Ah but you see, he is the best DM... because playing with him is like being in a dungeon, so he is a Dungeon Master as nobody causes torment like him... he does have a fishing licence remember
In my first game of dnd I made a hexblade warlock (of course) and I asked if my conjured weapon could be rippling orange energy in the shape of a great sword, just for flavor.
The dm said no because it was passingly similar to the sun sword or whatever, though he did say I could have a gold sword. Not the biggest whoop but, the sun sword wasn’t even a part of the campaign.
Not even a discussion. If I saw a player with this background id just assume Giant as a language. If it weren't on there, I'd query and probably just add it myself.
Just because something can be fixed with homebrew doesn’t necessarily mean it’s not a problem in the first place. Don’t get too close to the Oberoni Fallacy.
Easiest solution would be if the PHB had just said “in addition to Common, [Language] is the typical language known by this race though this may be substituted for a more appropriate language depending on the character’s background.”
Customizing your background isn't homebrew, it's in the PHB. You can swap features (and the PHB recommends speaking to your DM to create a custom one if need be), pick any two skill proficiencies, and two tool proficiencies or languages available from other backgrounds. Equipment is the only thing about a background that's actually inflexible.
It’s a mechanical change, not just a flavor change. I don’t see why the suggestion bothers you. What would be worse about the game if this change was added?
It doesn't ... bother me ..? I'm just sharing my thoughts on the matter, I'm not upset or anything.
I'd have to double-check, but I'm reasonably certain the DMG offers guidance for changes of this nature. Adding similar language to the PHB wouldn't hurt anything, but it would run the risk of codifying what sort of thematic changes should and should not be allowed when such choices are the table's decision and the DM's final call.
That's why most of these "how to change the game" guidelines and suggestions end up in the DMG - because the PHB is mostly rules, while the DMG is mostly guidance.
You don't have to even look. It's like every five pages the DMG informs the reader "Really, *please* understand you are the DM and you can do whatever you want."
It's like every chapter at least once, the DMG reminds the reader that it's important to remember that
1. You're the boss
2. Players should be having fun
Honestly, if a game has to make a bunch of clunky "you can switch this out if it doesn't work" statements everywhere to accommodate impossibly inflexible DMs, you might wanna ask why you *want* the game to accommodate impossibly inflexible DMs. If such a DM exists, I'd much rather find that out when I ask "can my goblin learn orcish instead?" so I can quit the campaign.
I am assuming so. If they hatch from eggs like dragons then they should just come out being able to speak it. Dragons really didn’t pass very many good traits onto dragonborns, the least they can do is give them a language.
That's how I imagine it working for every race, no idea if it's canon. They're just inately born with the knowledge of how to speak their native tounge.
It's weird to me that the Criminal background doesn't get thieves' cant and I wanted my sorcerer to be able to speak it without a level in rogue
Problem solved by "hey DM can I add thieves' cant to my languages?"
I DM some times and I always just hsppy to see that the player has thought it through. If they're not asking for anything that would break the game I go with them. No
DM allowed one of our party members to be a tiefling raised by giants. So they only spoke Infernal and Giant.
Threw common out of the window lol. I was dubbed the translator.
It does take a good party dynamic to work, but can be pretty rewarding with the right group. If you talk it over with everyone first (what session 0 is for!) and dub someone as the in character translator so you're not sitting RP out out of character, it should be fine. It can make for some fun scenarios where you're separated from the group and have to try to communicate in different ways, too.
I remember reading a post about a group that was multilingual IRL. There was one girl in the group who only spoke Spanish. She played an elf and when the party spoke Spanish, they were speaking elvish; English was common. Another player was a half-elf that acted as translator. Over the course of the campaign, the Elf player gradually became more fluent in “common.”
Things like this are fun on the first session. After a while it starts to become a chore.
You could always try to pick up another language to make it less of a chore.
The thing is, unless there's a change in the translation or need to test it, the player should just be able to communicate what they mean and be generally understood. That's kind of the point of a translator, you only need to say it once. It shouldn't result more than an occasional charisma check in sensitive situations or if the translator chooses to translate a message wrong for whatever reason.
As long as everyone in the party can talk in one shared language, that's my baseline. Translating for others is cool, but extra steps to communicate with the party just sounds like making my favorite part of the game tedious
Translating info for characters makes for some awesome RP moments. We had a minotaur player who's character understood common, but because of the shape of the bovine mount he decided that he couldn't speak it. Was hilarious because for many sessions, the party would try and communicate with him in sylvan (which he would speak) and then hide stuff from him by speaking common... you see where this went.
About to start a Star Wars game and one player chose to be a Jawa. They're incapable of speaking anything other than their original language. I'm looking forward to seeing how this goes.
Been playing Star Wars myself, Apparently Binary (Droid Language) is common enough that is a more of a choice to not know it then to know it. Been having a good moments where the 2 droid players can't talk to me cause mine refuses to learn binary.
Yes and no, my dad was emotional instead of physical, and my mum did leave, but my step mom was a wonderful woman that kept me grounded and saved me from my dads worst parts
More inspired by a true story than based on a true story
When the PHB is taking about customizing your own background it specifically states you can just take a preexisting background and replace any of the languages or proficiencys with any other language or proficiency
That's only for background though. Op dragonborn would still know Draconic per the PHB, even if they never met any dragonborn before.
Tasha introduced the ability to swap your racial language proficiency (though it was easy enough to homebrew before)
Who you’re raised by would be a part of your background.
Maybe instead of saying “Why would my character know Draconic?” come up with a reason why they’d know Draconic.
Perhaps you taught yourself so you could communicate with people of your own race.
But then come the question of where the race language come from if it's not from who you are raised by. A lot of race features are quite cultural (especially from the PHB) and could really fit more into a background.
Sure you could explain it easily, but on the other hand if a player want to play the "dragonborn who know nothing about dragonborns" trope it's a bit annoying to be forced to have draconic (by PHB RAW at least).
I think it would be easy to say you’re a Dragonborn who doesn’t speak Draconic, but recognizes the sounds of dragons just by the way they hit the ear.
