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Considering that magic makes learning languages of very little value, making it more difficult is a terrible idea.
Who cares if it's not realistic that you can learn so many languages with so much ease, there's magic. The world isn't realistic.
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I think we're inevitably gonna see languages be a bit more rare, since there are now only 4 ranks of skill above untrained. Personally, I think that speaking more languages is gonna be a Skill Feat.
That said, multilingual societies tend to produce people who speak more than just one or two languages, so I do hope that Int still adds some languages.
I’ve always wanted languages to be more meaningful. Rolemaster was the only system that came close to what I liked (though it still faced the problem that if languages are part of character development, traditional zero-hero games imply people becoming fluent in a couple of weeks).
If the PF2 team are able to make them both meaningful and fun, I’d be impressed.
Considering that magic makes learning languages of very little value, making it more difficult is a terrible idea.
Who cares if it's not realistic that you can learn so many languages with so much ease, there's magic. The world isn't realistic.
I care, but not because it’s unrealistic. There’s a subset of stories one can’t feasibly tell based on encountering new, isolated or extinct cultures.
A language revamp would presumably include the relevant spells.
I’ve played around with importing rules from other systems (focussing on both skill checks but also learned ability, ie capping what you can achieve by ranks) - the main barrier I found is not wanting to cripple PCs interested in other kinds of stories.
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See, finding the new culture can be fun and interesting. Struggling to puzzle things out isn't. Within the confines of the games mechanics there's not many ways to interact with language. You either know the language (which can be gained from background/race, or from spending points in the skill) or you puzzle it out based on a single skill roll (linguistics) or you use magic to automatically know it. Otherwise the party has no way to interact with it. For me as a player that's incredibly frustrating and not fun.
Language isn't the whole of a culture. You can tell plenty of stories about new interesting and unique cultures that don't depend on language.
Yeah, that’s what I meant. At the moment the rules don’t facilitate telling those stories in a fun way. I’d like it if the designers of PF2 were able to come up with a system where it was fun.
I pretty much agree with you, I’d just like it if it weren’t true (and although I can’t solve the problem, I’m no game designer).
Yeah, that’s kind of what I meant. At the moment the rules don’t facilitate telling those stories in a fun way. I’d like it if the designers of PF2 were able to come up with a system where it was fun.
I have a hard time imaging a system in which that sort of thing is fun unless you base your whole game system around that, instead of being based primarily around combat.
I think the thing to remember with Pathfinder is that it's rooted in war gaming. It's a game about combat. To have the the kind of game you want, you need to start with a completely different basis.
Yeah, that’s kind of what I meant. At the moment the rules don’t facilitate telling those stories in a fun way. I’d like it if the designers of PF2 were able to come up with a system where it was fun.I have a hard time imaging a system in which that sort of thing is fun unless you base your whole game system around that, instead of being based primarily around combat.
I think the thing to remember with Pathfinder is that it's rooted in war gaming. It's a game about combat. To have the the kind of game you want, you need to start with a completely different basis.
Me too.
I’m not demanding it be implemented (I also agree with you that PF1 is heavily combat focussed and don’t believe that focus should shift in PF2). I’m just observing that if that limitation on story can be solved, I’d be both impressed and pleased.
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Is "It's hard to talk to these people" a theme you are actually interested in exploring in a given campaign? Since most of the time it's not, but when it is it's easy enough to say "no, you can't learn this language that easily."
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My problem is that knowledge is power. I think if language acquisition becomes more expensive, the number of languages in the game needs to be reduced.
Too often even a high-level party with over a dozen languages will step into a cavern and the DM asks what languages are available and the one we need isn't. Knowledge is power. Requiring a spell to excel doesn't sit right with me.
All I'm saying is that it should (remain) possible for a party to deliberately pick up fluency with most languages they need by mundane means.
Yeah, that’s kind of what I meant. At the moment the rules don’t facilitate telling those stories in a fun way. I’d like it if the designers of PF2 were able to come up with a system where it was fun.I have a hard time imaging a system in which that sort of thing is fun unless you base your whole game system around that, instead of being based primarily around combat.
