How many monsters does a D&D edition need to start with?

[TiaC]

I suspect you have PL on ignore as he's, well, a frothing lunatic, but a stopped clock is right twice a day. (Unlike shadzar, who is better represented as a clock face with no hands for that metaphor.)

No, Shadzar would want to be a sundial, and would give you an incoherent rant (incoherant?) about how wanting to use a clock is the result of entitled timekeepers.

[Username17]

@Frank:

I suspect you have PL on ignore as he's, well, a frothing lunatic, but a stopped clock is right twice a day.

Not actually on ignore, but when he gets to the frothing, I skim or skip his messages, yeah. On account of him being a frothing lunatic.

Which means that your monster creation system can't be fully hammered down until you have representative monsters at all your levels.

That's the bit where he wants to write all the monsters before the system for monster generation exists. And that is basically ALL the monsters, since his representative monsters/minimum monster list is what he discussed earlier in the thread and is ludicrously huge.

How many is enough? Surely the number of monsters needed as a designer baseline for the generator is smaller than the number of monsters needed for publication. If nothing else shit like Elementals which are primary there as summon-fodder should probably be left until the system to beat it out is in place.

All a monster creation system can do is output monster profiles that are in line with what a monster of level N, of Type B, with Focus X should be capable of. That's important information, but it literally can't even exist until you have representative samples for level N, Type B, and Focus X.

Before your monster creation system can output an ability, you need to have a good idea of where that ability is supposed to be so that you can put it into your monster creation ability list. And that requires a frame of reference, which sad to say is completed (or mostly completed) monsters. Without a sample size of at least a dozen monsters at each level, I really don't think you could make a monster creation system that had any relevance to anything. I mean, you could just assign an arbitrary level to petrifying gaze or something, but without any knowledge of what the actual monsters of each level were, there's no way to know if such an assignment would make any sense.

So basically, you'd need to hammer down well over a hundred monsters before the monster creation system could even gel. That's why the monster creation system is always Appendix C or something.

What a good monster creation system does is let you quickly and effectively make a monster manual 2. You'd add some new monster powers that were in line with the monster powers of various levels, you'd run the numbers, you'd do a little bit of fiddling to make them more verisilimilitudenessed, and you'd be done. That would be awesome. Five people could crank out a high quality Fiend Folio in a month (plus however long it took to put together the art).

People who claim that they can put together a perfect monster progression system in the total absence of frames of reference are delusional. In exactly the same way as the people who made the 4th Edition Monster Manual were when they did exactly that and it was fucking terrible! Just like you can't make a character class progression without a frame of reference for what challenges they would be expected to face, you can't make a monster progression without a frame of reference for what kind of challenges it should create.

-Username17

[PhoneLobster]

What a good monster creation system does is let you quickly and effectively make a monster manual 2.

So, yeah, basically like I said. Frank is advocating you write all your original monsters up sans any system. Then write the system and you are cool from there.

This is of course insanity. And of course also not what the dumb fucks a page ago accusing me of reading comprehension failure were claiming.

As to what I see wrong with that, the biggest flaw lies in his strawman...

People who claim that they can put together a perfect monster progression system in the total absence of frames of reference are delusional.

Though to call it a strawman is perhaps unfair. Frank's, condition, forces him to see everything in stark absolutes. As far as he is concerned he either needs a perfect monster generation system first OR he needs a perfect monster list first.

The fact that he actually believes he can straight out of his ass write a huge and perfect monster list first without anything more than some vague sketch of the extreme limits of viable attribute numbers is... well... arguable significantly more insane than suggesting you could do so in a methodical and systematic rules based manner by developing a monster generator as you go.

But the idea that you would actually organically work on both your monsters and your monster generation system simultaneously is simply not one he is capable of entertaining. Worse the idea that you would run the whole lot through multiple revisions keeping your generated monsters and the system that generates them in line is beyond even consideration.

Not to mention that he it's not just the "chicken or the egg!" mentality that is so absolutist, but also he rather oddly both demands perfection from a monster generation system, and has apparently complete faith that he can generate, sans any system, perfect, or if you are incredibly charitable about his implied language, at the very least "more perfect" monsters. But again, that's just his condition.