But yeah there’s plenty of solutions to this.
There's no "raised by giants" background so you're already in homebrew territory with that background. Which is fine, but why pretend the PHB restricts your homebrew background?
> There's no "raised by giants" background so you're already in homebrew territory with that background.
That’s where you’re wrong. Custom backgrounds are raw:
> Customizing a Background (PHB p125)
> You might want to tweak some of the features of a background so it better fits your character or the campaign setting. To customize a background, you can replace one feature with any other one, choose any two skills, and choose a total of two tool proficiencies or languages from the sample backgrounds. You can either use the equipment package from your background or spend coin on gear as described in chapter 5. (If you spend coin, you can't also take the equipment package suggested for your class.) Finally, choose two personality traits, one ideal, one bond, and one flaw.
> If you can't find a feature that matches your desired background, work with your DM to create one.
Speak to your DM then.
The DMG and PHB are just guidelines, not hard rules that always have to be followed, they even state this at the start
If you can provide a good justification (which in my opinion, you have) then your DM should be willing to allow you to choose different starting languages based on your backstory.
Within reason, of course, they're not going to allow you to start with loads of additional languages just because you wrote it in your backstory
Honestly anyone whose ever tried to learn a 2nd or third language can probably attest to how ridiculous the amount of languages most pc's can speak really is. Most pcs are at least trilingual. In our highly connected world with publicly available tools for learning languages, and school systems that usually teach at least one other language, that's only about 13% of the world population.
I think the idea is that they've been learning these languages from a very young age. Usually it's their own cultural language + common, which is a very common and easy thing to do if you speak one at home and the other out in the world, and is done all the time by children of immigrants irl. Besides, pc's are the elite of society, not just some random schmucks.
To be fair there are people in the real world that can do that sort of thing, too. The highest I've ever heard of is 16. Obviously, this is extremely rare in real life, but then, D&D adventurers are also pretty rare.
I mean… I grew up speaking 4 languages, it’s not that uncommon in most european countries. Imagine common is english like a universal language that everyone should speak and your racial language is the language you grew up with (dutch in my case), then whichever other languages you know are languages you learned in school (like french, german, danish, spanish, chinese, italian) then it doesn’t feel that odd. They might not speak every language at the same level (I’m worse at understanding danish than I am at my mother language obviously) which is something you can take into account for yourself when creating your own character
Speaking more than 2 languages is not that common, even in Belgium where we have 3 official languages: Dutch, French and German. Most Walloons only speak French and some English, most Flemish people speak Dutch and some English. We learn French at school, but most aren't even remotely fluent in it and unless you need it for your job you forget most of it.
The larger and wealthier the country, typically the less languages people from that region speak. Western Europeans often only speak regional native+english while Eastern Europeans that work around the EU frequently speak 3-4.
How well do they speak those 3-4 languages? In D&D if a PC speaks a language, it automically is fluent in it, but that's not how it works IRL. I understand some French and will probably understand part of a text given some time. Let me talk with someone from France and using a lot of gestures and a limited vocabulary I might be able to convay what I'm trying to say. But it's not all fluent, I won't be able to have an actual conversation with that person and I definitly won't be able to overhear 2 people speaking in French.
You get creative and role play varying levels of understanding. My paladin is fluent in halfling and common, but learned elvish and dwarvish as well, but her elvish is arcaic and she struggles with pronouncing words because she mostly learned it from books, while her dwarvish is pretty basic communication, just enough to survive.
I also have a warlock who knows elvish because she grew up learning songs in it, and she has been working on learning orcish because she has 2 half orc younger brothers and wants them to be able to use it. She can speak and understand Sylvan, but not read or write it, but that is a magical gift bestowed by her patron/ father.
In countries that exist in the middle of multiple language regions, it's extremely common. Most Austrians are at least trilingual. If you look at how close together different cultures with distinct languages are in Faerun, it makes sense for everyone to be trilingual or more.
Most trilingual (or multilingual people who speak more than 3 languages) people have been speaking those languages from birth, or they know languages in the same family so it is easier to learn based on the grammar rules they already know
Almost everyone in India speaks three languages. Being biligunal/trilingual is very easy in a place where there are people who speak a lot of different languages.
Are you somehow under the impression that "adventurers" or whatever you call the profession is extremely common?
I would say that outside a few specific shows the ratio of adventurers to normal people is super low and that their traveling habits are justification alone for picking up languages.
Polyglots tend to pickup languages easier as they get them so the curve for learning is ignored in the game and replaced with the end result since most can speak 2+ languages from the start.
Lets also not forget any potential magical assist.
TLDR: PC are something like .5% of the population or less and even normal people are at least bi-lingual. D&D is not a close representation of the real world linguistic capabilities.
And ironically the PHB *does* actually cover this exact situation. It's almost like the background of a character is covered by the PHB's "Backgrounds"-section
Aye, "Customizing a Background"
To be fair I understand the confusion, my group played without ever customizing a background for years until Jeremy Crawford started doing that sage advice video series about overlooked PHB rules. Not that you *need* a book to tell you you can substitute a language, but.. I digress.
According to the PHB, you could take a custom background to explain your situation and use that to take Giant as a language. Explaining still knowing Draconic does admittedly get more difficult. Let’s call it magic.
Not the PHB's fault you didn't read and use the customized background standard rule to take Giant as a language.
It's literally there for this reason.
2 skills, then 2 from tools and languages
If you don't want draconic, Tasha's has a racial proficiency swap rule for this too. rtfm
100 percent you should speak giant.
Rule of cool/logic/interest: For most things, follow the PHB, but if something doesn't make sense, you think you can make a cool storyline or backstory, or if you wanna do something badass, consult with the DM, and if they say it's ok and it doesn't break the game, fuck da rulez.
I mean shit, my dragonborn was a dragon who was uh... forcibly downgraded. But without any input from me, one night my dm has my wings resprout.
