Our campaign setting is multi-lingual. It’s a vast continent, with the current region being a huge Mediterranean-style sea. All the PCs are either noble knights or scholarly types, and the story revolves around the relations of noble houses and trade issues across a variety of different cultures. As such, the Foreign Languages skill is going to be important for us.
We’ve already had one Foreign Languages test, which went just fine. The problem is what to do when we encounter the same language again and again, and how to improve one’s fluency in a foreign language.
My first instinct is to use training skills, and I think this is the proper approach. A passed Foreign Language test would add the training skill to the PC’s character sheet, with the fluency level determined by the margin of success. Meeting the Ob on a Foreign Languages test would indicate only basic understanding, whereas +1 MoS would be conversational language ability, and +2 MoS would indicate complete fluency. This seems to mesh nicely with Let it Ride.
A few questions:
[ol]
[li]Can a training skill be FoRKed into other skills?
[/li][li]Should I be enforcing a Foreign Languages test before using any social skills, read or write, if the character is not fluent? Or should it just be RPed out appropriately? Or should Ob penalties be used (very debilitating to social skills)?
[/li][li]What to do for scholarly types that want to study the intricacies of a language (beyond the fluent level)? I’d like to give them some kind of bonus, but am unsure what would be fair.
[/li][/ol]
Questions #1 and 3 are important, as the answer will determine whether or not the PCs should have a free training skill for their native language.
For studying to increase the fluency level of a foreign language one already knows, I’m thinking of just having practice or training times for the Foreign Languages skill count double for training a single chosen language training skill towards its next level of fluency. Regular tests in play don’t count.
Can anybody help me out with this? How do you use the Foreign Languages skill?
~ Dean