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Languages in Pathfinder have always been tricky because without common, it would be nearly impossible for anyone to talk to each other, but with it, there is only one must know language.
An elegant solution to this issue would be to make it a core rule that conducting any kind of diplomacy in common results in a flat -2 penalty to checks. Thus a good diplomat would also be a character that has spent time learning languages, but it doesn't create a scenario where no one can talk to each other.
I've actually done this before and it works well, though I applied it to all social interactions (Bluff other than to feint, Intimidate to coerce, Profession to make money, etc). It would work even better in PF2 if -2 is really that much more important than in PF1.
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Better house rule than one listed in a core rules. It would most likely be ignored very quickly by most players.
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Applying a bonus to making a diplomacy check in a native language feels like a better approach. After all, common is the native language for many people. Certainly the rules can do some things to make language more important, but unfortunately most of that comes down to DM and adventure design. If everything speaks common, you never need to translate giant runes or some such, and the adventure doesn't have you travel much, then the other languages simply aren't needed for that campaign. Having bonuses or penalties won't do much to change that.
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In another thread I mentioned that I'm very dissatisfied with 1e's language system. Too often language is completely handwaved, inconsistent between games, or just unhelpful in ways other skills aren't.
For example, I could play a language specialist and know a dozen languages, but the enemies we're trying to spy on just happen to be speaking one regional language I don't know in which case my max ranks in linguistics is useless unless the GM takes pity and lets me make a check to pick out bits and pieces.
I think characters should start knowing a set of languages that they don't need checks for and proficiency in linguistics should unlock groups of languages as well as add to your list of known languages.
Starting out, an untrained linguistics check might let you piece together the gist of a conversation in any of the common languages.
Trained might let you try to communicate in any of the common languages at a penalty, and piece together the gist of uncommon languages.
Expert removes penalties and unlocks rare languages, etc.
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Well, they can't just do languages the way they did in PF1. Not and have anyone know a large number of them. I mean, there are only four ranks of skills, and they only seem to be adding a single language for high Int. That's maybe 8 languages total?
My bet is that it will tie into Society (the skill I expect to be used for languages) ranks with escalating numbers of languages and the ability to puzzle out languages via Society checks at higher Proficiency, and will have Skill Feats to add to your linguistic abilities as well. I'd be shocked if their weren't a Skill Feat that basically gave you Tongues under certain circumstances, or let you swap out languages, or something like that.
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I haven't really had this experience in PF1. I can recall multiple times in published adventures where a creature could be negotiated with, but didn't speak common.
I can also recall many times when important notes, books, runes, etc, were in a language other than common.
Basically, knowing other languages has always seemed pretty important in PF1 to me, and I'd be satisfied with it staying around equally important in PF2.
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Many players ignore languages, just assuming that everyone (important) will speak common, the same way most Americans just assume that everyone will speak English. Many fantasy writers do the same thing, and ignore language barriers and differences, if only to more easily shovel their prose into the waiting maws of their eager readers.
IMHO, this is primarily a DM issue. If a creative DM wants to lay emphasis on speaking arcane and ancient languages in a lore-centric campaign, that can be cool. Isolated populations that speak only their own dialect or racial languages can be interesting, but language barriers often lead to solving all problems through violence (as if many players needed any encouragement in that regard). And spellcasters who summon critters know they need several key languages to give orders to their summoned lackeys.
I would hope that languages work like skills, and have a tiered proficiency structure, rather than just being a yes/no binary proposition. Regardless of whether they are treated this way in the playtest book, it would certainly be easy enough to implement. Linguistic problems can go a long way towards increasing the depth of cultural contrasts, and as a DM I really like going there.
Bonuses and penalties to social skills should definitely be affected by language proficiency.
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I think characters should start knowing a set of languages that they don't need checks for and proficiency in linguistics should unlock groups of languages as well as add to your list of known languages.
Starting out, an untrained linguistics check might let you piece together the gist of a conversation in any of the common languages.
Trained might let you try to communicate in any of the common languages at a penalty, and piece together the gist of uncommon languages.
Expert removes penalties and unlocks rare languages, etc.
I fiddled around with a House Rule similar to this, using the idea that many languages come from a common root (Romantic, Germanic, etc.). Pathfinder Languages could be organized in a similar fashion. For example, maybe Draconic is the root of the elemental languages (Aquan, Auran, Ignan, Terran) and Aklo is the root for Elven, Gnoll, Gnome, and Sylvan.
Putting a rank into Linguistics didn't instantly grant you proficiency in a language. Instead, it granted you a portion of proficiency in a Language Root. Language Proficiency came in 5 steps, with the first step being a rough understanding, requiring Linguistics checks to understand or express both the written and spoken forms of the languages. The final step let you speak, write, and understand the languages as if they were your native tongue. The forth step acted as the standard understanding of the languages.
