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Using my 10th level Truespeaker Aasimar as a template:
Ancient: Ancient Thassilonian, Ancient Osiriani, Ancient Azlanti (Cyclops, Jistka and Tekritanin options as well)
Regional: Tien, Polyglot, Shoanti, Kelish, Skald, Varisian, Hallit, (Osiriani not taken)
Racial: Elven, Dwarven, Giant, Goblin, Orc (Halfling and Gnoll are options but I've not taken them)
Elemental: Aquan, Auran, Ignan, Terran
Planar: Celestial, Abyssal, Infernal
Other: Common, Sylvan, Aklo, Necril, Undercommon, Draconic
The ones I've seen come up the most (not in this order) are Thassilonian, Azlanti, Osiriani (Ancient mostly), Sylvan, Aklo, Undercommon, Draconic, the 4 elemental languages, Tien, Hallit, Abyssal, Infernal and Celestial.
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The value of languages is also going to depend a fair bit on scenario choices, character choices, and GMs.
Some GMs, for example, are fairly liberal with handing out a circumstance bonus for talking to people in their own language. Others, not so much.
If your character has knowledges (especially history) then the languages of the various ancient civilizations will help both mechanically and from a role playing perspective. If the character shmoozes a lot then living languages are more useful,
If you're playing a lot of Season 8 then the elemental languages will come up a lot.
Having an obscure language shared by a lot of the group can be very useful
Personally, I mostly take the languages that just make sense to me from a character point of view and don't particularly worry about how useful it will be. Languages are rarely all THAT important in a world with comprehend languages, share language and tongue spells. Together with familiars with telepathy etc.
Fortunately, even people from other planes or who have been dead for thousands of years speak Taldane most of the time :-) :-)
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Depending on your character's theme some languages might be more important than others.
• My Shoanti character, being flavored as a Quah intermediary, needed to know the Northern languages (Erutaki, Shoanti, Hallit, Skald, Varisian, Giant and Goblin).
• My summoning focused Druid needed to know the Elemental languages (Auran, Aquan, Ignan and Terran) so he could communicate with his summons.
• My Summoner will similarly be learning the Planar languages (Elemental plus Infernal, Abyssal an Celestial) to communicate with her summons.
• My Witch with the Time Patron needed to know the Ancient languages (Thassilonian, Ancient Osiriani, Azlanti, Cyclops, Jistkan and Tekritanin).
So while some languages might come up more often than others, if your character is flavored as being a regional specialist, it would probably mean more to them to speak their relevant languages instead.
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The most important language to know isn't part of some Top Ten or Top Fifteen list.
...it's the language that your party doesn't know when exploring an ancient ruin and trying to figure things out about it...
...it's the language no one speaks while trying to negotiate with an opponent...
...it's the language that everyone *was* going to take, but either ran out of languages and/or it never seemed to have much use.
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The most important language to know isn't part of some Top Ten or Top Fifteen list.
...it's the language that your party doesn't know when exploring an ancient ruin and trying to figure things out about it...
...it's the language no one speaks while trying to negotiate with an opponent...
...it's the language that everyone *was* going to take, but either ran out of languages and/or it never seemed to have much use.
...so...Dark Folk. Check.
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If you can cast Summon Monster or Summon Nature's Ally 2+, be sure to get Aquan, Terran, Auran and maybe Ignan, in about that order. Summoned elementals can do all kinds of useful stuff if you can communicate.
I think I would move Terran into the first slot, if only because of the times enemy spell casters summon Earth Elementals...
PC #1 to newly summoned earth elemental: "so, Rocky, we meet again?!"
Rocky: "Ha! You again?! What is dis, like 2 times this week?" Takes swing, misses...
PC #1: "Yeah, been busy lately." Uses wand to cast Prot. Evil, "And how's your lady? and the little one... Chip isn't it?"
Rocky: "You still got dat wand t'ing? T'aught iddud be use't up by now... Chip's doing ok, starting up his own Rock Band!" moves on to attack another PC.
PC #1: "Hay! that's great! always good to have an artist in the family." glances down at wand in hand, and following Rocky to the next PC to tap him with the wand, "Well, it does come with 50 charges - and I don't get much use out of it any more, what with moving on to Year of the Serpent and not so much World Wound stuff..."
PC #2: "Dang it! Would you stop chatting up everything we meet?! That's the problem with having a Exchange Linguist Bard in the group... changing every good fight into a 'diplomacy encounter'... "
Rocky: "sheesh, w'at's wid dis guy? 'E's way to serious!"
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The Pathfinder Society has enough people who know Ancient Osiriani to supplant the more modern version entirely.
I have a Scarab Sage character that I'm building toward Living Monolith, who started with Ancient Osiriani thanks to a faction trait. In one recent scenario, he actually had to make a Linguistics check for *modern* Osiriani (though with a bonus for knowing the ancient form), so I bought that language for him as one as he leveled again--he is Osiriani, after all. Neferanu also knows Sphinx solely in order to qualify for the prestige class; I will be *ecstatic* if he ever gets to use it during play.
My wife's tengu archivist bard is attempting to learn every PFS-legal human and ancient language. At 4th level, I think she's missing only 4.
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Having an obscure language shared by a lot of the group can be very useful
In my experience with PFS, you're highly unlikely to have more than 2 PCs per table with the same obscure language, but this idea can VERY useful in a home game when you're adventuring with the same people from session to session. (In my last Freeport game, we had 2 undines, and everyone else either chose Aquan at 1st level or learned it as soon as they could.)
