Translate

Typically used with: Intellect.

For all you cunning linguists out there, the Linguistics skill brings you what you enjoy most: figuring out all them funny words! Linguistics can be used to get the gist of writing or speech that you otherwise don’t understand. It is also used to communicate with beings who don't speak or understand your language.

Difficulty

The difficulty for gaining information should be determined on a situational basis by the GM. Below are a few examples:

Example	DL
A conversation or writing from recent years	20
A several hundred year old tablet	25
Ancient text in a forgotten alphabet	30
Conversation is muffled or text is slightly illegible (smeared, worn)	+5

These are the examples of difficulty for evoking ideas and intents across language barriers.

Example	DL
Audience speaks or writes in a language similar to your own (Often geographical differences)	10
Audience speaks and writes with vastly different characters and patterns than your own (Often racial differences)	20
Audience has little to nothing in common with how you communicate (primitive and emotive grunting, exclusively written or signed language, etc.)	30
Intended audience is hard of hearing	+5

The GM might want to roll the Linguistics check is secret so the player isn’t sure what the character interpreted is correct or not.

Time

Translating a full page of text generally takes 1–2 minutes.