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NWoD > Language Merits

Language Rules

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A Note on Intentions

The general idea here is to make it easy to learn languages at Character Creation, and considerably more difficult to do so once play begins, in order to reflect the difficulty in learning new languages. In case someone objects to the complexity, the author would make the note that in real life it is considerably easier to learn Languages at a very young age than later in life.

What You Get For Free...

Everyone who starts a character has four basic options, depending on his wishes. The first three of these options are totally free, with only the fourth entailing the purchase of any merits at all.

My Character knows...

  • You have full mastery of a single language, and nothing else. Your archetypal American, who doesn't know nor care about "those silly foreign tongues.
  • You know two languages but speak with an accent in one of them. A bilinguial Minority American, who doesn't really speak English/His-Native-Tongue very well.
  • You're a native speaker of one language, and have dabbled in one or two others.
  • You're a native speak of one language, and purchase one of the Language Merits listed below.

the First Option: You might notice that, of the three free options, one of them is significantly less 'balanced' than the other two. If this bothers you, then you'll like this little rule! If you choose to simply have one native language (Language/3), without knowing any other tongues, then you can grab an extra speciality to reflect what your character focused on in place of linguistics.

Improving Your Skill Later: Option one gives you Language 3 with your native language. Option two to gives you Language 3 with one of your languages, and Language 2 with another. Option three provides you with Language 3 in one language, and Language 1 in no more than two languages.

Option Four - Character Creation-only Merits

The following merits are provided short-hand. I might provide a more detailed system later. These can ONLY be learned at character creation with initial seven points.

"Languages: The Dabbler" - this one point merit allows you to have 4 dots of languages, none of which can be rated higher than two dots. This is in addition to your native tongue.
"Languages: The European" - this two point merit allows you to have 9 dots of languages at whatever level of command and fluency that you wish. This is in addition to your native tongue.
"Languages: The Linguist" - this four dot merit allows you to have 18 dots of languages at any level of fluency that you might wish. This is in addition to your native tongue. In addition to these languages, once play begins (or with bonus XP) the Linguist learns additional languages with great ease and at half price.

Learning Languages in Play

In order to learn languages once play begins, use the Languages merit from the core rulebook. You are unable to gain more than one dot in a language at a time, and the process of doing such is quite difficult and time-consuming unless you have the Linguist merit.