I'm doubly embarrassed that I omitted Read Languages from yesterday's list of 1st level MU spells because A) I had the OD&D spell list right in front of me and B) it was Read Languages that got me thinking about this subject. What can I say? I'm an idiot sometimes.
Anyway, I consider Read Languages a pretty awesome spell. I know the internet is full of awesome people who speak multiple languages, but I'm not one of them. I struggled with French in high school and college. At one point I could read well enough to fumble my way through Sartre and Voltaire, but I'm sure I've lost that and I never was sufficiently fluent to speak the tongue. I'm pretty sure I passed my final conversational exam because I was almost twice as big as the instructor and he was kind of a nervous little guy. Linguistics as a field fascinates me, but I just seem to have no talent for learning new languages. I can't whistle either but that doesn't bother me as much.
So Read Languages is pretty much a miracle effect to me. Athanansius Kircher, one of the awesomest geniuses to ever live, couldn't crack the code for Egyptian hieroglyphs. Minoan Linear A and Olmec and many other ancient scripts remain undeciphered to this day. But here's a spell that instantaneously allows you to read all of that stuff and the Greek and Roman classics and the original Bible texts and Nietzsche in the original German and all the other written works of humanity. Boom. One spell gets you access to any document put in front of you. If a magic wish fairy could give real-world Jeff access to a single first level spell, this would be at the top of the short list. It's a totally awesome spell and unlike Burning Hands it won't result in me going to jail for setting jerkasses on fire.
Of course, like the issues with the Light spell I outlined yesterday, Read Languages only helps if your DMs world allows it to help. If this spells is going to count for anything, we need more rune-stones, love letters, diplomatic correspondence, roadsigns, inscriptions, etc. And they need to be in something besides Common.
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I totally agree, especially with the thought of including more opportunities to use read languages.
ReplyDeleteI think it's worth mentioning, that though one can read a text, he doesn't have to understand it. In everyday life, we often forget the importance of cultural reference. A wizard lacking knowledge about the context of a letter or document can get himself into some nasty shit ( all good DM's should apply this to their advantage)
He who can read Voltaire in his mother tongue is a master indeed!
ReplyDeleteApart from that: I have a very pressing problem: Is read languages applicable to aleph or the Ur-language or whatyoucallit, too? Spellweaver cypher?
To turn the question and put it on it´s feet: Is the decision to have some ultra-rare languages around that read language doesn´t cover cheating the players or is it reintorducing a layer of mystery and accomplishment the multiverse would otherwise lack?
He who can read Voltaire in his mother tongue is a master indeed!
ReplyDeleteHardly. I had an English translation beside me for vast swaths of it.
Apart from that: I have a very pressing problem: Is read languages applicable to aleph or the Ur-language or whatyoucallit, too? Spellweaver cypher?
I say nay. Otherwise there wouldn't be two different spells.
To turn the question and put it on it´s feet: Is the decision to have some ultra-rare languages around that read language doesn´t cover cheating the players or is it reintorducing a layer of mystery and accomplishment the multiverse would otherwise lack?
I'd call it cheating. Though I think one could pull some cryptological trickery on the low level magic-users. That would eventually lead to a higher level spell called Decode Cipher or some such, no doubt.
This sort of creates an interesting problem for things like codes. If you use standard characters for a code, but arrange them weirdly, what does Read Languages do? How about if you use a word-substitution code, i.e, "tree" means "orc", "ocean" means "We attack at dawn", etc. (A lot of real world codes use both... you use word substitution, then you apply an encryption algorithm).
ReplyDeleteSo if your Wizard intercepts a message, in Common, which reads "My mother is coming for dinner on Tuesday", if he casts Read Languages on it, will he see the message "The orc army is massing in the valley", which is what the intended recipient, with his code book, will know it really means?
My personal ruling would be "No". The spell translates the language into words the character can read; it does not reveal any special meaning those words might have to some other third party. (If there's more than one code which uses the words, how does the spell "pick"?)
I studied two languages in high school and was terrible at both. However, an interest in the animation of a particular culture and a tendencey to date women from said culture during my college years resulted in one of my favorite personal quips...
ReplyDelete"I took two years of Spanish and two years of French. As a result, I speak a little Japanese."
;)
Language is a big deal in my campaigns so Read Language is indeed a most powerful tool.
@ Jeff
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Being a 1st lvl spell RL is rather literal and modest in it's power.
ReplyDeleteIt does not translate proper nouns into ones familiar to player (lizards know Hobbiton as Dadskmf), words that have no translation are likewise unchanged (applies to magical, extra-planer, high-tech, etc languages.) It does not tell reader anything about the language (if they didn't know scroll was written in Elder Fuhark, they still won't after casting RL)
Cypers are not languages. The spell would not decipher them. But, the caster would see and know the characters and have chance to work out it's say rot13.