In dnd 2024 every character knows common and 2 standard languages.

A rogue ability grants to the rogue the knowledge of the “thieves’ cant” and allows to select a language from the rare languages table.

I don’t understand if these 2 new rare language add to the first 3, making every rogue start with at least 5 languages, or if you just replace the two standard languages with “thieves’ cant” and another rare language.

Any suggestion on the proper rule interpretation? Also I have similar questions for druid and ranger abilities that grant new languages.

  • makeshiftreaper@lemmy.world
    0·
    1 day ago

    I would interpret them as additional languages. First and foremost, thieves’ cant isn’t a language per se. It’s more of a series of code words and phrases to access shady parts of society. There may be local flavors, but it’s all generally similar regardless of the language you speak. Gaining one additional rare language is barely even a boon. Comprehend Languages is a 1st level spell. Unless language barriers are a significant part of your campaign, everyone is just going to be speaking common and frankly most players forget that they have other languages on their sheet anyway

    • 20nat@feddit.itOP
      0·
      14 hours ago

      Now I’m convinced that this is the proper interpretation, I think I will stick to the rule in my games but it still feels wrong for two main reasons:

      • I’ve never considered rogue or ranger a language heavy class, for me a wizard that knows 5 languages makes much more sense.
      • Apperently, according to the rules, there are 0 persons on the entire planet that know only 2 languages, even the stupidest barbarian out there has to know perfectly at least 3 languages.

      What do you think?

      • makeshiftreaper@lemmy.world
        0·
        8 hours ago

        I think it depends on your interpretation of “language” in 5E. I could see someone interpreting common and under-common being as similar as English and British English

        Rangers and Rogues are two classes that are generally interpreted as being better traveled which I would say is the argument for having that many languages. PCs are also very different from NPCs, any character that you play is already exceptional, so having more money, more skills, more languages is to be expected. Also, it’s not entirely unrealistic, there’s tons of bilingual/trilingual people in the real world, I bet you know words and phrases in multiple languages. I know you’re already fluent in English

        Although, I don’t know if this is RAW or commonly accepted home brew but generally anything under 3 INT isn’t considered capable of understanding language and if you roll a character that dumb I’d argue they shouldn’t be capable of speech