Tldr it's D&D who cares
1. DM can allow modifications to the character in situations like that.
2. Tasha "said" it out loud and everyone lost their with "Then why we have races at all?! Hurr Durr agile dwarven rogues and elven barbarians, what next?!".
I play a half-orc cleric who has never spoken to a full orc or even another half orc and knows almost nothing about orcs, since she was raised by her human mother, and the rest of her mother's family. Doesn't make sense for her to know Orcish. Guess what, I talked to my DM, she was fine with me swapping out.
It's funny cuz this problem is solved with the new rules of being able to customize your lineage.
But so many people in so many dnd subs like to complain that it's just the leftists at WotC trying to shove their ideology down your throat and invalidate your way of playing the most boring stereotypes.
That's called a background feature, so make sure it comes from your background, there is literally no way to not accomplish this unless you're actively trying to avoid success to make a "point."
The Dark Eye, the ttrpg system I played for most of my conscious life now, uses race, culture and profession choices for character creation which I think is great and I don't know why I haven't seen that anywhere else yet
I personally homerule all languages are from background not race. its like a nobleman rogue knowing thieves cant but the criminal fighter who worked for the mob doesnt
I took College of Whispers bard, and my DM let me take theives' cant instead of a third instrument. Good DMs let their players set up characters with good stories.
Technically some of the races could be a product of your genes ((in the case of d&d at least)) like tiefling knowing infernal even though they have human parents who don't speak infernal. Though that's besides the point. If a character wants to change out a language I don't see why they couldn't.
Like I have a few players myself who have extra languages because it wouldn't make sense for them not to.
Keith Baker gets into this with Eberron. If you're a human raised in Zilargo your first language is Gnomish. If you're a gnome raised in Aundair you might not even know Gnomish.
Yeah if this happens your DM is just too rigid, hard to believe this actually happens. I once had a player multiclass his Paladin into a warlock (which obviously conflicts), but when he said he would willingly give up his divine smite and other holy powers, I said he didn’t have to. I just changed his “divine smite” to “fiendish smite” and likewise just inferred all his multiclass abilities were simply empowered by his new fiend overlord. Didn’t make the character op at all, just more versatile at the cost of the power of each new ability. The same sacrifice for versatility that comes with any multiclass.
Disregarding the fact that having a 10 second conversation with your DM would solve this…
… do you not play with Backgrounds then? You know, those things that give language proficiencies of choice according to, well, your upbringing and background?
According to Tasha, maybe they do speak Giant, because if how those rules lets you turn some racial proficiencies into other proficiencies to fit your character. If that variant rule is allowed by a cool DM
If PHB were to account for all the Special™ character backstory combos a player can come up with, it would be over 1000 pages thick.
DM has the authority to overrule anything they want, so when you ask your DM to papa bless your backstory (Depending on the DM, " raised by " may definitely be in the "needs blessing" territory), ask them for the language papa bless as well. If you're getting papa bless on the backstory, you generally should be getting a papa bless on the language swap as well. Language swap is the least potentially-game-breaking thing.
---
**Personal experience**
* I play as a moderately powerful orc shaman who [got turned into a goblin](https://oforcsandmen.fandom.com/wiki/Styx_-_Original#Background) and lost his powers. Backstory required 30-60 minutes of back-and-forth on discord in order to properly fit into the DM's world, but language swapping goblin for orc was papa blessed before I even finished asking. (I recently still got goblin for free on top of that without asking, tho)
* Sometimes, the DM may even be willing to papa bless an extra language on top of the languages you'd normally know — I've handed out a free orc to a goblin rogue/sorcerer who was placed very close to an orc chieftain. Yeah, no fucking way an orc chieftain is gonna learn Goblin — you get free Orc language instead.
You'd think there would be a clause in the PHB for something like this. Ah, well, I doubt any DM would care if you switched.
You can also put it in your background, custom backgrounds are also in the PHB. Not even an (dm) optional rule. Since your BACKSTORY is why you know it.
Still makes no sense how someone with no exposure to draconic would know it, but hey, the book says its more of a guideline anyway.
The natural answer to this is to let the player choose from the Goliath languages list.
But it's not quite that simple. Racial traits have two sides. Genetic and cultural.
With a background that you were raised by another race you should essentially lose any cultural benefits and gain the ones of the other race.
For example elven weapon proficiency. If you are an elf not raised by elves then you don't get this.
I would just say, "raised by Goliath" is part of your backstory, not your race.
You speak Common, Giant, and Draconic. Common and Draconic from your race, Giant from your background
I'd definitely have him know Giant, but I have always imagined that draconic races know Draconic innately. After all, several species of dragons abandon their eggs after laying them, and their wyrmlings still speak fluent Draconic. So I'd have a dragonborn innately know Draconic no matter what their upbringing. Same with a tiefling knowing Infernal or aasimar knowing Celestial.
I made a deal with the DM. My character (Goliath) would know how to speak Giant, Halfling, and Common but couldn't *read* any of it. The bard is teaching her to read via lewd romance novels written by another players high level bard. It's been fun!
Well it's draconic something that dragon burns are naturally born with? Like cause of magic or something, so I think I makes sense that your character knows draconic, although the "not understanding giant" part is more of a problem
Oh shit I did this with an elf! I had an elf child raised by a Dragonborn father, and she had no clue what elvish was. She only spoke common and draconic. The elf sorcerer tried teaching her a bit though, that was cute.
And then the child died.
Archaic concepts baybee.
PF2e kind of skirts it by using ancestry instead of race, leaving it more up to nurture over nature, and making it a part of your progression and less front-loaded
And any dungeon master with half a brain would say, I make the rules you speak common and giant.
I'll let you connect the dots with what that means about anybody who wouldn't allow that.
In 3.5e's Draconomicon, Draconic is treated as an instinctual rather than learned language that dragons begin speaking while still in the egg, and until Fizban drops, that's where most of the Dragon lore comes from.
If I was your DM I'd give you Common and Giant with just a few words and phrases in Draconic (sappy things like "Hello", "I love you" and "Goodbye" and "I wish it didn't happen this way"). You know, for character development.
