Hey all, games like Into the Odd, Electric Bastionland, Mausritter, Cairn, etc. All use Chris McDowall's elegant 'stats as health' concept.
It's a great concept: It keeps the character sheet compact, and links a character's prowess to their condition which is very immersive.
However, there's a flaw in this system I cannot ignore: Strength is by far the most important Stat as almost all attacks target a character's Strength. As a result Dexterity and Will/Charisma damage rarely comes into play.
Whenever possible, I try to apply Dex damage from attacks, traps or poisons that hinder movement, or Wil/Cha damage from spells or poisons that don't affect the target physically, but that's just a houserule and it's not always easy to come up with immersive reasons a foe would have these abilities.
How do you get around that at your table? What are your most common ways of targeting these stats?
Makes sense if there's one nation that dominates economically and/or diplomatically. Like English today, IRL.
Though, if one group does not have such a strong influence, you'd probably end up with something like the "Lingua Franca," a mix of multiple languages spoken by the most relevant nations (IRL, in Renaissance Western Europe that was a mix of Italian, Greek, Arabic, Turkish, etc.)
So Common may not be a proper language at all, but instead be a creole/pidgin of all the other big ones. So characters hearing a language they do not speak might still catch words here and there allowing them to decipher the gist of what was said. Also, Common would most likely be spoken in more metropolitan areas. A backwoods farming town may only really speak their native tongue, save for the mayor or merchants.