In which I attempt to adjudicate one of the most ridiculously minute and unimportant rules in DFRPG. You may freely choose to ignore this entire thread and replace it with “Compel characters if there are difficulties understanding a language they have on their sheet” with minimal gameplay impact.

Languages are super weird and different from each other, and what it means to be fluent and literate in a language can actually change more drastically than a monolingual speaker with no language background might first assume. For this reason, I thought it would be a good idea to specify a set of rulings for what it means to “know” different languages: what dialects and writing can you be assumed to know? What is the scope of your fluency/literacy? I’m mentioning the subtleties of languages I know of here, but invite others to post as well if they have exposure to the subtleties of languages.

General rules:

-Intelligibility. Two systems of communicating, or “idiolects”, are considered mutually intelligible if a speaker in one system can understand the speaker of the other system and visa versa with minimal to no difficulty. However, this is a spectrum, not a clean division: certain idiolects can be more easily understood than others, depending on their closeness. Further, the level of the comprehension between two idiolects may be asymmetrical. If a dialect is somewhat but not fully intelligible to you, then understanding that dialect may require a Scholarship check, with difficulty scaling depending on the level of difference. You may even get a Fate Point for being unable to understand a dialect of a language you have taken if it impedes your comprehension enough. For example, a baseline speaker of General American English would face no difficulty understanding a speaker of Received Pronunciation, may occasionally face an Average (+1) difficulty check understanding a speaker of African American English thanks to AAE’s more complex verbal aspect system, should face a roughly Fair (+2) level of difficulty comprehending Shakespeare, may face either a Superb (+5) difficulty or a compel when trying to understand Scots, and should be unable to understand German without a separate language slot. However, in contrast, a speaker of AAE should generally face no difficulty understanding GAE. These difficulties are merely baseline suggestions, and may go up or down depending on the aspects and background of specific characters. 

Specify what dialect you know when specifying your knowledge of a language.

-Fluency vs Literacy. In general, familiarity with any spoken dialect of a dialect should imply literacy in the written language that dialect falls under. If this is not true for your character, they should have an aspect which can be compelled accordingly: ILLITERATE or similar may work as a catch all, but something like CHINESE AMERICAN IMMIGRANT can also work if that aspect implies specifically that you grew up speaking a Sinitic language in the home, but never learned Chinese characters, without impacting literacy in other languages. In general, mutual comprehension of writing is higher than mutual comprehension of speech: written language changes more slowly than spoken and tends to be more standardized. However, if multiple written standards for writing exist, this generality changes—indicate the standard(s) of writing you’re familiar with if your language has such distinctions. And while some languages have several standards of writing, others have no writing system at all, and such languages confer no literacy.

Signed languages: You must spend a language slot for each sign language you know, identically to spoken languages. For example, if your Scholarship score is Fair (+2), your native language is American Sign Language, and you would like to know both English and British Sign Language, you can have no more languages on your sheet without increasing your scholarship score or taking the linguist stunt. In general, signed languages do not confer literacy outside of very specialized exceptions: many native signers are also familiar enough with a spoken language with a writing system to get around this, even if they are physically incapable of speaking and/or hearing it, but this costs a language slot.

SPECIFIC LANGUAGE RULINGS

These are by no means comprehensive, and necessarily make divisions at higher levels than actually exist between dialects. For example, British Englishes or Levantine Arabic are each one category, even though much more precise dialectal variation exists between speakers of each of them. This is necessary to limit the explosion of this list to a ridiculous degree.

English

Writing system: Modern English has a single writing system that all speakers of modern dialects of English can comprehend with no difficulty. Elizabethan English has enough spelling differences to warrant a Fair (+2) check to understand without consistent exposure to it (for example, if you are a SCHOLAR OF SHAKESPEARE, your comprehension would be unimpeded). Understanding written Middle English or earlier requires a separate language slot.

Dialect groups:

Modern North American English (NAE), Modern British English (BE), Australian English (AE), African American English (AAE), Elizabethan English (EE), others.

NAE, BE, and AE have perfect mutual intelligibility with no difficulties unless a speaker is very deliberately using high idiomatic terminology. These three dialect groupings are also perfectly understood by AAE speakers, but may have difficulty understanding AAE (Mediocre (+0) to Average (+1) for NAE, Average (+1) to Fair (+2) for BE and AE). All modern dialects face a Fair (+2) understanding Elizabethan English without specific prior exposure, though this tends to matter more when dealing with Fae.

