New language: Thieve's Cant


Homebrew and House Rules


Thieve's Cant is a secret language that all rogues learn at level 1. It is a communicated through spoken slang, written symbols, and hand signals. Used in the criminal underworld of cities, it varies a little from location to location but has enough similarity that all speakers can understand each other. Communicating complex and lengthy concepts not related to criminal activity is beyond its scope.

It cannot be learned as a bonus language due to high intelligence. With your GM's permission, it may be learned by other character classes, such as investigators and vigilantes, by putting a rank into Linguistics or through feats like Cosmopolitan.


Honestly I though this was already a thing.


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Yeah. You can already do that with Bluff.


Most pro players immediately set up a special secret message language that only they know; though I'm pretty sure creating entire separate language would require a DC50 linguistic check.

Sczarni RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32

Thieves cant has a long storied history in RPGs. Been around for decades in dozens of rules. I seem to recall someone from the design team at PaizoCon said they didn't want to include it.

Just learn Canto. Better than thieve's cant because it's not a spoken language.


Sounds a lot like the Innuendo skill from D&D 3.0. You might want to read over Innuendo and see if any of its features can be useful. Personally I won't let any classes learn Theve's Cant for free, but if they want it they can learn it with a point in Linguistics. This language should probably also popular for enforcement NPCs to take.

Verdant Wheel

Sounds good to me.

Though it is not a "new" language - been around DnD for awhile.

Are you running Linguistics by the book, then?


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Rogues (who can be local thugs, government agents, independent cat buglers, escaped slaves or just crafty pragmatists) automatically knowing a single language was weird in 1E and it would be weird now. Situations like an assassin's disguising himself as a thief failing because he doesn't know it (actually a printed solution to exposing him in an official 1E module) just highlights how weird it was.

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