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As in, some quick line of text somewhere saying something like "with the GM's permission, you can switch one or more languages from your ancestry with other languages you have access to."
• This would make it easier to play characters with unusual backstories, such as being adopted by members of another culture, raised by wild animals or mythical creatures, or the like.
• There's already precedent for characters that don't fit the "default" of their ancestry, in the form of the variant attribute boosts, the Adopted Ancestry feat, and the rules for mixed heritages.
• Languages as a whole are largely a flavor concern anyway (i.e, the only mechanical difference between any two languages is just the fact that they're different languages, and therefore if you don't understand that specific language you can't speak it).
• I know that technically this (like many other things) is something you can already ask your GM to do, but it would be nice to have it explicitly supported in the rulebooks for the sake of tables that stick closely to the exact rules-as-written (potentially including Pathfinder Society play?)
• This is also just the kind of 1-2 sentence addition that should be easy to fit in as errata or something (though to be clear, I'm not an expert on how structuring physical books actually works).
• For the record, I'm specifically bringing this up because Monster Core changed the kobold monster statblocks to speak Sakvroth instead of Draconic, and while that fits well with the new post-remaster lore for kobolds, I would like the option for a kobold character raised in a dragon-worshipping tribe to speak Draconic (or anything else, e.g a kobold raised in a devil-worshipping tribe to speak Diabolic) without needing to go out of my way to invest character options (e.g improving INT, taking the Multilingual skill feat) into having the ability to do so.
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As in, some quick line of text somewhere saying something like "with the GM's permission, you can switch one or more languages from your ancestry with other languages you have access to."
Does The First Rule count?
The first rule of Pathfinder is that this game is yours. Use it to tell the stories you want to tell, be the character you want to be, and share exciting adventures with friends. If any other rule gets in the way of your fun, as long as your group agrees, you can alter or ignore it to fit your story. The true goal of Pathfinder is for everyone to enjoy themselves.
I think it's important that the ancestry rules mostly represent "how to be a typical member of this ancestry" since most of the time if you're picking an ancestry it's because something about that ancestry appealed to you.
If you actually want to be a Dwarf who was orphaned as an infant and never learned Dwarfish, then you can probably work out something with the GM, but even if you were raised by kindly members of a different ancestry maybe at some point in your life you decided to learn the tongue of your people.
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As in, some quick line of text somewhere saying something like "with the GM's permission, you can switch one or more languages from your ancestry with other languages you have access to."
(...)
• I know that technically this (like many other things) is something you can already ask your GM to do, but it would be nice to have it explicitly supported in the rulebooks for the sake of tables that stick closely to the exact rules-as-written (potentially including Pathfinder Society play?)
Like Finoan pointed out, indirectly this is already "RAW" via the First Rule. What you want is directly mentioning it instead.
That might work for a home game where the GM is particularly strict.
But for PFS it wouldn't work, because this is a "character build time" GM decision, and those are tricky in PFS because every session there could be a different GM.
PFS actually solved a closely related issue a year or two ago when the Mwangi book came out. There it became clear that in the Mwangi Expanse the common language was Mwangi, not Taldane. But because PCs go across the world in PFS, they need to know the "global Common" Taldane too. A human could learn both, using their bonus language. However, there are also various tribes in the Mwangi with their own languages. And there are non-human ancestries like dwarves and elves, that should speak both their own language, Mwangi, and Taldane then. But they don't get that many bonus languages.
So PFS did a "GM permission" global ruling in the campaign to handle this: everyone regardless of ancestry gets an extra language, which must be regional. So a dwarf from the Expanse would know Dwarven, Taldane and could choose Mwangi or another regional language.
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This would almost but not quite work for kobolds, since Draconic and Diabolic aren't regional languages, but Draconic is common and currently at least kobolds have access to Infernal. So maybe PFS should update that policy a little bit.
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Like Finoan pointed out, indirectly this is already "RAW" via the First Rule. What you want is directly mentioning it instead.
That might work for a home game where the GM is particularly strict.