I think the thing to remember with Pathfinder is that it's rooted in war gaming. It's a game about combat. To have the the kind of game you want, you need to start with a completely different basis.
Me too.
I’m not demanding it be implemented (I also agree with you that PF1 is heavily combat focussed and don’t believe that focus should shift in PF2). I’m just observing that if that limitation on story can be solved, I’d be both impressed and pleased.
That's fair.
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I think the thing to remember with Pathfinder is that it's rooted in war gaming. It's a game about combat. To have the the kind of game you want, you need to start with a completely different basis.
Some of my favourite PF games have used the kingdom building rules, the social combat and chase decks, downtime subsystems and so forth. Those games were still predominantly combat (at least in terms of table time) but it brought some depth and story opportunities that I greatly valued.
If there were a way to come up with a meaningful language system that had a decent mix of restrictions and opportunity to overcome them, then I expect I’d use it (some of the time - most campaigns I’d do what I do now which is basically plan on the party being able to read and listen to anything they encounter in English).
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Increasing the difficulty in learning languages just means fewer language-based plot points. An ancient tablet written in Undercommon can help set a tone, but also assumes there's a decent chance someone in an average party will know it. And if you want it to be a language the party can't speak, then you just make one up.
Personally I don't see an upside to making it harder, and definite downsides. It feels like a change more suitable to a houserule than an actual rules change.
Increasing the difficulty in learning languages just means fewer language-based plot points. An ancient tablet written in Undercommon can help set a tone, but also assumes there's a decent chance someone in an average party will know it. And if you want it to be a language the party can't speak, then you just make one up.
Personally I don't see an upside to making it harder, and definite downsides. It feels like a change more suitable to a houserule than an actual rules change.
I’m envisioning an optional subsystem, really. Most games it just adds tedious bookkeeping and annoying role playing - where you start off only speaking to one player, then end up speaking to all of them (taking the translating by the fluent PC “as read”).
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My problem is that knowledge is power. I think if language acquisition becomes more expensive, the number of languages in the game needs to be reduced.
Too often even a high-level party with over a dozen languages will step into a cavern and the DM asks what languages are available and the one we need isn't. Knowledge is power. Requiring a spell to excel doesn't sit right with me.
All I'm saying is that it should (remain) possible for a party to deliberately pick up fluency with most languages they need by mundane means.
Yeah, this is a pet hate of mine as a player. As DM, I make a point of knowing which languages the party can speak. Especially If one of them has decided to be a linguistics expert. I don’t want them to find none of their fifteen languages match, but the PC who just scribbled some random second language at level one has got lucky. It’s undermining the PC concept as much as continually putting the fire mage up against enemies who are immune.
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Might it be that learning languages is hard in real life because we aren't gaining enough XP to level quickly? Oh...wait.
Yeah, they're not analogous.
Isolated, learning a new language can be laborious (and that's often the situation in the U.S.). Constant exposure to foreign languages (especially from a young age) changes the paradigm. Children (and gifted linguists) can often pick up a language in a few months while others, even bright people, can struggle for years, never attaining fluency with a second even after immersing themselves.
I had a British friend joke that it was easy to tell the Scandinavian visitors from the British natives because the Scandinavians spoke English better. So maybe it's a matter of culture too. And didn't medieval culture have many multilingual folk among the elite or well-traveled (which adventurers would be)?
And then we have those amazing exceptions with dozens of languages.
How does one present such a spectrum as a game mechanic in a fantasy meta-culture? If it doesn't serve the plot, you don't.
Hence we get Common. Language barriers are often more hassle than cool obstacle. It's also one reason Comprehend Languages is such a low level spell.
In fact, I recently played an adventure where only one person (by fluke) could speak the needed language and we were low-level w/ no Comprehend Languages and in a village with poor resources. There would have been no story if that player had been dissuaded from taking that language by requiring a higher investment. I'm not even sure we could have gotten to the "bad guys that way" portion because we had to overcome villager suspicion first. Not fun.
