Sunday 6 October 2024

Speech Impediments - For When PCs Remember a Language They've Never Spoken

We've all been there.

The party is confronted with an otherworldly horror uttering guttural chants, or behold a mysterious elven monolith covered in curling runes that twist before their eyes, or stand enraptured before the song of an ancient angel from a forgotten heaven, or receive an email from the marketing department.

Then one of your players hits you with the "oh wait that's one of my languages!" and you have to let them speak to whatever it is.

In regular D&D where you pick Languages during char gen, this happens when it turns out someone has been able to speak Gnomish or Celestial the whole time.

In my game this happens because my players insist on rolling Languages any time they come across a new creature that shows even the tiniest glimmer of sentience. This is why several characters apparently speak fluent Eastern Lowland Gorillese.
This is really very silly but it's fun enough to keep (a la the secret fourth option in this post).

What's the "solution" to this "problem"?
They obviously know the language, but given the fact that they've never even mentioned that they can speak it in months of adventuring it must have been quite a while since they did that exchange trip to the eighth circle of hell.
But they're totally fluent of course, but uhhh... how do you say...


I'm a Bit Rusty

The first time your character speaks a language that they haven't previously spoken in-game, they're rusty.

Roll 1d30:

RollResult
1Can only speak in single syllables
2Tourist phrasebook content only - "two beers please", "which way to museum?" etc.
3They understand you but are always offended.
4Words that start with a vowel only.
5One word sentences only.
6Absolutely always alliterate.
7Words that start with a plosive only
8Must "speak" by describing emojis.
9Swear words only.
10Must speak way too loudly.
11Can only speak in quotations and metaphor.
12Sentences must be spoken in reverse order
13"Snake Snanguage" - all words start with the first two sounds of that language.
14Unable to use pronouns (I/you/he/her/it/etc)
15Unable to speak in present tense
16No verbs
17Speak in Haiku
18Can only write it, not speak it.
19Only know numbers
20"G" and "J" must be pronounced with a soft "zh" sound, as in treasure or casual
21No nouns
22Last letter of one word must begin the next word.
23One must refer to oneself as one, and instead of "we" or "they" must state the number of people in the group (eg. "One was with Four when someone robbed Two house")
24No adjectives
25All phrases must be an innuendo, if you know what I mean
26All sentences must be noun-verb-object
27Must stand on one leg while speaking
28Overly formal, everyone must have a title, no contractions, etc etc
29Every noun must be described by an incongruous and/or false adjective.
30Can speak the language but only in a cartoonish over the top accent.

When you speak that language you must abide by the rolled limitation.
This represents your character pausing to think, forgetting words, getting tones wrong, using the wrong conjugations, and other such issues with dredging up the language you haven't used in a long time.
Failing to do so means you've said complete gobbledegook and nobody understands what you just said.

In subsequent sessions it's all come back to you and you are completely fluent.
Presumably you quickly brushed up on some refresher notes, or beseeched the Horrible Green Owl to reinstate your streak.

Specialists, of course, are always fluent from the get-go. Skills are their whole deal after all.