It also works as guidance for GMs that aren't particuarly strict but also don't know that this is a thing that is "safe" to change. The book saying "These are typical starting languages but can be changed with GM permission" throws up a green flag that tells everyone "this is safe to alter as you see fit."
That kind of guidance is important, which is why other parts of the book do it. The biggest example being Secret Checks, which flat out say "the GM can just ignore this whenever they want." The book doesn't have to say that since the First Rule would let them do it anyway, but it does to serve as a callout to flag this as a case where you're likely to want to do that and its okay.
But for PFS it wouldn't work, because this is a "character build time" GM decision, and those are tricky in PFS because every session there could be a different GM.[/quoote]PFS already has its own rules around what you can take in character creation, so its not very onerous for PFS to say "you must take the base language options". It already gives you a bonus regional language so it could even be in the same sentence.
PFS actually solved a closely related issue a year or two ago when the Mwangi book came out. There it became clear that in the Mwangi Expanse the common language was Mwangi, not Taldane. But because PCs go across the world in PFS, they need to know the "global Common" Taldane too. A human could learn both, using their bonus language. However, there are also various tribes in the Mwangi with their own languages. And there are non-human ancestries like dwarves and elves, that should speak both their own language, Mwangi, and Taldane then. But they don't get that many bonus languages.
So PFS did a "GM permission" global ruling in the campaign to handle this: everyone regardless of ancestry gets an extra language, which must be regional. So a dwarf from the Expanse would know Dwarven, Taldane and could choose Mwangi or another regional language.
More generally: PFS also has a problem where an adventure takes place in a region where Taldane isn't the common language and the characters that show up don't speak the regional language. They either have to give key NPCs Taldane anyway (even when it doesn't fit) or make sure PCs can deal with it some other way, because otherwise you get an unworkable scenario where no one has a good time.
I ran into that sometimes in PF1, once where I had a scenario where I couldn't communicate with anyone, once where I was the only one that could, and once where I had to use all my highest level spell slots on Voluminous Vocabulary for the entire scenario just so that the players could actually do anything.
Giving everyone a regional language from level 1 ups the odds significantly that at least someone will be able to communicate, especially as "just get a scroll or wand to solve the problem" isn't as viable as it was in PF1.
I don't think that has anything to do with the book flagging to a GM that they should let players pick a more sensible starting language set when the default ones don't make any sense.
It's not like they don't do it anywhere else, after all: Strength of Thousands changes Common to Mwangi across the board, which didn't make much sense for a couple of players as one is from Varisia and another is from Avistan, where they'd almost certainly grow up learning Taldane rather than Mwangi.
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I think it's important that the ancestry rules mostly represent "how to be a typical member of this ancestry" since most of the time if you're picking an ancestry it's because something about that ancestry appealed to you.
If you actually want to be a Dwarf who was orphaned as an infant and never learned Dwarfish, then you can probably work out something with the GM, but even if you were raised by kindly members of a different ancestry maybe at some point in your life you decided to learn the tongue of your people.
No, I think it's good that the ancestry statblocks list the default languages an ancestry should know. I just wish that swapping those languages out for something else was something the rules explicitly said you could do with GM permission.
It's like how the default attribute boosts for dwarves (+CON, +WIS, -CHA) work well for "dwarf-y" classes like barbarian, cleric, or fighter, but you also have the option to swap them out if you want to play something that wouldn't be common in dwarven society, like a dwarf bard or dwarf wizard.
Likewise, I think with languages we should have a similar option. It could be interesting to play a dwarf raised outside of dwarven culture, completely disconnected from their own people to the point of not speaking the same tongue, and exploring how that would affect their outlook on the world.
I know that you can generally work out these kinds of changes with the GM on a case-by-case basis, but I wish there was a rule you could specifically point to in this regard, you know? Like how there's guidelines already for custom mixed heritages or long-term disabilities or altering undead player options to provide the full immunities of the Undead trait.
A component this minor for most campaigns is really best handled by GM fiat. It is unlikely to come up in PFS play, and I expect most campaigns mostly ignore language unless it's an ancient language the PCs are expected to be unable to translate. A sidebar reminder to GMs that they can be flexible with minor features could make sense, but language would mostly just be part of a list along with height and eye color.
