Pretty much comes down to Players needing to seek teachers for the various languages, Balok, Elven, Hin, Dwarven, or gnomish.
Id rather not see a player that rps his character as only holding conversation with his hin friends, or his elven friends, blah blah blah, you get the picture, and then say they know and speak Balok or some other language. I think its very cheesy and it breaks immersion of the setting, racial basis, and nationality.
I will point out again, that it is highly unlikely that Barovians wont teach their language or anything else to a nonbarovian, unless they absolutely like the person, which is again unlikely, youd need to find a teacher that is willing, with a few years of practice, or youre just a stupidly insane smart person, but then itd pretty much take almost the same amount of time and a Teacher.
That's a double negative, what you should have said was... 'I will point out again, that it is highly unlikely that Barovians would teach their language or anything else to a none barovian...'. It's also very generalising, just as generalising as saying all Germans are obsessed with punctuality. I can see plenty of the average commoner in Barovia talking to a foreigner.
If this is the case, i dont think they be speaking Balok to a foreigner, instead, using the common tongue/trade language, which i will point out , youre probably wrong, but the thing i dont see is DMs, CC and or Soren/Blue calling me out on this, do any of you? This isnt just about Barovians/Balok, were talking of each language, and avoiding Cheesing, but as some people have previously stated in the first few posts of this thread, i should just worry about myself and have fun, its kinda hard to when theres people out there that like to cheese and be assholes, anyhow.
A response to this would be great from the staff.
Response to what? There's no official ruling on learning languages, but as usual, players are expected to contribute positively to the common stories and to respect each other's RP. I feel that in order to do so, one wouldn't want to magically know every language there is.
To underline the canon stuff:
Balok
is quite possibly the most wide-spread language in the Core. It's the main language of several domains and secondary in many more. Someone arriving to Barovia from somewhere else of the Core with moderately good intelligence isn't all so unlikely to speak Balok.
In most settings, including FR, yes, it would be very uncommon (pun intended!) for an elf or a dwarf to teach their native language to an outsider. It's not, though, impossible that say, a human did know one or two of those languages at the time of being created as a character.
There is an alternative way to learn languages in Ravenloft that doesn't require a teacher. Can't quite remember how it went, but something akin to when one's immersed to a society with a language he doesn't know, he gets a Intelligence check every half a year at DC 25 - 1/every half year he has spent in the domain to learn the language.. Or something, I have terrible memory.
In any case, it still requires a "free" intelligence modifier slot.
So, to sum it up: There's no hard-and-fast rule on learning languages. But I'd certainly consider it respectful toward's other's RP to think a moment about what languages one's character can realistically know, set constraints on him, and try to find teachers if he does want to learn some language. And of course, going obviously too far might be called out by DMs.
