[DF] Why don't sea elves have Speak Underwater?

[Cowrie]

I'm honestly baffled by this. At first, I suspected it might be one of those DF-specific rule changes, like maybe in DF, Speak Underwater is included in the ability to breathe there, but the fact that several of the lenses for Water Elementals in Dungeon Fantasy 9: Summoners include Speak Underwater, makes this seem unlikely. So, what's the deal with sea elves not being able to speak underwater? For those of you who have ran or played campaigns featuring sea elf characters, did you/your GM allow sea elves to talk underwater without actually having this advantage?

[Dalzig]

I haven't read any of the rules in question so I could be missing something but...

Does it make any sense for sea elves to be able to talk underwater? At least, in a way that an advantage named like that would imply. I'm assuming that sea elves would still talk using vocal chords and air. Those are pretty crummy at producing sound underwater. Any species that lives underwater would have developed some other method of communication.

Water elementals being able to speak underwater makes sense because they are water. There's no barrier where the sound moves from air to water. That helps the sound survive better to be heard. Though maybe that means they should be crummy at talking when out of water?

[dataweaver]

Likely an oversight. One problem with GURPS' massive list of rather specific Advantages is that it's easy for things to fall through the cracks. Witness the Spirit meta-trait from the Basic Set which forgot to include Mute, leading to Fantasy having to effectively redo it.

[Kromm]

In physical terms, because they're assumed to be mostly like land-based elves when functioning in the air. Their vocal apparatus is linked to their lungs. Gills allow direct exchange between the bloodstream and the water – they don't fill up lungs.

There's also a playability consideration: This is an amphibious race, meaning they can function underwater but don't have to stay there. They're assumed to have normal civilizations in air – not water – so that PCs of other races can actually interact with members of a PC race. That's where they use language.

Finally, there's a point-cost issue: Speak Underwater a very marginal ability in just about all campaigns, so making the race 5 points more costly didn't seem right.

If it really matters, I'd let it slide to 0 points just like the assumed Unaging all elves have for free.

[Cowrie]

Originally Posted by Kromm

In physical terms, because they're assumed to be mostly like land-based elves when functioning in the air. Their vocal apparatus is linked to their lungs. Gills allow direct exchange between the bloodstream and the water – they don't fill up lungs.

There's also a playability consideration: This is an amphibious race, meaning they can function underwater but don't have to stay there. They're assumed to have normal civilizations in air – not water – so that PCs of other races can actually interact with members of a PC race. That's where they use language.

Finally, there's a point-cost issue: Speak Underwater a very marginal ability in just about all campaigns, so making the race 5 points more costly didn't seem right.

If it really matters, I'd let it slide to 0 points just like the assumed Unaging all elves have for free.

Thanks for the quick response. I guess I just sort of assumed sea elves had at least as many underwater settlements as land-based ones, mainly due to the way species similar to sea elves tend to have underwater cities in many other RPGs. This makes sense, though.

I'm still interested to hear how others have played it in the past, though.

[Railstar]

The sea-elf language is really a complex game of charades which is designed to be doable with webbed fingers.

More seriously, I think it was perhaps originally an oversight, but explaining it became more interesting than correcting it.

While I have played aquatic characters, everyone else was a surface dweller, so how they communicated with other underwater intelligent beings was never really an issue. They always had to stick their head above water to speak with the land-dwellers.

So while their language works underwater, we never really had to worry about how.

In game I'd allow sea elves to communicate in sea-elf underwater without requiring the advantage. Essentially if you put points in that language then you can use it under the intended conditions, just that the intended conditions for aquatic languages are not the same as for normal spoken languages.

[Kromm]

It really wasn't! As the designer, I faced a tossup between rounding out the template to a nice 20 points with either Pressure Support 1 or Speak Underwater. I decided that given the probable role of the sea elf in most PC parties would be "the delver who gets dunked to scout for the group whenever they encounter water," being able to dive deep would be more attractive to players than being able to talk to other party members who either aren't there or are there but have to hold their breath and not talk back.

Entire civilizations of sea elves weren't all that relevant. In fact, entire civilizations weren't all that relevant when designing any race in The Next Level. Stuff useful to individual heroes was the priority.

[Railstar]

Originally Posted by Kromm

It really wasn't!

Sorry about that. I started my post before you gave your answer and didn't bother editing it afterwards.

[sir_pudding]

I don't have a conceptual problem with amphibious humanoids using a sign language.

[Anthony]

I'm also not convinced that speak underwater should be more than a perk.