Venture-Agent, Georgia—Atlanta
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There seems to have been some changes to the wording about what languages you can know, perhaps in version 8 or 7 of the Guide.
* If you boost your INT with a Headband, do you choose the new languages known from the (relatively restricted) list of starting languages knowable by your race? Or can you choose any language (including ancient ones), as if you had taken a rank in Linguistics?
* If the answer to this question means that a PC is no longer legal (e.g. they used their Headband to give themselves Azlanti but they should have been limited to modern-day languages), can we just swap out the illegal language for a legal one?
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1. I wasn't happy with the headband granting another language to begin with, as the item description says nothing about it. If it does, that is because it increases the character's INT, so the character gains a language that he could have taken with a higher INT. It definitely doesn't give you a rank in Linguistics for any purpose.
2. An illegal option is illegal, so there are no rules for what to do if you have it. You should correct your character to be legal for play.
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Yeah, if you accidentally did something not allowed by the rules you just adjust it as best you can, in this case either swapping a language or if said language is a cornerstone for something pop a skill point into linguistics
Mind you, thats a big IF in this case. There's a gray area around if this works, and there's no one below staff that's in charge of how exactly this rule would play out.
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Intelligence: If my Intelligence modifier increases, can I select another bonus language?
Yes. For example, if your Int is 13 and you reach level 4 and apply your ability score increase to Int, this increases your Int bonus from +1 to +2, which grants you another bonus language.
Technically, Int-enhancing items such as a headband of vast intelligence should grant a specific language (in the same way they do for skill ranks).
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As a PLAYER
The item ups your int. Your increased int, after 24 hours, is supposed to act identical to you always being that SMRT. Which would mean that it comes off of your bonus language list. If i get an int boosting item, that is how i play it. If i really want another language, i just put a point in linguistics and call it a day.
As a DM
I am participating in a shared campaign where 95% of all policing is self policing.
My arguments for the above are not raw.
My arguments above incredibly interpolative, which means they are very weak
Alternate mechanisms, such as a language being hard coded into the headband, are equally viable.
The power difference between getting a language and getting any non secret language is somewhere in the neighborhood of a picoharsk: too small to give a ... well harsk about.
Most importantly, given all of the above there is no reason to expect a player independant of me sitting over their shoulder to reach the same conclussion I Have about how the headband works. So i don't expect them to They bought the hat they picked a language lets get on with the adventuring.
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As a DMThe power difference between getting a language and getting any non secret language is somewhere in the neighborhood of a picoharsk: too small to give a ... well harsk about.
Most importantly, given all of the above there is no reason to expect a player independant of me sitting over their shoulder to reach the same conclussion I Have about how the headband works. So i don't expect them to They bought the hat they picked a language lets get on with the adventuring.
*fav'd* for 'picoharsk' unit of measure. That's going in ye olde lexicone...
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Venture-Agent, Georgia—Atlanta
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Thanks all for the very useful comments and suggestions. I started the thread because I noticed that I had several PCs with ancient languages known, not as a result of linguistics but as bonus languages due to high INT. I'm not sure if this used to be legal (I think so but not 100% sure) and then it changed and I missed it, or if I just goofed from the outset. I use Hero Lab for character building, which, as we all know, has plenty of mistakes, so it's possible that this is one of them.
In any case, in the course of looking through these PCs, I realized that some of them *also* had bonus languages from having a headband, and that these languages seemed to be drawn from the wide list of languages that a rank in Linguistics gives you. The FAQ that Ragoz quoted above is not completely clear to me on this point - it could mean: when you buy a headband you decide what language it contains (as with the skills that it boosts), or it could mean: the headband is increasing your INT, so you can choose from the languages that are INT-dependent.
I completely agree that this whole question ain't worth a picoharsk, and if it gets in the way of the bardic masterpieces faq getting answered, y'all can definitely blame me. ;-)
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The FAQ that Ragoz quoted above is not completely clear to me on this point - it could mean: when you buy a headband you decide what language it contains (as with the skills that it boosts), or it could mean: the headband is increasing your INT, so you can choose from the languages that are INT-dependent.
You decide what language it contains when you buy it. The language can be from any you could obtain with a rank of linguistics.
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I have a character that speaks like 35 languages with a primary focus on anything you might encounter in the Emerald aspire. (Still bummed that you can't get Aboleth,)
The Veiled Master from Inner Sea Bestiary knows Aboleth.
Pathfinder Campaign Setting: Inner Sea Bestiary
All languages found in this book are available for a character to learn with the Linguistics skill
Could be an oversight but is currently legal from that source.