I don't mind the occasional adventure that accounts for there being a language barrier, but there's a reason Conan (et al) knew lots of languages and picked up others swiftly. It suits the plot better.
(And allowed him to play the dumb barbarian while really cunning.)
That said, I could see an argument made for some initial barrier as long as languages became even cheaper afterward.
Untrained: Zero bonus languages (still often two to three)
Trained: Int bonus = bonus languages (PF1 normal untrained)
Expert: Add level (remember, after this it becomes fantasy)
Master: Similar to Comprehend Languages, maybe double (Int + level)
Legendary: Similar to Tongues, essentially all languages with enough exposure because you're the Beowulf of linguists.
Cheers.
Considering that magic makes learning languages of very little value, making it more difficult is a terrible idea.
Who cares if it's not realistic that you can learn so many languages with so much ease, there's magic. The world isn't realistic.
Comprehend languages anyone?This is more an argument that those spells that trivialise language *also* need re-visiting than anything else.
Personally, i can think of no end of ways that trying to communicate with intelligent humanoids who don't speak your language can be entertaining.
None of them involve specific rules support beyond the odd skill-check - they'll just be naturally funny, like so much of D&D already is.
I mean, honestly - none of you think trying to negotiate with a tribe of goblins via gestures & ad-hoc sign language wouldn't be hilarious ?
No, it's frustrating not hilarious. From an in character perspective it really shouldn't be funny dealing with something that is as likely to set you on fire as it is to set itself on fire by accident, and also likely to set the nearby town on fire before eating all the babies and killing all the longshanks. Have you ever tried to communicate with someone who doesn't speak your language at all?
It's not fun. I was left alone in rural China for all of 2 hours and my broken Chinese didn't cut it. It was a surreal and humbling experience but I'm glad it didn't last any longer than that before my friend returned and was able translate for me again.
If your whole game system is set around this sort of thing you might be able to make it fun, but it's not the sort of thing to tack on.
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I’m envisioning an optional subsystem, really. Most games it just adds tedious bookkeeping and annoying role playing - where you start off only speaking to one player, then end up speaking to all of them (taking the translating by the fluent PC “as read”).Increasing the difficulty in learning languages just means fewer language-based plot points. An ancient tablet written in Undercommon can help set a tone, but also assumes there's a decent chance someone in an average party will know it. And if you want it to be a language the party can't speak, then you just make one up.
Personally I don't see an upside to making it harder, and definite downsides. It feels like a change more suitable to a houserule than an actual rules change.
That's funny because I have a PC face/linguist in Starfinder who mistranslates purposefully to keep the conversation on topics he wants to talk about: like himself. The other players know this, but roleplay straightforward as if the conversation they're having with the other speaker is real. I also have tremendous Bluff and they mostly (all?) have poor Sense Motive. Of course, this is not done to derail a plot or hamper a PC in any serious way, but rather for us all to laugh. And their pertinent questions get translated because my PC wants to succeed too!
That’s why I said most. If everyone’s onboard, it can definitely add to the story. :)
I think if languages were provided levels of fluency, you could do a bit more with them. Assume everyone knows pidgin (you don't even need to record it). That serves as a baseline and you let everyone communicate under the assumption that is good enough. If you want to bluff (or pick some other skill), you use the lower of novice (5), conversational (10), fluent (15), or native (unlimited) and bluff. Something like that.
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On the extreme end of the spectrum, Richard Francis Burton reportedly mastered at least 26 languages (40 if dialects are counted).
I would guess that Comprehend Languages will be / should be a ritual in PF2. Maybe require a book written in that language as the focus of the ritual? That way, sure, you can get it easily enough if you're in a town of that culture, but it can't just auto-solve problems if you're in a dungeon or out in the wild and haven't prepared. It can even be a minor quest tangent to a bigger puzzle when dealing with an ancient, dead language at ruins of mystic power. Perhaps also, at its basic level the ritual only increases your effective proficiency with linguistics / Society by one step; to get better effects you have to take a harder DC / pay more to cast it.