And as a further extension of his absolutist myopia and obsession (and belief) that he can have complete and perfect control he demands that even at the end point his "generated" monsters not actually be beholden in any way to the produced monster generation rules, because even then, and even for "monstrous manual 2" he wants to just ignore them whenever he feels like it.

I wouldn't be so concerned about that. I mean the LESS you pull that sort of bullshit CLEARLY the better, and he doesn't get that, and is making the ability to call that bullshit his primary priority in monster design, which is the wrong priority for bullshit. But you could do it a bit. Thing is, with Frank and his rather absolutist authoritarian attitudes to RPG design, well, yeah, its not about other peoples adaptability, its about he as designer being able to dictate whatever bullshit he wants regardless of productive outcomes usable as a toolkit for others (which is the last thing he wants players to have).

[MGuy]

Gonna have to side a bit with PL. The way you were talking it did sound like you did not want a Monster Gen system. I am sorry if I misunderstood. I can see you getting some monsters down perhaps but didn't you say earlier you decided what challenges you would expect people to face when considering what kind of challenges to put on the table? When I came up with my monster generation system the only thing I used as a basis for it were animals and then I decided what the battlefield/challenges should look like at certain checkpoints and generated abilities based on that.

The only reason I went over animals before making the generation system is because those are the only things that I am forced to give certain abilities to. Everything else I can pick and choose how I want it to be. I can make my own kind of elves, my own kind of humans, and people will either like it or fuck off. You might say that I could do the same thing to basic beasts but I really can't. Birds have to fly, fish have to swim, horses have to be fast at least to start off.

Honestly after that I just had to decide what level I want what at. I want a lot of area type abilities, easier access to flight or gravity defying abilities around 5th level. I want super long ranged and wall breaking power to be an easy thing at around 10th. I want people to literally change the battlefield from one thing to something completely different at 15th level. All my decisions, design wise, typically came from that kind of style. It's how I generated classes, feats, natural abilities, and so on.

Having to generate the beasts I suppose would count as me generating monsters before the generation methodology really got off the ground but if it does then I really am shouting at nothing then (at least on that point).

@Dogs: Dying to trained dogs is not fun for anyone. Pets honestly should be mooks. I don't see wild or even hunting dogs being fit to seriously challenge challenge PCs .

[Username17]

The only reason I went over animals before making the generation system is because those are the only things that I am forced to give certain abilities to. Everything else I can pick and choose how I want it to be. I can make my own kind of elves, my own kind of humans, and people will either like it or fuck off. You might say that I could do the same thing to basic beasts but I really can't. Birds have to fly, fish have to swim, horses have to be fast at least to start off.

That's the start of it. But it's not just that fish gotta swim and birds gotta fly, it's that ghosts gotta pass through walls, dragons gotta fly and breathe fire, and medusas gotta turn your ass to stone. If you're going to write a game set in the modern world, you have to deal with the capabilities of cell phones, plane tickets, and dump trucks. If you're going to write a D&D fantasy heartbreaker, you have to deal with the capabilities of magical beasts and not just dogs and bees.

You can come up with fancy math formulas to generate some starting numbers for things like saving throws, to-hit bonuses, and armor classes. In fact, you should. But you should have something like that before you even consider monsters when you're designing your core system. You should in fact be deciding what kinds of Perception Bonus things should have while you are deciding that things should have Perception Bonuses.

But your math formulas don't determine what abilities are actually appropriate. That is determined by deciding what creatures the game supports, what those creatures do, and when you want them to show up. The capabilities of a bear are reasonably well understood, and the statistics are essentially derivable from your system. You get to choose what level it is appropriate for a Berserker to fight a bear in hand to hand combat, but whatever castles you've built in the air about how "the math just works" or whatever the fuck don't actually get to change a bear that much without the players (correctly) calling bullshit on you. And so it is with the various powers and counters.