I know that you can generally work out these kinds of changes with the GM on a case-by-case basis, but I wish there was a rule you could specifically point to in this regard, you know?
Well... I point to 'The First Rule' for this specifically. And for many other similar minor impact change requests.
So, no. I guess I don't know.
Why wouldn't that work?
Why would a specific 'GM Fiat allowed for language changes' rule work better? A GM that is willing to allow language swapping would allow it in either case - and a GM that is not willing to allow language swapping would forbid it in either case.
To be honest, I'd be much more likely to just give all the PCs extra languages because they're going to need it for the campaign than to let people trade out their ancestral language for something else.
Like it's hard for me to understand why someone would want to make an Elf that absolutely cannot speak a word of Elfish. Generally "I can speak that language" is exclusively a positive thing since this is not "Radical Translation the Tabletop Game" so "you can't understand what they're saying" generally isn't fun or interesting.
Like if your backstory requires you to know more languages than your intelligence score allows for, I will just give everybody the Multilingual Feat.
I know that you can generally work out these kinds of changes with the GM on a case-by-case basis, but I wish there was a rule you could specifically point to in this regard, you know?Well... I point to 'The First Rule' for this specifically. And for many other similar minor impact change requests.
So, no. I guess I don't know.
Why wouldn't that work?
Why would a specific 'GM Fiat allowed for language changes' rule work better? A GM that is willing to allow language swapping would allow it in either case - and a GM that is not willing to allow language swapping would forbid it in either case.
Having it be a specific rule is nice for tables that want to stick closely to RAW. I, personally, am the kind of person that likes following the rules to the letter (rigid structure is comforting to me), so having these kinds of minor adjustments explicitly spelled out as "okay if you have GM approval" is preferable to having it not mentioned, and instead needing to hope that the GM is fine with these kinds of small adjustments so that I can actually play the character concept I'm interested in playing.
To be honest, I'd be much more likely to just give all the PCs extra languages because they're going to need it for the campaign than to let people trade out their ancestral language for something else.
Like it's hard for me to understand why someone would want to make an Elf that absolutely cannot speak a word of Elfish. Generally "I can speak that language" is exclusively a positive thing since this is not "Radical Translation the Tabletop Game" so "you can't understand what they're saying" generally isn't fun or interesting.
Like if your backstory requires you to know more languages than your intelligence score allows for, I will just give everybody the Multilingual Feat.
From a purely mechanical standpoint, yes, it's better to know more languages than it is to know fewer languages. But sometimes you don't want your character to know a specific language because there's not a time in their backstory they logically could have learned it; e.g, an elf with the dromaar versatile heritage who was raised among orcs would be much more likely to speak Orcish than Elvish.
To be honest, I'd be much more likely to just give all the PCs extra languages because they're going to need it for the campaign than to let people trade out their ancestral language for something else.
Like it's hard for me to understand why someone would want to make an Elf that absolutely cannot speak a word of Elfish. Generally "I can speak that language" is exclusively a positive thing since this is not "Radical Translation the Tabletop Game" so "you can't understand what they're saying" generally isn't fun or interesting.
Like if your backstory requires you to know more languages than your intelligence score allows for, I will just give everybody the Multilingual Feat.
If you take Adopted Ancestry it may often make more sense for you to speak the adopted language rather than the base ancestry one. Why would a Goblin raised exclusively by Gnomes know Goblin and not Gnomish? It makes no sense, but thats what the rules say should happen (and if you don't have an INT bonus you can't just also take Gnomish).
This is a thing a GM can (and should) change, but a callout in the book to that effect would be a nice addition.
It also can be fun or interesting sometimes. I've got a Leshy PC in my Strength of Thousands game that isn't from the expanse and couldn't speak Mwangi at the start of the game. He had to get help from others to get started and then roleplayed slowly learning the language over the entire first in-character year, until he got to the point where he gained another language and could fully learn it. This was actually quite a lot of fun for everyone as there was things they had to work around, miscommunication, and one case where they went to talk to the Leshy on campus and suddenly he was the one taking the lead (because Leshy speak Fey).
