Before my suggestion, a little history: A while back -- oh, heck, months, maybe even a year, I bumped into a thread that started when someone asked about different ways a character could or couldn't coerce a Druid into revealing their secret language, and what sort of pitfalls and ramifications there would be (short version: Bad Idea, in caps). Along the way someone made the suggestion, why not just take a level of Druid to gain the language? Of course that would work, and I don't honestly recall where that train of thought went.
Now I don't know why this idea popped into my head this weekend, months later, that's just the way my brain works. I got to thinking, well, what if that's not what the GM wants? I know, technically, it's perfectly within the rules. But it may not be appropriate for the campaign, and it does smack of... well, you know... *whispers* munchkinism. I mean, it's like taking your kid to the Shriners Circus and that's enough to be allowed into the highest levels of the Masons, and made a Templar and told where the Ark of the Covenant is an... I kid. Really. Please don't send the Illuminati after me.
But my point is, if you want to really take the whole exclusive/secretive/hierarchical nature of the Druid class,then taking a level of the class just to gain the language is muy quesorifico. If you disagree, or want to argue the validity of doing so, fine. The rest of my post will bore you. But if you want to limit that sort of thing, without resorting to the time-honored "No! BAD player! BAD!" method, you might want to try the following house rule.
The rule is based on the description of druidic society, along with my own experience with language and parenting (what are we doing for his b-i-r-t-h-d-a-y?).
Here's the idea: The Druidic language is incredibly complex, with many layers of hidden meanings, multiple terms for the same concepts and objects, subtle nuances, secret words, etc., and a Druid spend her whole life learning it. For that reason, treat the Druid language as a regular skill, not a language skill. The skill is a Wisdom-based skill, and is considered a class skill. A character's ranks in the skill do not cost any skill points and are equal to her levels in the Druid class, they cannot be increased by any other method. The Druid uses the Druidic Language skill in the following ways:
1) Druids can speak to each other in the Druidic Language, as per the standard rules for a language.
2) When Druids meet each other, they use the Druidic Language skill instead of Diplomacy to determine reaction to each other.
3) Druids can use the complexity of their language to exclude lower ranking Druids from the conversation. When speaking among other Druids, the Druidic Language skill is used in place of the Bluff and Sense Motive skills for the purpose of sending, receiving, and intercepting secret messages.
This would be a good house rule for a campaign in which the language of the druids plays a large role.
For a typical campaign, multiclassing just to learn a seldom-used language would be a significant disadvantage to the character, so I would be happy to reward the player with a secret here and there. Also, I've run campaigns before in which the society of druids included many multi-classed NPCs. Much like the Illuminati, or the Masons, they had followers in all walks of life, secretly infiltrating the government, the military, business, etc.
Just a moment, someone just knocked on my dofaj;owowowowowowowoweffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff
This would be a good house rule for a campaign in which the language of the druids plays a large role.
For a typical campaign, multiclassing just to learn a seldom-used language would be a significant disadvantage to the character, so I would be happy to reward the player with a secret here and there. Also, I've run campaigns before in which the society of druids included many multi-classed NPCs. Much like the Illuminati, or the Masons, they had followers in all walks of life, secretly infiltrating the government, the military, business, etc.
Just a moment, someone just knocked on my dofaj;owowowowowowowoweffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff
Well, yeah, it's definitely a setting-dependent HR. The other way to treat it would be to remove the language from the Druid's class features, and then treat the Druidic hierarchy the way some of the 3.x supplements (like Song & Silence) did secret societies, where there are membership requirements and perks to membership, and the language is a perk.