[RPG] What PC races do not speak Common

dnd-5elanguagesraces

In 5e, seemingly all races know "Common and [at least 1 other language]" for their languages.

Are there player races or subraces published by Wizards of the Coast, either officially or in UA, that do not speak common?

Best Answer

All the races in Planeshift: Ixalan might not speak Common

Planeshift: Ixalan (p. 6) includes optional rules for not everyone speaking Common. When using these rules, the merfolk, human, vampire, orc, and goblin subraces presented therein do not speak common, and neither does the new-to-that-material siren race.

Kenku don't speak Common

Kenku can't speak at all. They can read and understand Common, though.

Grugach and Grung don't speak common

Grugach, from the Elf Subraces UA, only speak Sylvan.

Grung, from the 2017 Extra Life charity release One Grung Above, are even more limited and only speak Grung.

What does it mean for something to be 'official'?

WotC only uses the term 'official' sparingly. It comes up a lot because it's used in the UA boilerplate:

This is Playtest Material

The material here is presented for playtesting and to spark your imagination. These game mechanics are in draft form, usable in your campaign but not refined by final game design and editing. They aren’t officially part of the game and aren’t permitted in D&D Adventurers League events.

If we decide to make this material official, it will be refined based on your feedback, and then it will appear in a D&D book.

That boilerplate makes it sound like there are two groups of material, 'official' and 'unofficial' material, and there are clear rules about what goes where. This is not the case. In actuality, very few books include self-labeling or marketing as 'official' — the PHB does, but, for example, Xanathar's Guide to Everything doesn't and hasn't had any ads run that way (at least that I've seen — it's difficult to be certain in the age of digital marketing).

Instead, there are layers of canon as typical for D&D games, where different groups make sets of different component materials and several competing sets lay claim to the 'official material only' term. Is Plane Shift official? They are published with a different disclaimer, one that avoids that language, and published officially by WotC e.g. on DMsGuild. Mike Mearls says no, though, and they aren't sold as physical copies.

Are livestream things official? The WotC website sure seems to think so. D&D Beyond doesn't, though.

Ultimately, what you have to come to terms with is that the designers haven't put a lot of stock into the idea of 'official' content. There's a clear distinction between AL-legal and not-AL-legal sources, but beyond that everything is a lot fuzzier. I've chosen to use a very big-tent approach to the definition of official in answering this question. You might disagree with some or all of the races listed counting as official, but hopefully you can understand how someone else might see that very same game content as an official WotC product.

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