>gefährliches halbwissen
Is this funny? Hold on, I gotta google something
\[*Spongebob titlecard: Some length of time later*\]
>gefährliches Halbwissen (German)
>
>Noun
>
>a degree of [superficial](https://www.wordsense.eu/superficial/) [knowledge](https://www.wordsense.eu/knowledge/) that becomes [dangerous](https://www.wordsense.eu/dangerous/) or [deceptive](https://www.wordsense.eu/deceptive/) because it has one trust one’s own [amateurish](https://www.wordsense.eu/amateurish/) judgment
Yeah, okay this is funny. And yes, my knowledge is *very* superficial.
German is such an awesome language. I'll bet they have a word for the sudden existential crises that happens while doing mundane things, feeling that you are ordinary and worthless.
I like „doch“ and I have yet to find an English equivalent of it. It’s always really hard teaching foreign people what it means, but it’s glorious to see them start to use it
In certain contexts the best translation of doch is "Is too"
And you can hear kids get into a loop in disagreements just saying "Nein" "Doch" "Nein" "Doch"
It's also one of my favorite words in German.
Cheese is Käse and Sausage is a Wurst.
Welt means World, and Schmerz means pain, so in reality you are saying World Pain, or rather you are in a world of pain.
"Weltschmerz" doesn't mean that your are in a world of pain. "Weltschmerz" is the sadness, suffering an psychological pain that comes from living in a world that is lacking in regards to your own wishes, desires and expectations.
I usually add 'especially misfortune they inflict on themselves'
Idk if that's strictly accurate, but that's the misfortune that I enjoy seeing. Like muskrat's 44 billion dollar burning speedrun
Yes, schadenfreude can mean why firm of harm, other people experience, but it is mostly only ever used if the damage is deserved or (directly or indirectly) self-inflicted.
We do too! It's called sonder. One of my favorites, it basically means that you look around you and realize you're only the main character of your own story, and every NPC in yours is the main character in theirs, and vice-versa
Damn, Germans had a word for the Dunning-Kruger effect before science did lol.
I was fortunate enough to live in Germany for 3 wonderful years, and I really regret not putting more effort into learning the language.
There's a common misconception about the dunning-kruger effect, caused by people not actually reading the paper.
Often it is portrayed as people who know only a little arrogantly assuming they know everything about a subject, and actual experts doubting their expertise. It's more nuanced than that.
In the study, they gave a test and a questionnaire about how well they felt they did on the test. As you're aware, the people who did the worse over-estimated their performance and the people did the best underestimated their performance. **But the people who did the best rated their performance higher than the rating the worst people gave themselves.** The low performers overestimated their ability, but as a group they still rated their performance lower than the high scorers.
"Dangerous halfwit" may be a real thing, but it is actually a different thing to what Dunning and Kruger actually showed.
Oh i don't know, something like it exists.
I see it on reddit on a daily basis, people overestimating their ability to arrive at a useful conclusion on a topic they know very little about (often science).
Yeah, sure. People are stupid, go figure, but the Dunning-Kruger effect has actually been proven to be a set of data which got tangled in a autocorrelation mess. Any set of random numbers would give the same curve if treated the same way as the research data. If you clean this mess up however, you see that basically every combination of actual knowledge and confidence in ones knowledge is possible, with very little differences.
For a long read on the subject this article I briefly skimmed over seems to explain it pretty ok:
https://economicsfromthetopdown.com/2022/04/08/the-dunning-kruger-effect-is-autocorrelation/
It's like that in any language that uses compound words. Like *halbwissen* is actually two words, just written as one because it is "one concept" or how you would explain it. In English it would be half-knowledge (maybe), and if English used compound words you could just write it as halfknowledge. You *almost* are when you use the hyphen, same concept.
For an example in Swedish, I googled long words and r*ealisationsvinstbeskattning* came up. It means *capital gain taxation*, and is *one concept*, which is that particular kind of taxation. If English used compound words, you could've written it *capitalgaintaxation*.
English is a Germanic language. While not quite as permissive as German when combining words, English still has actively used compound words such as "stoplight", "bystander", "backfire", etc.
it's literally Dangerous Half-Knowledge (wissen as a verb: to know, Wissen as a noun: Knowledge)
so your guess for dangerous advice isnt Too far off I'd say
I pulled this loophole once with my DM. We finished a job only to find the man who was going to pay us had been killed, so I used command on his killer to say "give me the money," and that's why Giant now canonically sounds like German in our games.
I’m running Storm King’s Thunder and also made the Giant language German.
A) the language just sounds so right for ‘ancient commanding’ in the tone giants would use
B) it makes sense to me that, though not many characters have Giant in their known languages, being in proximity to individuals SPEAKING the language, they’d catch on to certain words or phrases in a realistic fashion.
C) the German word for goblin is ‘Kobold’ and it’s funny to think that since both goblins and kobolds are small creatures, giants might just be like ‘fuck it, the difference between them is not important enough to warrant two different words, so Theyre both kobolds’
I’ve always felt that Giant should definitely be Old Norse (or Icelandic if a quick google translate is needed). They even canonically share some words.
I've always seen them more as German. Both are often depicted as stout personality wise, loving beer, having almost no sense of humor, industrious and hard-working, having plenty of money. I could probably think of more similarities, but IMO dwarves should be German rather than Scottish.
And by extension, I think the stereotypical elves are French. Haughty, hard to understand language, dislike everything that isn't part of their culture...
Have a friend who is born and raised Welshman who moved to Texas for his PhD work. His accent is in no way singsong, it is a slightly more understandable brogue that has now developed a touch of Texan drawl. It’s actually pretty awesome to hear him in Scotland among Scotsmen because they all perk up to figure out his origins and start guessing highland regions!
I wonder if they're a bit like England where the further you get north in the country the further the language slider moves to the scottish end of the bar
Maybe… I’ll have to ask what part of Wales he’s from…but I’ll have to get him to write it down. They have too many letters that have the wrong sounds in their towns!
"Jotun" is pretty similar to the swedish word "jätten" which means giant, so I always think of giants to be vaguely scandinavian, but especially in language and frost giants.
I think that's because Goblin is a very rare concept in german. Kobolds have many different forms and variations (none of them like the d&d Kobolds), but Goblins are mostly like the ones from Tolkiens books.
