Linguistics (INT)

You are skilled at working with language, in both its spoken and written forms. You can speak multiple languages, and can decipher nearly any tongue given enough time. Your skill in writing allows you to create and detect forgeries as well.

You can decipher writing in an unfamiliar language or a message written in an incomplete or archaic form. The base DC is 20 for the simplest messages, 25 for standard texts, and 30 or higher for intricate, exotic, or very old writing. If the check succeeds, you understand the general content of a piece of writing about one page long (or the equivalent). If the check fails, make a DC 5 Wisdom check to see if you avoid drawing a false conclusion about the text. (Success means that you do not draw a false conclusion; failure means that you do.)

To learn a new Language, a character must expend time to learn, though this does not cost any Experience. As a character becomes more skilled in Linguistics, the time required is reduced further. Initially, learning a new language takes 30 hours. The time to learn any language may be halved if the character possesses a tutor who knows the language, though the tutor must expend the same amount of time as the learning character (and typically requires payment for the service).

As before, certain languages such as Druidic are secret, and only obtainable from certain Paths or Talents. Languages gained in this manner are instantly learned with no time involved (as the time to spend the Experience for the relevant Talent accounts for it). Characters with a sufficient Intelligence score begin the game with bonus languages equal to the modifier as before.

Your Linguistics skill can also be used even if you lack the understanding of a language. To do this, you must make a Linguistics check against a DC of 15 (Common languages), 25 (Rare languages), or more (depending on the campaign). However, for every language which you already know, you may reduce this DC by one - even Common counts for this purpose. Deciphering in this manner takes at least 1 minute, and may take days depending on the length of the message to be deciphered, at GM discretion.

If you exceed the DC, your translation is apt to become more and more perfect. Failure likely means you can only get a word or two out, and must start again to try to understand. A critical failure (such as missing the DC by 10 or more) can cause you to misinterpret what you have read or heard.

Creating a forgery can take anywhere from 1 minute to 1d4 minutes per page. Detecting a forgery using Linguistics takes 1 round of examination per page.

Forgery requires writing materials appropriate to the document being forged. To forge a document on which the handwriting is not specific to a person, you need only to have seen a similar document before, and you gain a +8 bonus on your check. To forge a signature, you need an autograph of that person to copy, and you gain a +4 bonus on the check. To forge a longer document written in the hand of some particular person, a large sample of that person’s handwriting is needed.

The Linguistics check is made secretly, so that you’re not sure how good your forgery is. As with Disguise, you don’t make a check until someone examines the work. Your Linguistics check is opposed by the Linguistics check of the person who examines the document to verify its authenticity. The examiner gains modifiers if any of the conditions are listed on the table above.