As for skills, hm. I'm pretty sure the new Society skill is going to subsume Linguistics (along with Knowledge Local, etc). I liked where Castilliano was going but I might tweak the specifics. So I think I'd do it like:
- Untrained: Only the two languages you know for free as a starting character. You can't communicate worth crap with creatures that don't share a language. You can only attempt the most basic of social checks with such creatures, things that don't require language - screaming and using body language to Intimidate someone, feinting with Bluff, etc.
- Trained: Know 1 bonus language per 3-4 points of Intelligence. You can make a check to decipher written language using an alphabet you already know from another of your languages, at least to interpret basic concepts. As a harder check, you can try to break simple ciphers in an alphabet you know. You can make a check to communicate on a simple-concept level with creatures that don't share a language; you get a bonus on this check if you immerse yourself in the culture for a week first. If this check passes, you can use all functions of Bluff Diplomacy and Intimidate normally against that creature who shares no language with you, but at a -5 penalty.
- Expert: Know 1 bonus language per 2 points of Intelligence. Your decipher and interpret checks allow you to read and communicate in unknown languages at a peasant or schoolchild's level, and you can try to decipher written language in a completely foreign alphabet. As a harder check, you can try to break moderate ciphers using any alphabet or that rely on the couched meaning of homonyms, double entendres and words with different intonations. You only need to immerse yourself in a culture for a day to get the circumstance bonus. When successfully communicating with someone who doesn't share a language with you, your social checks only take a -2 penalty.
- Master: Know 1 bonus language per point of Intelligence. Your decipher and communicate checks with an unknown language allow you to function at the level of an educated native adult. You can decipher unknown heiroglyphics where single symbols can represent entire words, phrases or concepts; you can also make checks to try to decipher magic runes, or to puzzle out the meaning of a concept depicted as abstract art with no relation to written language. As a harder check, you can try to break difficult ciphers that use a mathematical key. You only need to immerse yourself in a culture for an hour to get the circumstance bonus. When you successfully make a check to understand a new language, you instantly and permanently acquire it as a bonus language from then on, and so not only take no penalty on social checks but can even write new texts in that language.
- Legend: You know all languages, flat-out. You instantly understand every form of writing and speech you come across. You can make a check to break extreme ciphers that use completely made up symbology, have no logical coherence and are supposed to be literally impossible for anyone without an explicit key to the symbology used. You can make a check to safely communicate with deities, gibbering mouthers and the like. You can make a check to understand magical runes and abstract art in the same time as reading normal text, without having to spend extra time puzzling it out.
- Mythic: (Because we all know it will come eventually.) You can communicate with beings that don't even have a language or form of communication, like animals, plants and oozes. You can instantly identify magic runes and the meaning of abstract art at a glance, and can instantly break any cipher whatsoever. You can speak with Cthulhu Itself without even having to make saves to avoid insanity. You can create glyphs or images that are instantly understood by anyone who sees them regardless of language.
Things like the aforementioned Aasimar trait could be represented as adding a direct bonus to the number of languages known; and if you are expert / master / legend in Society, adding that +1/+2/+3 bonus from Society to your Bluff / Diplomacy / Intimidate checks against characters with whom you do share a language.
Is "It's hard to talk to these people" a theme you are actually interested in exploring in a given campaign? Since most of the time it's not, but when it is it's easy enough to say "no, you can't learn this language that easily."
This is so spot on.
Although some people might find dealing with a language barrier an interesting aspect to add to their game, I suspect in most cases it would be a tedious obstacle instead.
Let's weigh the advantages and disadvantages. On one hand, you have some degree of greater verisimilitude of a multicultural world, as well as cool enigmas and mysteries dealing with ancient, lost languages that players only get access to through spells or lengthy study, trials and tribulations. On the other hand, you have increased violence (when you can't communicate, it's just easier to solve problems with bloodshed), awkward situations where some people around the table have access to information and others don't, and so many unforseen complications that arise from trying to apply social skill checks through imperfectly mastered languages.
