Niche D20Each race or culture tends to have their own language that they speak. This can be both a tool of secrecy and a barrier of communication, from two creatures speaking in their native tongue in a foreign land to reduce who listens in to their conversation; to adventurers happening upon a tribe of orcs and being unable to discern their words, left to only guess their intentions.
Of all the languages, one exists as “common”, common itself isn’t exactly a language, but instead is representative of the language used commonly for your area/region, meaning if you’re in a campaign of a land dominated by elves, then likely common will be your language.
Starting Languages
Almost all races and their respective heritages will have a “Starting Languages” section to their listing. Some heritages may have their own special dialect, while all of their race may share the same language. In almost all cases each race has the option of starting with common or the language appropriate to their race, though some may get their racial language in addition to the common language.
If a creature starts with a 14 or higher intelligence score, they may start with one additional language of their choice.
Learning New Languages
A creature may choose to spend skill ranks to learn a new language instead of spending those ranks in additional skills.
Literacy
In the basic Niche D20 setting literacy is not a guarantee. As a result it is assumed most creatures may be able to speak a language, but are not automatically literate. This does not affect spellcasters as the method to reading and understanding magic is not the same as reading mundane script.
If a creature has a 12 or 13 starting intelligence score they are assumed to have literacy in the common language. A creature with a 14 or higher starting intelligence is assumed to have literacy in all their starting languages.
For creatures learning new languages, or simply did not have literacy in the first place, may spend skill ranks to gain literacy in a language instead of spending those ranks in additional skills. Creatures could have literacy but be unable to speak a language, but this could cause confusion for some players, so it is recommended to limit literacy to languages a creature can speak.
Some settings may call for more common literacy, as a result a more renaissance to industrial era setting may call for simply a 12 or higher to gain literacy in all starting languages, while a more modern setting would assume all creatures are automatically literate in any language they can speak.
List of Languages
Below is a list of languages within the Niche D20 system. You may always choose to add more as appropriate to your own setting, but below is a list defined within the system.
| Language | Description | Starting Races |
|---|---|---|
| Common | The common language of the starting region of the campaign. | Almost all player character races have the option of common. |
| Centaur | The language of the centaur race, usually with very minor variation between the heritages. | Centaur(All) |
| Draconic | The language of dragons and many reptilian races. | Scalekin(All) |
| Dwarven | The common language of the Dwarven race. | Dwarf(All) |
| Elven | The common language of the Elven race. | Elf(All) |
| Giant | The common language of the Giant race. | Giant(All) |
| Goblin | The common language of the Goblin Race | Goblinoid(Goblin) |
| Halfling | The common language of the Halfling race. | Halfling(All) |
| Hobgoblin | The common language of the Hobgoblin Race. | Goblinoid(Hobgoblin) |
| Human | The common language of the human people. While some other human heritages may have their own, this is the most common of the human people. | Human(All), Beastkin(All), Planesborn(All) |
| Kheldzean | Another human dialect, but to the Kheldzean empire. Similar to the basic human language in origin, but a generally harsher tone and faster pace makes it difficult for outsiders to keep up. | Human(Kheldzean) |
| Orc | The common language of the Orc race. | Goblinoid(Orc) |
Documents and Writing
Writing
Writing documents is usually something simple a creature can do especially if they have literacy. A creature attempting to write more complex documents such as a novel may wish to instead use the Profession(Linguist) to handle the crafting and determining of quality. The DC of crafting a book should use the crafting complexity table to determine the DC, which us somewhat subjective by the GM. Usually Normal complexity should be utilized for common books, but books on complex subjects, encyclopedias, or books of generally greater length should use higher complexity.
A normal complexity book should be around 200 pages, with a creature capable of writing 2 pages per day for the purposes of determining progress with each degree of success increasing by the usual amounts (such as double the amount to 4 pages for one degree of success over the DC.) This means a creature can produce a single page in around 4 hours of work, while even shorter documents may take even less time. A failure by one degree or greater results in a creature having some sort of mishap resulting in 2 pages of existing progress being lost with an additional 2 per degree of failure beyond the first; this is usually represented by a writer needing to perform rewrites or having some sort of accident that ruins their pages (such as spilling ink on the paper).
Forgery
Forgery is an action a creature can attempt to do by copying the contents of another document, emulating the style, or simply emulating the handwriting of another. This behaves similar to writing for DC. When copying an object in which you have access to the original, the complexity is treated as Normal. Copying an object without its original, but instead from memory increases the DC to complex. Attempting to instead create something new, but mimicking the style in both handwriting and mannerisms instead becomes an Intricate DC.
Progress is usually determined at a rate of pages similar to books, meaning when forging a single page usually will only take 4 hours of work; with each additional page of success allowing the creature to create yet another duplicate as part of that session of work. Longer documents such as entire books take the usual duration of time.
Detecting a forgery is a sense motive check with the viewer’s familiarity with the original writer or simply source document adding a bonus to their check similar to a sense motive check. The DC of this sense motive check is at 12 + the writer’s Profession(Linguist) ranks + Focus modifier + any other miscellaneous bonus to their Profession(Linguist) check at the time of making the forgery.
Translation
When a creature is familiar and literate with a language and simply wishes to provide an accurate translation of a document into another language they are also familiar and literate in they may simply copy the book at a rate of 8 pages per day without a check needed as they are simply going through the motions.
For documents the creature wishes to decipher and translate this uses the writing rules to determine DC and time required; but the difficulty immediately starts at Extremely Intricate. Should the creature have access to reference materials to assist with translation of the language the DC is reduced to a Intricate work.
Encryption and Decryption of Documents
Encrypting a document by adding a cipher or some other level of obfuscation to make the documents difficult for others to read uses the writing rules, but reduces the rate of work to 1 page per day. The complexity of the encryption both determines the difficulty to decipher the encryption of the document. Encryption requires a DC 20 to perform and for every 5 the writer increases the DC the more difficult the document becomes to decipher.
Deciphering a document is done at the same rate of encrypting the document, but the DC is 20 + ranks in Profession(Linguist) of the creature who performed the encryption. For every 5 the creature increased the DC to encrypt the base DC to decipher increases by an additional 5.
Documents can be deciphered with Sense Motive instead of Profession(Linguist) but is done so at a -5 penalty.