How to Speak ALL LANGUAGES?

[Gauntlet]

I wonder how you would make a character who has the ability to fluently speak every language. Universal Translator wouldn't work as it only has you speak the language rather basically, always showing that you do not truly know the language. You could try and purchase every language but in that case your character would absolutely have no powers and be unable to do anything other than speak languages. Would there be any other options?

[Lord Liaden]

6E1 p. 269 has the latest mention of a venerable construct in HERO System, a Variable Power Pool, Only for Skills, aka a "Skill Pool." With a GM's permission a character can buy Skills in a VPP to represent an extremely wide knowledge base, too expensive to buy individually.

[Doc Democracy]

The classic build for this would be Telepathy, "only to allow those you are speaking to to understand".  The SFX is that you are speaking in tongues and everyone hears you in their own language.

 

It does not allow you to read or write those languages.

 

Doc

[Christopher R Taylor]

I think GMs should take the Life Support approach to languages.  After a certain point expenditure, the value diminishes enormously, so you can just have a point at which you speak everything.  Is it really worth spending 28,604 points to fluently speak every language (it is estimated that there are 7151 spoken languages on earth)?  Clearly not.

Edited September 9, 2023 by Christopher R Taylor

[Duke Bushido]

3 hours ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

.  Is it really worth spending 28,604 points to fluently speak every language (it is estimated that there are 7151 spoken languages on earth)?  Clearly not.

 

 

Man!  Suddenly i don't want this power.

 

I can't imagine having to repeat everything 7,151 times!   That would be like having eight kids!

 

 

[Duke Bushido]

7 hours ago, Doc Democracy said:

The classic build for this would be Telepathy, "only to allow those you are speaking to to understand".  

 

It does not allow you to read or write those languages.

 

Doc

 

 

Correct, bur you can get around that with "Telepathy, only to understand spoken words."

 

 

[Doc Democracy]

16 minutes ago, Duke Bushido said:

 

 

Correct, but you can get around that with "Telepathy, only to understand spoken words."

 

 

 

You are going to have to explain how understanding spoken words helps you read or write a language you don't know...

[Duke Bushido]

Getting around you understanding them, Sir.

 

I either mis-read or quoted the wrong part of your post.

 

Sorry about that.

 

[DShomshak]

I checked through a few editions, and the qualifier that Universal Translator only enables one to speak or write a language "crudely" seems to appear in 5th edition. 4th edition version just says that, yeah, you can speak, read and write any language you encounter. (With a few qualifiers such as physical ability to "speak" in the mode presented). So one solution is just to use 4th edition. (I'm not checking previous editions.)

 

OK, so you're stuck with a particular edition and you don't want to say the Rules As Written for that edition are pointlessly limiting. Steve Long gave another way out in 5e by deriving Talents from standard Powers and Skills. Officially, Universal Translator consists of two Detects: Detect Meaning of Speech [10 points] + Detect Meaning of Text [10 points]. Except thi9s is wrong. BY RAW, a basic Detect only registers the presence and intensity of some object or quality. Detect Meaning of Speech will only tell you that yup, that's speech and it has more or less meaning. You need Discriminatory, at the very least. And you would also need Transmit in order to speak back.

 

So let's "correct" the derivation, while conserving the final cost, by treating it this way: Detect Meaning of Speech (3 points -- pretty specialized), Discriminatory (+5 points), Transmit (+2 points); + Detect Meaning of Text (3 points), Descriminatory (+5 points), Transmit (+2 points). Though by RAW you could reduce the cost to 15, because you can add a second class of entity to a Detect for a flat +5 points without needing to re-purchase all the added modifiers.

 

To Detect and Transmit the finer shades of meaning implied by true mastery of a language, add Analyze. For the verion of UT that conserves existing point values that pushes the final cost to 30 points. Using the two-categories hack, the final cost drops back to 20 points.

 

You'll still have to make a PER Roll to comprehend or communicate in the language, but getting a better roll for this single Enhanced Sense costs only 1 point per +1. Buy +3 and I think it's fair to say you'now effectively have 4 points of fluency in any language you enounter.

