A Linguist is able to recognize spoken and written languages, whether foreign, racial, cultural, social, professional, religious, or magical. Absolute Success will even allow him to understand enough to get the gist of a conversation/text. He is also able to distinguish regional accents of languages with which he is familiar (i.e. by hearing a certain thief speak he could tell that he hails from Souvrael in the Kingdom of Illyravoin and probably from the poorer section of town). A linguist may be able to identify an impersonator by his language if he makes a successful roll.
A Linguist learns new languages 10% faster than normal per rank with this skill.
While intelligence normally limits the number of languages a character can learn, every 4 ranks, or fraction thereof, of this skill increases that maximum by 1. Thus, a rank 1 to 4 linguist can learn one additional language. A rank 5 to 8 linguist can learn 2 additional languages, and so on.
A rank 10 linguist has an effective rank in all languages known, including those known due to the natural linguist talent, if applicable, that is one higher than indicated. For example, if a rank 10 linguist has spent experience to bring their knowledge of Elvish to rank 5, they are effectively rank 6 due to their skill with linguist. |