Commentary -- or is it snark? -- on dndblog

Why is it that Barik's bluff checks always fail due to his poor speaking of Orcish? I think I came by the language just the same as Acavel did.

I'm not asking why Barik's bluff checks fail -- that's the dice talking -- but it seems a sort of weird justification, since knowing Orcish goes by a completely different route, rule-wise, as bluffing does. Using it once, I could understand, but it seems to be the only way Barik's unconvincing.

Not that I want to suggest that Barik's got any personality flaws, but he at least has a dwarfish personality; in addition, I like to think that the average Orc doesn't think like me. Perhaps the average Orc might notice these things?

Perhaps even more significant is what the Bluff is actually about. Although Tau'regk mentioned it once, it certainly seems that the general Orcish opinion is that we're "a bunch of traitors". So the thing I'm trying to conceal is that we are, in fact, the guys who've been attacking and hiding out, NOT the fact that we aren't actually orcs. Hearing my poor Orcish diction might suggest I'm not an Orc; noticing the subtle awkwardness of body language of someone who's unused to lying might suggest we're not just headed to the Tasty Dwarf for a beer.

This does bring up the rather silly oversimplification of language in D&D 3.5: pay the skill points and voila! you're indistinguishable from a native speaker. In my dream campaign, I hope to make "knowing a language", "being fluent", and "equivalent to a native speaker" as separate achievements of increasing difficulty. (On the bright side, I'm not going to handicap you for not having any ranks in a skill, like Scott does.)