So, last time we played I got some Goblins inside a cave speaking Goblin and a player asked "Do i know what language it's?"
And I said, "no, you do not speak that language".
He asked again "but I know what language it is? I'm not trying to understand it, I just want to know what language it is"
He gave me a very compeling argument that "well, you don't know how to speak russian, but if someone speaks near you then you'll problably know it's russian"
So I had him roll a History check with DC 15. He succeded.
Seems like a reasonable response. Though I might have just made it a straight int check. And I probably would have messed with the player if he failed the check, like tell him it sounded like ogre, then explained there are lots of languages that might sound like Russian, but aren’t actually Russian.
Ask the player to listen to Bulgarian, Czech and Serbian. Then ask which one is Russian.
I would ask what in their background makes them a linguist. If they have a compelling reason why they could differentiate Orcish and Goblin (or maybe more realistic, sylan, elvish and goblin), then I wouldn't make them roll at all. Or if they did roll, maybe they can decipher a few choice words. However, if they don't have any background in similar languages or exposure to that language, then I wouldn't let them roll.
I played a character who was very well-educated, but being well-educated in a pseudo medieval setting would probably mean being taught phrases in Elven and maybe Dwarvish. Proper education probably doesn't teach you how to speak Goblin.
I would have had the character make an intelligence check. If they had a Goblinoid language or something in their backstory, I would let them add proficiency.
As a general rule, if the DM thinks it is logical, that is the right answer. Everything here makes perfect sense, including the choice of skill to use.
Personally, I would have probably done something similar, but with a sliding DC, with different tiers. A 13 might provide basic information - you recognise this as Dethek script, which is used by dwarves, ogres, gnomes, goblins, and orcs. A 16 might provide some additional information - this seems like a more guttural version of Dethek, indicating it is likely written by ogres, goblins, or some of the more wild orc tribes. Rolling above a 19 might let them know it is goblin. A natural 20 might let them know one or two words in addition to knowing it is in goblin. A natural one might utterly convince the player this is Celestial.
I would ask what in their background makes them a linguist. If they have a compelling reason why they could differentiate Orcish and Goblin (or maybe more realistic, sylan, elvish and goblin), then I wouldn't make them roll at all. Or if they did roll, maybe they can decipher a few choice words. However, if they don't have any background in similar languages or exposure to that language, then I wouldn't let them roll.
There are plenty of aspects of characters that simply aren't established until they come up in play. Someone who's never heard spoken Goblin won't know what it is, other than 'unfamiliar', but it's certainly not unreasonable to think a character could have encountered Goblin and it just never came up in play before, and a history check doesn't seem like a ridiculous way of deciding whether a character has encountered goblinish (though I might set the DC fairly high).
It was your call so you did fine indeed. Personally, i wpuldn't ask for a check to identify the native language spoken by creature. I'd ask more for one if it was an exotic language that is different than the speaker's race, or if the speaker is not seen or identified or it's in written form.
History is probably the best roll. You may be able to remember specific words of a language you can't speak from say a book, historical figure or place name.
Another option is insight. This would be determining it from accents and speech patterns. You may not get the name of the language from that but you could get " it sounds like goblins". It's very similar to how you would do an insight check to determine if some one speaks like an upperclassman or something.
This makes sense, but it also might depend, if the players never heard someone speak goblin, would he know what it is when he heard it?
I think only people who it makes sense to have heard the language a bit before should be able to roll.
For me, part of the roll is determining if they have heard it before. All the small random contacts with the goblin language some one may have had are in there. For example if they happen to know one word that the goblin uses because they read a story book about gratog the goblin.
Where as more concrete things like having studied goblins or similar should be almost automatic successes or at least advantage.
This makes sense, but it also might depend, if the players never heard someone speak goblin, would he know what it is when he heard it?
I think only people who it makes sense to have heard the language a bit before should be able to roll.
For me, part of the roll is determining if they have heard it before. All the small random contacts with the goblin language some one may have had are in there. For example if they happen to know one word that the goblin uses because they read a story book about gratog the goblin.
Where as more concrete things like having studied goblins or similar should be almost automatic successes or at least advantage.