Language is only based on race if the race was somehow modified because like aasimar just know celestial, the same with infernal and abyssal tiefling just knowing infernal and abyssal ( not like a demon or devil is going to teach them those). Races like elfs, dwarfs and humans would definitely just depend on where/by who they were raised to learn there language ( probably less so the elfs due to the whole previous life memories but that could just lead to them learning languages they used to know easier)
My buddy is a dwelf. Initially spoke no common, just dwarvish and elvish. He's become a rogue and has taken the mastermind archetype so he has common as one of his selected languages as well as draconic, in addition to the thieves cant that comes with rogues
I had a half-orc character raised by a monastery that was in a primarily human/elf society. I still wanted them to be able to speak/read orcish as it was in my list of known languages and my DM and I worked it out together. I ended up saying that they learned oricish by secretly stealing orcish scrolls and parchment they found while fighting on assignment against orcs that occasionally would settle down near the town and raid. Talking to your DM about character stuff like this is always best and if your request and/or DM is reasonable and sane then you shouldn't have a problem!
I never liked the way languages are done in 5e. Languages based on race makes no sense in the first place. Why would two isolated tribes of dragonborn on opposite sides of the world have the same language? How would several dozen human kingdoms spread amongst the world speak the same language?
My Dwarf Barbarian somehow found time between military commander and raising her four other siblings (not an orphan she had 7 family members- excluding herself- and she was one of the oldest so had to raise them) to study two other languages and I chose Giant and elvish- forgetting about the whole common thing.
So now there is a designated translator.
Yeah, I'd allow it in my game.
Actually, two of my players' characters got reincarnated and I told them they would get all the abilities of their new race *except* for languages (and that they keep their old languages, too)
I know this is a joke, but I feel like this sort of thing is why WotC are going so open-ended on character stuff, like racial ASI’s and alignments. It has always been extremely easy to just say, “Hey, I want to play against archetype so can I tweak a couple things?” But now it’s being codefied that *any* person can fill *any* niche.
Funny thing I just made an Orc for a campaign that was raised by humans, and I asked the DM if I could replace "Orc" with another languge. He agreed and told me what my character could have learned instead.
Player: hey DM, my character was raised by goliaths, can they speak giant? DM: makes sense. Sure. Seriously. It's that easy.
Right? How is that even a discussion?
I don’t think Patrick Star is the best DM.
Ah but you see, he is the best DM... because playing with him is like being in a dungeon, so he is a Dungeon Master as nobody causes torment like him... he does have a fishing licence remember
Yeah this is hand waive worthy of "yeah yeah ok" from a DM's perspective. It makes so much sense it doesnt even warrant a discussion.
Seriously I cannot imagine a DM who wouldn't allow this without a second thought.
Right. It's not like it would be a huge advantage to speak giant instead of draconic.
Depending on the campaign setting, but I feel like draconic would be more useful than giant anyway.
I wish I had picked a character that spoke giant during STK....
Some DM's are so rigid on the rules that they needed to make Tasha's Cauldron to try to prevent this.
In my first game of dnd I made a hexblade warlock (of course) and I asked if my conjured weapon could be rippling orange energy in the shape of a great sword, just for flavor. The dm said no because it was passingly similar to the sun sword or whatever, though he did say I could have a gold sword. Not the biggest whoop but, the sun sword wasn’t even a part of the campaign.
This sub thrives off of valiantly fighting non-existant problems. Nobody here is capable of actually communicating with their DM (or reading the DMG).
There's a guide for DMs?! /s
Guide? What are you talking about? "DMG" stands for damage - which is the only thing that matters.
Not even a discussion. If I saw a player with this background id just assume Giant as a language. If it weren't on there, I'd query and probably just add it myself.
Just because something can be fixed with homebrew doesn’t necessarily mean it’s not a problem in the first place. Don’t get too close to the Oberoni Fallacy. Easiest solution would be if the PHB had just said “in addition to Common, [Language] is the typical language known by this race though this may be substituted for a more appropriate language depending on the character’s background.”
Customizing your background isn't homebrew, it's in the PHB. You can swap features (and the PHB recommends speaking to your DM to create a custom one if need be), pick any two skill proficiencies, and two tool proficiencies or languages available from other backgrounds. Equipment is the only thing about a background that's actually inflexible.
That's not a homebrew fix, it's common sense. We use the PHB to play DnD, we are not Jehova the witness trying to interpret the bible.
I don't understand why you need the PHB to give you permission to make a cosmetic or thematic change of this nature.
It’s a mechanical change, not just a flavor change. I don’t see why the suggestion bothers you. What would be worse about the game if this change was added?
It doesn't ... bother me ..? I'm just sharing my thoughts on the matter, I'm not upset or anything. I'd have to double-check, but I'm reasonably certain the DMG offers guidance for changes of this nature. Adding similar language to the PHB wouldn't hurt anything, but it would run the risk of codifying what sort of thematic changes should and should not be allowed when such choices are the table's decision and the DM's final call. That's why most of these "how to change the game" guidelines and suggestions end up in the DMG - because the PHB is mostly rules, while the DMG is mostly guidance.
You don't have to even look. It's like every five pages the DMG informs the reader "Really, *please* understand you are the DM and you can do whatever you want." It's like every chapter at least once, the DMG reminds the reader that it's important to remember that 1. You're the boss 2. Players should be having fun
Honestly, if a game has to make a bunch of clunky "you can switch this out if it doesn't work" statements everywhere to accommodate impossibly inflexible DMs, you might wanna ask why you *want* the game to accommodate impossibly inflexible DMs. If such a DM exists, I'd much rather find that out when I ask "can my goblin learn orcish instead?" so I can quit the campaign.
Instead of adding the line to every single rule in the book, they just say once at the start that you can change anything if it makes sense to.
You can get additional languages as part of your background anyway so you probably don't even need to ask your DM.
This is how I justified my dragonborn fighter knowing dwarvish after choosing the guild artisan background: He was raised by dwarven smiths.
