Speak With Animals - Can Animals Initiate Communication?

[roguebfl]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

Most animal communication is of a sort and/or frequency not audible to humans. Having the ability to always hear all of it should deafen.... if we were using reality to describe an overtly magical ability.

Just more background noise not more decibels hence deafening is not even remotely an issue. And you do the same thing you do in crowed room, you focus or ignore to make any particular conversation integrable.

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by roguebfl

Just more background noise not more decibels hence deafening is not even remotely an issue. And you do the same thing you do in crowed room, you focus or ignore to make any particular conversation integrable.

Two dozen people versus thousands of insects, worms, birds, mammals, etc. doesn't seem equal. But again, I did say that such realism clashes with Disneyesque powers.

(I'm surprised spellcheck recognized Disneyesque.)

[roguebfl]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

Two dozen people versus thousands of insects, worms, birds, mammals, etc. doesn't seem equal. But again, I did say that such realism clashes with Disneyesque powers.

that still doe not increase decibels. It increasings interference which make it harder to isolate particular people's conversation but thatvastly different then deafening.

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by roguebfl

that still doe not increase decibels. It increasings interference which make it harder to isolate particular people's conversation but thatvastly different then deafening.

I'm using it as synonymous with cacophonic. That word always felt archaic.

Maddening noise would have worked as well.

[Azrael]

If you really wanted to turn it off ... which I think some people would ... particularly if they thought they were crazy or the animal was irritating them ... then maybe they could learn to switch it off buy buying the switchable enhancement. They could probably stunt the enhancement until they learned how to properly turn the ability off (although that would only work for a minute at a time and drain their FP).

[the_matrix_walker]

Sounds like a good combo for speaking with a particular insect would be to add Discriminatory Hearing...

But as to the OP, I think by default you can simply understand the speech of critters, so they can call out an be heard and be eavesdropped upon by someone with Speaks with Animals.

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by the_matrix_walker

Sounds like a good combo for speaking with a particular insect would be to add Discriminatory Hearing...

But as to the OP, I think by default you can simply understand the speech of critters, so they can call out an be heard and be eavesdropped upon by someone with Speaks with Animals.

Since most animals are almost always communicating in some way, that would give Speak With Animals a free Detect Animals.
Spiders and insects are extremely quiet irrespective of their calls' pitch.

[roguebfl]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

I'm using it as synonymous with cacophonic. That word always felt archaic.

Maddening noise would have worked as well.

Remember unless the advantage spells out a drawback it's not there. GURPS does not do hidden drawbacks.

If you want that to happen in your world you must specified it a required limitation with discount for the drawback.

[Xplo]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

I'm using it as synonymous with cacophonic. That word always felt archaic.

Maddening noise would have worked as well.

Nonsense. There's no reason to assume that small animals would speak loudly. There's also no reason to assume that animals speak in a constant stream-of-consciousness babble. There might be a buzz of conversation, but it wouldn't necessarily be a "cacophony".

Anyway, it seems like this is just a setting switch, or if the setting assumes that magic users have some control over how their own spells manifest (as opposed to everyone being a magical script kiddie) maybe it's even left up to the player whether they want to speak directly to certain animals or just listen to ambient chatter.

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by roguebfl

Remember unless the advantage spells out a drawback it's not there. GURPS does not do hidden drawbacks.

If you want that to happen in your world you must specified it a required limitation with discount for the drawback.

And if no extra benefit is spelled out it's not there either.
Realistic animals won't initiate conversation anymore than local grasshoppers will try to talk to me now.
The magic will allow you to understand a grasshopper, but not necessarily hear any of its real mundane forms of communication.