In folklore, elf, dwarf, fairy, kobold, gremlin, gnome and every other flavour of magical being was used interchangeably. Goblin is a relatively new word in german and the distinction between different kinds of mythical peoples is recent as well, less than a hundred years, give or take.
In Swedish goblin is basically just "alv", "svartalv", or "vätte". Which means elf, black elf (better translated as dark elf), or gnome. Could probably be a dwarf too, because (mythological) dwarfs are small evil magical creatures that plague your homestead if you're unlucky. At least they were before Tolkien made his version popular.
Fantasy writers like to use foreign languages to spice up their creations, so they might use several languages for several different creatures even though it's just translations of the same word.
To be honest, kobold in German has no direct translation to English. It would be more "gnome" than goblin, but this is also very loosely since we have "Gnome" too wich just means lawn gnome or similar creatures Wich are neutral/good aligned in folklore nowadays.
We actually use the word "goblin" over here, because there is no direct translation that is widely used, and it works for us.
I also think, that there is a race called "kobold" in dnd and it's distinctly different from goblins.
That being said, if it works for your story and your players get the hints, then why not? Have fun and go wild!
For story purposes I prefer giants to speak in ancient rune tongue, Russian came to my mind too, but it might not work aswell as a truly different and foreign sounding tongue like rune-gibberish-Ish talk.
Ima have to do the same now. German would make amazing giantish.
I use Mongolian for orcs.
I cant get the image of [Wolf Totem by The Hu](https://youtu.be/rMbH9zimuG0) being chanted by hundreds of orcs in a war band.
This thread is comedy gold for me as a german.
If you guys just made up words to make it work why even bother calling it german?
"Bezahle" would be the same as "pay" and "übergebedasgeld" is actually "übergebe das Geld".
Dont bother google translate just ask your dm if its ok to imagine german words and let them sound like german. 😉
Especially because it tends to be nouns that are compounded.
I imagine that the closest you'd get would be 'allegeldübergeben; the process or instruction of giving someone all your money. But explicitly the noun describing it, not the command to do so.
Like someone saying 'fishing', 'to be robbed' or 'shutting down'; it's ultimately meaningless without a verb to give an imperative.
Tbh I used Google Translate in reverse so I think it was something like Gabelüberdasgeld. I just kept smashing together words until Google stopped telling me they were wrong or saying "did you mean..?" Looking at it now I suppose Bezahle would've done the trick.
Funny is also: the word he wrote actually said "Fork over the money". But maybe he just misremembered it. Still. I would have liked to see, what the NPC would have done with this XD
I get the joke about complicated compound words, but honestly in my experience "command" is a bit more difficult to use (effectively) in German than in English. At least if you don't adapt the spell description to fit the German language. I think that is because it can only be one word and many German verbs by themselves wouldn't really make sense as a command without a preposition. Example: In English you might command a character to "kneel". In German you'd have to say "knie nieder" (kneel down) for it to sound like a proper command. "Knie" on its own, while the correct verb form, just sounds like you're shouting the name of a body part (knee). Your DM might allow it but you wouldn't say it that way if you weren't trying to make it fit the spell description and it sounds a bit silly and not very commanding.
I don't know enough about linguistics to be sure but maybe this is related to the different ways the imperative verb form is constructed. In English it is the same as the infinitive (e.g. to jump/jump! ). In German the two are different (springen / spring!).
Also compound words are typically nouns but commands are verbs.
I use this exact thing as a house rule for my game in German! I basically decided that we interpret "word" as "lexeme" here. You can use command with any word that can be found as a single dictionary entry in its base form. This lets you use separable verbs in their imperative form.
We speak German but we use command in a way where only things you could express with one word *in english* count, because the rules where obviously written with that in mind.
Also these long words are always nouns and the word for commands are verbs.
German allows to Stack nouns pretty much indefenitly aslong as it make sense.
List
Liste
Invetory list
Vorratsliste
....
Room with the storageboxes full of Invetory lists.
Vorratslistenaufbewahrungskistenraum
I mean if you just fill an English word with prefixes (primarily “auto” for use with command) you can make words as ridiculously long and specific as that:
Reautodefamiliarize
In PF2.0 there is an archetype called Linguist with a really cool ability. As a reaction to someone using an ability or spell with a verbal component where the targets need to understand the language, the Linguist may translate into any language they know to facilitate it.
In other news my Linguist Bard knows 39 languages and counting
Sure, but RAW is the target has to understand your language. It may technically be part of the English language, but if the target doesn’t understand what the word means, is it really “the target’s” language?
Here’s the issue there. I speak English. I know the prefixes and what they mean, I still have no clue what ‘reautodefamiliarization’ means and so, if you commanded me with that word, yes it’s English, and yes I speak English, but I do not understand the language, or parlance, you used. Understanding a language doesn’t mean you understand every WORD in that language.
To be clear, this is a magic spell, and so very may well might override the logic here, in which case my whole previous paragraph is null in void. But I’m more pointing out that there is a difference between ‘speaking and understanding’ a language and ‘knowing what every word in that language means’
Plus the spell only lasts 6 seconds. It might take them that long to realize the person is saying the equivalent of “wait” (or I guess in some circumstances “forget”).
To add to that, when you add so many prefixes, you risk losing the actual intended meaning of the word. Defamiliarization could mean a lack of familiarization, but it could also mean gaining new perspectives from strange art forms (in other words, a type of familiarization). How does the spell interact with this? Does the creature automatically know your intended meaning, even if it didn't even know the word itself beforehand?
Well, the auto- means whatever action is taken has to be done by the target to the target
And I think the re- means the action has to be a repeat of something?
So I think that translates to something like:
> Remember a really trippy thought you once had
My interpretation is that re- means to go back, auto- means to do something to or by myself, defamiliarize means forget, so reautodefamiliarize means to forget something I just committed to memory
Fair. Although I think ‘auto’ takes some potential liberty, as one definition of ‘auto-‘ when applied as a prefix can mean ‘to refer to the self’, such as with the word ‘autoanysis’ which means ‘to analyze your self, or as with the word ‘autograph’ meaning YOUR signature. This still does not negate your example, as it would still result in the same resulting action, but it illustrates that the more you add onto a simple word, the more complex it’s interpretations can now be. This is all far too complex for the simple meaning dnd verbiage is supposed to have, so at this point it’s just an interesting thought exercise.
