for the sake of clarity, heres the ruling i am speaking about...

 in my games, people always pick infernal, draconic and abyssal. so i started telling them about the rules of standard and exotic languages.
my players were dumbfounded and said, there was no such rulings.
which there is in the language section of the players handbook.

so now i'm enforcing that ruling and because i am having enough of players always having the same set of 3 languages and never being able to speak to the common folk of the world.
but it led tme thinking...

how many DMs actually enforces that ruling ?
how many of us actually knew about this ruling ?

i know it doesn't change much, but its ridiculous to know that each characters who starts level 1 had easy acces to the celestial language or the infernal language or heck even the draconic language in a world where dragons are so sparse that you have 1 per continent only. yet they all speak fluently draconic, celestial and infernal.

so i am wondering the two questions above.
so discuss ?!!

I feel their background choice should play a big part of what languages they should know.  For example if they had a Acolyte or Sage background then it is perfectly feasible for them know many exotic languages.  However its a bit of a stretch if they were say a Human Fighter with the Soldier Background and somehow know how to speak Abyssal.

I mean as long as they can justify how they know those languages in their backstory then its all good with me.  In general my tables haven't had to enforce that rule because my groups come up with sensible backstories (well most of the time anyway lol).

I usually only allow standard languages in such case, keeping exotic ones unique to races or classes that have access to it, unless the character has the Linguist or Prodigy feat or another way to select a language of his choice other than his race or background. For exemple, class features such as the Mastermind Rogue Archtype, the Knowledge Cleric Domain or the Ranger Favored Enemy would be exceptions to select exotic languages. 

Honestly never noticed the line between regular and exotic languages.  In our groups, we tend to try and cover as many languages as we are able.  As well, we usually try to come up with a reason for our character to know them.  In truth, we try to justify, character-wise, ANY proficiencies, languages or other "extras" for our characters.  My Monk, as an example, has the Sage background.  He has Common, Elvish, Orc and Primordial.  The Primordial comes from his fascination with the beginnings of his people (Genasi) and our DM accommodates this by giving me advantage on history checks regarding Primordial things, be it a creature, a behavior or what not.  I would allow any language choice that made sense, from where the character allegedly might have learned it.

IMO, a party who builds characters, thinking of their lives and what they would and wouldn't have seen, experienced and learned, usually ends up being a party with a good range of skills and abilities that the DM can work with easily, because they fit the character.  I agree, the Fighter who was once a soldier isn't likely to speak Infernal or some such, but Goblin, Orc or any other common racial language could easily fit.

Never noticed it, ha. I guess it hardly matters... Unless you find that it harms your verisimilitude, or that of your group, but I suppose I don't.

Application of that rule is entirely world building dependent and up to the DM. Some DMs have no issues with whatever languages the characters choose since they may not use them much or perhaps it only rarely comes up. In other cases, the world could have enough sages and libraries or just random folks with the required knowledge that it would be relatively easy for a character to have a background giving access to one or more of these "exotic" languages. In these cases, the DM doesn't care and ignores the rule.

On the other hand, it may be that creatures from the outer planes of any sort are so rare that there is no knowledge of the languages that they speak. In such a case, the DM might mention that certain languages are unavailable in a general sense though specific classes or races might still be able to learn them due to their nature.

Bottom line is that use of languages and language restrictions is part of the DM world building activity so application of that rule will be both DM and world dependent. A DM might use it one world and ignore it in another for example.

I haven't noticed infernal, draconic and abyssal being the go to languages in my experiance paries try to maximise the number of languages they cover.

I actuially think draconic should be a common language, not so much because it is the language of dragons but because it is the language of dragonborn and kobalds.

The use of any language is dependant on the DM and the campaign, in a campaign with a lot of mind flayers deep speech will be very useful, if the characters spend significant amounts of time exploring dwarven ruins they will benefit from someone speaking dwarvish.

I am in a campaign as a player where the different races tend to stay apart, and common is the language only of humans. This approach makes common languages much mor euseful as you may have to burn resources to speak to an elvish NPC.

If two demons wanted to ensure privacy, they'd speak to each other in halfling.

