I'm more and more thinking this: even though language skills are universally said to be quite useless, I, ehrm, rather beg to differ.

The thing is that language skills have their specific uses. They are not exactly suited to every character in every situation, like a weapon skill... BUT there are situations where they are prime.

I'm saying this because the main inspiration for this was an event that happened today. I was playing "pure mage", was in the Mantellan Crux, and my weapon was sheathed - so there was I killing everything on the way, when I jumped into the pyramid pit and right in front of a Daedra Seducer. And to my surprise, the Seducer just stood there. Thing is that I never had to "talk" to her in dialogue mode... And the only thing of note was that my weapon was sheathed. And I had about 4% Daedric skill, for the record because I never bothered with it. (FYI, she was actually looking at me, so it wasn't a function of stealth).

Now the reason why the canned "Mage", "Healer" classes and others have these skills is probably vastly underestimated. Not every class is conducive towards pure hack and slash, not every class is conducive towards stealth or even illusion - the Healer is a case in point. And when you're essentially a wimpy guy with little combat skills, no armour skills and just short blade on the minor slot, it might be best to evade the fight whenever you can; a character who uses the Mages Guild Trainer to boost his Daedric skill up there has a potential chance of going all the way through Daedric lairs and the Mantella without fighting a single Daedra, provided that he maintains a cautious attitude - it's easy for spellcasters, since they don't have to carry a readied weapon at all.

... and contrarily to what I thought, there's no need for any special dialogue clicking. So long as the critter is not turning its back on you, but actively glancing you without making a move, it means the language skill comes in handy. It is automatically checked.

This just gave me a bright idea, alas. Instead of the traditional hack and slash, I'm going to make the exact antithesis of it - more of a stealthy character savvy in one or two languages. And for those who think that is quite hard to level up Daedric when you're low level, well, Trainers are there for a reason. In fact Trainers tend to be quite underestimated sometimes. Just loot a graveyard or go dungeon crawling, and burn all that extra gold you're not going to use with Training.

Now tell me what other TES game allows you this?

I once managed to get full Daedric. It actually made the game boring fairly soon (the most dangerous opponents weren't doing anything)

I always thought the most dangerous opponents were the Ancient Vamps., humans , Liches and other things which you *generally* can't talk to. I know Daedra are pretty dangerous, but they aren't really the worst thing ever.

That would be the perfect slogan if Mehrunes Dagon were running for public office. "Vote for Dagon, because he's pretty dangerous but not the worst thing ever."

I'm with Rsobota on this one. I actually find human enemies to be more dangerous than daedra, especially at high level. A Daedra Lord only has 1 set of stats; so he's bad when you first meet him, but once you out-level him he's a pushover. Humans, on the other hand, always level to you, and thus are always a challenge. Especially nightblades and battlemages.

And yea, having your weapon sheathed or not actually is in the equation for language checks--which, like stealth, are checked automatically on approach. Having your weapon out is a huge penalty, on the order of automatic failure for most characters.

The thing is that language skills have their specific uses. They are not exactly suited to every character in every situation, like a weapon skill... BUT there are situations where they are prime.

The primary objection to the language skills has never been their efficacy. It's always been that they're fiendishly hard to level. Sure, you can train...up to 51%. After that you're on your own, and good luck levelling any of them.

IMO, language skills have in the end one function in DF: to cripple your character for the sake of having a challenge.

I never thought language skills were totally useless, but some are clearly better than others. I'll only go for the ones that cover multiple monsters with one skill, like Daedric or Orcish, rather than, say, Nymph. Who the heck worries about Nymphs?

On a related note, am I the only one who finds it ironic that Orcs, Daedra, and even Imps are /more civil/ than any human opponents? You can potentially talk your way out of a fight with anything that's got a language skill, but human opponents-- whom you should /already/ be able to speak to fluently-- will never listen to reason? That always struck me as a tad... unusual.

So I was doing what you suggest today and crawling through a dungeon with my weapon sheathed.

