Best Languages

[Swosh]

Languages is often neglected, and although it doesnt provide any direct boost in combat, it certainly can be useful. Especially in regards to spells, like Command which requires the creature you are targeting to understand you for the spell to work. Thus the most important factor to concider when evaluating a language is if the creature that understands that language also understand Common.

From doing a little research and from personal experience it seems like Undercommon and Giant is top choices as most of the creatures that speak these languages dont understand Common. Has anyone done a deep analysis regarding languages?



Edit: I decided to try and make my own analysis/guide, people that are interested can find it here:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/16jfKX7LFTe0bJy4c3kUMn-pmFbqaSpVbPNqEYhllsuY/edit?usp=sharing

[MrCharlie]

It's very campaign specific, but a lot of creatures speak do speak undercommon and not common, which is a good reason to pick it up. Giant is fine for the same reason, and surprisingly primordial can be useful to talk to summoned creatures and because a lot of sea creatures speak Aquan but not common. Draconic tends to come up not because dragons can't speak common, but because they choose not to-also, ancient tomes tend to be in draconic, which is sortuve like fantasy Latin. Goblin and orc are also both worth considering because they are spoken by prolific races/empires, so you are more likely to actually overhear them being spoken, and you can theoretically infiltrate or communicate with the creatures that speak them peacefully-a lot of things that speak undercommon or giant aren't likely to be smart enough or willing enough to talk before eating you.

[iTreeby]

I haven't tried to answer that particular question in 5th edition but here are a few nuggets worth thinking about.

The dwarvish alphabet is the most common so if you know dwarvish or any language that uses the dwarvish alphabet, you can probably accurately copy down most text you encounter

My gut says that sylvan would get you the most milage out of the languages in that fey might be insulted if you don't use their language even if they understand common. Goblins seem very likely to not speak common so you could also pick a language based on what the "ignorant races" are most likely to be.

One last item of note, rangers can learn any one monster language by choosing those that speak it as a favored enemy. As far as I know choosing sphinx as your favored enemy is the only way to learn sphinx. There are probably better languages to pick (like deep speech) but it's probably the best language for sending coded messages except maybe druidic or thieves cant.

[PhantomSoul]

It's not perfect since it doesn't show a full matrix, but this is a decent start and there's a revised count for creatures that don't know Common in the comments. However, how much you see of any group of creatures (and often creatures type is a good predictor, so campaign themes are likely to be useful predictors) will vary a lot by group/campaign/story.

https://www.reddit.com/r/dndnext/comments/hha9iy/most_spoken_players_handbook_languages_among/

[Corran]

There is an interesting bit about the halfling language, that goes somewhat like this. While the halfling language isn't secret, halflings dont like to share it. And at the same time there are not many things written down in halfling either. So, while not as good as an exotic language for sharing written stuff in secret (btw the sphinx idea above is just brilliant!), it might work this way if you are limited in what languages you can pick. It's a poor man's thieves' cant/ keen mind for anything written.

[Naanomi]

Depends on if I am hoping to communicate with NPCs (where elven, Dwarven, Undercommon, and maybe Orc/goblin/giant come into play) or decipher ancient writings (where draconic, deep speech, primordial, celestial, etc. tend to be more applicable)

[Gale]

You actually got me wondering, how often is it that you will run into an enemy that doesn't speak Common? So, I went through every enemy in the monster manual that doesn't speak Common and tallied up what languages they do speak to the best of my ability. (There are probably a couple of mistakes, but this gives us a good enough estimate.) Note, I tried to exclude enemies that ostensibly pop up twice but under different names. For example, dragon wyrmlings only speak draconic and they only got one entry under draconic; I did not count each different color wyrmling individually. Nor did I count every different kind of Giant individually, they only got one count. Similarly, I only counted Lizardfolk once and did not count Lizardfolk Shaman or Lizardfolk King/Queen.

Anyways, here are my results~
Abyssal: 18
Undercommon: 14
Infernal: 12
Aquan: 9
Terran: 9
Ignan: 8
Draconic: 7
Elvish: 6
Giant: 6
Auran: 5
Deep Speech: 5
Modron: 5
Sylvan: 5
Everything else: 2 or less

Hence, it seems if you're looking to teach your character languages that will serve them well in combat you can't go wrong with Abyssal, Undercommon, and Infernal. I'd say Draconic is pretty good too as dragons are oddly common in Dungeons and Dragons.

But in the end, language barriers are part of the fun and balance of D&D and your character might not have much control over which ones they know anyways. So it's probably best not to overthink it.

EDIT: Whoops, looks like someone's done this already. (https://www.reddit.com/r/dndnext/comments/hha9iy/most_spoken_players_handbook_languages_among/fw8yzal/) :(

[Swosh]

It's not perfect since it doesn't show a full matrix, but this is a decent start and there's a revised count for creatures that don't know Common in the comments. However, how much you see of any group of creatures (and often creatures type is a good predictor, so campaign themes are likely to be useful predictors) will vary a lot by group/campaign/story.

https://www.reddit.com/r/dndnext/comments/hha9iy/most_spoken_players_handbook_languages_among/

Yeah its a good start. However there is lots of flaws. For example it dosnt take into account overlap between languages and creature rarity for starters. Take Deep Speech for example which pretty much has a full overlap with Undercommon, thus making it useless. Or Draconic which is listed very high in number of speakers but, the creatures that speak it are often very rare to encounter (10 Dragon Wyrmlings, 6 Guard Drakes). This acctually got me more intrigued and i made an analysis of the languages using the Basic, Monster Manual and Volos Guide to Monsters, for those intressted you can check the Analysis/Guide here:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/16jfKX7LFTe0bJy4c3kUMn-pmFbqaSpVbPNqEYhllsuY/edit?usp=sharing

[Amdy_vill]

I play in krynn a lot so dwarven and elvish tend to be the best lanuages.

[Caelic]

There's also the converse to consider: it can be advantageous for members of a group to all learn a very obscure language, thus enabling them to converse freely without the likelihood of being understood. "Best" is all in how you look at it.

[Swosh]

There's also the converse to consider: it can be advantageous for members of a group to all learn a very obscure language, thus enabling them to converse freely without the likelihood of being understood. "Best" is all in how you look at it.

Yes, i have already concidered that which is why Celestial got a good score. Its a very rare language and unlike Halfling which is also rare, Celestial has its own Script so you can also write secret messages to eachother.