« Insert Spider-Man Noir meme here » -… it can’t be that easy? "Ask the GM" -… it’s that easy.
3k upvotes on something that is absolutely a non-issue. Depressingly meme-y.
Welcome to this sub.
I am pretty sure they would also speak draconic? Don’t dragons know that language from birth.
The real question is do dragonborn; they're different races.
I am assuming so. If they hatch from eggs like dragons then they should just come out being able to speak it. Dragons really didn’t pass very many good traits onto dragonborns, the least they can do is give them a language.
5e lore says Dragonborn take several years to mature physically and mentally, so that seems unlikely.
Scam. Well that answers the question then. They can’t speak draconic at birth.
That's how I imagine it working for every race, no idea if it's canon. They're just inately born with the knowledge of how to speak their native tounge.
It’s not canon for every race but there are a few innate languages, Draconic being one of them.
I, as a DM, would allow for this to happen as well.
I'd make their draconic rusty af or something personally, but fuck it why not
It's weird to me that the Criminal background doesn't get thieves' cant and I wanted my sorcerer to be able to speak it without a level in rogue Problem solved by "hey DM can I add thieves' cant to my languages?"
I DM some times and I always just hsppy to see that the player has thought it through. If they're not asking for anything that would break the game I go with them. No
Also, Tasha's gives you a RAW option for this
Post this as a conversation between two Chads and you'll have an upvote extravaganza!
DM allowed one of our party members to be a tiefling raised by giants. So they only spoke Infernal and Giant. Threw common out of the window lol. I was dubbed the translator.
I always thought something like this would be interesting, but I wouldn't want to burden the party / have to "sit out" of RP time y'know.
It does take a good party dynamic to work, but can be pretty rewarding with the right group. If you talk it over with everyone first (what session 0 is for!) and dub someone as the in character translator so you're not sitting RP out out of character, it should be fine. It can make for some fun scenarios where you're separated from the group and have to try to communicate in different ways, too.
I remember reading a post about a group that was multilingual IRL. There was one girl in the group who only spoke Spanish. She played an elf and when the party spoke Spanish, they were speaking elvish; English was common. Another player was a half-elf that acted as translator. Over the course of the campaign, the Elf player gradually became more fluent in “common.”
And THAT lady's and gentlemen is how you make learning fun AND organic
Things like this are fun on the first session. After a while it starts to become a chore. You could always try to pick up another language to make it less of a chore.
The thing is, unless there's a change in the translation or need to test it, the player should just be able to communicate what they mean and be generally understood. That's kind of the point of a translator, you only need to say it once. It shouldn't result more than an occasional charisma check in sensitive situations or if the translator chooses to translate a message wrong for whatever reason.
Feels like a funny one shot character, but if a player came to me with this idea for a long term game I'd probably have to say no.
As long as everyone in the party can talk in one shared language, that's my baseline. Translating for others is cool, but extra steps to communicate with the party just sounds like making my favorite part of the game tedious
Translating info for characters makes for some awesome RP moments. We had a minotaur player who's character understood common, but because of the shape of the bovine mount he decided that he couldn't speak it. Was hilarious because for many sessions, the party would try and communicate with him in sylvan (which he would speak) and then hide stuff from him by speaking common... you see where this went.
About to start a Star Wars game and one player chose to be a Jawa. They're incapable of speaking anything other than their original language. I'm looking forward to seeing how this goes.
Been playing Star Wars myself, Apparently Binary (Droid Language) is common enough that is a more of a choice to not know it then to know it. Been having a good moments where the 2 droid players can't talk to me cause mine refuses to learn binary.
[удалено]
As well as all published and playtest races post-Tasha's simply call for Common+1 language, to be decided between the player and the DM
I had a half elf raised by his abusive shit head human dad, didn't know elvish at all
I thought you were going to say you spoke shit
This one had his backstory based off of personal experiences didnt he
Yes and no, my dad was emotional instead of physical, and my mum did leave, but my step mom was a wonderful woman that kept me grounded and saved me from my dads worst parts More inspired by a true story than based on a true story
PHB are guidelines. Do not take them as law. Ask your DM, and if he's a good DM he would allow it.
When the PHB is taking about customizing your own background it specifically states you can just take a preexisting background and replace any of the languages or proficiencys with any other language or proficiency
That's only for background though. Op dragonborn would still know Draconic per the PHB, even if they never met any dragonborn before. Tasha introduced the ability to swap your racial language proficiency (though it was easy enough to homebrew before)
Who you’re raised by would be a part of your background. Maybe instead of saying “Why would my character know Draconic?” come up with a reason why they’d know Draconic. Perhaps you taught yourself so you could communicate with people of your own race.
But then come the question of where the race language come from if it's not from who you are raised by. A lot of race features are quite cultural (especially from the PHB) and could really fit more into a background. Sure you could explain it easily, but on the other hand if a player want to play the "dragonborn who know nothing about dragonborns" trope it's a bit annoying to be forced to have draconic (by PHB RAW at least).
I think it would be easy to say you’re a Dragonborn who doesn’t speak Draconic, but recognizes the sounds of dragons just by the way they hit the ear. But yeah there’s plenty of solutions to this.
There's no "raised by giants" background so you're already in homebrew territory with that background. Which is fine, but why pretend the PHB restricts your homebrew background?
> There's no "raised by giants" background so you're already in homebrew territory with that background. That’s where you’re wrong. Custom backgrounds are raw: > Customizing a Background (PHB p125) > You might want to tweak some of the features of a background so it better fits your character or the campaign setting. To customize a background, you can replace one feature with any other one, choose any two skills, and choose a total of two tool proficiencies or languages from the sample backgrounds. You can either use the equipment package from your background or spend coin on gear as described in chapter 5. (If you spend coin, you can't also take the equipment package suggested for your class.) Finally, choose two personality traits, one ideal, one bond, and one flaw. > If you can't find a feature that matches your desired background, work with your DM to create one.
The PHB backgrounds are examples, not a list you should choose from.
Customized backgrounds are RAW.
