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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Raduin711" data-source="post: 7930839" data-attributes="member: 15303">So I had this idea on the way home from D&D tonight. In D&D, languages for the most part aren't terribly useful. Your GM might give you a hand out that's in Dwarvish or Abyssal or something like that, and either A) one of your characters speaks it, so the GM hands over the translation, or B) you are forced to burn a comprehend languages or similar magic so that you know the thing and the campaign can progress.It rarely interferes with your ability to interact with NPC's because Common is so widespread there is rarely an excuse to need one, and even if you did, all it would do is bog the game down- so DM's are typically going to avoid putting the players in situations where they need to talk to someone who can't speak common.My idea is to instead use languages like cultural proficiencies. In 3.5 edition, we had Knowledge: Local, but no such proficiency exists any longer. Languages would then work like a specialized version of Knowledge: Local, (in addition to allowing you to speak their native tongue.)My justification here is that in order to fully learn a language, you generally have to immerse yourself in its culture as well. I can foresee a few hiccups though...<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Common. Having the Common language implies a proficiency in a sort of universal culture which... the existence of which is debatable. And if it does exist, then why should anyone have to roll this, seeing as it is so universal? And then you might have players who might misuse it, think it's like Kn: Local (Everybody) which defeats the purpose of the exercise.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Humans. Humans have no language other than common. One solution is to treat Common proficiency as Kn: Local (Humans), which means that everyone has knowledge of human culture. Whether this is acceptable kind of depends on how big your world is. In a Points of Light scenario, this might not seem unreasonable, since the world is so tiny. In a setting with multiple nations and cultures (Forgotten Realms, Eberron, Greyhawk...) everyone having knowledge of every nations' cultures might be a bit of a stretch.</li> </ul>My solution here would be to break the common language down into regions. A lot of campaign settings include lists of regional dialects already, so every race would pick one of those. This regional dialect would get you access to the Common language, which is still universal, and allow you to make checks pertaining to that particular region's culture.For example, an Elven character might have Common (Calimshan) and Elvish, and a Dwarf might have Common (Tethyrian) and Dwarven. The Elf and Dwarf would be able to communicate with one another through their common tongues, but only the Elf could would get the bonus to knowledge of Calimshan culture.<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Shared Languages. A lot of languages are shared between different races and subraces that may or may not deserve to be shared under this system. On one hand this may be a feature rather than a bug. Giving a dwarf insight into Azers seems kind of cool, but what about, Deep Speech which is shared between Mind Flayers and Beholders, Giant which is shared between Ogres and Giants, Goblinoids (so many!) Sylvan, Infernal, Celestial, Abyssal which cover some very, very exotic creatures. I can't make up my mind whether these need to be broken up somehow similar to how common is broken up into different cultures or whether to leave things as they are.</li> </ul>I think these languages could also be treated similar to common. When learning Giant you might have to choose between Ogres and Giants, for example. But then again, maybe this isn't such a bad thing? There are some languages that I feel should be treated like latin: more of a theoretical, academic understanding of a language than real cultural insight.<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Undercommon. Unlike Common which has the benefit of humans being the primary speaker, there is no race that Undercommon ties itself to. This means that taking undercommon either doesn't give you any cultural knowledge (just a lingua franca for underground peoples) or it could apply to all of them, which might be problematic? </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Creature Cataloguing. In our 3.5 games we often used the various knowledge skills as a way to probe the GM about various monsters' abilities and weaknesses. 5th edition seems to have done away with that which I am kind of thankful for, and I wouldn't want to see a knowledge of Abyssal turn into a knowledge check to tell me what weaknesses a Kyton has. </li> </ul></blockquote>

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