Topic: Starting languages in 2nd edition?

[runequester]

I must be going blind, but I am having a heck of a time figuring out languages in Rolemaster 2.

The race stats mention how many you start with, but has nothing on how many ranks you get in them.

Or do you buy them out of your rather limited number of DP?

[markc]

  In 2ned I forget the exact number of ranks but I think it is 6 spoken and 4 or 5 written and the note is generally in the notes at the bottom of the chart.
MDC

[Old Man]

IIRC Character Law never said - hence why I wrote section 6.3 of ROCO IV on a random table for Starting Language Ranks.

If ok by ICE, I can reproduce here ...

[Thom @ ICE]

OK

[runequester]

huh, I actually got Companion IV so I can check

[Old Man]

OK

Cool, to wit:

Starting Languages

Character Law suggests a number of starting languages for particular races of characters but no mention of what starting rank should be assigned. Presented here is a background table for a PC's relative level of education and the rank of languages known commensurate with the education level.

Character Educational Table
d100 Roll   Education   Language Ranks
      ( Spoken / Written )
01-05:    Illiterate      5 / 1
06-10   :    Grade School   5 / 3
11-50   :    2 yrs High School   7 / 5
51-90:    4 yrs High School   7 / 7
91-95:   College      9 / 9
96+      Graduate Studies   10 / 10

A Gamemaster may also wish to give those who reach "College" or "Graduate Studies" of education a chance to learn additional languages above their starting quota.

A Gamemaster may also assign a particular level of teaching to a character based on his or her background and the world construct ( for example the Shard Plains tribesmen have no written tongue only a crude pictorial language so any starting PC tribesman can have no written language level above 3 ).

[OLF, i.e. Olf Le Fol]

The point IMO is that starting language is education-dependant and not race-dependant. It's not even culture-dependant since, inside a same culture, children from different social classes would obviously have a different education. For my part, I use the Character Law table p67 to determine a character's starting language's ranks, according to his social background (it's usually 6/0 for 99% of people, anyway, with nobility starting at 7/7 in any applicable language and bourgeoisie starting at 6/4 in mother language and 5/3 in any other applicable language).

Character Educational Table

I think I never liked this table because the percentiles are off. Only 5% illiteracy? In a medieval context? The table's figures match more the literacy rate of a first-world country... and even then, only in the 20th century.

[Old Man]

Character Educational Table

I think I never liked this table because the percentiles are off. Only 5% illiteracy? In a medieval context? The table's figures match more the literacy rate of a first-world country... and even then, only in the 20th century.

Certainly YMMV and feel free to slide the percentiles this way vs that way. Then you can satisfy your medieval or fantasy or far future or post-holocaust context. At the time, I guess I figured PCs tended to be edumacated (sic) but if I were to re-write the table, I might give a variety of options -or- some standard plus/minuses for world-view...