We know that however terrifying a steel moose is, that it can't fight a flying thunder chariot. Because it's a fucking steele moose and it doesn't have any wings or hands! So it's all well and good to sit around and armchair theorize about what level every enemy has to have a counter for flight, but when the rubber hits the road that level has to be at least one level higher than you are expected to fight a steele fucking moose.

The actual creatures you actually have in your actual fantasy world define what abilities are appropriate for each level. Just as birds and fish determine what mobility modes can exist, so too do Blink Dogs.

-Username17

[ishy]

I'm actually extremely puzzled by this position.

The level 10 wizard PC isn't going to be exactly the same stats as the 10th level wizard BBEG. So why is it so important that the bear you summon be exactly the same as the bear you fight in a cave?

The rules they use to interact with the world need to be the same. But that doesn't mean they need the same strength scores or damage dice.

Because the flavour text of Summon Creature tells you, that you are summoning that creature.
Can you change Summon Creature so it no longer summons a copy from the MM? Sure. But the results can sometimes be silly, confusing and hurt verisimilitude.

Lets look at the pathfinder animal companion feature for a moment.

Animal companion are not real animals.
Sure you will occasionally hear complaints about animals losing their great eyesight, how leopards lose their climb speed and gain a sprint ability as soon as they are enslaved etc.
Yet people still play and enjoy playing with animal companions.

So if you can really improve your game by ignoring it, go ahead. Most people will accept it, even though they'll tell you it is stupid.

[Red Archon]

Only PL could muster the spite required to disagree with Frank on this point. And you can bet your pantaloons he will.

[tussock]

Yes, coming up with suggestions for eliminating DnD archer dominance is crrrraaaazzzzy. Only a mad fool considers designing a base combat system where melee fighters don't instantly lose to ranged attackers.

I quite like -1 per 10' for thrown stuff, and -1 per 20' for ranged. But fighters eventually have +$TEXAS to hit and will tag you anyway. Note, this also requires that things like fireball have targeting rolls for distance and scatter, to be fair, like they did originally. Which in turn requires the spell be dangerous enough for anyone to put up with that, and so on.

@table lookups: No fucking books at the table. Especially not the fucking monster manual. For reals people. Just say no. Your character doesn't know half that shit anyway, put it away.

Your wizard does know a lot about the fantastic beasts he summons. (or at least should -- you might have an extraordinarily uncurious wizard, or one who just leveled up this morning.)

Do I need the links to medieval bestiaries in my sig or some shit? Pre-scientific people did not understand anything about anything, and certainly would not hold accurate encyclopaedic knowledge of the quirks and unique vulnerabilities of the various gibbering hell-spawn they might call on in their minds. Hell, there's a lot to be said for random summons.

@Dogs: Dying to trained dogs is not fun for anyone. Pets honestly should be mooks. I don't see wild or even hunting dogs being fit to seriously challenge PCs.

Mastiffs and Alands, not Foxhounds or Spaniels. Proper big dogs. Wolfhounds and shit, and not the fluffy, tame versions we've got now.

And I get that real-world humans with spears can kill anything with very little risk, including the very biggest land animals, because all the other species are very stupid by comparison, but in D&D you need to make the scary-sounding ones last a little longer than that. 3' giant rats are our 1st level mobs, bigger things need to be higher level.

[OgreBattle]

When you're putting together monsters, especially when you're doing the monster maker stuff, you're going to want to hammer various stuff down. What do the numbers of a 6th level monster who is good at defense look like? What do the numbers of an 8th level monster who is good at mobility look like? What do the numbers of a 5th level monster who is good at ambush attacks look like? These are all legitimate questions that your monster maker system needs to be able to answer, which is why you need to be able to sort your monsters into categories like "has good mobility", "has good stealth and scouting", and so on. Or to put it bluntly: you need roles like "Skirmisher" and "Lurker" if you are going to make the monster maker system even pretend to work.

This reminds me of an earlier thread about roles where this was said:

But basically, you could seriously decide that you wanted to split up the stat lines so that you could quickly whip up a monster that:

• Was individually weak but collectively dangerous.
• Was dangerous at range, but vulnerable in melee.
• Was dangerous in melee but susceptible to battlefield control.
• Acted as a force multiplier on others on its team.
• Was especially dangerous to soft and high priority targets on the player side.
• Was versatile in both melee and range abilities.