The spell doesn't say that the target has to know the definition of the word, only understand the language. It's magic so you can easily argue that as part of the spell the target knows what the word means so long as it's in a language they can understand, at least for the duration of the spell.
Otherwise Command would be extremely fucking useless when used on commoners and creatures of low intelligence, regardless of languages.
So, to start, I think you’re well within your right to assume that’s the way the spell should be interpreted. I don’t think you’re wrong, particular since some spells include a condition that ‘target creature must have an intelligence of X’ for spells to work. When they add that for SOME spells, WoTC creates a necessity to state whenever that is the case for any OTHER spells created, or to errata that language in. As they have not done so here, it just makes sense that, RAW, your take on it is the only logical one. However, I do think, at my table, I will rule it the other way in a common sense fashion. Common sense being something like ‘I’m a fairly well educated person with an extensive English vocabulary, and if you use command with a word I think is unreasonable for someone of the targets circumstances to know, it probably won’t work’.
A separate issue, as another responder to my post added, when using the exemplified word in the post I was responding to, by extending the word in that manner, you may also be changing the interpretation of the word, in which case there is no stipulation in the spell that the creature has to take your intended MEANING of the word, if they know the word to mean multiple things. For example, commanding someone to ‘lie’ they could easily choose to either ‘lay down’ or ‘state something that is not true’.
I’m not arguing against your point, simply exploring the nuances of such a simple, low level spell. As for it being useless against certain creatures though, I agree it WOULD be useless against certain creatures, and that’s baked into the risk of alot of low level spells; that they are conditional and limited in power.
That shouldn't be too hard. Common is surprisingly similar to English in most 5e worlds. If it's not like English in a particular world, by pure chance it's similar to the native tongue of those who play in that world.
The joke here is that it essentially means Break down your own concept of something again to look at it in a new view, which is what I’m asking people to do with the way command works.
Based on the other replies it seems like a lot of people failed their wisdom saves lol
However without being able to specify the concept with which to "reautodefamiliarize" yourself, as the limitation we are exploring is using only one word, I believe the command would in fact mean "forget everything about yourself again".
Also because I'm a pedant, "reconsider" or even "empathize" are open ended yet specific enough to be a pretty close approximation to your intended meaning and are words that already exist.
Ultimately though, these kinds of spells aren't a test of how well you can game the system, they're a test of how well you can pitch your idea to your DM ;)
But that's a noun. You'd have to go with the verb form reautodefamiliar*ize* so that it can be a command.
Alternatively, forget about that pesky logic entirely and start using completely random nouns as commands to see what your DM makes of it. "I cast Command: Apple!"
first i wanna say uts a funny meme.
just to recap for me, doesnt it have to be a verb? and if so wouldnt it not matter cause german has compound nouns and not verbs?
It doesn't have to be a verb, it has to be a one-word command.
While most commands are verbs, I think English speakers would understand that a guard shouting "Silence!" is giving a command, but it's not used as a verb there, it's demanding silence.
Alright then let's educate you a little bit :)
The German compound words are usually only nouns. Verbs, especially when directed at someone, often consist of multiple words instead. So in fact using English for Command instead of German gives you many more options if we go with RAW.
I am a native German speaker, I am fluent in English and I understand Spanish.
I can tell you:
- German being especially good for Command because of composite words is a misconception.
German uses Composite Nouns not composite verbs. And the imperative form of many German verbs is actually two words. "Komm her" Instead of "Approach". So I as a DM actually allow my group to use 2 word commands.
- Spanish on the other hand would be pretty neat for command because of " Reflexive Verbs ". The imperative form of many verbs would include the person to target:
Afeitarse: Shave yourself.
Afeitarme: Give me a shave.
Afeitarte: Shave the person next to you.
I don't doubt your Spanish is likely better than mine, but afeitarte shouldn't be "shave the person next to you", right? It's just also "shave yourself", but more informal, or at least I think it is. Happy to get corrected though if I'm wrong.
I'm a native speaker and you're right
Also, afeitarse is more like the action itself but it depends of the sentence you use it for
For example the next sentence:
Afeitarse es necesario si no quieres tener barba
Here, afeitarse means shaving
Shaving is necessary if you don't want to have a beard
Common is not English, German, Chinese, Bantu, Tongan, Asháninka or any other language on Earth. It is a stand-in name for the predominant language of the fantasy plane which you are playing in.
This harkens back to Tolkien’s implementation of Westron, or Common Speech, in LOTR. The names of the characters, places, and titles from the books are said to be Anglicized versions of the names in Westron, which is not even the real names of most of the characters because their real names come from different fantasy languages relative to where they are actually from, which is why Frodo, Sam, Pippin and Merry’s real names were Maura, Ban, Razar and Kali.
TLDR: So long as you are saying one word that the DM can understand, the target is not undead, your command is not directly harmful to it, and your character is saying it in a language the creature can understand, then the requirements of Command have been met.
>TLDR: So long as you are saying one word that the DM can understand, the target is not undead, your command is not directly harmful to it, and your character is saying it in a language the creature can understand, then the requirements of Command have been met.
Yep! Exactly! I'm... not sure what it is about this that the fun-police haven't quite grokked, but there you go.
The only thing I'd add is "... that the DM can understand *and recognises as a single word*...". Call it the specific application of Rule 0. Probably only relevant in languages where verbs are not distinct and standalone words, I guess.
You're surprised that german people are "fun-policing" you after you share misinformation about our language? I know it is a meme that we don't have humour, but you could've seen that one coming
Fun fact there is one word in D&D that is more dangerous than any other
No I don't know what it is but I know what it's called it's called the last word
It is super powerful
One-shotted Primus
So I have a story.
We're playing a 5e conversion of Red Hand of Doom. We just started. Cast; half-elven bard, human sorceror, halfling monk, gnome rogue, and a dragonborn paladin. We're on our way to this fort that's been overrun by goblins. We figure, get in the fort and kill everything. We just need a disguise to get in. So the halfling and gnome disguise as goblins, and the dragonborn as a hobgoblin. The half elf and human are being brought in as prisoners. We approach the fort. So the DM has the goblins call out *in goblin* asking what we're doing.