My wife and I have a couple pairs of characters who share one or more non-native languages. The first pair are the two I mentioned in my last post; I was requesting Osirion scenarios because of my proto-monolith, and her bard has played most of the same adventures because that was the low-level PC she was advancing at the time. The other pair are half-siblings (one half-elf, one half-orc) who we deliberately designed to play together; they both know Halfling, the language of their adoptive parents, and intend to learn each other's native racial language at 2nd level.
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Venture-Lieutenant, Minnesota—Minneapolis
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Having an obscure language shared by a lot of the group can be very usefulIn my experience with PFS, you're highly unlikely to have more than 2 PCs per table with the same obscure language, but
Share Language can fix that.
Well, my first Pathfinder game was the Iron Gods campaign. I was the only one in my party who was able to speak Androffan. Came in handy a few times until the game had to be cancelled.
I like to make characters just to make characters and I tend to default to core race languages when I'm filling out the sheet. I'll switch them out if I feel I need to when I start that character in a game.
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When I play a character who is going to have a lot of languages I tend to go for regional languages first so they can speak and be social whatever country they're in. From there I start looking at the traditional race languages.
Tim: I'm in a home game right now where everyone took Sphinx as our obscure language to communicate in, and it's been pretty effective. Very amusing when we ran into a sphinx as well.
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Tim: I'm in a home game right now where everyone took Sphinx as our obscure language to communicate in, and it's been pretty effective. Very amusing when we ran into a sphinx as well.
This is best when you fail to identify the sphinx, it asks why you speak its language, and you deduce in-character that this must be a sphinx because of that.
"Oh crap, it understands us!"
"It must be a sphinx! What do we know about sphinx?"
"That they speak sphinx!"
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@Muse: I love the story, but I don't think Protection From Evil works against earth elementals. Elementals don't have the * in the Summon Monster table to make it take on your alignment and PfE only works on evil summoned creatures.
LOL! Ouch. My age is showing.
"Protection from...." spells used to prevent contact from any Summoned being, but I guess that has changed in Pathfinder (it's only been what, nine-ten years or so now? I'm still getting the changes strait!). Ah well...
THanks for the correction. I'll need to come up with something else to protect from Summoned creatures I guess....
Maybe Rocky is Evil? Who would have known - a nice family man/creature like that...
Venture-Lieutenant, Florida—Jacksonville
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Hhmmm my Seeker Aasimar Paladin/Swashbuckler has tried to get everything remotely tied to the emerald spire and go from there..
She speaks: Abyssal, Aklo, Ancient Osiriani, Aquan, Auran, Azlanti, Celestial, Common, Cyclops, Daemonic, Draconic, Dwarven, Elder Thing, Elven, Giant, Gnome, Goblin, Halfling, Hallit, Ignan, Infernal, Kelish, Orc, Orvian, Osiriani, Polyglot, Protean, Shoanti, Skald, Sylvan, Terran, Thassilonian, Tien, Undercommon, Varisian
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Well, if parrots can do it, somehow, I guess tengus can fake it too?
I was trying to make a character from the depths of Casmaron, and discovered that we don't have a lot of tools to do it with. That's unfortunate! Since I'd already done all the work, I made a list of PFS-legal languages though, to supplement the wiki. It's hard to figure out from the wiki what's legal and what's not.
(Feedback appreciated on the list, by the way.)
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Venture-Agent, Oregon—Portland
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Thank you all for the advice/suggestions. Working with +4 int and Linguistics for every level so I have a lot of slots for languages, wanted to know if there were some that would be niche enough that others wouldn't have but not so niche ( finger tapping) that it would NEVER be used.
Undercommon! It seemed like a natural choice for my first character, since she's a dwarf with a background in Darklands commerce, and I've been surprised to discover since how rarely it comes up and how few characters know it. But it has come up, and it was extremely useful when it did.
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Venture-Lieutenant, Netherlands—Leiden
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I'll pick languages either based on character background ("I have Wayang Spellhunter? I better learn Wayang or Minatan, and Tien"), or on usefulness ("I summon monsters? Better learn Terran, Earth Glide is better if you can tell the elemental what to do with it")
The languages that I've found to be good are:
- Terran: the elemental species with the most useful ability (earthglide) for setting up flanks and pincer movements. Also for telling them to do a bullrush.
- Auran: during the Tyranny of Winds trilogy.
- Ignan: sometimes used by bad guys to be edgy, especially Moloch cults.
- Tien: good chance of your fellow PCs having it and therefore sharing a secret language.
- Ancient Osirian: there's still a whole faction dedicated to this.
- Undercommon: sometimes opens up diplomatic options, not all darklands creatures speak common.
- Sylvan: also opens up diplomatic avenues, and sometimes gives bonuses during social conflict resolution.
- Abyssal: can sometimes figure out what's going on somewhere, what evil runes mean and such.
- Aklo: likewise
Languages that have proven surprisingly little useful:
- Celestial: most higher beings have truespeech or telepathy.
- Infernal: most social devils can speak your language or telepathy
- Draconic: the dragons mostly got left behind in D&D and it doesn't seem to be the "language of magic" so much in PF.
- Elvish, Dwarven: PFS focuses more on humans
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In my experience with PFS, you're highly unlikely to have more than 2 PCs per table with the same obscure language, butShare Language can fix that.
I'd forgotten about that spell when I posted, and my wife's tengu bard even knows it. But I think she has the only character among the local regulars who has advertised that they can cast it.
Tim: I'm in a home game right now where everyone took Sphinx as our obscure language to communicate in, and it's been pretty effective. Very amusing when we ran into a sphinx as well.
I'll repeat: I will be ecstatic if Neferanu's knowledge of Sphinx ever becomes useful for something other than a mere prereq for the prestige class he wants! Ecstatic, I say!