For something like PFS its more often a pain in the butt than not if you don't speak the language (hence the bonus one PFS gives), but there's definitely cases where its perfectly fine.
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Having it be a specific rule is nice for tables that want to stick closely to RAW.
But... You didn't ask for a specific rule that changes RAW.
with the GM's permission, you can switch one or more languages from your ancestry with other languages you have access to.
That still wouldn't be any more RAW than The First Rule. More specific, yes. But not something you could use to coerce your GM into allowing your requested language change. The first four words allow the GM to tell you 'no' because they don't want to have to consider the balance concerns and don't want to deviate from RAW (or tell you 'no' for no reason at all). Even things like the Undead Archetype's Undead Benefits say that while changing the rules is allowed, it is up to the GM to determine if such changes are good or bad for the game balance.
Notably, any of these GM Fiat rules aren't allowed in PFS. The role of the GM to allow rule changes is kept by the PFS organizers and not delegated to the GMs that run the games at the table.
So I am still very confused. The only thing I can think of that having the more specific GM Fiat rule does is gives a false sense of authority. It makes it 'feel' like it isn't actually GM Fiat - even if that is what it literally says - because if it was only GM Fiat, then the game devs would just leave it covered under The First Rule.
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It never ceases to amaze me that, in these last couple of years, there are all of these new Ardande and Talos immigrants/refugees flooding into the Universe from realms that have been sealed off from all other planes since before modern language was invented...yet they all speak fluent Taldane, Tian, or Mwangi (Common) AND NOT A WORD OF THEIR NATIVE TONGUES (Arboreal or Talican)!
I smell a conspiracy! LOL.
Any such migrant character in my games won't have access to Golarion Common in their early career, and will instead have that language replaced by one of the two languages above, which would be their native Common.
Having it be a specific rule is nice for tables that want to stick closely to RAW.But... You didn't ask for a specific rule that changes RAW.
with the GM's permission, you can switch one or more languages from your ancestry with other languages you have access to.That still wouldn't be any more RAW than The First Rule. More specific, yes. But not something you could use to coerce your GM into allowing your requested language change. The first four words allow the GM to tell you 'no' because they don't want to have to consider the balance concerns and don't want to deviate from RAW (or tell you 'no' for no reason at all). Even things like the Undead Archetype's Undead Benefits say that while changing the rules is allowed, it is up to the GM to determine if such changes are good or bad for the game balance.
Notably, any of these GM Fiat rules aren't allowed in PFS. The role of the GM to allow rule changes is kept by the PFS organizers and not delegated to the GMs that run the games at the table.
So I am still very confused. The only thing I can think of that having the more specific GM Fiat rule does is gives a false sense of authority. It makes it 'feel' like it isn't actually GM Fiat - even if that is what it literally says - because if it was only GM Fiat, then the game devs would just leave it covered under The First Rule.
The First Rule is a generic rule that basically just means "you don't need to follow the rules written in the rulebooks if you think changing them would make the game more fun". Which is a good rule to follow, but at the same time it's also nice to have more specific cases that explicitly say "it's okay for you to change how this thing works" (e.g swapping out wizard curriculum spells, changing how spellcasting incantations work for nonverbal characters) because that specifically indicates that changing that rule won't have a negative effect on gameplay balance (as compared to, say, letting a character with only one arm wield a two-handed weapon, which is specifically disallowed in the rules for disabilities) and therefore GMs are more likely to allow those kinds of changes.
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The First Rule is a generic rule that basically just means "you don't need to follow the rules written in the rulebooks if you think changing them would make the game more fun". Which is a good rule to follow, but at the same time it's also nice to have more specific cases that explicitly say "it's okay for you to change how this thing works" (e.g swapping out wizard curriculum spells, changing how spellcasting incantations work for nonverbal characters) because that specifically indicates that changing that rule won't have a negative effect on gameplay balance
That's not how GM Fiat works. The game devs don't get to say that "It's okay for you to change how this thing works". That is up to the GM to decide. In all of those GM Fiat statements. No matter how general or specific they are.