I would rule they need to have a teacher in the background.

and a good house rule is:

without a feat/special race, anyone with a normal throat cannot speak Draconic, Infernal or Abyssal even if they learn it.  They learn to understand it, not to speak it (think of R2D2, he clearly understands english but cannot speak it.)

Some exceptions would be dragonborn and kobold being able to speak Draconic, while Tieflings speak infernal automatically and have a throat capable of speaking abyssal.

There's also ways to learn new languages through training in the Dungeon Master Guide or Xanathar's Guide to Everything that could be exotic in nature, but you must find a teacher that speaks it and spend considerable time and ressourcesto learn it. 

I take it a step further and consider exotic languages cannot be adequately phonetically recreated with humanoid mouths, and that is why they're exotic. Writing it, similarly, is not entirely possible via mundane inks and a pen. So a character can, by dm approval, decide to take one with the caveat that they're largely only able to read and hear the language, not speak or write it. Unless they gain some supernatural/magical means of doing so. Most opt for the standard languages now, but occasionally a more academic character, especially spellcasters who feel they can sidestep the restriction, will take the exotic ones. that's the perfect balance imo.

Eg. A spellcaster with Mold Earth could use it to recreate the grinding rock sounds required for Terran.

Languages

 So, what may be tangible differences related to languages that are "common in your campaign" and languages that aren't? 

For me, this just relates to opportunities to practice. If you live in a location with a lot of dwarves then, partly dependent on the extent you fit in, there may be opportunities to pick up and practice some dwarvish.

However, even with the case of dwarves, we read: "You can speak, read, and write Common and Dwarvish. ..."  This may even fit with something approaching the situation in Wales and Scotland where people may primarily use English while retaining cultural use of the Welsh or Scots languages.  

So, what of the "exotic languages"?  When I was religious I learned Greek and Hebrew for the purposes of studying the bible.  I had a reason to do it, I had the opportunity to do it and I did it.  I had a background where I could learn the languages.  I was religious and lived near locations that enabled learning.  I went to some schools, accessed some materials and, though I was Christian, I visited synagogue.  

 If a nature-based character lived in mystic wilds I'd them to learn Sylvan or Druidic. 
If a scholarly character has a sage background, or even archaeologist or hermit, I may let them choose from any languages they wanted. 
If a seafaring character had a sailor or marine background I'd let them choose aquan or, depending on backstory, another language of the creatures of the sea.

Of course, this may result in players designing characters for the sake of gaining abilities, but that's nothing new and, in many cases, could add to the game.

Quote from Ravnodaus >>

I take it a step further and consider exotic languages cannot be adequately phonetically recreated with humanoid mouths, and that is why they're exotic. Writing it, similarly, is not entirely possible via mundane inks and a pen. So a character can, by dm approval, decide to take one with the caveat that they're largely only able to read and hear the language, not speak or write it. Unless they gain some supernatural/magical means of doing so. Most opt for the standard languages now, but occasionally a more academic character, especially spellcasters who feel they can sidestep the restriction, will take the exotic ones. that's the perfect balance imo.

 Yeah some languages are just too alien to humanoids. It's one of the reasons i basically enforce this rule in my campaigns as well. 

So this is where I let character histories help with decisions and letting my players give me a good reason. Oh your a halfling rogue that has never left water deep whey do you need draconic? Cleric of Bahamat sure you can have draconic! Wizard who has studied in a tower for the last 2 decades I would say you can have access to one maybe two odd languages but your giving up common one you might have had. So that wizard may have common draconic and infernal. But you know hes been lucky his whole life that the elves he trades with speak common otherwise he can understand them. Sometime it can be fun for interactions other times it make no sense why a Dwarven battlerager would have Abyssal.

TLDR. If they have a good reason I may give them one exotic language. If not they get the common languages of the land.

so now i'm enforcing that ruling and because i am having enough of players always having the same set of 3 languages and never being able to speak to the common folk of the world.

This is literally why Common exists and why everyone knows it. This should not be an issue in any game.

i know it doesn't change much, but its ridiculous to know that each characters who starts level 1 had easy acces to the celestial language or the infernal language or heck even the draconic language in a world where dragons are so sparse that you have 1 per continent only. yet they all speak fluently draconic, celestial and infernal.

