Necromancer: “I am versed in the ancient tongues! The forgotten lore! The oldest words ever spoken. And you come here to challenge me?! ស្លាប់”

Barbarian: “Huh?”

Necromancer… flipping through spellbook: “Uh… ꯃꯥꯡꯍꯅꯕꯥ꯫ !”

Barbarian: shrug

Necromancer… tearing out pages in frustration: “Η ζωή σου τελειώνει τώρα!!!”

Barbarian: Razing axe over head, somewhat bemused

Necromancer, relieved sigh: “Here it is.” Makes the Crotch Chop gesture

Barbarian clutches chest, keels over

That first line is reminiscent of Snowcrash.

In dnd 5e, there’s no RAW to support this.

In PF2e, you don’t need to understand the spell but you need to be able to hear it. So deafening yourself does in fact protect against Power Word Kill, RAW.

“Illiterate” is “unable to read”, FYI.

Uneducated or monolingual would work better.

I think power words work with Earthsea rules.

Uneducated is probably best. For all we know, that barbarian is conversational and literate in 3 different non-common languages, can communicate in 6 and has a doctorate from a far eastern university - barbarian is a class, not a job or ethnicity.

In the real world, there are many places with a high density of non-European languages.

Neither effectively encompasses “inability to understand” the spell’s language, though.

Wouldn’t the allegory for class be job? Or maybe career?

Not really. D&D characters have jobs (unless they’re unemployed), the class just describes a set of skills that would (hopefully) be useful for that job. Class is more equivalent to a university degree or trade school diploma - it usually suggests certain jobs, but those skills are usually useful and sought after in many different careers.

Warriors can have many different jobs, like bodyguard, townguard, soldier/mercenary, robber, brigand, monarch, hunter, or something completely different like university professor and the character just takes their exercise regimen really seriously.

Power words are just truespeech in 5e Forgotten Realms

The way I understand it, the whole world knows this language

Funny meme doe

illingual works if we’re willing to make up words, and operating under the assumption that the barbarian doesn’t know much of any language, rather than that they are fluent and well spoken in some language other than common

the whole world knows this language

That would be super dangerous.

It’s prolly more accurate to say “reality obeys this language”

“Illingual” sounds like the dopest rap album of 1989

So they’re more of just skill sets (lol obviously).

I guess my mental dissonance came from you saying “it’s a class, not a job …”, when naturally, skill sets are critically important to jobs! I guess a bit of a Venn diagram type confusion. lol Saying “not” about overlapping circles can get interesting with interpretations.

Making shit up as we go is how language evolves, so that could work —though one could certainly argue that even a primitive system of clicks, grunts, gestures, etc. to convey meaning would negate that term’s all-encompassing scope. I suppose, according to this silly pedantry I’ve stepped in, the more precise term would describe an inability to parse “languages used by the majority of current civilizations”, or something like that. ‍️

I was bummed in Dragonlance when our favorite Death Knight, Lord Soth, finally uses power word kill, points his finger and just says “die”. C’mon!

Like, at least be a little fancy with it and use “perish” or some other posh word.

Should be “power phrase” instead of power word, so it could get super fancy

Personally, I describe the word as basically being every language spoken at once, yet you hear it most clearly in whatever language you understand best, and more to the point, it speaks most clearly to your soul, which (on a failed save) cannot help but to obey and thus perish. Even on a save I try to describe just how creepy and horrifyingly eldritch it is.