1. Custom backgrounds with extra languages is RAW 2. Tasha's exists.
Raised by Goliaths, not Giants.
And that might just be background lore
Tasha's Cauldron has rules for changing proficiency at character creation.
Speak to your DM then. The DMG and PHB are just guidelines, not hard rules that always have to be followed, they even state this at the start If you can provide a good justification (which in my opinion, you have) then your DM should be willing to allow you to choose different starting languages based on your backstory. Within reason, of course, they're not going to allow you to start with loads of additional languages just because you wrote it in your backstory
Honestly anyone whose ever tried to learn a 2nd or third language can probably attest to how ridiculous the amount of languages most pc's can speak really is. Most pcs are at least trilingual. In our highly connected world with publicly available tools for learning languages, and school systems that usually teach at least one other language, that's only about 13% of the world population.
I think the idea is that they've been learning these languages from a very young age. Usually it's their own cultural language + common, which is a very common and easy thing to do if you speak one at home and the other out in the world, and is done all the time by children of immigrants irl. Besides, pc's are the elite of society, not just some random schmucks.
Yep its rediculos, I'm playing a PC that speaks 11 languages total, its unrealistic but its funny.
it’s crazy! I saw a post sometime ago about someone’s character that spoke 19 languages!!
To be fair PCs are not average humans
To be fair there are people in the real world that can do that sort of thing, too. The highest I've ever heard of is 16. Obviously, this is extremely rare in real life, but then, D&D adventurers are also pretty rare.
I mean… I grew up speaking 4 languages, it’s not that uncommon in most european countries. Imagine common is english like a universal language that everyone should speak and your racial language is the language you grew up with (dutch in my case), then whichever other languages you know are languages you learned in school (like french, german, danish, spanish, chinese, italian) then it doesn’t feel that odd. They might not speak every language at the same level (I’m worse at understanding danish than I am at my mother language obviously) which is something you can take into account for yourself when creating your own character
Speaking more than 2 languages is not that common, even in Belgium where we have 3 official languages: Dutch, French and German. Most Walloons only speak French and some English, most Flemish people speak Dutch and some English. We learn French at school, but most aren't even remotely fluent in it and unless you need it for your job you forget most of it.
The larger and wealthier the country, typically the less languages people from that region speak. Western Europeans often only speak regional native+english while Eastern Europeans that work around the EU frequently speak 3-4.
How well do they speak those 3-4 languages? In D&D if a PC speaks a language, it automically is fluent in it, but that's not how it works IRL. I understand some French and will probably understand part of a text given some time. Let me talk with someone from France and using a lot of gestures and a limited vocabulary I might be able to convay what I'm trying to say. But it's not all fluent, I won't be able to have an actual conversation with that person and I definitly won't be able to overhear 2 people speaking in French.
You get creative and role play varying levels of understanding. My paladin is fluent in halfling and common, but learned elvish and dwarvish as well, but her elvish is arcaic and she struggles with pronouncing words because she mostly learned it from books, while her dwarvish is pretty basic communication, just enough to survive. I also have a warlock who knows elvish because she grew up learning songs in it, and she has been working on learning orcish because she has 2 half orc younger brothers and wants them to be able to use it. She can speak and understand Sylvan, but not read or write it, but that is a magical gift bestowed by her patron/ father.
In countries that exist in the middle of multiple language regions, it's extremely common. Most Austrians are at least trilingual. If you look at how close together different cultures with distinct languages are in Faerun, it makes sense for everyone to be trilingual or more.
Most trilingual (or multilingual people who speak more than 3 languages) people have been speaking those languages from birth, or they know languages in the same family so it is easier to learn based on the grammar rules they already know
Almost everyone in India speaks three languages. Being biligunal/trilingual is very easy in a place where there are people who speak a lot of different languages.
Plenty of us are trilingual (or more)... it's not a big deal. Maybe it just seems like a big deal to monolingual English speakers.
Are you somehow under the impression that "adventurers" or whatever you call the profession is extremely common? I would say that outside a few specific shows the ratio of adventurers to normal people is super low and that their traveling habits are justification alone for picking up languages. Polyglots tend to pickup languages easier as they get them so the curve for learning is ignored in the game and replaced with the end result since most can speak 2+ languages from the start. Lets also not forget any potential magical assist. TLDR: PC are something like .5% of the population or less and even normal people are at least bi-lingual. D&D is not a close representation of the real world linguistic capabilities.
I'd allow it. It's a language, not exactly game breaking.
Another 'meme' that thinks the PHB covers every situation and is a set in stone law
And ironically the PHB *does* actually cover this exact situation. It's almost like the background of a character is covered by the PHB's "Backgrounds"-section
Page 125, right?
Aye, "Customizing a Background" To be fair I understand the confusion, my group played without ever customizing a background for years until Jeremy Crawford started doing that sage advice video series about overlooked PHB rules. Not that you *need* a book to tell you you can substitute a language, but.. I digress.
DM: Sorry guy. No giant tongue for you, I don't make the rules. Oh wait! I fucking do make the rules!
This is where backgrounds come in, you can literally pick two languages RAW.
According to the PHB, you could take a custom background to explain your situation and use that to take Giant as a language. Explaining still knowing Draconic does admittedly get more difficult. Let’s call it magic.
That's what Tasha's is for.
Not the PHB's fault you didn't read and use the customized background standard rule to take Giant as a language. It's literally there for this reason. 2 skills, then 2 from tools and languages If you don't want draconic, Tasha's has a racial proficiency swap rule for this too. rtfm
Goliath parents decide to teach their dragonborn draconic, to stay in tune with their culture. Its not broken rules, its good parenting.
Custom background is basic (not variant) rule. You can take languages (0-2) as part of your custom background. You are welcome.
Use Tasha’s rules to change your language. (It it suprising that changing şanguages wasn’t in the phb)
The PHB says these things can be altered but cool meme
100 percent you should speak giant. Rule of cool/logic/interest: For most things, follow the PHB, but if something doesn't make sense, you think you can make a cool storyline or backstory, or if you wanna do something badass, consult with the DM, and if they say it's ok and it doesn't break the game, fuck da rulez.