I'd imagine all this would require is access to a library. These languages are not just for conversation. There would be texts in draconic or celestial that impart incredible knowledge and wisdom. Being able to read them is a reasonable and almost expected part of being a scholar or receiving certain types of education. Latin is a dead language that isn't spoken by anyone, but millions of people know it.

Your players keep picking those languages because it makes them feel cool. I say just let them feel cool. If you want to gate information, there are countless other ways to do so.

Quote from scatterbraind>>

so now i'm enforcing that ruling and because i am having enough of players always having the same set of 3 languages and never being able to speak to the common folk of the world.

This is literally why Common exists and why everyone knows it. This should not be an issue in any game.

Not every NPC is presumed to know Common, that is a PC specific feature of the races. You can compare, for example, a Drow from the monster manual to a Dark Elf (Drow) for PC race selection and you'll find that the NPCs only know Elven and Undercommon, while the PC-Drow know Elven and Common. This isn't a mistake. PCs are given Common to ensure they have at least one shared language with one another, but there is no such guarantee for NPCs.

Never expected this to have such strong discussion right off the bat. glad to see this !

ok first off, i think i need to explain a bit the problem, which most of you actually pointed out already...

- versimilitude, the group takes languages to accomodate the most languages to break barriers, but in a reality of such a group being formed, none fo them should have known who or what languages others may have learned, making this a problem since now you got a group min maxing their ways. thus meta gaming and breaking the 4th wall by knowing what others could do before even meeting them.

this becomes much of a problem when you realise that most magics uses draconic, elvish, infernal and celestial as the type of writing of runes, thus someone knowing those languages could potentially easily recognise magic traps just because they somehow learned those things for sake of learning them even though they had no way of actually learning them. runes for magic are everywhere and once you start using languages in your campaign for the things they should be used, you easily see the problem for what it is... just a group of people meta gaming because they didn't want to take some useless languages. the same is true for skills... how many of you actually makes uses of sleight of hand ? i mean aside from the rogue occasionnally using it. itsa not something you use. how often is your acrobatic checks actually be usefull ? how often is animal handling ever used ? catch the drift ? everyone picks the usefull skills that will be most use. by default that is meta gaming, that is min maxing for sake of min maxing. because the problem is... people don't want to have a useless skill.


the second thing i want to talk about is...
Writting....
if you look at the table, you see that most writings are in dwarvish and elvish. yet most people do not even take those languages !
sure abyssal is  not a language you take often... but why would you take it if taking infernal allows you to also understand abyssal ?
if the sake of versimilitude was a reality, then nobody would need more then giant, elvish, common, dwarvish, celestial, infernal and draconic... anything else is derived from those languages. even primordial is useless in a setting where primodial is dwarven writtings. this again shows the same kind of problem being about meta gaming more then anything.

i'm all about wanting a good group, but a game where languagesbecomes a triviality is something i am against.
languages are made to be a barrier, not to be a small annoyance.
in mygames, languages are much needed. heck even my common is split into 4 other languages. sure most people who know common can speak to eahc others, but even there they do not necessarily understand well. thats more real to me. but i have to say, everytime i say "you see some writtings on the wall" the next question is always the same... "do i know it ?" and the answer is always, who speaks elvish ? they all answer me ! because in the end, that versimilitude makes them perfect linguist. spells like comprehend languages and tongues, becomes literally obsolete. 

knowing all that... i ask the question...
what'S the point of trying to make a world where languages matters ? at this point, why not just leave common and erase all other languages ?

again, in my world, languages have a use. each city each country has its own language. a kobold tribe getting killed because lacks of communication is something that could happen.i find it really awesome that it hapenned. i don't understand why it would be that bad ? its something that could happen. thats why languages are important. you don't go unprepared in a diplomatic misson. my players have learned thanks to that kind of problem. that communicating with other stuff then just words have been doing wonders. i had a whole miming contest between a kobold leader and an aasimar because the dragonborn wasn't there to translate. they eventually made a treaty and not 1 word was talked. when the dragonborn looked at the treaty written in draconic, they realised the kobolds had only understood half of it. but still, no war was better then one.

that's my take on it. and i agree fully on the races shouldn't be knowing exotic languages. feats, classes i understand, heck even background should be able to since not all of them gives you languages.

i'm finishing on this...
really happy to see so many people taking part in this.