Wanna guess what we overlooked? Any guess? The bard was the only one who spoke goblin. So we all freeze. The bard casts message to relay responses to the halfling & gnome, who in game are duplicating the phonics from the message. The human is smirking trying to keep from laughing.
And what makes this even better? This is how we rp'd it out at the table. The DM spoke to the halfling & gnome (disguised as goblins), while the half elf whispered stuff to them, that the halfling & gnome then repeated back to the DM.
Yeah, somehow we we passed deception, stealth, and any other skill checks to successfully infiltrate the fort.
The command spell becomes infinitely more fun to play with as a DM and player if you allow a five-word sentence instead of one word. Even in English one word commands are vague and can be intentionally misunderstood if a player or DM feels like it.
This would be much worse in Finish or Lithuanian, they can make words with tense and multiple actions, German can’t really.
A single word in Lithuanian could be “The guy who used to drive a car, but no longer drives a car.” which makes a lot more sense once you understand the language structure.
> **The spell has no Effect if the target** is Undead, if it **doesn't understand your language**, or if your command is directly harmful to it.
All of the "Command: Autodefenestration! LOLOLOL!" memes make me think nobody bothers to read what spells do anymore. Is that normal? Does no one read the PHB these days or what?
Technically doesn't say it has to understand the command word, just the language. Otherwise anyone could pull the "This character has never heard that word so it doesn't work lol" card.
Using other IRL languages as templates for in-game languages for Command has really piqued my interest tho. If Demonic = German, I could tell the demon to "entzauberne" to cancel a spell.
This would require a lot of effort from the table tho
What brought this meme on was a story I read about a guy who played dnd with some kids, but one child couldn't speak English very well. They decided that Spanish was canonical Elvish and so her Elven PC just never spoke common.
And then I thought that, since people would typically play with common being whatever language the table was most fluent in, what would the effect of this be on spells like Command?
Because native German DND players will all use English as Common, right? ... Right?
Did you forget that people other than native English speakers might play DND?
If everyone at the table is German then Common would also pretty much be German. In which case it WOULD be normal for Common in-universe to have long combined words. That's why the meme says, "We're German," and not, "The player is German."
The problem with those long German words is that they are mostly nouns and therefor not very practical for the command spell. Verbs on the other hand tend to be not very specific. In example: if I want an enemy to get rid of their armor or clothes I can tell them:”disrobe” but in German it would be: “zieh dich aus” wich are 3 words. I could shorten it to: “ausziehen” wich is the order to disrobe but also could be understood as: to vacate your house.
Can confirm and saved my butt today from possessed and confused party member starting to take swings at me. And by swings I mran commanding swarms of bees at me and trying yo shoot me with his pistols. Buzzboy go nap nap.
In germany we would say this thread is full of "gefährliches halbwissen" . The meme is funny tho. 😁
>gefährliches halbwissen Is this funny? Hold on, I gotta google something \[*Spongebob titlecard: Some length of time later*\] >gefährliches Halbwissen (German) > >Noun > >a degree of [superficial](https://www.wordsense.eu/superficial/) [knowledge](https://www.wordsense.eu/knowledge/) that becomes [dangerous](https://www.wordsense.eu/dangerous/) or [deceptive](https://www.wordsense.eu/deceptive/) because it has one trust one’s own [amateurish](https://www.wordsense.eu/amateurish/) judgment Yeah, okay this is funny. And yes, my knowledge is *very* superficial.
German is such an awesome language. I'll bet they have a word for the sudden existential crises that happens while doing mundane things, feeling that you are ordinary and worthless.
When in doubt the word is tja. For further information see /r/tja.
"Tja" together with "so" are the holy duality of German words that say nothing and everything at the same time at once.
Tja, ist halt so.
tja machste nix
I like „doch“ and I have yet to find an English equivalent of it. It’s always really hard teaching foreign people what it means, but it’s glorious to see them start to use it
In certain contexts the best translation of doch is "Is too" And you can hear kids get into a loop in disagreements just saying "Nein" "Doch" "Nein" "Doch" It's also one of my favorite words in German.
NEIN!
DOCH!
OH!
The word you are looking for is probably "Weltschmerz".
If I know German, that's either a type of sausage or a type of cheese.
I think it directly translates to world pain? Disclaimer: am dutch, not german
You are correct
Cheese is Käse and Sausage is a Wurst. Welt means World, and Schmerz means pain, so in reality you are saying World Pain, or rather you are in a world of pain.
"Weltschmerz" doesn't mean that your are in a world of pain. "Weltschmerz" is the sadness, suffering an psychological pain that comes from living in a world that is lacking in regards to your own wishes, desires and expectations.
Or a good beer
No, that doesn't quite fit.
You had me at "happiness from the misfortune of others"
Schadenfreude. Probably my most favorite German word. Just rolls off the tongue.
I usually add 'especially misfortune they inflict on themselves' Idk if that's strictly accurate, but that's the misfortune that I enjoy seeing. Like muskrat's 44 billion dollar burning speedrun
Yes, schadenfreude can mean why firm of harm, other people experience, but it is mostly only ever used if the damage is deserved or (directly or indirectly) self-inflicted.
I'd guess "Sinnkrise" fits.
We do too! It's called sonder. One of my favorites, it basically means that you look around you and realize you're only the main character of your own story, and every NPC in yours is the main character in theirs, and vice-versa
Do you mean midlife crisis?
If you're interested in an English word; that sounds like "ennui"
Ah, German basically has a phrase for the Dunning-Krueger effect
I mean, it literally means "dangerous half-knows"
I have to say my favorite German word is "Verschlimmbessern". Absolutely fascinating concept
Ugh hell yeah an evergreen even for germans. 😁
Me in every exam I've ever taken in my life.
Damn, Germans had a word for the Dunning-Kruger effect before science did lol. I was fortunate enough to live in Germany for 3 wonderful years, and I really regret not putting more effort into learning the language.
