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So this question comes down to interpreting the Off-Hours study boon for Grand Archive, and how it interacts with the verbiage concerning languages in the CRB, World Guide, and the PFS2 Character Options.
Has anyone been able to pin down what a "common" language is from the boon, reproduced below?
You spend your free time studying learning new trivia or practicing unfamiliar languages. When you acquire this boon, choose a common language you don’t know or a Lore skill in which you are untrained.
Pg 65 in CRB has Table 2-1 and 2-2 which delineates language which are common and then has the wording "[Regional Languages] are uncommon". Going to the CRB page 432, languages [u]outside[/u] of their region are "uncommon" suggesting they're common in the region, for PFS does this alter its status or is it still uncommon? At any rate you gain access to all the languages in your home region, hence characters being able to speak their local tongue. Really this is only a sticky wicket because the Off Hours Study boon specifies "common" languages instead of "languages to which you have access" which is the default language about Home Region specific things (see Aldori swords, Jadwiga witches etc.) Seems like you're limited to CRB Table 2-1 in that regard, but the boon seems to make it impossible to learn regional languages which is quite sad. It's also one of the few (only?) boons which doesn't specify "access" for the character options and explicitly limits things to Common availability. Mostly looking at the Linguist archetype made me go down this little rabbit hole, wondering how to learn all the languages (see below).
If (big if) your Home Region makes languages in that region common, or if the boon gets changed to "access" there are two things that pop out. 1) From a languages perspective, you should choose Absalom and Starstone Isle. Because "All" languages are are common there. That's right, all of them. Learn literally any language. 2) Some non-regional uncommon languages appear in other regions, Abyssal in the Broken Lands, Necril in Eye of Dread and Impossible Lands, Azlanti and Infernal in the High Seas, Shadowtongue in Old Cheliax (funnily no Infernal).
Venture-Lieutenant, Netherlands—Leiden
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Since these languages are available to take (in PFS) by characters with high intelligence, it stands to reason they could also be learned with Off-Hours Study.
It seems PFS makes these "modern human languages" a touch more common than the CRB.
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Since these languages are available to take (in PFS) by characters with high intelligence, it stands to reason they could also be learned with Off-Hours Study.
It seems PFS makes these "modern human languages" a touch more common than the CRB.
That was what I'd been trying to figure out. The CRB explicitly makes them uncommon on pg 65 but then softens it later, suggesting they're common availability in their home regions. But how does that interact with the boon? Why doesn't it just say access.