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Firehawk Games RPG Products => Novus RPG => Topic started by: Forwax on August 11, 2011, 04:42:03 AM

Title: Starting language
Post by: Forwax on August 11, 2011, 04:42:03 AM
I'm doing my first novus character and I'm bugged about what is the starting language skill when doing a level 1 character. Is it measure on a 10 scale or 5. is fluently speaking/writing is 6/10 or 3/5 ? just need a little help here. I'm working with the 0.5 version of the pdf.
Title: Starting language
Post by: samwise7 on August 11, 2011, 04:51:18 AM
I might be off my rocker, but languages are Talents and you essentially buy the written and the spoken forms of the languages for 1 CP each.  There really isn't any skill involved.
Title: Starting language
Post by: Forwax on August 11, 2011, 05:08:51 AM
So language are CP and when you purchase 1 point you learn that language fluantly ?

And thx for the thunderbolt fast response (http:///smile.gif)
Title: Starting language
Post by: imported_Rasyr on August 11, 2011, 12:26:01 PM

I'm doing my first novus character and I'm bugged about what is the starting language skill when doing a level 1 character. Is it measure on a 10 scale or 5. is fluently speaking/writing is 6/10 or 3/5 ? just need a little help here. I'm working with the 0.5 version of the pdf.




You are thinking of Rolemaster/HARP (which I have worked on previously) which has 10+ skill ranks or MERP (which has 5 skill ranks per language -- Note the US Military also uses 5 langauge ratings in real life).

In Novus, languages separated into spoken and written. And you either know the language or you don't. Learning the language is a done through purchasing a Talent, which happens to cost 1 Character Point for normal languages, more if you want to learn a Magical or Ancient Language.

And since the language talents are trainable, that allows you to learn a new language whenever you go up a level if you want.

I made the decision to handle languages the way I did to keep things simple and in part because of the number of Character Points received each level. I had originally considered using the US Military's rating system, but frankly that would have turned languages into an enormous CP sink, which is not something I wanted, but I did want it to take time and effort (i.e. cost CP) to learn new languages, so treating learning new languages as a Trainable Talent was the best solution that I could come up with.
Title: Starting language
Post by: samwise7 on August 11, 2011, 03:45:34 PM
So language are CP and when you purchase 1 point you learn that language fluantly ?

And thx for the thunderbolt fast response




Yep, you spend 1 CP and you can learn the Spoken form of a language and speak it fluently.  You can also spend 1 CP and you can learn the written form of the language and then can read and right that language.  No problem on answering the question.  (http:///smile.gif)  I tend to hang out in internet forums a lot, hehe.
Title: Starting language
Post by: imported_Rasyr on August 11, 2011, 04:12:36 PM

  I tend to hang out in internet forums a lot, hehe.




Stalker!!!!

(http:///tongue.gif)
Title: Starting language
Post by: Forwax on August 12, 2011, 03:30:49 AM
thx guys to anwser me.

Rasyr yes I come from a really rolemaster/MERP/HARP heavy setting (mostly Rolemaster tho) so that is whu I ask many question since I discovered you (http:///tongue.gif)
Title: Starting language
Post by: imported_Rasyr on August 12, 2011, 01:50:27 PM
Well, I worked for Mjolnir (the company that was doing business as ICE up until last November) for nearly 8 years, so I have a heavy RM background (and HARP since I authored it) as well.

In writing Novus, I deliberately made some design choices to separate myself from those systems in certain ways, and making languages a talent and not having ranks was one of those specific design choices - plus, with the number of CP I was handing out and the number of skills incorporated, having languages as skills didn't make sense either.
Title: Starting language
Post by: samwise7 on August 12, 2011, 02:03:09 PM
I do like to stalk around forums, hehe.  (http:///smile.gif)
Title: Starting language
Post by: Fidoric on August 13, 2011, 06:35:32 PM
If you want more complexity in languages acquisition, you can use a 1-5 scale for languages as Rasyr suggested and consider that each CP used to buy the language talent gives you your intelligence bonus in that language.
Title: Starting language
Post by: Forwax on August 14, 2011, 06:06:41 AM
Hell no Fidoric LOL... Language as talent is nice enough for me (http:///smile.gif)
Title: Starting language
Post by: imported_Witchking20k on August 22, 2011, 02:31:01 AM
That means i tend to "lurk" around the forums Samwise!   Ba ha ah ahah ha..... if only everyone thought I was as funny as I do.