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wait... if you only get racial languages when you put on a Headband of INT - then that would mean the language you get CHANGES from PC to PC? Hand the Headband off to a different PC and you get a different language?
Wow... not sure if I would be comfortable with that.
The language the headband grants should be fixed to the item, not dependent on the combination of Headband + Creature.
Though it could be funny if you had an animal companion with a headband who was able to speak ...what... Elk? or would it have to be Great Northern Elk?
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The problem with the headband being baked into the item is that found headbands would have to list a language with them. That would be a pain to track, and more importantly could result in redundant languages (which throws off your math AND deprives a player of something)
You could also use it as a cheap translating device. Which.. could be a feature or a flaw.
Either way gets you some weirdness.
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The problem with the headband being baked into the item is that found headbands would have to list a language with them. That would be a pain to track, and more importantly could result in redundant languages (which throws off your math AND deprives a player of something)
You could also use it as a cheap translating device. Which.. could be a feature or a flaw.
Either way gets you some weirdness.
do you mean... "The problem with the language being baked into the item ..."?
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The problem with the headband being baked into the item is that found headbands would have to list a language with them. That would be a pain to track, and more importantly could result in redundant languages (which throws off your math AND deprives a player of something)
You could also use it as a cheap translating device. Which.. could be a feature or a flaw.
Either way gets you some weirdness.
so... every time a different PC puts the Headband on it gives a different language? One that is an "allowed" language for that PC?
PC A (a Halfling) gets Gnome when she puts it on.
PC B (a Tengu) gets Tien.
PC C (an Ifrit) gets Aguan.
PC D (a Tiefling) gets Infernal.
wow... this "would be a pain to track".
would a different Halfling also get Gnome when they put it on?
Or would the language gained be unique to the PC?
Or would it be unique to the TIME the PC puts it on? so that each time a PC dons it they gain a choice of allowed languages?
edit: IMHO The problem with the language "being baked into the item" is MUCH less than the problems of languages NOT "being baked in". Balance found headbands would have to list a language with them vs. having to keep a list of what PC gets what language from which headband.
Heck - we already have magically resizing magic items and other weirdness... this is a very minor weirdness...
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Like i said, i don't know HOW it works. Maybe it helps you remember all the conversations in Sylvan your weird uncle had with the trees when you were a kid.
But as there's no reason i can't take one of my starting languages with the headband , there's no reason i can't have mine work the way I think it does, and yours can work the way you think it does.
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I was going to say, isn't there an FAQ about this.
Edit:
Yep, I remembered correctly.
Intelligence: If my Intelligence modifier increases, can I select another bonus language?
Yes. For example, if your Int is 13 and you reach level 4 and apply your ability score increase to Int, this increases your Int bonus from +1 to +2, which grants you another bonus language.
Technically, Int-enhancing items such as a headband of vast intelligence should grant a specific language (in the same way they do for skill ranks).
So, it grants a specific language.
Although, unclear what the source of the language can be. But the wording makes it seem like it wouldn't be limited by languages you race normally knows, it would be whatever language is attached to the headband.
So the question really becomes, what determines what language comes with a headband of int? Probably something to do with the individual that created the headband.
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I'm a little shocked how there is so much confusion still.Why should you be shocked? There are so many FAQ's and developer clarifications in an already very complicated game with many confusing rules interactions that I would be surprised that if these issues didn't occur.
Because the FAQ was the 5th post and the discussion kinda seemed to actively ignore what it said.
Edit:
Expect table variation
You cause incredible pressure to build in the target’s head; this spell works only on a creature that has a head and would die from the loss of a head. The spell kills any such target that has 20 hit points or fewer, exploding its head and spreading debris in a 10-foot radius.
Each poster in the area must succeed at a Reflex saving throw or take 2d6 points of slashing damage from the flying debris.
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Intelligence: If my Intelligence modifier increases, can I select another bonus language?
Yes. For example, if your Int is 13 and you reach level 4 and apply your ability score increase to Int, this increases your Int bonus from +1 to +2, which grants you another bonus language.
Technically, Int-enhancing items such as a headband of vast intelligence should grant a specific language (in the same way they do for skill ranks).
****
..which just confuses me. If i do the confused dog headtilt left its parses to "it grants you another bonus language (off your racial list), even though it SHOULD have a specific language on it"
and if i confused dog headtilt right it parses to "it grants a language and we really should have listed which one with every int booster but we've been slacking"
and if i confused dog headtilt right again, i get dizzy, fall down, and don't care.