Quote from scatterbraind >>

so now i'm enforcing that ruling and because i am having enough of players always having the same set of 3 languages and never being able to speak to the common folk of the world.

This is literally why Common exists and why everyone knows it. This should not be an issue in any game.

i know it doesn't change much, but its ridiculous to know that each characters who starts level 1 had easy acces to the celestial language or the infernal language or heck even the draconic language in a world where dragons are so sparse that you have 1 per continent only. yet they all speak fluently draconic, celestial and infernal.

I'd imagine all this would require is access to a library. These languages are not just for conversation. There would be texts in draconic or celestial that impart incredible knowledge and wisdom. Being able to read them is a reasonable and almost expected part of being a scholar or receiving certain types of education. Latin is a dead language that isn't spoken by anyone, but millions of people know it.

Your players keep picking those languages because it makes them feel cool. I say just let them feel cool. If you want to gate information, there are countless other ways to do so.

 as was already mentionned...
then why do you even have any other languages ?
just remove them all if all you need is common.
i understand the point of them understanding each others...
but them understanding the rest of the world, thats something entirely different.

they are not taking the languages because they think its cool...
they are taking it, cause they know there will be infernal beings, so they don't wanna get screwed by infernal contracts.
they take draconics because most magics runes are written in draconics. they definitely don't take them because its cool.
they pick them cause they either didn't know what to pick and elvish and dwarvish are too basics for their taste. or they picked them for metagaming purposes.

I'm confused about these runes you mentioned. In my own games, the only runes have been A) ancient giant runes that simply have historical meaning, and B) magic runes that don't carry meaning, just magic. Like Halaster Blackcloak's signature rune. Does it mean anything? Not really, it's just here to blast you with magic if you see it. The runic magic items from Storm King's Thunder bridge the gap between these categories, since they're emblazoned with real language, but you don't need to understand their meaning in order to use their magic. But when there are runes that hold meaning, the only reason the meaning is even a little bit hard to understand is because the language they're written in is dead. Ostorian, I believe it's called, the language of the ancient giants. Nobody uses it anymore, not even giants. Scholars only know bits and pieces of it. I wouldn't allow a player to take it as a starting language, because in practical terms it isn't a language.

Anyway, you might enjoy this thread I made while I was thinking about your thread. https://www.dndbeyond.com/forums/dungeons-dragons-discussion/homebrew-house-rules/125512-soft-language-barrier-to-reflect-older-sword-coast

Quote from Kotath >>

Quote from DnDPaladin >>

Quote from scatterbraind >>

so now i'm enforcing that ruling and because i am having enough of players always having the same set of 3 languages and never being able to speak to the common folk of the world.

This is literally why Common exists and why everyone knows it. This should not be an issue in any game.

i know it doesn't change much, but its ridiculous to know that each characters who starts level 1 had easy acces to the celestial language or the infernal language or heck even the draconic language in a world where dragons are so sparse that you have 1 per continent only. yet they all speak fluently draconic, celestial and infernal.

I'd imagine all this would require is access to a library. These languages are not just for conversation. There would be texts in draconic or celestial that impart incredible knowledge and wisdom. Being able to read them is a reasonable and almost expected part of being a scholar or receiving certain types of education. Latin is a dead language that isn't spoken by anyone, but millions of people know it.

Your players keep picking those languages because it makes them feel cool. I say just let them feel cool. If you want to gate information, there are countless other ways to do so.

 as was already mentionned...
then why do you even have any other languages ?
just remove them all if all you need is common.
i understand the point of them understanding each others...
but them understanding the rest of the world, thats something entirely different.

they are not taking the languages because they think its cool...
they are taking it, cause they know there will be infernal beings, so they don't wanna get screwed by infernal contracts.
they take draconics because most magics runes are written in draconics. they definitely don't take them because its cool.
they pick them cause they either didn't know what to pick and elvish and dwarvish are too basics for their taste. or they picked them for metagaming purposes.

 

So teach them otherwise in game. Have Elvish or Dwarvish come up as language issues. Leave the exotic languages until higher levels where they fit better.

 which leads us back to... they shouldn'T be able to select exotic languages to begin with...