Do humanoids speak 'English?' Does Anyone Care?

I give my blessing for talking creatures. They learn pidgin english when they make raids on caravans and farmhouses and such. Plus, they have patrons that use them as mules for work and gopher jobs and such tasks. They have to teach them at least the rudiments so they know why they will be killed if they fail.

 

Can you make them talk bad english? Most talking greenskins I've encountered in other games are usually handled this way. Think talking gnolls in Moathouse or something like that.

 

You CAN make one of them speak Shakespearian English, you know. Bring Great King Rat back? Please?

Also, it's not just gnolls, but also Lubash the Ogre, Temple Trolls etc.

 

But chances are significant that a few of them green races in hickory branch are going to maybe speak a touch better because they are leaders and whatnot.

That commander that does piles of damage with the unholy double greataxe should speak a little better than Joe Orc. Same goes for that orc wizard and orc shaman.

That goblin leader wouldn't haven't gotten to the lofty position he is in by being a dumb@$$.

Same maybe with the kobold leader.

 

That Leader orc in the orc caves should be a little bit more intelligent than his followers and speak likewise.

Or perhaps here's another idea. I don't know programming so I don't know if this would be hard or not. What if you had to have a particular race as a PC in order to understand what other creatures say? Like, you might need to have the pre-generated orc character "Giant" in the party to understand orcs in the orc cave and orcs in hickory branch.

 

in DnD learning languages is REAL easy (and there is magic that makes you speak all languages anyways)...

nobody speaks english, they speak "common" or "undercommon" in the underdark... many races have their own unique languages...

Any CREATURE with an int of 3 or more knows common unless otherwise stated in their description (that means btw, that any celestial animal / infernal animal that you summon via summon monster speaks common, but not celestial/infernal ... this is well documented in CharOp forums)

And an adventurer knows common, their racial language (ex: elf), and 1 extra language per starting int modifier. Also, they can learn a new language for 2 skill points.. or 1 skill point if their class has "speak language" as a class feature (ex: loremaster does)

Anyways... none of them speak english, but they ALL speak common in ADDITION to their racial language unless from the underdark where they all speak undercommon.

The thing is... there is no dialogue in character creation to choose your languages spoken... so that band of orcs certainly can speak to YOU in common, but they will speak to each other in Orc... whether you understand what they are saying depends if your character learned their language.

http://www.d20srd.org/srd/skills/SpeakLanguage.htm
here is the list of languages.
Goblins would speak goblin, orcs will speak orc. But they both ALSO speak common.

You could showcase that I guess by having them speak incomprehensibly to each other and then speak to you in common... But that ignores the ability of most characters to understand exotic speech. High level monks get it as a class ability, and all the prime casters get it as a spell. There can be no end to the amount and possible ways of working on it...
so I think it is more practical to have one of three options:
1. "you understand them" (since there are so many WAYS for you to do so, its a given that you would)
2. "you don't understand them" unless they choose to speak in common.
3. "you don't understand them and they don't understand you and no communication is possible, period".

I dislike 3, especially in a mixed party group... so among the dwarf, elf, human, and gnome you can all understand each other... but you can't speak to the orc?

2 and 1 are both fine IMHO. I have no leanings either way.

 

When it is necessary to move the story forward, they should speak simple English. Otherwise nonsense sounds or silence should suffice.

 

Lareth controls his bugbears and gnolls, so either he speaks several languages or the humanoids know or at least understand a little common. Language shouldn't be any kind of problem or barrier in the game.

 

I throw my vote also on "communication isn't a problem"... everyone can speak to everyone.

 

Maybe it was actually the bugbears that engineered the killing of christ as opposed to the popular perception.

I didn't realize that ToEE was so anti-semitic. oke:

What does Troika translate into from german?

 

As mentioned, plenty of vanilla ToEE humanoids speak common: Grurz the bugbear leader, Oohlgrist, Gnoll leader, etc. Thus, having the leaders speak a little broken English won't spoil ToEE's sanctity.

...And yes, the language of Arcane Evil is indeed officially Hebrew :evil:
(the writing on the Pentagram near the Moathouse exit tunnel is "Leviathan" in Hebrew)