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Additional languages must be hard-wired into a headband, just like skills. If you craft, or have crafted, a headband, you get to pick the additional languages, just like you get to pick the skills. If you buy a pre-made headband, the languages and skills should either be randomly determined or flavorfully-selected by the GM. At no point does a PC get to plop a headband on and decide which language he/she "learns" any more than he/she gets to pick his/her new skills. This is to prevent players form passing the same headband around, or one person taking it off and putting it back on again, and picking just the right skill or language for a situation (plus the fact that it takes 24-hours to "attune" to a new wearer).
All this comes from back in the Alpha days. There was a lot of discussion about how headbands worked back in 3.5, because in 3.5 it worked more like Con increases where you just got retroactive HP for every level, you would just get retroactive skill points and you could add them to whatever skill or skills you wanted. It was messy, and it made stating up higher-level PCs and NPCs difficult. So the decision was made from Alpha to Beta to just assign a specific skill to each +2 of a headband at creation, to "hard-wire" the skill increases. That's why they aren't cumulative; if you have 5 ranks of Stealth, and you're 10th level, and you get a headband (Stealth), you don't get 10 more ranks, or 5 ranks of Stealth and 5 points to spend elsewhere, you get 10 ranks of Stealth that overlay the 5 ranks you already had.
Once Beta was around, folks asked "What about languages?" The developers' answer was that you only get bonus languages for Intelligence at character creation:
You apply your character's Intelligence modifier to:
• The number of bonus languages your character knows at the start of the game. These are in addition to any starting racial languages and Common. If you have a penalty, you can still read and speak your racial languages unless your Intelligence is lower than 3.
Personally, I didn't like that; I figure that if you get smarter, you can learn another language (and I think this hews closer to the easier-to-build-high-level-NPCs goal), but it's not the RAW. By RAW, you only get additional languages at character creation.
So, no, you don't get additional languages because your character gets smarter from a headband. If you want to justify granting extra languages through headbands - and the RAW is silent on this - your most logical, most consistent bet is to handle it just like skills and have additional languages be hard-wired into the headbands.
(And to the OP's original question about ancient languages, I actually think that makes a lot of sense. If you're a wizard who's going to craft a headband to make yourself smarter than the way-smart you probably already are, you're not going to waste the effort to hard-wire Goblin into it, or Undercommon. I'd expect the wizard to put something weird and, to her, useful, like Auran or Infernal or Thasselonian, something that a normal PC probably couldn't just learn on the streets.)
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So, no, you don't get additional languages because your character gets smarter from a headband. If you want to justify granting extra languages through headbands - and the RAW is silent on this - your most logical, most consistent bet is to handle it just like skills and have additional languages be hard-wired into the headbands.
This is objectively wrong per the faq quoted above.
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Interesting. The FAQ contradicts what the developers said way-back-when, when they pointed me to the bit I cited from the description of Intelligence. But that's fine with me. Like I said, I disagreed with what the developers said then and like the FAQ better. Either way, though, headbands should have their languages hard-wired just like skills.
BTW - I did a quick search of a bunch of Paizo books and modules. I found about 20 examples of headbands of vast intelligence. Only 3 listed specific skills, and we KNOW those are hard-wired. None listed specific languages, but my assumption is that it's just too ticky-tacky and a waste of word-count for most authors to worry about it. And the RAW technically doesn't say they give bonus languages. We're all just extrapolating that they should. And it would be weird if one bonus (skills) was hard-wired, and one (languages) was up for player choice.
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here's a fun one to consider...
this Headband of INT (+2) gives ranks in Linguistics... and I'm 5th level, so does that mean I get 5 languages learned? would my buddy (also 5th level) also get 5 new languages? are they the same ones that I get when I put the headband on? What if she knows some of those already - does she get different ones or just "knows that language twice as good"? If she gives it back and I put it back on - do I get the SAME 5 languages I got the first time... so many issues with this magic item. It's making my head hurt.
Time to brake out the Nerf Bat!
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After 24hrs you will gain maxed linguistics and gain a number of new languages equal to the difference between your HD and your current ranks. These are different from person to person and independent of the additional language it grants for a higher int score. You can choose new languages after wearing them item again for 24hrs.
After being worn for 24 hours, the headband grants a number of skill ranks in those skills equal to the wearer’s total Hit Dice. These ranks do not stack with the ranks a creature already possesses.
Learn a Language: Whenever you put a rank into this skill, you learn to speak and read a new language.