Even something as simple as how many languages you get to pick can be a balance thing. If the game devs want to say that picking languages is of no balance concern, then they would have written that every character gets 2 + INT languages of choice with a recommendation that the character picks the language of their ancestry for character consistency reasons. That would be a change that would affect RAW. That is what you really want. Because at that point you could build your Kobold character with whatever languages you want them to have and no GM, not even a PFS GM, could tell you that you built your character wrong and will have to fix it.
But it isn't what you are asking for. And on analysis, that is where my confusion comes from - the disconnect between what you really want (a change to the RAW) and what you are asking for (a GM Fiat note).
So I'm confused, because most (all?) of the Ancestry Language statblocks include this verbage:
"and any other languages to which you have access (such as the languages prevalent in your region)."
So...this actually is already the rule. Isn't it?
So you have the option of speaking your native tongue only if you're smart? And are stuck with a foreign tongue you couldn't possibly have learned no matter what?
Seems fishy to me.
The First Rule is a generic rule that basically just means "you don't need to follow the rules written in the rulebooks if you think changing them would make the game more fun". Which is a good rule to follow, but at the same time it's also nice to have more specific cases that explicitly say "it's okay for you to change how this thing works" (e.g swapping out wizard curriculum spells, changing how spellcasting incantations work for nonverbal characters) because that specifically indicates that changing that rule won't have a negative effect on gameplay balanceThat's not how GM Fiat works. The game devs don't get to say that "It's okay for you to change how this thing works". That is up to the GM to decide. In all of those GM Fiat statements. No matter how general or specific they are.
What? No, there's very definitely a lot of cases where the designers explicitly point out a rule and give guidance to GMs how they can adjust that rule for their tables and what impact that might have on the game. Hell, that's most of what the content in the Gamemastery Guide is.
Even something as simple as how many languages you get to pick can be a balance thing. If the game devs want to say that picking languages is of no balance concern, then they would have written that every character gets 2 + INT languages of choice with a recommendation that the character picks the language of their ancestry for character consistency reasons. That would be a change that would affect RAW. That is what you really want. Because at that point you could build your Kobold character with whatever languages you want them to have and no GM, not even a PFS GM, could tell you that you built your character wrong and will have to fix it.
But it isn't what you are asking for. And on analysis, that is where my confusion comes from - the disconnect between what you really want (a change to the RAW) and what you are asking for (a GM Fiat note).
I mean, sure, changing every ancestry to a generic "2+INT languages" would completely solve the problem that I'm having. But I don't *mind* that there's default languages listed for each ancestry, I just wish the rules more explicitly allowed you to swap those languages out for different ones.
I guess technically speaking, sure, the change I'm proposing is really just "a GM fiat note" rather than a hard rule. But, like... is that a problem? GM fiat notes are good. It's good for GMs to have guidance for what kinds of changes they can make. Besides, this would be, like two sentences at most, so I wouldn't really expect it'd be a page-space concern or anything. I feel like this would just be a strictly beneficial change and it would be objectively better to have a small note than to have no mention of swapping languages at all.
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Seems fishy to me.
Doubly suspicious, since fishes haven't got any tongues at all.
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I think the ancestry language does one more thing that isn't noted - it gives functional access to cultural feats. After all, how are you getting Elven Lore without knowing Elven? And of course loads of ancestry feats are written with the assumption you are an active, participating member of that culture, so if they write an exception for elves not knowing Elven, they'd have to also note that those elves can't access elven cultural feats. Or, well, they can assume that most people play elves who are Elven and anyone who really, really wants to play a non-Elven elf to the point they would rather not know Elven can do it themselves and figure which ancestry feats they can't take while they're at it
Now, you may say, what about Adopted Ancestry? But the inly ancestry who can take that at level 1 is humans, and they get a free pick of languages anyway. If you're in a game where non-humans can get adopted ancestry at level 1 for free if they abandon their cultural ties, you're effectively creating a new ancestry with access to physical feats from one side and cultural feats and language from another side, and once again that's not the Player Core's remit to handle.
