept doesn't translate, and it works both ways since others will see your lips moving out-of-sync with what you're saying and while they can generally understand you, occasionally a nuance or detail of what you're saying will be lost.Comprehend Languages I assume works perfectly, you can innately understand what's being communicated and get all the subtleties you might not normally even have words for, of course, you can't communicate the depth of it to others with languages you know, and you can't hold a conversation with it, but it's great for reading ancient texts and overhearing things.I also let players make Intelligence checks after they've been immersed in a language for a while to try and figure out, very roughly, what's being said or written, with bonuses if they know a closely related language, and penalties if it's wildly different from anything they know.  They still need to spend skill points to become truly skilled with the language though.</blockquote>

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