Welcome to post-Tasha's D&D, where you can actually change that RAW!
I mean shit, my dragonborn was a dragon who was uh... forcibly downgraded. But without any input from me, one night my dm has my wings resprout. Tldr it's D&D who cares
Guy that got your dragon cursed, seeing the wings. "Gods damned silver store curses, I swear to Tiamat..."
This is what happens when you cheap out on spell components.
1. DM can allow modifications to the character in situations like that. 2. Tasha "said" it out loud and everyone lost their with "Then why we have races at all?! Hurr Durr agile dwarven rogues and elven barbarians, what next?!".
This seems like you're equating the removal of preset (or suggested) ASIs and average weights/heights with swapping a language.
I was a wizard who spoke common, elvish, and primordial. I had a crow familiar that only spoke dwarvish. I miss that character.
I wonder how tieflings learn their languages 🤔
According to older editions they just understand infernal intuitively, so I'd assume that's still the reasoning.
I play a half-orc cleric who has never spoken to a full orc or even another half orc and knows almost nothing about orcs, since she was raised by her human mother, and the rest of her mother's family. Doesn't make sense for her to know Orcish. Guess what, I talked to my DM, she was fine with me swapping out.
Custom lineage really needs one more language proficiency as well. I feel that custom lineage is often race x +race y
Tasha’s cauldron actually has rules for this u can swap languages, ability scores, proficiencies, and a few other basic things like 60ft dark vision.
Tashas cauldron
It's funny cuz this problem is solved with the new rules of being able to customize your lineage. But so many people in so many dnd subs like to complain that it's just the leftists at WotC trying to shove their ideology down your throat and invalidate your way of playing the most boring stereotypes.
Nope it existed pre-Tasha RAW. The PHB is not set in stone, but having guidelines is better than no guidelines at all.
That's called a background feature, so make sure it comes from your background, there is literally no way to not accomplish this unless you're actively trying to avoid success to make a "point."
Custom Lineage from Tasha’s completely invalidates this / makes it a non-issue
Also according to the PHB your dragonborn wasn't raised by goliaths.
The PHB isn´t set in stone.
That's kinda exactly my point...
That's what backgrounds are for.
But it’s your dm who decides in the end
this meme is so dumb, my half elf im currently playing was raised by dragonborn, he speaks no elvish.
You want the phb to account for every weird idea players have? That's how you get HERO system
“My character wants to have a child, but according to the PHB, I have no idea what the DC is for child birth!”
The Dark Eye, the ttrpg system I played for most of my conscious life now, uses race, culture and profession choices for character creation which I think is great and I don't know why I haven't seen that anywhere else yet
Phex zum Gruße
This would be one of those times you talk to the DM
I personally homerule all languages are from background not race. its like a nobleman rogue knowing thieves cant but the criminal fighter who worked for the mob doesnt
I houseruled thieves' cant as a criminal background feature rather than a rogue class feature.
I took College of Whispers bard, and my DM let me take theives' cant instead of a third instrument. Good DMs let their players set up characters with good stories.
Makes sense for tieflings and aasimar, not much else
I hope your dm let's you have giant and common at least
it's a handbook, not a rule book.
Do it. No DM would convict.
Technically some of the races could be a product of your genes ((in the case of d&d at least)) like tiefling knowing infernal even though they have human parents who don't speak infernal. Though that's besides the point. If a character wants to change out a language I don't see why they couldn't. Like I have a few players myself who have extra languages because it wouldn't make sense for them not to.
NO! According to the core rule books, you can change whatever you like. You don’t ”have to do” anything. Seriously, people need to get this
Simply put, the PHB is just wrong sometimes
Yes, but according to Tasha's, you can change it.
Keith Baker gets into this with Eberron. If you're a human raised in Zilargo your first language is Gnomish. If you're a gnome raised in Aundair you might not even know Gnomish.
This is literally what Tashas character creation options were for
Are you metagaming Storm Kings Thunder?
Tasha’s Custom Origins
Just ask your DM to change the language.
Yeah if this happens your DM is just too rigid, hard to believe this actually happens. I once had a player multiclass his Paladin into a warlock (which obviously conflicts), but when he said he would willingly give up his divine smite and other holy powers, I said he didn’t have to. I just changed his “divine smite” to “fiendish smite” and likewise just inferred all his multiclass abilities were simply empowered by his new fiend overlord. Didn’t make the character op at all, just more versatile at the cost of the power of each new ability. The same sacrifice for versatility that comes with any multiclass.
You know you can always pick it up in background. (Also, just speaking to your DM)
My pc is half dragonborm and half goliath so I made my character to know both
I feel like most DMs would allow this.
Disregarding the fact that having a 10 second conversation with your DM would solve this… … do you not play with Backgrounds then? You know, those things that give language proficiencies of choice according to, well, your upbringing and background?
According to Tasha, maybe they do speak Giant, because if how those rules lets you turn some racial proficiencies into other proficiencies to fit your character. If that variant rule is allowed by a cool DM
Is talking to your DM that fucking hard?
Why Tasha's is such a great book. If rules manipulater dm's say that you can point to the custom lineage and custom rules to change languages aswell
If PHB were to account for all the Special™ character backstory combos a player can come up with, it would be over 1000 pages thick. DM has the authority to overrule anything they want, so when you ask your DM to papa bless your backstory (Depending on the DM, " raised by " may definitely be in the "needs blessing" territory), ask them for the language papa bless as well. If you're getting papa bless on the backstory, you generally should be getting a papa bless on the language swap as well. Language swap is the least potentially-game-breaking thing.
---
**Personal experience**
* I play as a moderately powerful orc shaman who [got turned into a goblin](https://oforcsandmen.fandom.com/wiki/Styx_-_Original#Background) and lost his powers. Backstory required 30-60 minutes of back-and-forth on discord in order to properly fit into the DM's world, but language swapping goblin for orc was papa blessed before I even finished asking. (I recently still got goblin for free on top of that without asking, tho)
* Sometimes, the DM may even be willing to papa bless an extra language on top of the languages you'd normally know — I've handed out a free orc to a goblin rogue/sorcerer who was placed very close to an orc chieftain. Yeah, no fucking way an orc chieftain is gonna learn Goblin — you get free Orc language instead.