Arabic

Writing system: Modern Standard Arabic (MSA), which is also spoken in highly formal contexts such as the news or scholarly discussion. Everyone who takes a spoken dialect of Arabic can be assumed to understand this dialect even when it is spoken. There is also Classical Arabic (CA), the Arabic of the Qur’an, which is more flowery and difficult to understand: difficulty Average (+1) to Fair (+2) to understand writing in CA.

Dialect groups:

Levantine Arabic (Lebanon, Syria) (LA), Egyptian Arabic (EA), Peninsular Arabic (the Arab peninsula) (PA), Maghrebi Arabic (Northwest Africa) (MA), Iraqi/Mesopotamian Arabic (IA). EA is easily understood by most Arabic speakers, as is LA. EA and LA speakers face minor difficulties understanding IA (difficulty Average (+1)) and more major difficulties understanding Peninsular Arabic (Fair (+2)). All other speakers face intense difficulty understanding Maghrebi Arabic (difficulty Good (+3)).

Chinese

Writing system: Several. Traditional and Simplified are the standard two: most speakers of a Chinese language can be assumed to be familiar with one of the two, and face an Average (+1) difficulty understanding the other most of the time. Specify which of them you know when you take a Chinese language, but you may know both without penalty so long as your character can justify exposure to them. Classical characters also exist, but face a Fair (+2) to Good (+3) amount of difficulty to be comprehended, in general. Pinyin and bopomofo are pronunciation systems, but not usually used for writing and depend on which Chinese language you’re writing in.

Languages: Mandarin, Yue, Cantonese, Taishanese, and other so called “dialects” are considered separate languages, and need a language slot apiece to comprehend, but each one confers literacy in the same Chinese character set. Mandarin, the most “standard” language in use, has true dialects which can be classed broadly as “North” and “South”, but these dialects have little difficulty understanding one another, in general.

Hindustani/Urdu/Hindustani

Writing system: Two (Devanagari and Nastaliq), neither of which is understandable if you only know the other. Specify which you know, but you may know both without penalty. Being literate in Arabic or Persian automatically confers knowledge of Nastaliq if you know Hindustani.

Dialect groups: Modern Standard Hindi and and Modern Standard Urdu are the main two, and they face no intelligibility difficulties unless the topic of conversation is highly religiously specialized for Hinduistic religions or Islam (respectively). There are other less broadly distributed dialects, with asymmetric comprehensibility: people who speak those dialects will understand either of the standard two easily, but the reverse is untrue, in general.

Plains Indian Sign Language

I include this because it is EXTREMELY important if you’re setting a campaign in the middle Americas prior to or at the start of colonization. It was the lingua Franca between an incredibly diverse group of speakers from west to east in the southern half of modern Canada, down to modern Texas and across the part of the United States west of the Mississippi River (all the way to the Pacific), with some bleed over to the east of the river as well.

Writing system: Did not exist until the after colonization, but had more progress in its writing than modern ASL.

Dialectal variation: Existed, but was to some extent “deliberately” minimized, inasmuch as linguistic variation can be regulated. The language existed to be as mutually comprehensible as possible across all four compass directions of most of a continent. There were probably enough variations to make that occasionally difficult, just because of the sheer size of its spread, but I don’t know enough specifics to say with confidence.

Anyway, that’s my way too much thought into a really minor rule in the DFRPG. Please feel free to add any additional languages you think need clarification, or quibble.

PRIMAL ENMITY [+0]

Description: You have a primal opposition to one or more enemies of yours, crossing over from personal dislike into the sort of warring that makes myths. Whether you’re a knight of the cross dealing with Denarians or a scion of Beowulf trying to stop a Grendelkin, you detect the presence and workings of your enemy more easily. The downside is, these sorts of bonds do not work one way.

Musts: You can only take this power if your relevant sworn enemy takes it as well.

Note: This isn’t a power you can slap onto any two rivals. The opposition of the enemies who take this power must be in the realm of myth: Heaven vs Hell, Winter vs Summer, and so forth are the class of viable candidates to go with here.

Skills Affected: Lore, Deceit, Stealth, possibly others.

Effects:

Know Thy Enemy. You know instinctively when your foe is at work. You can use Lore+1 to detect your enemy’s presence or identify them as the culprit behind the magic they weave.

The Enemy Knows Thee. Your presence and your magic are more detectable to your enemy than you might like. Any skill you use to conceal yourself from your enemy suffers a -1 penalty. Further, if you attempt to hide yourself with magic, the penalty is -2 instead.

I had stumbled on an old thread on the board where there was a conversation about social combat weapon ratings, and recalled an article by the Giant in the Playground (here). Aspects cover some deficit in social combat in FATE versus a lot of other systems, but until I saw the Weapons rating thread, I still felt like there was some fix that the GitP approach could help cover, but didn't know what it was. So, combining these approaches, I have emerged with a possible formalization of social combat that feels "correct", in some sense. I will gladly take criticism, but here is what I have.