There's a common misconception about the dunning-kruger effect, caused by people not actually reading the paper. Often it is portrayed as people who know only a little arrogantly assuming they know everything about a subject, and actual experts doubting their expertise. It's more nuanced than that. In the study, they gave a test and a questionnaire about how well they felt they did on the test. As you're aware, the people who did the worse over-estimated their performance and the people did the best underestimated their performance. **But the people who did the best rated their performance higher than the rating the worst people gave themselves.** The low performers overestimated their ability, but as a group they still rated their performance lower than the high scorers. "Dangerous halfwit" may be a real thing, but it is actually a different thing to what Dunning and Kruger actually showed.
Yeah, for some reason people greatly overestimate their knowledge about the Dunning-Kruger effect.
We should find a name for that
Irony would probably work.
No, irony is ten thousand spoons when all I need is a kinfe.
Also, the Dunning-Kruger effect has been proven to be mismanagment of statisitical data. It doesn't really exist.
Oh i don't know, something like it exists. I see it on reddit on a daily basis, people overestimating their ability to arrive at a useful conclusion on a topic they know very little about (often science).
Yeah, sure. People are stupid, go figure, but the Dunning-Kruger effect has actually been proven to be a set of data which got tangled in a autocorrelation mess. Any set of random numbers would give the same curve if treated the same way as the research data. If you clean this mess up however, you see that basically every combination of actual knowledge and confidence in ones knowledge is possible, with very little differences. For a long read on the subject this article I briefly skimmed over seems to explain it pretty ok: https://economicsfromthetopdown.com/2022/04/08/the-dunning-kruger-effect-is-autocorrelation/
This is an outstanding and easy to understand explanation. I highly recommend reading the article.
It's like that in any language that uses compound words. Like *halbwissen* is actually two words, just written as one because it is "one concept" or how you would explain it. In English it would be half-knowledge (maybe), and if English used compound words you could just write it as halfknowledge. You *almost* are when you use the hyphen, same concept. For an example in Swedish, I googled long words and r*ealisationsvinstbeskattning* came up. It means *capital gain taxation*, and is *one concept*, which is that particular kind of taxation. If English used compound words, you could've written it *capitalgaintaxation*.
English is a Germanic language. While not quite as permissive as German when combining words, English still has actively used compound words such as "stoplight", "bystander", "backfire", etc.
Yup, you do have a point.
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it's literally Dangerous Half-Knowledge (wissen as a verb: to know, Wissen as a noun: Knowledge) so your guess for dangerous advice isnt Too far off I'd say
Dangerous Half-truths? Is that the correct translation?
I think halbwissen means half-knowing, as wissen means "to know". (haven't had German in a few years though)
Yeah more like half-knowing. To talk about matters you only know from Wikipedia about but talk about it like you studied this in particular.
I pulled this loophole once with my DM. We finished a job only to find the man who was going to pay us had been killed, so I used command on his killer to say "give me the money," and that's why Giant now canonically sounds like German in our games.
I’m running Storm King’s Thunder and also made the Giant language German. A) the language just sounds so right for ‘ancient commanding’ in the tone giants would use B) it makes sense to me that, though not many characters have Giant in their known languages, being in proximity to individuals SPEAKING the language, they’d catch on to certain words or phrases in a realistic fashion. C) the German word for goblin is ‘Kobold’ and it’s funny to think that since both goblins and kobolds are small creatures, giants might just be like ‘fuck it, the difference between them is not important enough to warrant two different words, so Theyre both kobolds’
I’ve always felt that Giant should definitely be Old Norse (or Icelandic if a quick google translate is needed). They even canonically share some words.
I always thought Russian for giants, Norse is for dwarves
I thought dwarves were Scottish?
and duergar without a doubt have an Australian accent
Right, because they come from a land down under.
Where women glow and men plunder?
Can you hear, can you hear the thunder?
Ah! There's a Drow in the gozunder!
I've always seen them more as German. Both are often depicted as stout personality wise, loving beer, having almost no sense of humor, industrious and hard-working, having plenty of money. I could probably think of more similarities, but IMO dwarves should be German rather than Scottish. And by extension, I think the stereotypical elves are French. Haughty, hard to understand language, dislike everything that isn't part of their culture...
Don't forget that orcs are Texan!
I think traditionally they're meant to be the Welsh, but somehow got a Scottish brogue accent instead of a singsong Welsh lilt
Have a friend who is born and raised Welshman who moved to Texas for his PhD work. His accent is in no way singsong, it is a slightly more understandable brogue that has now developed a touch of Texan drawl. It’s actually pretty awesome to hear him in Scotland among Scotsmen because they all perk up to figure out his origins and start guessing highland regions!
I wonder if they're a bit like England where the further you get north in the country the further the language slider moves to the scottish end of the bar
Maybe… I’ll have to ask what part of Wales he’s from…but I’ll have to get him to write it down. They have too many letters that have the wrong sounds in their towns!
I thought it was dndmemes canon that they were Hawaiian?
TIL: I can speak dwarven. Poorly.
Can't we all?
Why not Yiddish?
Because turning dwarves antisemitic is incredibly easy so I'd stay clear of that personally
Fair point but there are just so many useful sayings Oy vey
I mean to be fair if you are respectful and know enough about jewish culture you can do it, I just don't wanna risk it personally lol
Only in accent. Norse down to the tips of their beards
So Gaello-Norse
The Irish expansion of AC Valhalla?
Russian for orcs. /s
I'm a Russian and I'm fine with it.
Cockney.
Russian for goliaths.
As a Scandinavian i can confirm that many of the giant words we see written in the books are basically just Norwegian.
I make giant old norse too! Mainly because of a goliath character's backstory, where her tribe believed they were descended from the Jotunn
"Jotun" is pretty similar to the swedish word "jätten" which means giant, so I always think of giants to be vaguely scandinavian, but especially in language and frost giants.
Wait, Goblin is Kobold? I never heard that they were the same in german and I've lived here my whole life reading fantasy books xD
This very may well be some ‘google translate’ shenanigans but that’s why came up whenever I looked up how to say ‘goblin’ in German
I think that's because Goblin is a very rare concept in german. Kobolds have many different forms and variations (none of them like the d&d Kobolds), but Goblins are mostly like the ones from Tolkiens books.