And you could call those roles: Minion, Artillery, Brute, Leader, Skirmisher, and Soldier. You could totally do that. That would be a fine thing to do....

Heck, you could even put in a distinction between Force Multiplier monsters that grant bonuses to their team and Force Multiplier monsters that penalize team hero. So you could even have a separate Controller and Leader. You would just have to do the math and have the discipline to carve up the kinds of numbers and abilities things had so that those things would be different.

That's just going with the 4e roles though, so what would be a better way to go about it? Here's my take on it:
-Warrior: Your tough dude with stickiness
-Hunter: Your mobility and stealth specialist with slipperiness
-Controller: Leadership and control effects
-Hazard: Traps like g.cubes and rolling boulders. Has a big gimmick and a glaring weakness
*'damage dealer' is something all of them can be
**It basically reflects the fighter-thief-magic user trinity.

I think it's better to have a few diverse classes than a bunch of specific ones. So bears are warriors and tigers are hunters and a giant clam is a hazard.

Or would a monster classplosion be better?

[Kaelik]

Do I need the links to medieval bestiaries in my sig or some shit? Pre-scientific people did not understand anything about anything, and certainly would not hold accurate encyclopaedic knowledge of the quirks and unique vulnerabilities of the various gibbering hell-spawn they might call on in their minds.

Good thing medieval authors could cast Divination all the time, or else your comparison would be completely bullshit.

[Omegonthesane]

Do I need the links to medieval bestiaries in my sig or some shit? Pre-scientific people did not understand anything about anything, and certainly would not hold accurate encyclopaedic knowledge of the quirks and unique vulnerabilities of the various gibbering hell-spawn they might call on in their minds.

Good thing medieval authors could cast Divination all the time, or else your comparison would be completely bullshit.

What, this Divination available only to Clerics who are on the cusp of escaping mortal concerns, or just divinations in general?

To be honest my real dispute is the idea that D&D luminaries are pre-scientific.... pre-industrial, sure, but so was Newton.

[Username17]

That's just going with the 4e roles though, so what would be a better way to go about it? Here's my take on it:
-Warrior: Your tough dude with stickiness
-Hunter: Your mobility and stealth specialist with slipperiness
-Controller: Leadership and control effects
-Hazard: Traps like g.cubes and rolling boulders. Has a big gimmick and a glaring weakness
*'damage dealer' is something all of them can be
**It basically reflects the fighter-thief-magic user trinity.

I think it's better to have a few diverse classes than a bunch of specific ones. So bears are warriors and tigers are hunters and a giant clam is a hazard.

Or would a monster classplosion be better?

You would probably be better off doing a classplosion. Certainly, the number of monster classes is going to want to be fairly high even if you don't end up expanding it later. Higher than 3 anyway. Beyond that though, you need these classes to be gestaltable. I don't think you should make vampire dragons, but that has to be something your system can put in its mouth without choking.

You need gestalt multiclassing for monsters even if you don't have it for players. It's a deal breaker if the Cleric/Thief is better than the Cleric or the Thief, but while it's important to keep in mind when designing adventures, it is in no way a deal breaker if a fire octopus happens to be a much tougher opponent than a fire elemental or octopus. So the whole dilemma of the Fighter/Mage is simply fundamentally different over on team monster. You could just announce that monsters with multiple classes were more dangerous by roughly X amount.

But regardless, just as your team player classes are designed to conform to the challenges presented by team monster, so are the team monster classes. So unfortunately you're going to need a pretty hefty sample of monsters before you can even decide what exactly the "ooze class", or the "brute class", or whatever you end up having is supposed to be doing.

-Username17

[shadzar]

how many levels or HP or such is flight worth i wonder?

[Foxwarrior]

But Frank, at the point where you've got hundreds of monsters and played with them all to gain a good solid idea of how they work in game, in what way is "Making a Monster Generation System and using it" any more sensible than "Consulting your hard-gained wisdom to make some more monsters by hand"? It's hard to deny that generation systems tend to give somewhat more generic results than arbitrary decisions made in the pursuit of actual novelty.

