Non-Verbal Communication

[White_Drake]

I want to play a Tressym character, but I need to find a way to communicate due to my lack of speech, any ideas?

[Sgt. Cookie]

Three:

Telepathy

Drow sign language

Peal of speech

[White_Drake]

Now I feel like an idiot... I forgot to add, this would be a first level character; he couldn't afford a Pearl of Speech, I'm fairly certain hands are a prerequisite for sign language, and I know of no way to gain telepathy at first level.

[Jeff the Green]

Drow Sign Language may not work, given the lack of fingers.

Telepathy is easily had through a dip in Mindbender, though you'll also need the Surrogate Spellcasting feat. There's also the crystal mask of languages, which is like a pearl of speech but for multiple languages.

If you feel like silly RAW, LEoF only says they don't speak human languages, so you could speak Elvish or Dwarf or Gnomish. Or you could ask the DM to fiat that clause away. (You need his fiat to remove the +0 (cohort) LA, anyways.

[Darrin]

Hmmm. Easiest way would be to take Draconic as your language, and just make sure someone else in the party speaks Draconic.

Otherwise, at level 1, you can take the Hidden Talent feat to get mindlink. However, you'd be limited to 10 min/PP, and only 2 PP to start with. Or... if you start with a psionic class, you could take Psicrystal Affinity, communicate telepathically to your psicrystal, and have it "speak" for you.

There's also the Shedu Crown soulmeld... if bound to your Crown chakra, that gives you telepathy. But that requires at least 4 levels of Incarnate or Open Least Chakra (6th level).

[Telonius]

Be a wizard or sorcerer with a Raven familiar. At level 1, he can tell the party how you generally feel. At level 5, he'll be able to communicate to the party for you.

[nedz]

I really wouldn't do this, RPing is all about talking.

I've seen it done with Perform(Mime) and it was so much hassle for the other players that the character was just ignored most of the time.

This is a cool, but not fun idea.

[Slipperychicken]

Bluff lets you send secret messages, although people need a DC 15-20 Sense Motive to figure out what you mean.

Custom item of continuous Ghost Sounds is just 1,000gp. The item is permanently set on "single human voice", and can only emulate the sound of one person talking. See if your DM would be cool with letting you have one at first level, since it's basically fluff/convenience anyway, and isn't going to make you overpowered. You can fluff it like Steven Hawking's voice-thingy, which produces a bland mechanical voice that you control.

[Qwertystop]

I played a character once that was a homebrewed will-'o-wisp-as-a-player-race, with a self-imposed "cannot speak any language but Sylvan (but can understand them if the language is known)" and it sort of worked. I just changed colors for general ideas, and one of the party members spoke Sylvan. Much humor could have come of intentional mistranslation, but the game died...


For a winged cat, though? All I can think of is work out general signs through trial-and-error. A generally good set is to have "yes/good", "no/bad/danger", "please explain", and "let's try a 20-Q so I can get this idea across". If you're intelligent enough, you could also manage writing if you have a large enough surface or significant one-claw dexterity.

[ericgrau]

Hmmm. Easiest way would be to take Draconic as your language, and just make sure someone else in the party speaks Draconic.
I was once in a party where 2 people couldn't speak common. We quickly discovered that everyone took draconic and it became the language we all used to communicate with eachother. There's always at least one person taking draconic, if not everyone.