RPGs have always glossed over language differences, either through liberal application of a "common" tongue, easy access to multiple languages, or simply by ignoring the problem altogether.
How could PF2.0 improve the situation? By deconnecting experience level and areas of knowledge like language learning and lore. Starting languages and lore should be linked to your character's ancestry, background and class. Improvements in languages and lore should be linked to downtime activities, not experience points and levels.
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I believe the only time that language makes for an interesting game element is when the PCs encounter somebody/thing that talks only in an uncommon language and the challenge is to communicate, be it thanks to somebody investing in relevant skill or having the right spell handy.
Like all specific challenges, this is something that is fun once in a while. Just like having acrobatics challenge of jumping over burning barrels or a puzzle challenge every night would be a chore, so would be communication challenges if they'd pop up every session.
Since almost everything speaks common I think common should be a pidgin language and all social interactions made via common have a penalty (-2 maybe not huge). That would still make it possible for everyone to communicate but give a reason to actually bother learning languages.
That said I think languages should probably be background skills like in Unchained and I don't think it should be particularly hard to learn them. I don't know if that will be a thing in PF2 but they mentioned lore so maybe.
I do not think this would add to the game. I'm in the 'this would be boring and unfun' camp pretty solidly.
In PF1 it is easy to do though -
Remove Common.
Give all languages 3 levels of fluency (pidgin (-4 to all skill checks), basic (-2), fluent (no penalty)?)- no proficiency -8 or impossible
A point in linguistics increases fluency in a language by 1 (3 levels to learn a new language fluently) -
Each point in intelligence grants 3 levels of fluency - so you can learn pidgin in 3 languages or become fluent in 1.
Remove language based spells or increase them by 2-3 levels
boom - instant nightmare!
Shouldn't take too long to do something similar in PF2
There is about sixty (60) languages currently in the game when including the gaggle of them unique to Golarion. Characters with a specific racial feature/trait are the only ones that can hope to learn more than half of them as things currently stand. There are at least four sign languages in the setting: Drow, Pathfinder, Sczarni and Varisian.
Trimming down languages to a more manageable list, in large part by eliminating redundancies. An example would be removing Cyclops as a language, rolling it back into Giant.
One could task Linguistics with its nominal purpose (making sense of languages you do not know or only know partially) instead of forgery. Make forgery an Int-based usage of Thievery or something.
I like Wheldrake's suggestion: starting languages are determined by ABC with additional languages via downtime activities and boons (such as via campaign traits, spirits granting a language via *pouf*, et al).
I like Wheldrake's suggestion: starting languages are determined by ABC with additional languages via downtime activities and boons (such as via campaign traits, spirits granting a language via *pouf*, et al).
The most important reason for relegating language learning to downtime activities is that, as any multilingual person knows already, learning languages takes time. Sure, the time it takes IRL varies a lot from one person to the next, according to the environment you live in (target language vs native language) and according to the resources and energy you invest in learning it.
But if the goal is to make a relatively simple system that still has a lot of depth (as our pals from Paizo have said about so many other systems) we can't afford to bog ourselves down with minutiae like levels of competency in each individual language and the impact of those levels of competency on social interaction situations and die rolls.
Simply put: language learning shouldn't happen suddenly, when a PC goes up a level or two.
Starting languages should come from AB & C. The PC should invest some duration of downtime in any subsequent language learning that isn't magically assisted. The exact amount of downtime might be a result of various factors, like INT, WIS and the learning environment.
I like the idea of penalties for imperfect language matches. It acknowledges the fact that if communication is part of the plot, it will happen, which makes languages, almost without exception, superfluous. So let's take the baseline assumption that pidgin is understood by just about everyone, so you don't even need to write it on your character sheet. Then give bonuses if you know (or, equivalently, penalties if you don't know) a more elegant common language than pidgin.