The Premise

All social combat is based on the premise of getting someone to accept a deal that you offer them, for a very broad definition of deal. From a business transaction to "leave this room without molesting me further" to an "acquire this artifact or I kill your son", all of these fall under some kind of "deal." So, there are two mechanics to use here, and two social pressures to capture: armor and weapons for the first, and prior relationship and the actual deal for the second. Fortunately, the mechanics and the social pressures seem to line up nicely.

Armor: The prior relationship

Show of hands, how many of us have done something they would rather not just because someone we really like asked us to? Conversely, how many of us have refused to do something to help ourselves because someone we disliked asked us to? This disparity in our ability to be persuaded, under this system of social combat, will be represented by Armor class as follows.

Armor:0 A very close friend or lover, someone whom we trust implicitly. Your loving spouse making puppy dog eyes at you to convince you to do something grants you no armor.

Armor:1 A positive acquaintance, someone we would give more leeway than the average person. A business associate who has helped you in the past and kept his word asking you for another deal grants Armor:1.

Armor:2 A neutral acquaintance. Either someone whom you haven't met before, someone you feel nothing special towards, or someone you are highly conflicted about. Random Joe Schmoe on the street, a random person your friend knows whom you are aware of, or someone whose morals you disparage but whose ends may justify the means to some extent in your book gets Armor:2.

Armor:3 A negative acquaintance. Someone whom you have reason to dislike, but no substantial reason to like. A guy who acts sleazy towards a woman has to face Armor:3 to get that woman to do anything.

Armor:4 A nemesis. Someone whom you loathe without end, and who you may act specifically to spite. A campaign archvillain gets Armor:4 to defend against any social attacks the PCs who foiled him again and again try to make to get him to stand down.

Note: this armor does NOT represent the truth of a relationship, but rather what the person being persuaded believes to be true. So your brother who loves you dearly but whom you secretly wish to usurp from his throne and torture gets Armor:0 on his defense, not Armor:4. Armor values can also change over the course of an interaction, if you do something that especially endears you to the other person or makes them despise you.  So if your brother finds out that you have been plotting to usurp him and have started by attempting to kill his son, his armor class against any deals you try to make with him will skyrocket right quick.

Weapon rating: The deal itself

Politics make strange bedfellows, and a really good deal can make even a powerful hatred move aside for a time. The basis of a deal's weapon rating is the set of consequences that the listener can foresee and cares about, and it works as follows:

Weapon:0  A deal that would be utterly idiotic to take. A demon trying to get you to sell your soul for a piece of cloth gets Weapon:0 to try to make that deal with you.

Weapon:1 A deal with some benefit, but likely to backfire in your face. One of the fae asking you for something that seems innocuous but has a high likelihood of screwing you over down the line has Weapon:1.

Weapon:2 An equal exchange. Convincing you to pay good money for something that is similarly expensive has Weapon:2.

Weapon:3 A concrete advantage to the person being persuaded. A reasonable amount of generosity in a deal has Weapon:3.

Weapon:4 It would be stupid not to take this deal. Either you're in a situation where someone is promising you the world for nothing, or promising to destroy all you hold dear if you don't take the deal (these weapon ratings can come from less fuzzy things too!)

Note: Again, this weapon rating comes from what the person being persuaded thinks is a good deal. Further, it is possible for the person being persuaded to offer a concession if the weapon rating of what you are offering is just barely not enough to take them out by offering to take a deal slightly better in their favor.

Examples:

1. Charlie Wiseman, a well known magical salesman in the Ann Arbor area, approaches an acquaintance in the Ann Arbor Alliance to make a deal. Charlie is part of the A^3, and so the acquaintance, who has reason to believe Charlie will look after her interests, gets Armor:1 against his attempts at making a deal. If Charlie offers an equal exchange to her, he gets Weapon:2 to make that deal, which all in all gives him an additional point of stress for all social attacks he makes to get her to accept that deal. He could even ask for something that causes her a little bit of harm and still have no reduction in shifts (Weapon:1 versus Armor:1); she may not like it, but she's a bit more willing to go a little out of her way to help him, especially if she can cash in later.