This allowed a character to get about the same number of Languages per skill rank, assuming they put 4 ranks into each Root. Alternatively, they could be specialists in a smaller number of languages (the 5th step grants the character a bonus on social skills when using/dealing with other creatures who speak the same language), or else they could have a looser understanding of a larger number of languages by putting 3 or less ranks into each Root (3 or less ranks grant a penalty similar to the 5 rank bonus, and 1 and 2 ranks require Linguistics checks).
What I liked about this rule was it fixed the issue that let a character with Int 6 and amnesia from instantly learning Infernal while traveling in the desert, simply because he leveled up, while not penalizing characters who didn't have access to spells like Comprehend Languages by making it take forever to just learn one language. The problem I found was that it mechanically turned 4 or 5 languages into one single language.
Another system I like is just using the downtime rules. You need to dedicate a certain amount of time to studying the language you want to learn, as well as a certain amount of gold. After spending the gold and time required, you make a Linguistics check. If you fail, you need to start over. You can alternatively spend more time and money to lower the Linguistics DC.
The great thing about this system is it allows a low-level NPC (maybe an older one whose profession requires him to know many different languages) to know 8 different languages, but it wouldn't make sense for him to be as high as level 6, which would otherwise be required because of all the Linguistics ranks he'd need. For groups that don't use the Downtime rules, though, or campaigns that don't see a lot of downtime, this system isn't so helpful.
I definitely want to see Languages get some love in PF2 - make them important and not trivial to learn, yet allow characters to learn them at a pace that doesn't halt the rest of the game. At the same time, maybe make spells like Comprehend Languages and Tongues be a bit more restricted - Comp Lang lets you understand a single language of your choice upon casting, and Tongues lasts 1 minute per level. Or maybe you have to identify the language before you can use those spells to perfectly understand and/or speak them.
Languages in Pathfinder have always been tricky because without common, it would be nearly impossible for anyone to talk to each other, but with it, there is only one must know language.
An elegant solution to this issue would be to make it a core rule that conducting any kind of diplomacy in common results in a flat -2 penalty to checks. Thus a good diplomat would also be a character that has spent time learning languages, but it doesn't create a scenario where no one can talk to each other.
In Golarion the common language is Taldane. So this means any diplomacy in Taldor (or the other countries that primarily speak common) would be penalized. This might be a bit of a bug.
I especially don't want to go through the routine in major nations because no one speaks Chellish or whatever.
There is no Chelish language. Chelish people speak Taldane (ie: Common).
It's just Mr. Pedantic being his loveable self.
Sometimes I think that languages should be more relevant and useful, but it really seems like a low level challenge than can become tiresome, so I guess it should depends on the campaign being run.
That doesn't change my point. Sub it out with an actual regional language if you want, the premise stands. I just want to ask the damn guard captain where the kobold nest is, I don't want to waste valuable playing time finding some nitwit who speaks both Ulfen and whatever the hell my character does.
If it changed your point, my identity would be somewhat different. I'm just being me (ie: pedantic corrections for the sake of technical accuracy).
I feel like genre fiction in which "talking to new people you encounter is difficult" is a whole different animal from genre fiction in which "talking to new people you encounter is easy" and you kind of have to pick one side of this divide and stick with it.
Since "magic that will translate literally any language, no matter how unfamiliar" is a thing in Pathfinder this means that radical translation is possible, and thus that there is something like a metaphysical shared pool of concepts which every language simply has different words for.
So I think it makes sense that "talking to those new people" is a lot easier in Pathfinder than it is in real life. If we wanted to make it hard, we would have a fundamentally different kind of game.
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Pretty much any campaign can have language based challenges. I think it's certainly at least as interesting has having locked doors and traps. If both of those systems receive support, languages should as well.
Examples of languages being used in a fun way:
1. Decipher a written warning that gives a clue about which corridor is dangerous
2. Speak to the summoned creature that has been given a mundane task and relishes the opportunity to tell you how many cultists went into the inner sanctum an hour ago.
3. Translate the journal of the long dead adventurer who made progress on some of the puzzles further ahead before succumbing to mummy rot.
4. Ingratiate yourself with the timid slaves brought from a foreign land by speaking in their native tongue.
5. Communicate with your party members without giving away your plans to listeners.
6. Test whether someone is who they say they are by asking them a question in an unexpected language.
7. Understand the words to a local song that the party hears while walking by that has bearing on their current investigation.
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Pretty much any campaign can have language based challenges. I think it's certainly at least as interesting has having locked doors and traps. If both of those systems receive support, languages should as well.
