Question:
Could someone explain to this poor confused soul about the Speak
Language skill? The PHB doesn't say how many skill points should be
spent to learn a new language, and it seems that just spending one point
on it is a little light. Any insights? I'm figuring that there has to
be a roleplaying component to it as well, such as spending six months at
a school, spending a couple of hours a night with the party's dwarf
getting trained, etc. How are people handling this in their campaign?
Answer:
The basic system as presented in the PHB is that you just get one new
language for each skill rank you have in "Speak Language". Unless
you're a Barbarian, this also grants you literacy in that language.
I don't much like the assumption (as presented in the PHB) that if you
know a language at all, you are a perfect speaker and can
automatically read and write it. If Slackbladder the Ranger wants to
be able to imitate orcish speech, he should have to invest some skill
ranks becoming fluent enough to do so. If he doesn't want to "waste"
the skill ranks in this way - well, that's his choice.
I intend to carry over the language skill from my Fantasy Hero
campaign, which would work as follows:
1 rank = basic conversation (tourist phrase-book quality)
2 ranks = accented fluent conversation
3 ranks = fluent conversation with little or no accent
+1 rank = literate (at similar level to base language skill)
+2 ranks = highly literate (essentially provides a Knowledge skill of
the literature of the appropriate culture, and might allow the speaker
to compose poetry, decipher allegory, etc.).
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