Tongue of the Sun and Moon, Monk Ability

[Tetsubo]

This Extraordinary Ability lets a Monk of 17th level speak to any living thing. Which is darn cool. But it has brought up a couple of questions for me:

Can a Monk with this ability speak to Undead when they do not share a common language?

If a Monk is speaking to a crowd of living beings, do they all "hear" his speech as being in their native tongue?

 

[AuraSeer]

The ability does not work with undead, because they are not living things.

The rules don't specify exactly how the ability works, so it's up to the DM to decide. One option is that each listener hears his own native tongue. Another is that the monk speaks in a unique, strange language, but listeners find they can understand him anyway.

 

[Christian]

Personally, I mentally add to this ability, " ... as if continuously under the effects of Tongues, Speak With Animals, and Speak with Plants spells."

Not quite RAW, but easy to adjudicate ...

 

[RangerWickett]

And now I must risk offending the grandma.

I was running a silly little game where the party members were 20th level goblins, trying to kill the evil forest witch (a 15th level nymph druid). At one point the nymph trapped the goblin monk in a wall of thorns. He started shouting:

[sblock]"Let me out, stupid bush! Hey nymph, I'm using my tongue of the sun and the moon in your bush. I'm tonguing your bush! Stupid bush."[/sblock]

Thankfully the goblin rogue had incendiary grenades, so they were able to burn the monk free.

Later in the adventure they were all shrunk to be an inch high, and were trapped in the nymph's hut. The nymph wanted to defeat her enemies, but she didn't want to kill them, so she kept a small colony of inch-high goblins that had attacked her. The party spoke with the other goblins and learned that the exit was guarded by a fierce dragon.

So out they set, to liberate their allies. They reach the edge of the hut and get to the door. The sun is shining from outside, casting the shadow of something horrifying and huge on the ground. As they approach, it notices them and twitches, then roars:

"Meowwww!"

From around the corner stalks the Dragon - a tabby cat that is, for all the goblins care, a colossal creature. Anyone want to guess the monk started talking about as they fought the pussy cat?