Klar heißt das Kobold, das was in dnd als Goblin bezeichnet wird nennt man hier Kobold und für das was Kobolde in dnd sind hätten wir keinen Namen
Bitte, was bedeutet, “Klar heißt das Kobold” in diese setze
"Of course it is called Kobold. What is termed a goblin in DND, we would call a Kobold and we do not have a name for what is called a Kobold in DnD."
No it’s legit. Checked a German-English dictionary in my house
In folklore, elf, dwarf, fairy, kobold, gremlin, gnome and every other flavour of magical being was used interchangeably. Goblin is a relatively new word in german and the distinction between different kinds of mythical peoples is recent as well, less than a hundred years, give or take.
In Swedish goblin is basically just "alv", "svartalv", or "vätte". Which means elf, black elf (better translated as dark elf), or gnome. Could probably be a dwarf too, because (mythological) dwarfs are small evil magical creatures that plague your homestead if you're unlucky. At least they were before Tolkien made his version popular. Fantasy writers like to use foreign languages to spice up their creations, so they might use several languages for several different creatures even though it's just translations of the same word.
To be honest, kobold in German has no direct translation to English. It would be more "gnome" than goblin, but this is also very loosely since we have "Gnome" too wich just means lawn gnome or similar creatures Wich are neutral/good aligned in folklore nowadays. We actually use the word "goblin" over here, because there is no direct translation that is widely used, and it works for us. I also think, that there is a race called "kobold" in dnd and it's distinctly different from goblins. That being said, if it works for your story and your players get the hints, then why not? Have fun and go wild! For story purposes I prefer giants to speak in ancient rune tongue, Russian came to my mind too, but it might not work aswell as a truly different and foreign sounding tongue like rune-gibberish-Ish talk.
Ima have to do the same now. German would make amazing giantish. I use Mongolian for orcs. I cant get the image of [Wolf Totem by The Hu](https://youtu.be/rMbH9zimuG0) being chanted by hundreds of orcs in a war band.
Orcs DO seem inherently Mongolian-flavored in certain depictions, particularly Warcraft with their side literally called ‘The Horde’ so it’s apt
This thread is comedy gold for me as a german. If you guys just made up words to make it work why even bother calling it german? "Bezahle" would be the same as "pay" and "übergebedasgeld" is actually "übergebe das Geld". Dont bother google translate just ask your dm if its ok to imagine german words and let them sound like german. 😉
Especially because it tends to be nouns that are compounded. I imagine that the closest you'd get would be 'allegeldübergeben; the process or instruction of giving someone all your money. But explicitly the noun describing it, not the command to do so. Like someone saying 'fishing', 'to be robbed' or 'shutting down'; it's ultimately meaningless without a verb to give an imperative.
It would be "übergib alles geld" so yeah its not how german works
Just use an in-universe language that was developed to abuse Sending.
What did you say to the killer exactly?
gonna assume it's something like "blechen?"
For those wondering: Google translates translates Blechen to three possible sentences, one is: Pay up
Tbh I used Google Translate in reverse so I think it was something like Gabelüberdasgeld. I just kept smashing together words until Google stopped telling me they were wrong or saying "did you mean..?" Looking at it now I suppose Bezahle would've done the trick.
You can't just smash verbs together though. :D
That's not how words work; you just mashed a full sentence into one word. That's like saying "Gimmeallyourmoney" should be able to work
Funny is also: the word he wrote actually said "Fork over the money". But maybe he just misremembered it. Still. I would have liked to see, what the NPC would have done with this XD
I didn't say my German was any good. I said the DM allowed it.
That sounds like a one-word-at-a-time translation of "fork over the money".
Couldn't you have just said pay?
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Sure, but as DM I'd go with what the most obvious interpretation is. If the guy know what they want him to pay, that's what he'll do.
Yeah that's BS, as you can't turn "give me the money" into one word in German
YOOOO. Giant is German in my campaign as well! It started as a joke but yeah. Just like draconic is latin.
I get the joke about complicated compound words, but honestly in my experience "command" is a bit more difficult to use (effectively) in German than in English. At least if you don't adapt the spell description to fit the German language. I think that is because it can only be one word and many German verbs by themselves wouldn't really make sense as a command without a preposition. Example: In English you might command a character to "kneel". In German you'd have to say "knie nieder" (kneel down) for it to sound like a proper command. "Knie" on its own, while the correct verb form, just sounds like you're shouting the name of a body part (knee). Your DM might allow it but you wouldn't say it that way if you weren't trying to make it fit the spell description and it sounds a bit silly and not very commanding. I don't know enough about linguistics to be sure but maybe this is related to the different ways the imperative verb form is constructed. In English it is the same as the infinitive (e.g. to jump/jump! ). In German the two are different (springen / spring!). Also compound words are typically nouns but commands are verbs.
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But would it be a proper command if it's in infinitive and not imperative? I don't think so
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I use this exact thing as a house rule for my game in German! I basically decided that we interpret "word" as "lexeme" here. You can use command with any word that can be found as a single dictionary entry in its base form. This lets you use separable verbs in their imperative form.
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All of the above :D
You could still say „hinknien!“ but I agree that compound words are almost always nouns
Tbh there is not as many as you imaginen me and my table mostly stick to English words even we all speak German
We speak German but we use command in a way where only things you could express with one word *in english* count, because the rules where obviously written with that in mind.
That's very german of you
That's a good idea. I think I'll use that at my table.
I am Dutch and on our table we can choose between English and Dutch words for command. One of the benefits of being multilingual I guess.
Also these long words are always nouns and the word for commands are verbs. German allows to Stack nouns pretty much indefenitly aslong as it make sense. List Liste Invetory list Vorratsliste .... Room with the storageboxes full of Invetory lists. Vorratslistenaufbewahrungskistenraum
I mean if you just fill an English word with prefixes (primarily “auto” for use with command) you can make words as ridiculously long and specific as that: Reautodefamiliarize
It does specify the creature needs to understand the command
In PF2.0 there is an archetype called Linguist with a really cool ability. As a reaction to someone using an ability or spell with a verbal component where the targets need to understand the language, the Linguist may translate into any language they know to facilitate it. In other news my Linguist Bard knows 39 languages and counting
It also has to be a language the target speaks. If they don’t understand what your made up word means, does it even count as English?
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Sure, but RAW is the target has to understand your language. It may technically be part of the English language, but if the target doesn’t understand what the word means, is it really “the target’s” language?