Was your intent with the statement about Monster Manual II that you'd be offshoring the task to ignorant freelancers?

[name_here]

Well, for one thing you can totally publish your monster generation system so people can make up their own monsters. Plus there will be some turnover in the ranks of people who do your monster manual even if you don't delegate it to a secondary team, and lastly it's faster to do math than fiddle with fuzzy thinking exercises.

[Kaelik]

What, this Divination available only to Clerics who are on the cusp of escaping mortal concerns, or just divinations in general?

To be honest my real dispute is the idea that D&D luminaries are pre-scientific.... pre-industrial, sure, but so was Newton.

Since you get all the knowledge for your knowledge skills from books and shit, and books are usually written by the people with the most knowledge, the existence of 5% of people who can cast Divination and then show up at the authors door and explain that for second edition, Manticores X, makes popular monster books that are full of shit very unlikely. Presuming those books aren't written by said Clerics in the first place.

And yes, Wizards can also cast Divination if they have certain ACFs, or they can cast CoP, and all that shit. But literally any of those things alone is enough to guarantee that popular monster books aren't full of shit.

[Omegonthesane]

What, this Divination available only to Clerics who are on the cusp of escaping mortal concerns, or just divinations in general?

To be honest my real dispute is the idea that D&D luminaries are pre-scientific.... pre-industrial, sure, but so was Newton.

Since you get all the knowledge for your knowledge skills from books and shit, and books are usually written by the people with the most knowledge, the existence of 5% of people who can cast Divination and then show up at the authors door and explain that for second edition, Manticores X, is very unlikely. Presuming those books aren't written by said Clerics in the first place.

And yes, Wizards can also cast Divination if they have certain ACFs, or they can cast CoP, and all that shit. But literally any of those things alone is enough to guarantee that popular monster books aren't full of shit.

I am currently unable to comprehend the bolded clause. As in, it doesn't fucking parse. Please restate.

Granted, one way or another people will within a reasonably short time take the word of higher-level people if said higher level people care to give it. That, and from a metagame PoV it's utter bullshit if your Knowledge skills give you bullshit instead of knowledge.

[Previn]

The interesting part of this thread is about solving the system-wide problem of summoned monsters, mounts, pets, polymorphing, and Steves.

Steves?

[Username17]

Steves?

A Steve is a monster that is sufficiently unique that it may as well have a proper name. Thus we gave it one, and that name happens to be "Steve".

Essentially, any monster you've never heard of that you will encounter exactly once ever could just as easily be a monster that the DM had just made up and pulled out of his ass. Whatever "lore" is attached to it is meaningless, because the players will never know or interact with that lore. All of its abilities will feel pretty much exactly as arbitrary as if the DM had been making it up as he went along.

A good example of a Steve is the "Witchknife". You probably don't know what that is. It looks like sort of a pinkish Jem Hadar looking dude who does not in fact appear to have a knife or to be a witch. At some point during combat, he is going to throw greater command, which is going to surprise the fuck out of you because there is absolutely no way you could have expected that shit.

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[/img]

Steves are basically a bad thing. And the goal with the prose and art of a monster book is to show the monsters as compellingly as possible so that people get to know them and they aren't Steves.

But Frank, at the point where you've got hundreds of monsters and played with them all to gain a good solid idea of how they work in game, in what way is "Making a Monster Generation System and using it" any more sensible than "Consulting your hard-gained wisdom to make some more monsters by hand"? It's hard to deny that generation systems tend to give somewhat more generic results than arbitrary decisions made in the pursuit of actual novelty.

Was your intent with the statement about Monster Manual II that you'd be offshoring the task to ignorant freelancers?

Once you have a representative sample of monsters such that you can derive a formula that generates them, making additional monsters goes faster. Also, it's useful for production if the different authors can work mostly autonomously. So once you get a formula you're happy with, one of the other authors can say "I wrote up a seventh level rampager with the plant template. Then I traded some of its speed and reflexes for a bump to AC and fort because it grows roots into the ground." That immediately tells the other authors where to look to see if that author did something crazy or not.