True, that also works, if you do it that way then maybe give advantage or an automatic success if they have interacted with goblins a lot (more than the average person).
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
BoringBard's long and tedious posts somehow manage to enrapture audiences. How? Because he used Charm Person, the #1 bard spell!
He/him pronouns. Call me Bard. PROUD NERD!
Ever wanted to talk about your parties' worst mistakes? Do so HERE. What's your favorite class, why? Share & explainHERE.
If a character has been exposed to a language before, i'd grant automatic success for sure.
As someone who works professionally with language, I have to point to my original example. Everyone has heard Slavic before: can you tell the difference by ear between Serbo-Croatian and Russian? If I played Chinese, Korean and Japanese next to one another, could you tell the difference (besides those languages being dramatically different)?
I don't think an uneducated (to our standards) adventurer could really tell what language a monster is speaking, unless they have extensive exposure to the language. The best you could tell is from context clues, which is to say you see a goblin speaking a language you don't understand, you assume it is Goblin language. He could be speaking Abyssal with a goblin accent, but unless you know goblin or abyssal, it would be very difficult or impossible to tell.
Russian and the Slavic langauges aside, often people mistake unrelated languages for Russian. People think Finnish or Hungarian is Russian, despite those languages having very little in common with Russian. There are people, who have been exposed to Italian, who can't tell the difference between German and Italian while spoken. Why? They hear you are speaking a foreign language and they guess which language not based on phoenetics but based on which language they think it might be likely you might speak.
And to the person who suggested that we don't know a character's backstory before we play? Nonsense. We have backgrounds, we have racial languages and we have classes like the rangers who are explicitly experts in a language and society. It's not fair to those characters to grant a character expertise on a subject because they are proficient in history.
I think it's reasonable to note that just because someone doesn't speak a language doesn't mean you can't necessarily recognize a script and narrow it down. I don't speak Russian, but I can recognize generally when I see Cyrillic. Likewise, people can recognize the Latin and Greek alphabets pretty frequently even without speaking any language with those alphabets. That doesn't necessarily mean that you always know what language something is (for example, it would be completely legitimate to just say "It's written in Dwarven script" or "The speech is fast and staccato, reminding you of X language group.") but it can be reasonable to get close enough to get an educated guess. Depending on how fringe the language is, or how much exposure the character had, I suspect it's reasonable to set the DC quite high sometimes, and even to reward different amounts of information on a more extreme success, but I don't think it's impossible.
Ask the player to listen to Bulgarian, Czech and Serbian. Then ask which one is Russian.
I would ask what in their background makes them a linguist. If they have a compelling reason why they could differentiate Orcish and Goblin (or maybe more realistic, sylan, elvish and goblin), then I wouldn't make them roll at all. Or if they did roll, maybe they can decipher a few choice words. However, if they don't have any background in similar languages or exposure to that language, then I wouldn't let them roll.
I played a character who was very well-educated, but being well-educated in a pseudo medieval setting would probably mean being taught phrases in Elven and maybe Dwarvish. Proper education probably doesn't teach you how to speak Goblin.
The description of Common in the PHB tells us that it's a mix of many other languages so it's not too far fetched that someone who rolls well enough would be able to identify the language. Or at least which language family it belongs to.
You guys keep pointing out to various language / dialect from the same human race. Monsters languages, such as goblin and gnoll are most likely much more different and distant than Serbo-Croatian and Russian. If you see and hear gnoll talking, you are unlikely to take it for goblin that you previously heard.
A DM can always say that some monsters language are more closely related and could be recognized or be misinterpretated as another monster language, but generally speaking, if you have been exposed to some language and hear it again, i would not ask for a check, unless the outcome is somewhat meaningful.
I think one thing to consider here is the stakes. Is anything really going to change if the player identifies the language? If major consequences hinged on something, it might be worth it to really think it through and develop some kind of system, but in a case like this I think OP's way of handling it is honestly the best route - adjudicate something quickly and then move on with the game.
So, last time we played I got some Goblins inside a cave speaking Goblin and a player asked "Do i know what language it's?"
