Language Percentages

^{Mistveil → Rules → Language Percentages}
Instead of knowing all languages perfectly, this alternate system implements a percentage based system that allows for partial understandings and mistranslations with the ability to enhance your understanding of those languages over time through down-time activity or by putting ranks into the linguistics skill. Whenever a character attempts to read or speak a language that they do not have 100% comprehension with, they roll a d% to determine how close to a perfect translation they were able to make.

Starting Languages

The amount of languages a character begins play with remains unchanged (a base language plus a number of bonus languages equal to the character's intelligence modifier for the vast majority of races) however only two of those languages begin with a complete understanding, or 100% comprehension. After selecting those two, each additional language comprehension the character begins with is reduced by 25% each to a minimum of 25% (for anyone who begins with 6 or more languages). For example a character that begins the game with four languages would have two at 100%, one at 75%, and one at 50% comprehension.

Learning New Languages

Learning new languages works the same as always except that starting comprehension for new languages begins at 25%.

Improving Languages

There are two methods to improve languages. Firstly, putting a rank into the linguistics skill allows you to either increase your comprehension of one language by 15% or to increase an amount of languages equal to the character's intelligence modifier by 5% each.

Alternately you can spend downtime to study and improve your languages. By spending 1 full day working with someone who is more fluent with the language you wish to improve or a source of text written in the language you can improve your comprehension of the language by 2%.

New Trait

Natural Linguist
You learnt to speak different languages very early in your life which made them much easier to grasp.
Benefit: Each of your starting languages begin with 25% higher comprehension.

Spell Changes

• Comprehend Languages
• Tongues

Feat Changes

• Skill Focus (linguistics)

The Common Concern

The inherent concern with this alternate rules system is how disruptive it could potentially be if someone makes a character without 100% comprehension of Common in a party that doesn't share any other language. Similar to the vanilla issue of roleplaying a character who simply doesn't know Common, the solution isn't to bog down the game with constant language comprehension rolls. Instead, the player who controls this character should attempt to focus on roleplaying their lacking comprehension while communicating with the party by using techniques like misunderstanding certain phrases or terms for example while only using comprehension rolls while interacting with NPCs where failure to communicate has meaningful consequences such as while attempting to negotiate prices or avoid combat. This system is meant to allow languages to be a fun obstacle for the party to overcome, not to make it a burden in the name of realism.