 

If you're *really* persnickety, add +2 points for "Sense", so you can use it without needing a half-Phase action. But I think you can bring the whole thing in at 25 points.

 

Dean Shomshak

[Duke Bushido]

Wow.

 

That's just neat!   Well done!

 

 

 

 

[Gauntlet]

Unfortunately Telepathy doesn't work well as you would only be speaking to the one person and no one else around you would hear you. Plus if they were anyone who had bought Mental Defense you have a good chance of it not working.

 

I definitely never thought of using detect though, that is definitely a interesting idea.

[Doc Democracy]

Yeah, but removing line of sight range and adding area effect (anyone who can hear voice) covers most of that.

 

Defences could be an issue, though similar things can prevent other solutions.  There are hand wavy things with a few things.

 

I like Dean's solution but Detect feels fundamentally hand-wavy to me when you get to speaking and writing and reading.

 

I am however, fundamentally accepting of waving hands to achieve a reasonable solution to say yes to a player for a cool power.

 

Doc

[steriaca]

On page 16 of the Advance Player's Guide 2 has Universal Orator, which cost 17 points and is built as Telepathy 4d6, Area Of Effect (Voice Range:+1), Reduced Endurance (0 END, + 1/2), Brodcast Only (- 1/2), Extra Time (Full Phase, - 1/2), Incantations (throughout communication, - 1/2), No Range (- 1/2).

[Lord Liaden]

Great find, steriaca, thank you! Removing Broadcast Only should cover the basic needs of the ability.

 

And you spelled everything perfectly!

[Doc Democracy]

I think a strength of the system (and a problem sometimes for GMs) is that there are often lots of ways to achieve an effect in game.  The best thing I get from seeing the details of someone's build is to get insight into how they did it, how they looked behind the understood or implied game effects and used that mechanic to deliver something else.

 

For instance, I liked to see how Steve deconstructed instant change and gave a build.  I did not NEED  that to use instant change in my game.  I still dont.  What it did do was give me ideas on how to achieve similar things when players came, stuck on how to do a build.

 

I have learned so many things on these boards by people saying Energy Blast [sic] is not an energy blast, it is a way to do damage to someone at range.  If you want to lift someone into the air and drop them to do damage, then Energy Blast is probably what you should be thinking about, and everything else is SFX.

[Gauntlet]

23 hours ago, steriaca said:

On page 16 of the Advance Player's Guide 2 has Universal Orator, which cost 17 points and is built as Telepathy 4d6, Area Of Effect (Voice Range:+1), Reduced Endurance (0 END, + 1/2), Brodcast Only (- 1/2), Extra Time (Full Phase, - 1/2), Incantations (throughout communication, - 1/2), No Range (- 1/2).

 

Problem still is that this power often does not work in a Champions game as characters frequently have bought up EGOs and/or Mental Defense, both of which make speaking with them impossible. In addition, if you have Broadcast Only you can't understand what they have to say.

[Doc Democracy]

17 minutes ago, Gauntlet said:

 

Problem still is that this power often does not work in a Champions game as characters frequently have bought up EGOs and/or Mental Defense, both of which make speaking with them impossible. In addition, if you have Broadcast Only you can't understand what they have to say.

 

The purpose of the power was to speak in tongues, where people would be able to undertand what you had to say. The conceit would be that someone with mental defence, high EGO and/or high DECV would realise that someone was seeking to communicate with them and would be able, if they wnted, to understand him.  They would have an additional defence if the person relied on that power to persuade, interrogate or anything else that required them to comprehend things.  Just having spent on those things should not inhibit you more than anyone else.

 

The other thing, you as a GM can do, is come up with a power that reliably works for the average person in the campaign and then declare that it is a "thing" that work in the described manner for a described price.  Steve Long, several times, said that it would be fine for a GM to work out how much it would cost to endure the majority of attacks in the campaign, then declare, for that cost, you can purchase Invulnerable, and ignore damage regardless of the role or details of the damage inflicted on them.