And I said, "no, you do not speak that language".
He asked again "but I know what language it is? I'm not trying to understand it, I just want to know what language it is"
He gave me a very compeling argument that "well, you don't know how to speak russian, but if someone speaks near you then you'll problably know it's russian"
So I had him roll a History check with DC 15. He succeded.
You guys find what I did to be accurate?
Seems like a reasonable response. Though I might have just made it a straight int check. And I probably would have messed with the player if he failed the check, like tell him it sounded like ogre, then explained there are lots of languages that might sound like Russian, but aren’t actually Russian.
Sounds fine
Ask the player to listen to Bulgarian, Czech and Serbian. Then ask which one is Russian.
I would ask what in their background makes them a linguist. If they have a compelling reason why they could differentiate Orcish and Goblin (or maybe more realistic, sylan, elvish and goblin), then I wouldn't make them roll at all. Or if they did roll, maybe they can decipher a few choice words. However, if they don't have any background in similar languages or exposure to that language, then I wouldn't let them roll.
I played a character who was very well-educated, but being well-educated in a pseudo medieval setting would probably mean being taught phrases in Elven and maybe Dwarvish. Proper education probably doesn't teach you how to speak Goblin.
I would have had the character make an intelligence check. If they had a Goblinoid language or something in their backstory, I would let them add proficiency.
As a general rule, if the DM thinks it is logical, that is the right answer. Everything here makes perfect sense, including the choice of skill to use.
Personally, I would have probably done something similar, but with a sliding DC, with different tiers. A 13 might provide basic information - you recognise this as Dethek script, which is used by dwarves, ogres, gnomes, goblins, and orcs. A 16 might provide some additional information - this seems like a more guttural version of Dethek, indicating it is likely written by ogres, goblins, or some of the more wild orc tribes. Rolling above a 19 might let them know it is goblin. A natural 20 might let them know one or two words in addition to knowing it is in goblin. A natural one might utterly convince the player this is Celestial.
There are plenty of aspects of characters that simply aren't established until they come up in play. Someone who's never heard spoken Goblin won't know what it is, other than 'unfamiliar', but it's certainly not unreasonable to think a character could have encountered Goblin and it just never came up in play before, and a history check doesn't seem like a ridiculous way of deciding whether a character has encountered goblinish (though I might set the DC fairly high).
It was your call so you did fine indeed. Personally, i wpuldn't ask for a check to identify the native language spoken by creature. I'd ask more for one if it was an exotic language that is different than the speaker's race, or if the speaker is not seen or identified or it's in written form.
History is probably the best roll. You may be able to remember specific words of a language you can't speak from say a book, historical figure or place name.
Another option is insight. This would be determining it from accents and speech patterns. You may not get the name of the language from that but you could get " it sounds like goblins". It's very similar to how you would do an insight check to determine if some one speaks like an upperclassman or something.
This makes sense, but it also might depend, if the players never heard someone speak goblin, would he know what it is when he heard it?
I think only people who it makes sense to have heard the language a bit before should be able to roll.
BoringBard's long and tedious posts somehow manage to enrapture audiences. How? Because he used Charm Person, the #1 bard spell!
He/him pronouns. Call me Bard. PROUD NERD!
Ever wanted to talk about your parties' worst mistakes? Do so HERE. What's your favorite class, why? Share & explain
HERE.For me, part of the roll is determining if they have heard it before. All the small random contacts with the goblin language some one may have had are in there. For example if they happen to know one word that the goblin uses because they read a story book about gratog the goblin.
Where as more concrete things like having studied goblins or similar should be almost automatic successes or at least advantage.
True, that also works, if you do it that way then maybe give advantage or an automatic success if they have interacted with goblins a lot (more than the average person).
BoringBard's long and tedious posts somehow manage to enrapture audiences. How? Because he used Charm Person, the #1 bard spell!
He/him pronouns. Call me Bard. PROUD NERD!
Ever wanted to talk about your parties' worst mistakes? Do so HERE. What's your favorite class, why? Share & explain
HERE.If a character has been exposed to a language before, i'd grant automatic success for sure.