Examples of languages being used in a fun way:
1. Decipher a written warning that gives a clue about which corridor is dangerous
2. Speak to the summoned creature that has been given a mundane task and relishes the opportunity to tell you how many cultists went into the inner sanctum an hour ago.
3. Translate the journal of the long dead adventurer who made progress on some of the puzzles further ahead before succumbing to mummy rot.
4. Ingratiate yourself with the timid slaves brought from a foreign land by speaking in their native tongue.
5. Communicate with your party members without giving away your plans to listeners.
6. Test whether someone is who they say they are by asking them a question in an unexpected language.
7. Understand the words to a local song that the party hears while walking by that has bearing on their current investigation.
1. comprehend languages
2. tongues
3. comprehend languages
4. tongues
5. Bluff/Sense Motive
6. tongues
7. comprehend languages
Where was the challenge, again? :)
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Not sure what your point is since spells also bypass locks and traps. Also spells that replaces skills in second edition are looking to be more along the lines of "+4 to X skill checks for 10 minutes". Also, watching a spellcaster solve all the problems is right along watching paint dry in terms of excitement.
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Languages in Pathfinder have always been tricky because without common, it would be nearly impossible for anyone to talk to each other, but with it, there is only one must know language.
An elegant solution to this issue would be to make it a core rule that conducting any kind of diplomacy in common results in a flat -2 penalty to checks. Thus a good diplomat would also be a character that has spent time learning languages, but it doesn't create a scenario where no one can talk to each other.
In Golarion, Common is actually Taldane, which is the language of Taldor. So I would say that any country where Taldane is the national language, that you would not get the -2.
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Not sure what your point is since spells also bypass locks and traps. Also spells that replaces skills in second edition are looking to be more along the lines of "+4 to X skill checks for 10 minutes". Also, watching a spellcaster solve all the problems is right along watching paint dry in terms of excitement.
Well of course, "magic trivialises mundane challenges" is a D&D staple since 1978. If I wanted mundane challenges to be challenging in a fantasy RPG, I'd play Ars Magica.
I feel like how in Pathfinder you could get together people from six different planets with zero languages in common, who can each cast tongues and/or comprehend languages and hash out some sort of pan-galactic Rosetta Stone would mean that some "Grand Unified Theory of Linguistics" is much more achievable in the Pathfinder universe than any realistic one.
Heck, get people from different planes involved. I figure that's pretty much how people can speak Terran on Golarion- someone summoned an Earth Elemental and used magic to talk to it and took notes which were subsequently published.
Not sure what your point is since spells also bypass locks and traps. Also spells that replaces skills in second edition are looking to be more along the lines of "+4 to X skill checks for 10 minutes". Also, watching a spellcaster solve all the problems is right along watching paint dry in terms of excitement.
Yes, watching the spellcaster cast a spell and get past the trap without setting it off is like watching paint dry. Meanwhile, watching the rogue fiddle with lockpicks and get past the trap without setting it off is what, the kentucky derby?
Not sure what your point is since spells also bypass locks and traps. Also spells that replaces skills in second edition are looking to be more along the lines of "+4 to X skill checks for 10 minutes". Also, watching a spellcaster solve all the problems is right along watching paint dry in terms of excitement.Well of course, "magic trivialises mundane challenges" is a D&D staple since 1978. If I wanted mundane challenges to be challenging in a fantasy RPG, I'd play Ars Magica.
Looks like one of the untold goals of PF2 is precisely that
Not sure what your point is since spells also bypass locks and traps. Also spells that replaces skills in second edition are looking to be more along the lines of "+4 to X skill checks for 10 minutes". Also, watching a spellcaster solve all the problems is right along watching paint dry in terms of excitement.Yes, watching the spellcaster cast a spell and get past the trap without setting it off is like watching paint dry. Meanwhile, watching the rogue fiddle with lockpicks and get past the trap without setting it off is what, the kentucky derby?
Watch the grass grow
In another thread I mentioned that I'm very dissatisfied with 1e's language system. Too often language is completely handwaved, inconsistent between games, or just unhelpful in ways other skills aren't.
For example, I could play a language specialist and know a dozen languages, but the enemies we're trying to spy on just happen to be speaking one regional language I don't know in which case my max ranks in linguistics is useless unless the GM takes pity and lets me make a check to pick out bits and pieces.
I think characters should start knowing a set of languages that they don't need checks for and proficiency in linguistics should unlock groups of languages as well as add to your list of known languages.
Starting out, an untrained linguistics check might let you piece together the gist of a conversation in any of the common languages.
Trained might let you try to communicate in any of the common languages at a penalty, and piece together the gist of uncommon languages.
