Can linguistics be used like Craft / Profession?

[SangoProduction]

I mean, scribes were some truly well paid (for the day) professionals, who just copied books every day.

So, anyway, to my argumentation for Linguistics to be used like a professional skill: It allows you to make copies / forgeries.

Creating a forgery can take anywhere from 1 minute to 1d4 minutes per page.

So, it can even be forgeries multiple pages long, and not just signatures or royal decrees or whatever. And there are books which are of fairly substantial value (equivalent of masterwork tools or more).

However, with exception to Spell Books, there are no details on exactly how many pages each book contains. Although they can't be all that extreme if you can flip through them and find the relevant passage in less than 24 seconds.

And since there's ambiguity, we should go to the closest known rule, which are the crafting rules, which is given in either silver or gold per day.

[heavyfuel]

I don't think you'll find any rules about it, but it does seem like something that should work.

In 3.5, the Tumble skill (Acrobatics in PF) could be used just like Perform in order to make a living, though it looks like this rule is no longer present in PF (or at least in the PFSRD)

[Ashtagon]

I have a feeling that 1d4 minutes per page was meant to be for documents laid out as official documents, such as certificates, title deeds, licences, passports (in the mediaeval sense of the word, not the modern document), and the like. An A4 page of dense handwriting about be about 400 words, and I don't think even at copy-text writing speeds a scribe can do that in four minutes. Trying to forge another's handwriting while maintaining that kind of speed would be pretty much impossible.

However...

With such documents, unless the person reading it is familiar with the original document and the handwriting of that scribe, the specific handwriting won't matter so much as the quality of penmanship and the credibility of the information contained within the document.

So yeah. If you want to work as a copy-scribe, assuming there is work to be found, iirc the Profession skill lets you for for a weekly wage. The exact speed you write isn't relevant, and good penmanship can be assumed for anyone with Forgery (and skills derived from that).

I wouldn't let Forgery (et al.) to be used to write original, masterwork-bonus-inducing books. Just because you can copy text and make it look neat, doesn't mean you know what to write. That'd be like me with my 300 wpm (not really) typing speed trying to use that to write a cutting-edge essay on particle physics.

Could a character with such a skill craft a masterwork book by copying the text verbatim from an existing such book? I'd allow it. I'd use the Crafting rules, and require that the character have the original book as a reference all the while he is crafting his copy. Number of pages isn't relevant here, merely the gold-piece cost.

While forging a signature if the most commonly thought of use for the skill, forging a treaty that looks right but with minor changes, or forging a pass that allows the bearer safe passage through a foreign kingdom, could also be useful.