As someone who works professionally with language, I have to point to my original example. Everyone has heard Slavic before: can you tell the difference by ear between Serbo-Croatian and Russian? If I played Chinese, Korean and Japanese next to one another, could you tell the difference (besides those languages being dramatically different)?
I don't think an uneducated (to our standards) adventurer could really tell what language a monster is speaking, unless they have extensive exposure to the language. The best you could tell is from context clues, which is to say you see a goblin speaking a language you don't understand, you assume it is Goblin language. He could be speaking Abyssal with a goblin accent, but unless you know goblin or abyssal, it would be very difficult or impossible to tell.
Russian and the Slavic langauges aside, often people mistake unrelated languages for Russian. People think Finnish or Hungarian is Russian, despite those languages having very little in common with Russian. There are people, who have been exposed to Italian, who can't tell the difference between German and Italian while spoken. Why? They hear you are speaking a foreign language and they guess which language not based on phoenetics but based on which language they think it might be likely you might speak.
And to the person who suggested that we don't know a character's backstory before we play? Nonsense. We have backgrounds, we have racial languages and we have classes like the rangers who are explicitly experts in a language and society. It's not fair to those characters to grant a character expertise on a subject because they are proficient in history.
I think it's reasonable to note that just because someone doesn't speak a language doesn't mean you can't necessarily recognize a script and narrow it down. I don't speak Russian, but I can recognize generally when I see Cyrillic. Likewise, people can recognize the Latin and Greek alphabets pretty frequently even without speaking any language with those alphabets. That doesn't necessarily mean that you always know what language something is (for example, it would be completely legitimate to just say "It's written in Dwarven script" or "The speech is fast and staccato, reminding you of X language group.") but it can be reasonable to get close enough to get an educated guess. Depending on how fringe the language is, or how much exposure the character had, I suspect it's reasonable to set the DC quite high sometimes, and even to reward different amounts of information on a more extreme success, but I don't think it's impossible.
I would make the DC dependent on how common the language is, but that sounds reasonable.
The description of Common in the PHB tells us that it's a mix of many other languages so it's not too far fetched that someone who rolls well enough would be able to identify the language. Or at least which language family it belongs to.
You guys keep pointing out to various language / dialect from the same human race. Monsters languages, such as goblin and gnoll are most likely much more different and distant than Serbo-Croatian and Russian. If you see and hear gnoll talking, you are unlikely to take it for goblin that you previously heard.
A DM can always say that some monsters language are more closely related and could be recognized or be misinterpretated as another monster language, but generally speaking, if you have been exposed to some language and hear it again, i would not ask for a check, unless the outcome is somewhat meaningful.
What you did was totally reasonable. Especially as their are only 8 common languages
If you really want to get technical, I would do the following:
Int check to recognize a language you do not speak yourself.
+2 if you speak a language in the 'group'
-5 if the language is an 'exotic' language
DC: 10 to realize the language group, but not the specific language. 15 to realize the exact language.
Standard languages: Common, Halfling, Elvish, Gnomish, Dwarvish, Giant, Orc, Goblin
Exotic: Draconic, Undercommon, Sylvan, Primordial (and the sub primordials), Sylvan, Abyssal, Celestial, Infernal, Deep Speech
Groupings:
1) Common, Halfling, Undercommon, Elvish, Sylvan
2) Dwarvish, Gnomish, Giant, Orc, Goblin
3) Draconic, Primordial, Celestial
4) Abyssal, Infernal, Deep Speech
I think one thing to consider here is the stakes. Is anything really going to change if the player identifies the language? If major consequences hinged on something, it might be worth it to really think it through and develop some kind of system, but in a case like this I think OP's way of handling it is honestly the best route - adjudicate something quickly and then move on with the game.
My homebrew subclasses (full list here)
(Artificer) Swordmage | Glasswright | (Barbarian) Path of the Savage Embrace
(Bard) College of Dance | (Fighter) Warlord | Cannoneer
(Monk) Way of the Elements | (Ranger) Blade Dancer
(Rogue) DaggerMaster | Inquisitor | (Sorcerer) Riftwalker | Spellfist
(Warlock) The Swarm