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Hi All,

I have a character that had the cultural virtue Ravens of the Mountain, in the description there is this piece of text.

"Long-lived and able to speak the common tongue, these birds are often wise companions, bound to your kin by ties of old friendship."

I have said to my player that only he, and others with this virtue (or special people in Middle-earth) can communicate with the raven. So other dwarves with the virtue, Gandalf, Radaghast, Saruman and possibly (although much rarer) elves and humans whom have studied the ravens and have learnt to communicate with them. Essentially, only the dwarf in the party can communicate with his raven. Is this a reasonable limitation?

The second thing that I was thinking about was the level of complexity of the task given to the raven. I have said that my player needs to be mindful of the complexity of instructions he gives to the bird. Has anyone come up with some rules on this or do they just "wing" it? I am currently thinking complicated instructions would cause the task to take longer to complete with an added margin of error. Perhaps returning with less or misleading information due to confusion. What are your thoughts on this?

Kind Regards,
Kurt

Kurt wrote:I have said to my player that only he, and others with this virtue (or special people in Middle-earth) can communicate with the raven. So other dwarves with the virtue, Gandalf, Radaghast, Saruman and possibly (although much rarer) elves and humans whom have studied the ravens and have learnt to communicate with them. Essentially, only the dwarf in the party can communicate with his raven. Is this a reasonable limitation?

Reasonable in what sense? It's directly counter to both the rules and the portrayal of the creatures in question in The Hobbit (where, much like the Eagles in some ways, the ravens are people with names and a culture who talk to the dwarves as equals), so it's a limitation that makes no in-world sense and is clearly a House Rule.

As a House Rule, it doesn't actually restrict how useful the Virtue is too much if you've got some paper, but it's completely unnecessary.

Kurt wrote:The second thing that I was thinking about was the level of complexity of the task given to the raven. I have said that my player needs to be mindful of the complexity of instructions he gives to the bird. Has anyone come up with some rules on this or do they just "wing" it? I am currently thinking complicated instructions would cause the task to take longer to complete with an added margin of error. Perhaps returning with less or misleading information due to confusion. What are your thoughts on this?

Again, per the world lore, the Raven is about as smart as a human, so this restriction doesn't make a lot of sense.

Kurt wrote:Hi All,

I have a character that had the cultural virtue Ravens of the Mountain, in the description there is this piece of text.

"Long-lived and able to speak the common tongue, these birds are often wise companions, bound to your kin by ties of old friendship."

I have said to my player that only he, and others with this virtue (or special people in Middle-earth) can communicate with the raven. So other dwarves with the virtue, Gandalf, Radaghast, Saruman and possibly (although much rarer) elves and humans whom have studied the ravens and have learnt to communicate with them. Essentially, only the dwarf in the party can communicate with his raven. Is this a reasonable limitation?

The second thing that I was thinking about was the level of complexity of the task given to the raven. I have said that my player needs to be mindful of the complexity of instructions he gives to the bird. Has anyone come up with some rules on this or do they just "wing" it? I am currently thinking complicated instructions would cause the task to take longer to complete with an added margin of error. Perhaps returning with less or misleading information due to confusion. What are your thoughts on this?

Kind Regards,
Kurt

I would say that the raven would talk to everyone if he wish, but take order only from the dwarve.

For the degree of complexity you can say that you can give instruction with two verb: eg "Go to Dale and Say to Reinald Goldhand his lost treasure was found".

“Before long there was a fluttering of wings, and back came the thrush; and with him came a most decrepit old bird. He was getting blind, he could hardly fly, and the top of his head was bald. He was an aged raven of great size. He alighted stiffly on the ground before them, slowly flapped his wings, and bobbed towards Thorin.
“O Thorin son of Thrain, and Balin son of Fundin,” he croaked (and Bilbo could understand what he said, for he used ordinary language and not bird-speech).”

One of my players has a Raven of the Mountain. He speaks to the dwarf in front of everyone using Westron and sounds like this:

"Look ahead, Kuäk will. But fog hides much, warn you Kuäk does."

Another player, over the course of the campaign, learned the speech of birds. When he spoke to another raven in her own language, this is what she sounded like:

"I am Kéval. I fear my life is at an end, you must tell my father that I am sorry for not completing my mission. But my life is of little consequence... they have begun to melt the gold. The dragon will come!"

Hopefully you can get a sense of the difference... the ravens are of equal capability, it's just in the first case they're speaking in an unfamiliar language and trying to get ideas across quickly. In their native tongue, they're able to be more loquacious.

zedturtle wrote:
"Look ahead, Kuäk will. But fog hides much, warn you Kuäk does."

Then Kuäk sighed, sorry that it had to come to this. Reaching underneath his cloak of feathers he drew out his magic longsword, and with a cry leapt forward (doing a triple flip) and cleaved his foe in two.

No, your restrictions do not make sense. The description could not be more clear: the raven speaks in the common tongue (Westron) and can understand and be understood by all who do the same.

Although canonically (as shown by the passage I quoted) they speak Westron, I don't see a problem with restricting it if that's what works for you. After all the Wood-thrush spoke its own language which Bard could understand and the Dwarves could not.

Thanks for the quotes Glorelendil and the explanation Zed.

I'll go with Terisonen's suggestion that he only takes orders from the dwarf and speaks in the style that Zed suggests. The raven can understand and speak Westron as well as converse in a more verbose manner using its native language.

Kind Regards,
Kurt