-Username17

[K]

What, this Divination available only to Clerics who are on the cusp of escaping mortal concerns, or just divinations in general?

To be honest my real dispute is the idea that D&D luminaries are pre-scientific.... pre-industrial, sure, but so was Newton.

Since you get all the knowledge for your knowledge skills from books and shit, and books are usually written by the people with the most knowledge, the existence of 5% of people who can cast Divination and then show up at the authors door and explain that for second edition, Manticores X, makes popular monster books that are full of shit very unlikely. Presuming those books aren't written by said Clerics in the first place.

And yes, Wizards can also cast Divination if they have certain ACFs, or they can cast CoP, and all that shit. But literally any of those things alone is enough to guarantee that popular monster books aren't full of shit.

We have a world with replicable experiments that potentially could be performed by nearly anyone and a sizable number of people still think evolution is a lie.

True knowledge doesn't push out lies. It competes with lies.

[wotmaniac]

So, monsters follow different rules than PCs?

Well, yeah. Monsters have access to abilities and racial packages that PCs don't. A Manticore can simply not have hands, which isn't acceptable for a PC. A Wyvern can simply not have the power of speech, which is even worse. Heck, a Golem can lack the power of independent thought, at which point they literally cannot have a player at all.

I guess what I had in mind is along the lines of "what if a player wants to make their PC using a monster" -- if they're not governed by the same rules, that's gonna make things a bit wonky (unless you print 2 versions of each "playable" monster -- Team Monster version and the PC version; but that has its own problems).

So monsters have to follow a set of creation rules that allows them to get to places that player characters simply can't. It would be a monstrous failure of imagination if those monster creation rules didn't also have outputs that were simpler than PCs and more appropriate to being played five at a time by a DM with a near vertical learning curve than to being the main character of a player.

So yeah, wolves shouldn't have feats. They shouldn't have "backgrounds" or "perks" or whatever the fuck your system uses either. They should be composed of much less lego bits than a player character because they are made out of the system that makes a fucking one-shot wolf rather than the system that makes a full-scale adventurer.

Okay, I get that. But then that necessitates having 2 separate and completely unrelated systems for advancement (1 for characters, and 1 for monsters) .... but then you're back at having a complete clusterfuck any time someone wants to play a monster as a PC.
Would it consume too many trees to have a block at the end of the descriptions of "playable" monsters that detailed how to convert a given monster in to something that conforms to the PC rules?

Link, please. (I gotta read that)

The thread in question is Here.

Oh yeah, I remember that thread now. It only took him a page-and-a-half to completely come unglued. Many lulz were had.

This is basically you yelling at the mailbox to get off your lawn. No one, and I mean no person at all is actually saying that there shouldn't be a monster generation system.

That's right! Yelling at a mailbox NO ONE is arguing against a monster generation system! Frank just wants to not be limited to actually following one (because of creative differences) and also wants to write all of his monsters (which won't be creatively limited by adhering to a monster generation system) BEFORE the monster generation system exists!

Got it? Because apparently THAT is not arguing against having a monster generation system.

I'm assuming it's a deeply semantic argument he is pulling here because as far as I can see he is basically pulling a "I'm arguing against using a monster generation system! You can totally have one..."

I would think that the way a game designer makes monsters (or challenges in general, for that matter) from whole cloth (at least for initial release) would be different than the thing you give to the end-user intended for them to spice-up their games on their own.

And I'm gonna have to agree with Frank on the matter of first needing to have a sufficient sample size from which to construct your model. If you make your standardized model first, you don't know if the outputs are reliably gonna make sense until it's too late .... then you're back to spending an inordinate amount of time and energy going through erroneous trial-and-error bullshit until you happen to stumble upon something that works.

[Kaelik]

We have a world with replicable experiments that potentially could be performed by nearly anyone and a sizable number of people still think evolution is a lie.

True knowledge doesn't push out lies. It competes with lies.

Human minds are really bad at understanding the concept of evolution because it occurs over time periods that don't make sense to us, and the proof involves complex shit and making connections.