I get the idea you're going for, but I feel like if a player's backstory involves them not growing up among members of their own culture, they'll just... not pick those feats. While a lot of ancestry feats are culture-based, there's just as many that are more based on physiology.
This is less a mechanical concern than a "players might pick feats that don't make in-universe sense" concern, and I feel like that's kind of a non-issue since if a player is committed enough to their backstory concept to want to change their starting languages then they're almost certainly going to be paying equally close attention to their feat selection.
The First Rule is a generic rule that basically just means "you don't need to follow the rules written in the rulebooks if you think changing them would make the game more fun". Which is a good rule to follow, but at the same time it's also nice to have more specific cases that explicitly say "it's okay for you to change how this thing works" (e.g swapping out wizard curriculum spells, changing how spellcasting incantations work for nonverbal characters) because that specifically indicates that changing that rule won't have a negative effect on gameplay balanceThat's not how GM Fiat works. The game devs don't get to say that "It's okay for you to change how this thing works". That is up to the GM to decide. In all of those GM Fiat statements. No matter how general or specific they are.
Even something as simple as how many languages you get to pick can be a balance thing. If the game devs want to say that picking languages is of no balance concern, then they would have written that every character gets 2 + INT languages of choice with a recommendation that the character picks the language of their ancestry for character consistency reasons. That would be a change that would affect RAW. That is what you really want. Because at that point you could build your Kobold character with whatever languages you want them to have and no GM, not even a PFS GM, could tell you that you built your character wrong and will have to fix it.
But it isn't what you are asking for. And on analysis, that is where my confusion comes from - the disconnect between what you really want (a change to the RAW) and what you are asking for (a GM Fiat note).
Except that is how it works, and the rules ALREADY do it in multiple places. The Secret Check rules go into a description on how they work, and then at the end say "but the GM can choose not to use secret checks if they would rather some or all rolls be public".
The First Rule already lets a GM do that, but the rules call it out specifically anyway in this case. Since the rulebook already does this, any protest that the rulebook can't do this doesn't really fly.
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Sure but once you're into 'a player is committed enough to their backstory concept to want to change their starting languages' you've already left the realm of things the ancestry system cares enough about to have a sidebar about. Anyone who cares enough to go to that extent can discuss it with their GM, who would also probably appreciate having advanced notice of such a thing lest they accidentally make an encounter that hinges on one person knowing Elven because of course the elf does.
Notably, one thing they don't want people to do is to pressure their GM to let them swap languages because a sidebar says so. Purely in a vacuum, Elven is a more potent language than Halfling, for instance. And there's the actually useful non-ancestry languages, like Sakvroth. You can say that 'well an experienced GM can settle these issues' but an experienced GM can just let the player change the language without a sidebar saying so too.
The ancestry system cares enough about "playing against type" for the variant attribute boosts (and, more recently, mixed heritages) to be a thing, at least. And I'm not saying "let players do this without requiring them to talk to the GM about it" so much as "have the rules specifically say you *can* ask the GM about it", which would give more leeway to players trying to come up with unusual character concepts while still giving the GM the option of a hard "no, I'm not allowing that".
I also don't really think that languages are really more or less potent than each other in a vacuum; while Elven is theoretically "stronger" than halfling (since Elven society is both larger in scope and more likely to have, say, ancient magical artifacts or whatever), in practice whether or not a given language is useful depends on the campaign itself (e.g if the party is trying to track down a famous halfling hero, or if they're exploring some distant continent that elves have never laid foot on, then Elven is a less attractive option). I don't really think minmaxing language selection is something to really be concerned about.
I mean, you're asking for an extremely edge case scenario here to merit a line in a book. You need a player with a deliberately aberrant character concept, who has no spare languages and hence needs to swap rather than drop the unwanted language, to be playing with a GM who values either languages specifically or RAW in general that there needs to be a line in a Core book to specifically allow this option. Any player playing an unusual character concept should be talking to their GM anyway!