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And the RAW technically doesn't say they give bonus languages. We're all just extrapolating that they should
Intelligence: If my Intelligence modifier increases, can I select another bonus language?
Yes. For example, if your Int is 13 and you reach level 4 and apply your ability score increase to Int, this increases your Int bonus from +1 to +2, which grants you another bonus language.
Technically, Int-enhancing items such as a headband of vast intelligence should grant a specific language (in the same way they do for skill ranks).
That is not extrapolation. The headband that increases your intelligence is not only increasing your int modifier, it's specifically called out by name as something that grants a bonus language. I know you disagree with that but you cannot plausibly cite ambiguity here.
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I recall a recent thread asking what would happen if a Tengu put one of those on, since they learn two languages for every rank in Linguistics.
In keeping with the "It's not you, it's the item" reasoning I'd have to say that those ranks grant the same languages (and number of languages) to everyone equally.
Map them out to 20, I suppose. Then whoever wears it knows what they get.
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I recall a recent thread asking what would happen if a Tengu put one of those on, since they learn two languages for every rank in Linguistics.
In keeping with the "It's not you, it's the item" reasoning I'd have to say that those ranks grant the same languages (and number of languages) to everyone equally.
Map them out to 20, I suppose. Then whoever wears it knows what they get.
Hmmmm. So sorely tempted now.
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If the language is chosen upon purchase and is baked into the headband, it should be any legal language you want.
If the language is chosen by whomever puts the headband on once it becomes a permanent bonus, then it should come off the list of available bonus languages for the character's race (plus any extra available per the Guide.)
Seems the FAQ conflicts with itself as to which it should be.
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The rules I cited suggest the wearer picks the linguistics skill rank granted languages but not the language tied to the increase in INT.
Issue 1) does the headband (with linguistics ranks) grant the same languages if you remove it, then put it back on. Or can you switch out to different languages each time?
Issue 2) If the PC has ranks in Linguistics BEFORE they put on the Headband (with linguistics ranks) - are the Languages gained from those ranks suppressed while the PC has the Headband-w-L-R on? Or is he "locked" into those Languages for each rank?
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Is the only instance of a "bonus" language the bonus languages you receive at character creation, that are tied to your race? Or is it possible to have different bonuses? If the former (which I think unlikely) then the FAQ suggests that yes, there's a limited pool of choices here depending on your race. If it's the latter, the the use of the word "bonus" in the FAQ is not a reference to additional languages at character creation and is merely a common-English usage meaning "extra." I favour the latter interpretation, which if nothing else is cleaner and more simple.
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Is the only instance of a "bonus" language the bonus languages you receive at character creation, that are tied to your race? Or is it possible to have different bonuses? If the former (which I think unlikely) then the FAQ suggests that yes, there's a limited pool of choices here depending on your race. If it's the latter, the the use of the word "bonus" in the FAQ is not a reference to additional languages at character creation and is merely a common-English usage meaning "extra." I favour the latter interpretation, which if nothing else is cleaner and more simple.
I believe the only "bonus" terminology used for languages, are the languages you get during character creation based on your starting INT and Race. As such, when using the term "Bonus", it most likely is referring to that small list of languages.
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Seems unduly restrictive to me. The usual PRD definition of "bonus" cannot be applied here, so I think we have to rely upon the everyday use of the word in English as meaning something extra or additional.
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Seems unduly restrictive to me. The usual PRD definition of "bonus" cannot be applied here, so I think we have to rely upon the everyday use of the word in English as meaning something extra or additional.
I disagree, but not strongly so. I think when you look at things like this, you have to look at precedent. Where else does Bonus show up with Language. Well as far as I know (and I'm not 100% sure because Paizo has a habit of re-using terms in weird locations that just muddies the water--a lot) that's the only place those two terms show up together.
Therefore, I think its save to assume that they are referring to the list of bonus languages each race has access to.
I also don't feel this is restrictive either (especially for int bumps from leveling up).
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The rules I cited suggest the wearer picks the linguistics skill rank granted languages but not the language tied to the increase in INT.Issue 1) does the headband (with linguistics ranks) grant the same languages if you remove it, then put it back on. Or can you switch out to different languages each time?
Issue 2) If the PC has ranks in Linguistics BEFORE they put on the Headband (with linguistics ranks) - are the Languages gained from those ranks suppressed while the PC has the Headband-w-L-R on? Or is he "locked" into those Languages for each rank?
Already answered above.
Also people are going way off again. The FAQ is quite clear the language granted from the bonus to intelligence on the headband is a language selected from languages available from a skill rank in linguistics and is then tied to the item.