Character starting with the necril language

[doc the grey]

I'm in the middle of building a gravewalker occultist who focused on understanding the arts of necromancery and the undead for our budding carrion crown game. Now I'm debating on having necril as one of my starting languages but I'm wondering if it is at a disservice to the game to begin with the necril language or if it won't spoil anything, anyone have any advice?

[Pendagast]

well, we played the first two in the AP before the group broke up... ive never heard of the language... so im pretty sure it wont spoil anything.

[Trinite]

I haven't noticed necril appearing at any time in the first three books. So it won't spoil anything, but it might not help you with much of anything, either. Of course, if I were your GM,I'd certainly add in some opportunities for it to pay off for you. ;)

[Rynjin]

Nah, Necril shouldn't spoil anything (and might actually give you a few bonuses if you ever try to use language dependent spells on Undead).

I would suggest at least one person in your party taking Varisian though.

[doc the grey]

k i think that was one of my other ones. Ahh the wonders of Int dependent casters.

[Deidre Tiriel]

One of my players took Necril. From what I can tell, ghouls speak it, no one else, pretty much.

[darkwarriorkarg]

Deidre Tiriel wrote:

One of my players took Necril. From what I can tell, ghouls speak it, no one else, pretty much.

Ghoul 1: "Look! Food speaks!"

Ghoul 2: "Wonder if it makes the tongue tastier?"

[Zhangar]

Necril's the language of choice over in Geb. Most of the undead in Ustlav speak Common (though I've been changing that to Varisian for a lot of them - Varisian is Ustlav's primary langauge).

[tbug]

Zhangar wrote:

Necril's the language of choice over in Geb. Most of the undead in Ustlav speak Common (though I've been changing that to Varisian for a lot of them - Varisian is Ustlav's primary langauge).

I think this kind of thing is really important for the flavour of the setting. Taldane is the default common language in Avistan, but I don't think GMs should automatically translate any instance of "Common" in a stat block to "Taldane" without thinking it through. In Ustalav "Common" means "Varisian", just like in Kalabuto it means "Polyglot" and in Katapesh it means "Kelish".

[Rynjin]

Then why do most Ustalavan stat blocks have them as speaking "Common, Varisian"?

Common is the trade language. It is the language that most intelligent creatures choose to learn in order to communicate with other intelligent creatures of different nationalities, that all may have wildly differing languages.

It's there so that Xianese and Ustalavans and Sargavans and whatever else may talk to each other in a well, COMMON language.

[tbug]

I should have specified that this was my opinion, and clearly differed from what Paizo was publishing. My thought is that if a random peasant from Ustalav speaks only one language then it's Varisian, not Taldane; if he speaks a second language then it's likely Taldane. According to the rules I'm wrong and those priorities are reversed.

Sorry for not making my variation from the default clear.