I feel like it's a fairly common situation to be playing a character that would logically have different languages than the standard for their ancestry, namely because that's pretty much any backstory that doesn't involve said character growing up in a typical example of their ancestry's culture (e.g adopted by members of another culture, raised by wolves, stolen by fey as a baby, planar scion that was raised outside of the Universe, etc).
One specific case that comes to mind is skeletons, which always only know Common and Necril by default. This means that all skeleton PCs, unless you specifically go out of your way to ask the GM to change your ancestry statblock, are sort of required to have a backstory that both involves completely forgetting their previous ancestry's language (but not Common) as well as having interacted with enough undead over a long enough period of time to learn Necril. That feels weirdly restrictive, because it makes it harder to do backstories like "I remember most of my past life and there's a specific goal connected to that that I want to accomplish".
I feel like having a one-sentence patch that just explicitly allows players to *ask* the GM to swap out their languages would be a nice quality-of-life thing, is all. It's not that the lack of such an option is a Massive Problem That Makes The Game Literally Unplayable, it's just a small one-line change that'd be a nice addition to the game. Obviously you can already just ask your GM to change any of the game's rules if the table agrees that it would make the game more fun, but I feel like it's not unreasonable to want the rulebooks to specifically go "here is a knob that you can tweak if you want", instead of expecting the players and GM to figure that out for themselves.
Page space isn't free, this is a minor swap below the level of "take a background but tweak it's description and granted Lore" and "change what spells an item that grants spells give".
I mean, I don't know why you're bringing up those changes as if I was arguing against them. Those are also options that I would enjoy.
I get that page space can be an issue, but A.) the proposed language-swapping thing would really need to be, like, two sentences at most, and B.) if there really isn't room in Player Core for that, they could always just have some kind of "variant background customization rules" section in a future book or something, like how Treasure Vault has a whole Complex Crafting section that provides a complete alternative to the default crafting rules. I don't care how specifically it gets added to the game, I just think it'd be a nice addition.
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The worst is Fleshwarps: They only speak common. So by default they don't speak their native language unless they are taldan humans.
And the option to swap Common for their native language seems... not exactly a solution :D
The worst is Fleshwarps: They only speak common. So by default they don't speak their native language unless they are taldan humans.
And the option to swap Common for their native language seems... not exactly a solution :D
That is odd that they outright only get one language, yeah. You'd think it'd be like humans where they get Common and 1+INT languages of their choice.
Poppets and awakened animals technically have the same issue, but at least in their case I can understand the idea that they only recently became sapient so they haven't had the time to learn more than one language. Fleshwarps explicitly used to be members of a different ancestry though so I'm not sure what the reasoning is there.
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Honestly, languages as a whole don't make much sense in Pathfinder.
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Honestly, languages as a whole don't make much sense in Pathfinder.
In what manner of speaking?
(Ba-dum-tss!)
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It never ceases to amaze me that, in these last couple of years, there are all of these new Ardande and Talos immigrants/refugees flooding into the Universe from realms that have been sealed off from all other planes since before modern language was invented...yet they all speak fluent Taldane, Tian, or Mwangi (Common) AND NOT A WORD OF THEIR NATIVE TONGUES (Arboreal or Talican)!
I smell a conspiracy! LOL.
Any such migrant character in my games won't have access to Golarion Common in their early career, and will instead have that language replaced by one of the two languages above, which would be their native Common.
That is an interesting way to push some players to invest in INT for some PCs.
Could be seen as punishing them for no good reason though.
It never ceases to amaze me that, in these last couple of years, there are all of these new Ardande and Talos immigrants/refugees flooding into the Universe from realms that have been sealed off from all other planes since before modern language was invented...yet they all speak fluent Taldane, Tian, or Mwangi (Common) AND NOT A WORD OF THEIR NATIVE TONGUES (Arboreal or Talican)!
I smell a conspiracy! LOL.
Any such migrant character in my games won't have access to Golarion Common in their early career, and will instead have that language replaced by one of the two languages above, which would be their native Common.
That is an interesting way to push some players to invest in INT for some PCs.
Could be seen as punishing them for no good reason though.
