Post/Author/DateTime	Post
eagleye 11-15-07, 03:37 PM	I find it odd that bonus languages are restricted per race. You can check the races (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/races.htm) page on the SRD. I was writing up a half-orc illusionist fostered by gnomes, so I wanted to give it Gnome as one of its bonus languages. But the language list of a half-orc is as follows: Bonus Languages: Draconic, Giant, Gnoll, Goblin, and Abyssal. What does that mean? That I can not, ever learn Gnome by any non-magical means, by just studying it? I find it very odd because humans can learn any language, and since half-elfs and half-orcs are half-human, I was thinking surely they can do this as well? As a DM I would allow this of course, but I wonder what the reasoning behind this is. *edit* Another weird thing I'm noticing is that normally Abyssal, Celestial, Infernal are only available to Clerics, this totally makes sense to me. The half-orc however is the only race also has one of these languages as a bonus lanuage: Abyssal (spoken by demons and chaotic evil outsiders). Why are half-orcs able to take abyssal? Because orcs are "often chaotic evil (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/orc.htm)"? Elfs are "usually chaotic good (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/elf.htm)" but they don't get to speak celestial and neither does the half-elf. This seems pretty random to me.
zook1shoe666 11-15-07, 04:09 PM	i think most DMs won't care that much if you have Gnome as one of your languages. all my chars have langauges more based on their background, not race.
Duzzle 11-15-07, 08:09 PM	Bonus languages are meant to represent what languages you are likely to be exposed to while growing up (as an American you might see Spanish on the list of bonus languages, but not Swahili). It only restricts the languages you get from having a high intelligence, you can still spend skill-points to pick up rarer tongues (to represent going out of your way to study a specific language). In Forgotten Realms the bonus languages are changed to match your region, the same could be applied to your half-orc, since he was raised by gnomes he would use the gnome list instead because that is his "region" (with DM permission of course). As to half-orcs and abyssal, it would probably be for those half-orcs raised on the orcish side of the family and implies that it is not uncommon for orcs to know the language (possibly they traffic with demons a fair amount). Standard Elves must not deal with celestials as much (in forgotten realms some elves get celestial and other planar languages as bonus languages because they do have a fair amount of contact with such beings).
eagleye 11-16-07, 03:42 AM	Thanks Duzzly, that's exactly the explenation I'm looking for!