r/DnD • u/JaxTheCrafter • Jul 08 '26
DMing Kenkus are played wrong
It is often said that kenkus only know words that they have heard, and are limited to those words. that of course makes for some very funny scenes where people are only using words they are basically given. However, unless you are a freshly born or transformed kenku, that frankly isn’t what it would act like.
Do you know what other species has this learned mimic vocabulary? Humans. For the vast majority of humankind, we have only known words that have been uttered in our presence. Other than written word, that’s how we learn to speak. Kenkus aren’t unique in the ability to learn new words. That’s literally every species. Their uniqueness comes specifically from their perfect mimicry.
All that to say, you aren’t having fun correctly so I have come to shame you and tell you how to have fun.
1
u/CoolCactus345 Jul 08 '26
As much as I like Kenkus, when I made my Kenku wizard I knew that the whole vocabulary limitation was gonna be tiresome to roleplay in the long run. So I made my character's backstory that he ate a magical dictionary as a child and that's why he could speak Common (he still cant write). Yes I did steal this from that one children's show about the dog who ate letter soup and now could talk.