Outright removing Common from a character's ancestry probably isn't ideal unless you let them swap out some other language for Common instead. Otherwise, you need to figure out how that character can communicate with the rest of the party, how they can communicate with NPCs, how they can read in-universe writing, etc.
That's not to say that you *can't* do this kind of concept well, but everyone at the table needs to be on-board with it for it to really work (e.g, at least one other person in the party probably needs to be speaking one of the character's known languages), and in any case it creates a lot more work for everyone involved (since now you need to worry about niche language-barrier stuff like monsters not being able to Demoralize that character reliably or Point Out requiring a Perception check more often than not). It can be an interesting story element, it just takes a lot more effort to run.
A similar concept that would probably be a lot easier is having the *entire party* not speak Common (save for maybe one member) in a region that predominantly speaks Common. (You can achieve similar results by just dropping a typical party somewhere where the common tongue isn't Common, as well.) This changes the dynamic from "How do we get this one weird party member up-to-speed with what's going on?" to "How do we, as a group, navigate this region without being able to communicate with the locals?", which is a lot more straightforward and doesn't make it feel like one specific party member is just an inconvenience.
You still want the party to have at least one shared language, of course, because *everyone* having a language barrier with *everyone else* would just a massive headache to play. Though now that I think about it, that could maybe make for an interesting play-by-post style of game where the players aren't allowed to communicate with each other directly (i.e, any time a character speaks, listens to, or reads someting, the actual content of the information is exclusively between that player and the GM). That would probably be super impractical to actually run in practice, though.
Nobody loses Common, it's just that Common happens to be a different language depending on which region the character is from. There's long been precedence for this with the Mwangi Expanse and Tian Xia. There likely will be for Casamaron and other far off or isolated locales as well.
I see it as no more punishing than if a character from the Mwangi Expanse or Tian Xia adventured in the Inner Sea, or vice versa.
If it was intended for everyone to be able to communicate perfectly all the time, there wouldn't be any rules for languages at all.
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Nobody loses Common, it's just that Common happens to be a different language depending on which region the character is from. There's long been precedence for this with the Mwangi Expanse and Tian Xia. There likely will be for Casamaron and other far off or isolated locales as well.
I see it as no more punishing than if a character from the Mwangi Expanse or Tian Xia adventured in the Inner Sea, or vice versa.
If it was intended for everyone to be able to communicate perfectly all the time, there wouldn't be any rules for languages at all.
These are for the party communicating more easily with NPCs thanks to a PC knowing the right language.
Not to ostracize one PC just because of their backstory.
There's no ostracizing going on. It's just the way things are. People speak different languages.
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There's no ostracizing going on. It's just the way things are. People speak different languages.And how is that fun for the players ?
It's fun for them because they CHOSE to play foreigners in a foreign land.
Every player I've seen do that has either invested in local languages to make it a non-issue or made the communication difficulties a part of their character's development. There's never been any expectation that everything would be handed to them on a silver platter like some sort of isekai.
There's no ostracizing going on. It's just the way things are. People speak different languages.And how is that fun for the players ?
For a player that knows what they're getting into and wants the narrative believability? Its quite fun. They have challenges to overcome and need help to do it.
Some players won't want to deal with those problems, but others find it silly that they came from another continent, have never heard the language before, but somehow speak it perfectly well because its "common".
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There's no ostracizing going on. It's just the way things are. People speak different languages.And how is that fun for the players ?For a player that knows what they're getting into and wants the narrative believability? Its quite fun. They have challenges to overcome and need help to do it.
Some players won't want to deal with those problems, but others find it silly that they came from another continent, have never heard the language before, but somehow speak it perfectly well because its "common".
I agree. But I read RD as meaning that the player had no choice. Which I honestly believe diminishes the player's fun.
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...I read RD as meaning that the player had no choice. Which I honestly believe diminishes the player's fun.
There would be a discussion first. If the player can convince me that their character should be able to speak Common (Taldane) without any investment in Intelligence, feats, or anything else, despite having been sealed away in another dimension since before Taldane existed, then yeah, they'll get their language.
Even if they don't have a +50 Diplomacy modifier, I would grant them access to the language.