Expert removes penalties and unlocks rare languages, etc.
I like this solution. I'd like to see feats that build off of this that let a linguist study a language to create an intermediate language for fluent communication, as opposed to piecemeal messages, and then one that lets a legendary linguist understand all languages innately simply because they are that good.
Not sure what your point is since spells also bypass locks and traps. Also spells that replaces skills in second edition are looking to be more along the lines of "+4 to X skill checks for 10 minutes". Also, watching a spellcaster solve all the problems is right along watching paint dry in terms of excitement.Yes, watching the spellcaster cast a spell and get past the trap without setting it off is like watching paint dry. Meanwhile, watching the rogue fiddle with lockpicks and get past the trap without setting it off is what, the kentucky derby?
I'm not saying picking locks and disabling traps is a fun time. I *am* saying that linguistic challenges are at least as much fun as those, and if the rules support thievery challenges they may as well support linguistic challenges. The absence or presence of spells that invalidate those skills has no bearing.
I would go further to argue that linguistic challenges can be *more* fun because they are typically not a dead end if failed. All the linguistic challenges I listed are convenient if they succeed but not required, while failing to open a locked door means either no progression there or bringing out the adamantine pickaxe.
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I don't understand the argument that spells nullify this region of the game.
Well, the fact those spells exist implies this region of the game does in fact exist.
And the nullify it no more than Telepathy nullifies Sense Motive, or any other spell filling in for mundane skill.
Want to use spells for this area of the game? OK, that's your choice. Skills can also do so. So what?
If anything, the 4-degrees of success/failure suggest a more supple range of effects from the spells in highly likely in P2E.
Same for how Language proficiency/skill will work, with same 4-degrees of success/failure, right?
I can imagine dozens of cinematic or novel scenes which involved one or more sides unable to communicate fluently.
Why exactly do people want to excise that from the game? (and negate the rationale for these spells themselves)
IMHO simply the intra-party roleplaying dynamics from only one PC (or NPC) having the relevant language (via skill or spell) is interesting.
Maybe that person isn't the normal "face". Maybe that person will uniquely provoke/be provoked in the interaction.
Maybe that person will misrepresent the conversation to their allies, etc.
We already have solid amount of information about 'related' and 'co-influenced' languages/groups.
Given 'languages' already have plausible (national) subdivisions which is realistic given the ridiculous few # of 'languages' in Golarion world,
so what is presented as 'languages' need not even be more consistent than Arabic, Chinese, Romance etc.
So the reason magic nullifies this region of the game from where I sit is that direct and perfect translation in real world natural language is impossible. Not only are certain things essential to meaning (e.g. word play, sound) impossible to convey via translation (e.g. Camus careful word choice in "La Peste" makes a droning noise when read aloud in French, to evoke the sound of flies buzzing around, which is impossible to replicate in the English translation- read it in French, folks) but we also have issues among real world natural languages where some things cannot be translated at all because a concept exists in one cultural context and not in another.
But in Pathfinder we have magic which can do all of this impossible translation, no meaning gets lost in the process and all concepts are conveyed perfectly and succinctly (no need to stop to explain "Hyggelig", "Utepils" or "Mångata" to the listener, thereby losing the power of their brevity). Which leads me to believe that Languages in the Pathfinder universe are much more similar to each other (even ones from other planes of existence or planets) than real world natural languages are.
So it being hard to translate between Aklo, Tien, Czech, and Triaxian is somewhat implausible to me. It's another example (like alignment) where a game conceit drastically simplifies real philosophical questions. We can cast a spell and find out that "gavagai" really and truly means "rabbit".
Reminding me, will that "not-Slavic" Ulfen/Kellid grayland thing be given specific identity?
I believe there's even a region with huge density of "not Finnish". Just off the top of my head.
And of course hopefully Mwangi and Southern Garund presentation is finally given it's due.
(I saw somebody referencing Paizo dev's owning that as failure, although I'm not familiar with statement they refer to...)
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I'm definitely on board with a small bonus to Diplomacy, Bluff, Sense Motive, etc., if you can speak to a creature in its native language.
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You could have various languages be of different rarity much like how spells will be now. So you could learn any of the common languages easily enough, but the more uncommon or rare languages you'd need to spend downtime/extra points/find a copy of the rare language to be able to speak or read them.
I'm definitely on board with a small bonus to Diplomacy, Bluff, Sense Motive, etc., if you can speak to a creature in its native language.
I'm down with that, as long as I don't get penalized for making a low INT character who only speaks common, yet is very Charismatic. I don't believe it is fair to place a -2 penalty on CHA skills so that Linguistics can have some shine...