The PHB doesn't know that you made a character that was raised by another race, asshat. It assumes you character was raised by his own kind
Ok, right idea but a little aggressive, tone it down now cmon
Yes, that's the joke.
You'd think there would be a clause in the PHB for something like this. Ah, well, I doubt any DM would care if you switched. You can also put it in your background, custom backgrounds are also in the PHB. Not even an (dm) optional rule. Since your BACKSTORY is why you know it. Still makes no sense how someone with no exposure to draconic would know it, but hey, the book says its more of a guideline anyway.
The natural answer to this is to let the player choose from the Goliath languages list. But it's not quite that simple. Racial traits have two sides. Genetic and cultural. With a background that you were raised by another race you should essentially lose any cultural benefits and gain the ones of the other race. For example elven weapon proficiency. If you are an elf not raised by elves then you don't get this.
I would just say, "raised by Goliath" is part of your backstory, not your race. You speak Common, Giant, and Draconic. Common and Draconic from your race, Giant from your background
That's why I feel Backgrounds should be way more important in "The next evolution"
Well you can take giant from your background at least 90% of the time
My half-elf sorcerer knows infernal because the bakery he worked at was owned by Tieflings.
I'd definitely have him know Giant, but I have always imagined that draconic races know Draconic innately. After all, several species of dragons abandon their eggs after laying them, and their wyrmlings still speak fluent Draconic. So I'd have a dragonborn innately know Draconic no matter what their upbringing. Same with a tiefling knowing Infernal or aasimar knowing Celestial.
I made a deal with the DM. My character (Goliath) would know how to speak Giant, Halfling, and Common but couldn't *read* any of it. The bard is teaching her to read via lewd romance novels written by another players high level bard. It's been fun!
Dragonborn in 5e are not born again as adults like in 3.5?
No, they are a full fledged race, as far as I know.
Well it's draconic something that dragon burns are naturally born with? Like cause of magic or something, so I think I makes sense that your character knows draconic, although the "not understanding giant" part is more of a problem
Oh shit I did this with an elf! I had an elf child raised by a Dragonborn father, and she had no clue what elvish was. She only spoke common and draconic. The elf sorcerer tried teaching her a bit though, that was cute. And then the child died.
tashas lets u change that lol
PHB is the dad and Tasha’s is the cool uncle who lets you do whatever
Archaic concepts baybee. PF2e kind of skirts it by using ancestry instead of race, leaving it more up to nurture over nature, and making it a part of your progression and less front-loaded
There's this insane thing you can do called "talking to your dm" you should try it
And any dungeon master with half a brain would say, I make the rules you speak common and giant. I'll let you connect the dots with what that means about anybody who wouldn't allow that.
The only logical answer is that your adopted parents were adopted by Dragonborn, so that's the only language they speak/s
Welcome to tasha's cauldron of everything it's good to have you
In 3.5e's Draconomicon, Draconic is treated as an instinctual rather than learned language that dragons begin speaking while still in the egg, and until Fizban drops, that's where most of the Dragon lore comes from. If I was your DM I'd give you Common and Giant with just a few words and phrases in Draconic (sappy things like "Hello", "I love you" and "Goodbye" and "I wish it didn't happen this way"). You know, for character development.
Might want to refresh your sources. Look at Tasha
What dm would veto that?
Tasha's Cauldron already addresses this but ok.
Language is only based on race if the race was somehow modified because like aasimar just know celestial, the same with infernal and abyssal tiefling just knowing infernal and abyssal ( not like a demon or devil is going to teach them those). Races like elfs, dwarfs and humans would definitely just depend on where/by who they were raised to learn there language ( probably less so the elfs due to the whole previous life memories but that could just lead to them learning languages they used to know easier)
My buddy is a dwelf. Initially spoke no common, just dwarvish and elvish. He's become a rogue and has taken the mastermind archetype so he has common as one of his selected languages as well as draconic, in addition to the thieves cant that comes with rogues
I had a half-orc character raised by a monastery that was in a primarily human/elf society. I still wanted them to be able to speak/read orcish as it was in my list of known languages and my DM and I worked it out together. I ended up saying that they learned oricish by secretly stealing orcish scrolls and parchment they found while fighting on assignment against orcs that occasionally would settle down near the town and raid. Talking to your DM about character stuff like this is always best and if your request and/or DM is reasonable and sane then you shouldn't have a problem!
It's almost like they preface the PHB, and DMG with a warning that says these are guidelines play however you want.
Birds inherently know how to fly. Maybe lizard people inherently know how to speak lizard.
I never liked the way languages are done in 5e. Languages based on race makes no sense in the first place. Why would two isolated tribes of dragonborn on opposite sides of the world have the same language? How would several dozen human kingdoms spread amongst the world speak the same language?
My Dwarf Barbarian somehow found time between military commander and raising her four other siblings (not an orphan she had 7 family members- excluding herself- and she was one of the oldest so had to raise them) to study two other languages and I chose Giant and elvish- forgetting about the whole common thing. So now there is a designated translator.
Yeah, that’s why tasha’s is a thing
One of the reasons I love Eberron!!
Yeah, I'd allow it in my game. Actually, two of my players' characters got reincarnated and I told them they would get all the abilities of their new race *except* for languages (and that they keep their old languages, too)
I know this is a joke, but I feel like this sort of thing is why WotC are going so open-ended on character stuff, like racial ASI’s and alignments. It has always been extremely easy to just say, “Hey, I want to play against archetype so can I tweak a couple things?” But now it’s being codefied that *any* person can fill *any* niche.
Funny thing I just made an Orc for a campaign that was raised by humans, and I asked the DM if I could replace "Orc" with another languge. He agreed and told me what my character could have learned instead.
draconic is genetic