On the other hand human minds are very good at understanding: "Hey magic being, what is the answer" and then believing that. In fact, how good we are at understanding that concept is exactly why people still reject evolution.

There is no reason to think that people writing monster books will be wedded to the idea that X is true, when they can literally ask for and receive information from someone under a Zone of Truth who can tell them about the Divinations that specifically said X is not true.

[K]

We have a world with replicable experiments that potentially could be performed by nearly anyone and a sizable number of people still think evolution is a lie.

True knowledge doesn't push out lies. It competes with lies.

Human minds are really bad at understanding the concept of evolution because it occurs over time periods that don't make sense to us, and the proof involves complex shit and making connections.

On the other hand human minds are very good at understanding: "Hey magic being, what is the answer" and then believing that. In fact, how good we are at understanding that concept is exactly why people still reject evolution.

There is no reason to think that people writing monster books will be wedded to the idea that X is true, when they can literally ask for and receive information from someone under a Zone of Truth who can tell them about the Divinations that specifically said X is not true.

People believe in alternative medicine like homeopathy despite the fact that they can personally not get the effects of it. That should tell you everything that you need to know about the value of truth compared to lies.

As for divinations, it's a world with counter-magics and illusions in addition to the lies. You can actually ask people under a Zone of Truth and they can make a save, or they can fail a save tell bad information truthfully because they think its the truth. You can just get lies from some spells like Contact Other Plane.

Secondly, why even ask the guy who can cast divinations? Why wouldn't a made-up book with entertaining lies lodge itself more firmly in the minds of people than a book limited to the truth?

Even if you did ask, how would you know that this person was telling you the truth? It's not like there are many people who could cast the same spells to confirm the information. For all you know, the spellcaster can just make some shit up, take his pay, and be confident that there are only a small number of people on the planet who can call him a liar.

[tussock]

@Asking: ask what exactly with which spell?

Divination magic doesn't do anything like what most people think it does. Not to mention that 3e and 4e have actual rules about what your character is allowed to know and it is fuck all. Like, that mountain of ruby-colour anger coming your way on scaled wings, you might not even know it breathes fire. Not just yet anyway. The smart one in the party, the bookish one, they can probably tell you it's a Dragon, so you could guess based on common colour associations from there. Wait, is that sheen ruby-red, blood-red, red-gold, russet, coppery, or bronzed? Who's got the colour charts? What about that sunset, is it orange? Rust? Bronze? It could be purple in this light. I asked for the colour charts!

What are people even thinking here? That some Wizard has set up a line of 100 chained and subdued Tarrasques and has polymorphed humans beating them with swords enchanted to a specific tier, measuring carefully both the rate of "likely wounds" against "scratches" so as to mark out the LD50 of "base wounds" to kill a Tarrasque, promptly comparing it to his voluminous tables of "killing amplification factors at various ranges and conditions" for the party Archer? That he has memorised for thousands of fucking monsters?

So when a wild Tarrasque appears, he can shout to the archer, "dude, it's only got 700 hit points, nail it". Because no, you fucking don't.

[Cyberzombie]

Secondly, why even ask the guy who can cast divinations? Why wouldn't a made-up book with entertaining lies lodge itself more firmly in the minds of people than a book limited to the truth?

Very true. Most people get their information from entertainment as opposed to actual factual textbooks. In the D&D world, bards and other storytellers are going to be the chief source of information, not sages.

For instance, many people think that a silenced gunshot has a high pitched chirp sound because that's how movies portrayed them. When in reality it's just a dulled version of a regular gunshot. Still there are a lot of people who don't realize the difference between a hollywood special effect and reality.

The main problem D&D makes with monster knowledge skill checks is that a failed knowledge check should very rarely mean you don't know a monster at all. Stories about monsters are going to be widespread and common, but due to storyteller's creativity, you're never quite sure what's true and what isn't. A failed check should generally mean you come up with some kind of misconception about the monster and think it's true. Someone might have given you advice to survive a ghoul attack by playing dead or maybe someone said you need silver to damage it.