Linguist Virtue vs Native Language

One potentially strange consequence of this interpretation would be if you apply it to the Language of Innocence rules from Ancient Magic pg 11. Using your interpretation a Feral child who did learn Adamic would gain a 2 in that language for free and still get a full 120 experience points for their first five years of life experience.

Personally I've always liked how the math for Feral Upbringing worked out perfectly. So my interpretation has always been that the initial score of 5 children get does represent the 75 experience points worth of exposure, practice, and instruction that anyone with a "Normal" upbringing gets in a native language. Characters just don't have a choice to spend it elsewhere unless they are raised by wolves or suchlike.

I guess if I followed my interpretation out I would have to say that characters who we're born linguists or with an affinity for their Native language would get extra x.p. to spend. However I think that xp would have to go into their native language or perhaps some other living language.

I disagree. The passage you refer to says that a character can begin with a score of 2 in Adamic "instead of beginning with a Living Language score of 5": so it is not an option available to children with the Feral upbringing flaw, who would not gain a Living Language to "trade" for Adamic. In other words, if raised without contact with a human language, most children develop no language at all (and thus get the Feral Upbringing flaw); but a rare few Gifted ones develop language on their own, and that language is Adamic (in which case no Feral Upbringing flaw is gained, and Living Language 5 is simply replaced with Adamic 2).

For obvious reasons I don't reply to 'observations' like this.

Actually, though I did not mention it in my original post, the Feral Upbringing flaw is actually one of the reasons I wondered whether the Linguist virtue should also apply to the native language.

What would if you were to create a character with both Feral Upbringing and Linguist? The character would get 120 xp for his early childhood. After the child rejoins society, he is taught a language to a score of 5, learning it quickly with only 60 xp needed. Now, because of a flaw, he is ahead by 15 xp compared to a character that only has Linguist virtue and a normal childhood. To me, that is the part that doesn't make sense in Linguist not applying to the virtue not being reflected in some xp adjustment for his native language.

I would be in total agreement in saying that those extra 15 xp can only be used language abilities.

Note that an analysis of the usefulness of the Linguist virtue, as compared to Educated or Warrior, means that before it yields as much experience, the character needs the equivalent of 3 languages at a score of 5, and 2 languages at a score of 2. Essentially, the character needs to have spent 200 xp in languages to get the equivalent of the 50 xp given by either Educated or Warrior.

(Duplicate post deleted)

:laughing:

To my own opinion , i would consider the initial 5 in living languaje as shorter (and safer) way to say 75 points and avoid exploiding.

Its like tell; that five dozen are not sixty eggs but 5 dozen.

To my own point of view the virtue RAW at least would give that living languaje 5, [75] (94px) because you can add points later to increase this abillity and that total points are retroactive.

Another interpretation ( in last case houserule), and i don't consider it a exploid, is use this possible 15px in other living languajes as far as, by history, those are living language also (example given a bilingual, or a zoco raised child, or one foreing parent)

All in my own rule interpretation that i not consider better or worser that other, and those are my arguments

You seem to assume that virtues (should?) have the same value. They do not.

I am assuming nothing of the sort. But sometimes, comparing a virtue to other similar virtues helps to understand its scope.

In this case, what I was trying to say was that before you reach a similar gain in xp, you'll need to have invested quite a large chunk of experience in languages. This is, to me, similar to the comparison between Puissant Art and Affinity with Art.

Having the Linguist virtue give 15 extra xp to spend on languages at character creation because of the native language xp allocation is simply an indication of how soon that virtues "pays off" compared to other virtues. If you go with the native language giving extra xp, than the treshold is lower -- 140 xp vs 200 xp if you rule that the native language initial score of 5 is unaffected by the virtue.

However, the thing that bothers me is that a character with Linguist + Feral Upbringing (a Flaw) "comes ahead" of a character with only Linguist. That, to me, makes no sense.

I think that "comes ahead" is a matter of perception; it's only because you are comparing the two assuming that the non-Feral character will, after childhood, spend less effort on languages than the Feral character. If they spend the same effort, they'll get exactly the same amount of extra xp -- it's just that the non-Feral character will always have 75 more xp in languages than the non-Feral one; whereas the Feral character will always have 75 more xp in "wilderness" skills.

Keep in mind that Feral Upbringing is a Flaw for most character concepts; a character with this flaw starts without any xp in a lot of crucial skills, and it will take a lot of time before he's "functional". Furthermore, serious trouble interacting with civilized society means probably missing a lot of Training, Teaching etc. and ending up quite a few xp behind anyway...

That said, I just noticed that Feral Upbringing is a general, rather than personality Flaw -- unlike other "Upbringing" Flaws. I find that strange.