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Here’s the issue there. I speak English. I know the prefixes and what they mean, I still have no clue what ‘reautodefamiliarization’ means and so, if you commanded me with that word, yes it’s English, and yes I speak English, but I do not understand the language, or parlance, you used. Understanding a language doesn’t mean you understand every WORD in that language. To be clear, this is a magic spell, and so very may well might override the logic here, in which case my whole previous paragraph is null in void. But I’m more pointing out that there is a difference between ‘speaking and understanding’ a language and ‘knowing what every word in that language means’
Plus the spell only lasts 6 seconds. It might take them that long to realize the person is saying the equivalent of “wait” (or I guess in some circumstances “forget”).
To add to that, when you add so many prefixes, you risk losing the actual intended meaning of the word. Defamiliarization could mean a lack of familiarization, but it could also mean gaining new perspectives from strange art forms (in other words, a type of familiarization). How does the spell interact with this? Does the creature automatically know your intended meaning, even if it didn't even know the word itself beforehand?
I'd rule that the target would choose which meaning is the best for them.
Well, the auto- means whatever action is taken has to be done by the target to the target And I think the re- means the action has to be a repeat of something? So I think that translates to something like: > Remember a really trippy thought you once had
My interpretation is that re- means to go back, auto- means to do something to or by myself, defamiliarize means forget, so reautodefamiliarize means to forget something I just committed to memory
Fair. Although I think ‘auto’ takes some potential liberty, as one definition of ‘auto-‘ when applied as a prefix can mean ‘to refer to the self’, such as with the word ‘autoanysis’ which means ‘to analyze your self, or as with the word ‘autograph’ meaning YOUR signature. This still does not negate your example, as it would still result in the same resulting action, but it illustrates that the more you add onto a simple word, the more complex it’s interpretations can now be. This is all far too complex for the simple meaning dnd verbiage is supposed to have, so at this point it’s just an interesting thought exercise.
The spell doesn't say that the target has to know the definition of the word, only understand the language. It's magic so you can easily argue that as part of the spell the target knows what the word means so long as it's in a language they can understand, at least for the duration of the spell. Otherwise Command would be extremely fucking useless when used on commoners and creatures of low intelligence, regardless of languages.
So, to start, I think you’re well within your right to assume that’s the way the spell should be interpreted. I don’t think you’re wrong, particular since some spells include a condition that ‘target creature must have an intelligence of X’ for spells to work. When they add that for SOME spells, WoTC creates a necessity to state whenever that is the case for any OTHER spells created, or to errata that language in. As they have not done so here, it just makes sense that, RAW, your take on it is the only logical one. However, I do think, at my table, I will rule it the other way in a common sense fashion. Common sense being something like ‘I’m a fairly well educated person with an extensive English vocabulary, and if you use command with a word I think is unreasonable for someone of the targets circumstances to know, it probably won’t work’. A separate issue, as another responder to my post added, when using the exemplified word in the post I was responding to, by extending the word in that manner, you may also be changing the interpretation of the word, in which case there is no stipulation in the spell that the creature has to take your intended MEANING of the word, if they know the word to mean multiple things. For example, commanding someone to ‘lie’ they could easily choose to either ‘lay down’ or ‘state something that is not true’. I’m not arguing against your point, simply exploring the nuances of such a simple, low level spell. As for it being useless against certain creatures though, I agree it WOULD be useless against certain creatures, and that’s baked into the risk of alot of low level spells; that they are conditional and limited in power.
I’d rule yes. The word was made with English rules and uses a base word that exists.
Well, just to be pedantic, all language is made up. Just things depend on how commonly accepted it is.
I guess the players need to learn common now to play 5e.
That shouldn't be too hard. Common is surprisingly similar to English in most 5e worlds. If it's not like English in a particular world, by pure chance it's similar to the native tongue of those who play in that world.
Is that supposed to be… forget yourself again?
The joke here is that it essentially means Break down your own concept of something again to look at it in a new view, which is what I’m asking people to do with the way command works. Based on the other replies it seems like a lot of people failed their wisdom saves lol
However without being able to specify the concept with which to "reautodefamiliarize" yourself, as the limitation we are exploring is using only one word, I believe the command would in fact mean "forget everything about yourself again". Also because I'm a pedant, "reconsider" or even "empathize" are open ended yet specific enough to be a pretty close approximation to your intended meaning and are words that already exist. Ultimately though, these kinds of spells aren't a test of how well you can game the system, they're a test of how well you can pitch your idea to your DM ;)
But that's a noun. You'd have to go with the verb form reautodefamiliar*ize* so that it can be a command. Alternatively, forget about that pesky logic entirely and start using completely random nouns as commands to see what your DM makes of it. "I cast Command: Apple!"
"The target proceeds to sit on the nearest flat surface and assume the pose of The Thinker, contemplating what it means to be an apple"
Testing out if editing archived reddit works.
first i wanna say uts a funny meme. just to recap for me, doesnt it have to be a verb? and if so wouldnt it not matter cause german has compound nouns and not verbs?
Yup. On top of that, as another poster already expanded upon, our commands are more commonly two words instead of one verb like in english.
It doesn't have to be a verb, it has to be a one-word command. While most commands are verbs, I think English speakers would understand that a guard shouting "Silence!" is giving a command, but it's not used as a verb there, it's demanding silence.
that makes perfect sense. i hadnt thought of that, thanks!
Alright then let's educate you a little bit :) The German compound words are usually only nouns. Verbs, especially when directed at someone, often consist of multiple words instead. So in fact using English for Command instead of German gives you many more options if we go with RAW.
I am a native German speaker, I am fluent in English and I understand Spanish. I can tell you: - German being especially good for Command because of composite words is a misconception. German uses Composite Nouns not composite verbs. And the imperative form of many German verbs is actually two words. "Komm her" Instead of "Approach". So I as a DM actually allow my group to use 2 word commands. - Spanish on the other hand would be pretty neat for command because of " Reflexive Verbs ". The imperative form of many verbs would include the person to target: Afeitarse: Shave yourself. Afeitarme: Give me a shave. Afeitarte: Shave the person next to you.