 

In this case, you have worked out a reasonable way to allow everyone (not explicitly enhaneced) to understand your speech.  After that, you ignore the core mechanics of it, and call it Speaking in tongues (anyone that can hear you speak can understand what you mean), Xpts.

 

Do not allow the details of the system rob you of cool powers, or force you into a never-ending recursion of powers, advantages and disadvantages to better model reality.

 

Doc

[Gauntlet]

Of course I have seen some GMs do it as Universal Translator but with an extra cost of 5 points per upgrade of languages spoken. 

 

5 Points - Fluent Conversation

10 Points - Completely Fluent

15 Points - Idiomatic

20 Points - imitate dialects

 

You of course would still have to make the rolls.

[Christopher R Taylor]

I think that kind of thing is the best approach, I think.  Like I tried to point out above, buying languages is a diminishing return, like life support.

[Gauntlet]

On 9/11/2023 at 10:49 AM, Christopher R Taylor said:

I think that kind of thing is the best approach, I think.  Like I tried to point out above, buying languages is a diminishing return, like life support.

 

But of course Life Support does have a maximum it can go up to, unlike if you have to purchase all languages to be able to speak them properly it would take hundreds of points or more.

[dmjalund]

8 minutes ago, Gauntlet said:

if you have to purchase all languages to be able to speak them properly it would take hundreds of points or more.

it may COST hundreds of points, but is it WORTH hundreds of points?

[Gauntlet]

1 minute ago, dmjalund said:

it may COST hundreds of points, but is it WORTH hundreds of points?

 

No, it's not. That's why we are looking for alternatives like allowing Universal Translator to be bought up.

[Christopher R Taylor]

Right, my comparison to Life Support is to suggest languages would need the same kind of cap.  You can buy longer life, but after a certain point, its just "immortal" because its not worth dozens of points to live effectively forever.

[unclevlad]

I've never been particularly crazy about the argument that "Universal Translator is not a cheap way to buy all languages."  Because it's not cheap.  How often do any of us invest 20 points into a language?  I've got a couple with a lot...usually characters I treat as polymaths.  So native English, idiomatic French, German, Spanish, and Italian, and completely fluent in Arabic, Mandarin, and Japanese perhaps.  But guess what, that's only 18 points because of the language similarity rules and Linguist.  So, 20 points is a LOT of languages.  

 

Of course it isn't all, but as has been said, diminishing returns kicked in a LONG time ago.

 

I'd couple a talent with a skill, for SPOKEN languages.

Talent:  Instant Translation (30 points)

KS:  Linguistics

 

Instant Translation lets you speak any language.  It requires the Linguistics roll to recognize the language.  

 

For WRITTEN, the issue I have is the scripts.  Thai?  Hindi?  Japanese?  Mandarin?  Thousands of characters each.  If you want to keep it simple, then...don't worry about it.  Same rules.  We're talking 33 points after all...in background stuff.  If someone can give an example of how this might disrupt a game, I'd love to see it.

 

On 9/10/2023 at 1:46 AM, Doc Democracy said:

I like Dean's solution but Detect feels fundamentally hand-wavy to me when you get to speaking and writing and reading.

 

I am however, fundamentally accepting of waving hands to achieve a reasonable solution to say yes to a player for a cool power.

 

Doc

 

"Detect" because it's the catch-all term for anything like this.  I'd put it in the Unusual Group;  to use it requires that the speech or text be readable/audible, then you get into the 'extract the language concepts' notion, Unusual Group.  It is hand-wavy, but pretty sure no more so than plenty of others.  

 

Another option.  The base skill is either Translator (PS) or Linguistics (KS).  Instant Translator:  10 points.  Lets you try to translate any language.  The skill roll has a penalty, based on the degree of familiarity with the languages you know, using the Familiarity charts...4 point familiar might be 0, whereas no commonality might be 5 points.  It could also be used to extend what you have learned...if you have 2 points in Russian, make a roll...make on the nose, maybe it bumps up to 3.  By more, can go up to full idiomatic.

 

And I think, as so often is the case, we're trying to nitpick our definition.  Keep it simple.  This is background stuff.