2. Dr. X has a mother who is less than benevolent. In fact, he hates her guts on the basis of literally everything she has ever done to him, ever. He automatically gets Armor:4 against all attempts she makes to persuade him to do anything, so even a deal that is favorable to him, with Weapon:3, still loses shifts of stress when she connects a social attack. However, Mommy Dearest can easily level the playing field by threatening one of his closest friends whom she is holding hostage, getting Weapon:4 in her attempts to persuade him to take the deal to do something that seems innocuous in exchange for sparing the friend. With Mommy's high intimidation score and a few choice maneuvers, she can eventually get him to take the deal. However, if the good doctor figures out that his mom intends to screw him over and kill the friend anyway (or if she has a reputation for not keeping her deals), her Weapon rating rapidly goes down.

3. Karrin Murphy is Harry Dresden's closest friend, and has been willing to help him again and again when the chips are down, even being willing to sacrifice her life to save his daughter. Harry automatically gets Armor:0 against attempts she makes to get him to do something. If she's asking him to stop doing something that is clearly moronic, she gets Weapon:3 (or even Weapon:4, depending on how moronic it is), and Harry is more likely than not to back down.

4. Harry does NOT like Mab very much, but recognizes that she fulfills a very important function. Further, he's willing to trust her to be herself, and she's sufficiently reasonable that he feels that he can reach some kind of equilibrium with her. Therefore, he gets Armor:2 against her social attacks. Mab, however, needs him to work with Nicodemus for a time. This deal is terrible to Harry: he does not really value his life as compared to the possibility to working with Nicodemus, so this deal gets Weapon:0 at first, and even Mab's great social skills are insufficient to compensate. However, when Mab lays out the consequences of NOT doing this (the probable destruction of everything he holds dear) versus what she is ACTUALLY asking him to do (play along with Nicodemus until the time comes where Harry can double cross the asshole), the weapon rating jumps to Weapon:4, and Harry falls in line soon after.

Thoughts?

Aka time for Sanctaphrax to cuss me out.

Has anyone seen/had a satisfactory temporary power granting power? If so, what does it look like?

What casting languages have you guys used for wizards in your game? Why?

Personally, I've used Sanskrit (Daniel Thresh) and Afrikaans (Alice Grace). I used Afrikaans for Alice because she was originally going to be African American (instead of the Chilean she is now), so it would have been a cheap laugh then. I kept it as a reminder of her development.

Thresh, on the other hand, uses Sanskrit because he's a giant snob.

This is an update for Precognition that I've had in the works, and I'm trying to get ideas for balancing it.

Focused Precognition [-1] (Requires Precognition): Define a set of circumstances (for example, against vampires or near liquid water). Your Precognition only works in these circumstances. However, in exchange, when tagging an aspect created by Precognition for a dodge, you may increase the tag benefit to +4, a reroll and a +2, or two rerolls.

A shaman of the land tunes himself or herself to the surrounding land, gaining powers thematically in line with his or her environment. A sufficiently powerful Shaman can also shapeshift into his or her "spirit animal", a mundane animal that reflects the inner character of the Shaman somehow. Shamans grow more powerful the more lands the they visit and tune themselves to, making them able to gain more powers from the lands they visit as well as bolstering their spirit animal form. A shaman who has grown sufficiently powerful is singularly terrifying, able to improvise and adapt the power they get from a land to suit their circumstances.

Musts:

A shaman of the land must have a High Concept reflecting the fact that they're a shaman, such as DEFIANT SHAMAN OF THE LAND or SHAMAN AND PSYCHO. They also must take:

Mimic Land (as Mimic Abilities, but the Shaman must take abilities based off of the themes of the environment. This can include anything that fits in with the surroundings. Players are expected to get creative.) [-4]
Moderate Limitation (shamans can only hold onto the abilities they get from a land as long as they are in said land.) [+1]

The Land Sustains (reskinned Wizard's Constitution) [+0]


Additional Options:

A shaman may increase the number of his or her Mimic Abilities up to as many times as he or she can afford (adjusting Limitation accordingly). If a shaman has done this at least once, he or she becomes eligible to be able to shapeshift into his or her spirit animal and may therefore take:

Echoes of the Beast (Varies) [-1]
Beast Change [-1]

In addition, the shaman may take permanent physical powers and Creature Features, but they must be attached to Human Form [+1]. Given that a shaman derives his or her power from growth, any toughness powers carry an up to a +2 Catch of Necromancy and Outsider Magic.

Important Skills:

Depends. Many Shamans can shapeshift, so they can switch skills around. But nearly all of them have high Alertness and Lore.

Criticism welcome. I want to refine this enough that I can get it onto the Templates Section of the Wiki.

Ok, here's a question for you: how much would a power that enables spellcasters to cast evocations up to Conviction in power without any stress cost? It clearly would not be for PC use, but we've seen people doing something along those lines, such as Titania's/Mab's extended battle and Ivy at the aquarium.