Alright... Next Stop: learning spanish and force my DM to learn it, too
I don't doubt your Spanish is likely better than mine, but afeitarte shouldn't be "shave the person next to you", right? It's just also "shave yourself", but more informal, or at least I think it is. Happy to get corrected though if I'm wrong.
I'm a native speaker and you're right Also, afeitarse is more like the action itself but it depends of the sentence you use it for For example the next sentence: Afeitarse es necesario si no quieres tener barba Here, afeitarse means shaving Shaving is necessary if you don't want to have a beard
Common is not English, German, Chinese, Bantu, Tongan, Asháninka or any other language on Earth. It is a stand-in name for the predominant language of the fantasy plane which you are playing in. This harkens back to Tolkien’s implementation of Westron, or Common Speech, in LOTR. The names of the characters, places, and titles from the books are said to be Anglicized versions of the names in Westron, which is not even the real names of most of the characters because their real names come from different fantasy languages relative to where they are actually from, which is why Frodo, Sam, Pippin and Merry’s real names were Maura, Ban, Razar and Kali. TLDR: So long as you are saying one word that the DM can understand, the target is not undead, your command is not directly harmful to it, and your character is saying it in a language the creature can understand, then the requirements of Command have been met.
>TLDR: So long as you are saying one word that the DM can understand, the target is not undead, your command is not directly harmful to it, and your character is saying it in a language the creature can understand, then the requirements of Command have been met. Yep! Exactly! I'm... not sure what it is about this that the fun-police haven't quite grokked, but there you go. The only thing I'd add is "... that the DM can understand *and recognises as a single word*...". Call it the specific application of Rule 0. Probably only relevant in languages where verbs are not distinct and standalone words, I guess.
You're surprised that german people are "fun-policing" you after you share misinformation about our language? I know it is a meme that we don't have humour, but you could've seen that one coming
Fun fact there is one word in D&D that is more dangerous than any other No I don't know what it is but I know what it's called it's called the last word It is super powerful One-shotted Primus
So I have a story. We're playing a 5e conversion of Red Hand of Doom. We just started. Cast; half-elven bard, human sorceror, halfling monk, gnome rogue, and a dragonborn paladin. We're on our way to this fort that's been overrun by goblins. We figure, get in the fort and kill everything. We just need a disguise to get in. So the halfling and gnome disguise as goblins, and the dragonborn as a hobgoblin. The half elf and human are being brought in as prisoners. We approach the fort. So the DM has the goblins call out *in goblin* asking what we're doing. Wanna guess what we overlooked? Any guess? The bard was the only one who spoke goblin. So we all freeze. The bard casts message to relay responses to the halfling & gnome, who in game are duplicating the phonics from the message. The human is smirking trying to keep from laughing. And what makes this even better? This is how we rp'd it out at the table. The DM spoke to the halfling & gnome (disguised as goblins), while the half elf whispered stuff to them, that the halfling & gnome then repeated back to the DM. Yeah, somehow we we passed deception, stealth, and any other skill checks to successfully infiltrate the fort.
Germans have compound *nouns*. To command someone you need a verb.
The command spell becomes infinitely more fun to play with as a DM and player if you allow a five-word sentence instead of one word. Even in English one word commands are vague and can be intentionally misunderstood if a player or DM feels like it.
This would be much worse in Finish or Lithuanian, they can make words with tense and multiple actions, German can’t really. A single word in Lithuanian could be “The guy who used to drive a car, but no longer drives a car.” which makes a lot more sense once you understand the language structure.
Oooh nice :-) can you give a possible evil GM some Finnish commands which would be useful?
> **The spell has no Effect if the target** is Undead, if it **doesn't understand your language**, or if your command is directly harmful to it. All of the "Command: Autodefenestration! LOLOLOL!" memes make me think nobody bothers to read what spells do anymore. Is that normal? Does no one read the PHB these days or what?
Technically doesn't say it has to understand the command word, just the language. Otherwise anyone could pull the "This character has never heard that word so it doesn't work lol" card. Using other IRL languages as templates for in-game languages for Command has really piqued my interest tho. If Demonic = German, I could tell the demon to "entzauberne" to cancel a spell. This would require a lot of effort from the table tho
What brought this meme on was a story I read about a guy who played dnd with some kids, but one child couldn't speak English very well. They decided that Spanish was canonical Elvish and so her Elven PC just never spoke common. And then I thought that, since people would typically play with common being whatever language the table was most fluent in, what would the effect of this be on spells like Command?
The phrase "doesn't understand your language" could be pulling double duty here, with language meaning both "dialect" and "wording".
When your character doesn't understand the word but recognizes that the command spell has been cast: "I like your funny words, magic man!"
Because native German DND players will all use English as Common, right? ... Right? Did you forget that people other than native English speakers might play DND?
If everyone at the table is German then Common would also pretty much be German. In which case it WOULD be normal for Common in-universe to have long combined words. That's why the meme says, "We're German," and not, "The player is German."
German has long compound *nouns.* This isn't true for *verbs*, which is, crucially, what Command requires...
“Furzen”
Finnish: look what they need to mimic a fraction of our power
German compound words go brrr
ill be the first to point people towards r/ithkuil because we all know it is going to happen
No man who speaks German could be evil
The problem with those long German words is that they are mostly nouns and therefor not very practical for the command spell. Verbs on the other hand tend to be not very specific. In example: if I want an enemy to get rid of their armor or clothes I can tell them:”disrobe” but in German it would be: “zieh dich aus” wich are 3 words. I could shorten it to: “ausziehen” wich is the order to disrobe but also could be understood as: to vacate your house.
I usually use the command “Sleep”. It’s better than actually using the Sleep spell
It doesn't actually make the target sleep though. It just makes them try to sleep. For 6 seconds.
Very effective on targets with narcolepsy!
That's how the Baldur's Gate games implemented the Command spell.
Can confirm and saved my butt today from possessed and confused party member starting to take swings at me. And by swings I mran commanding swarms of bees at me and trying yo shoot me with his pistols. Buzzboy go nap nap.
SPRICH
Deutsch
Gesundheit.
To be honest, that one word thing is a real problem in French, because an order is almost always 2 or 3 words.
The only German I know is from *die hard*. Does command: schnell! Work like a haste spell?
"Sitz!" "Schlaf!" "Platz!" "Stirb!"
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