And I encountered a wereboar who just stands there, like you describe. I click on him and it says "you see a wereboar."

Does that mean I speak wereboar?

Maybe this phenomenon is just a bug.

I have encountered this with other enemies, human enemies, and I just attack them anyway. Since there are no human speech skills, I'm assuming my experience was a bug, so such a bug does exist.

Maybe YOU are a Wereboar and the other doesn't care to attack its own kind.

Look in the mirror. Are those tusks protuding from your face? Do you feel inclined to wallop in mud? Are you constantly flatulent? Beware the signs of Hyaenthropy today!

Nah, it's cool. I'm not a wereboar. He was the only friendly werebear in that ridiculous dungeon, which kicked my ass. A frost daedra broke my elven tanto and my ebony dagger was still in the shop so I had to retreat.

I named the friendly wereboar Steve. He meowed at me every time I passed him.

If you're a member of Dibella, your rank counts as a chance that any critter won't attack you. So it might be that at work.

Anyway, I just had a new experience today. Fired up a mage, casted invisibility true + tongues through all the dungeon. I was lucky since it was filled with critters that couldn't either see me, or critters that could see right through the invisibility spell, but had a language (daedra); as a result, even without the invisibility, I estimated I only had to fight about 20% of the critters in the whole dungeon. Most of them just ignored me.

And my character is quite wimpy, if you ask: no armour, only 40% blunt, but excellent magical skills. I resisted the temptation of making a godly spellsword.

I was a member of Dibella, but was expelled and I'm now a member of kynareth. Would that make a difference?

Dunno, maybe a bug.

Or maybe WAD. Maybe the game indeed has a dim random chance that a critter will not attack you. More likely, though, your benefits from being a member of Dibella were probably not correctly erased.

No, you do get a small chance to pacify humans, it just isn't much.
For your enjoyment, here are the formulas for pacification from the DF Chronicles:

Monsters with language: % = Language_skill + PER/10 + weapon
Humans: % = PER/5 + Etiquette/10 + weapon
(Where weapon = 10 if sheathed and -25 if drawn)

what about wereboars?

Really? See, this is what I love about Daggerfall. Over a decade of playing and it still throws surprises at me. I've never heard of this before.
Of course, the one time I took Etiquette as a skill was when I tried to RP as a really formal wanna-be knight. It took me about twenty minutes to decide I hated talking to nobility and I never looked back.

Talking to the nobility is one of my favourite pastimes .

But I generally don't do it, since I roleplay characters with very weak personalities. All those points are better elsewhere, like in INT or Agility.

I enjoy using Etiquette, but it's annoying that you have to click your speech mode over each time you talk to someone.


Heh, it's funny that you say its roleplaying, but then admit it's about the points
Not that I can talk! I often bump PER down to 20 so I can have awesome SPD, AGI, or LUC. I'm a big fan of luck. None of my characters are particularly charismatic, but that may have something to do about their love of crime and mayhem.

But I did have a little fun with a very noble and proper knight, who had all kinds of PER and LUC, but dumb as a rock in the INT=20 range. That was different, having to avoid crime. Didn't last though, he ended up slaughtering the city guards just like the rest . I guess, no matter the WIL of my characters, I myself have very little.

Willpower is good because it governs magical resistance and supposedly, makes it easier to rise all those magical skills. Since most magical skills are tied to WIL and not INT, having it high is good if you're a mage, I suppose.

Though with my latest character, a High Elf, I broke a bit the paradigm of INT and WIL. I created a Custom "Wizard" class which made them akin to MW High Elves: Weakness to all Elemental Magic, Weakness to Magic, even took off some WIL points. Now it's merely 56.

And I can say that I didn't have much trouble *yet*. I'm still level 4, though, and the best thing the Nightblades throw at me is Silence, so it remains to be seen whether or not I'm going to get fried because of my weaknesses and low WIL or not. But I was able to boost my INT to 100 already in the beginning. I also have Spell Absorption, which helps.

Oh and lol... Patience is of grave importance .