The Gaming Den

I had a thought the last while, starting from my longass trip home from Hartford. It was on the whole Knowledge thing in D&D.

What would happen if everybody had what amounts to Bardic Knowledge, with a bonus equal to half their HD or something? And perhaps a bonus to show one is trained in x fields. That way somebody who has formal training still has an edge on some shmuck, but people can have absorbed things about their world by cultural osmosis and experience.

So a character maybe could start with knowledge training in the way we start with languages or something. 2+ int mod, and I dunno, spend 2 SP to gain training in another field (like Skill Tricks).

So our hero Slab Bulkhead is a lvl 6 fighty type of some sort, with an Int of 12. He's knowledgeable in 2 fields, which gives him a +4 bonus on them. Let's say they're on dungeoneering and history.

So when he sees some monster he rolls:
1d20 + 3 (Half his lvl) + 4 (Training) + 1 (Int mod), for a total mod of +8.

Or...I don't know. Maybe a bonus equal to character level would be better. I guess it'd depend on whether we use RAW identification or the revised rules in the Tome pdf. I'm not very good at game design, so what do you see wrong with it?

Parts of it aren't bad. I'd legitimately expect people to know about stuff from their world.

But a couple of things could improve it:

1) Monster recognition should not be spread over the whole damn Knowledge continuum.

1a) Monsters being recognizeable by CR are dumb. You end up with people being able to go "That's a wormling" and but be stumped by an Old Red Dragon that's a lot more draconic than that little toothy squirming lizard.

2) I'm fine with keeping the Knowledge Skills (though they could be overhauled, yes). Spending 2 skill points to pick them up is...bad. It might be worth developing exploits further for this (remember them from Races of War? Yeah). Maybe if you read a few books on a subject, you get trained in it. Or if you're taught by someone. Also, people should have knowledge proficiencies as part of their background, and assuming a certain level of education.

Just some copypasta from what I was talking about in the pdf:

Knowledge
The rules for handling monster identification using Knowledge skills are, well, back-asswards. A character
with a +13 Knowledge (religion) check automatically recognizes an allip and most likely knows a couple of
things about it, but that same character will often fail to identify a wyvern zombie. A 5th-level druid with 8
ranks in Knowledge (nature), at least 5 in Survival, and a 14 Int can’t fail to recognize an ogre mage, and will
usually know a couple of things about it, but might not know about elephants and dire tigers. As long as there
are skeletons, zombies, giant animals, and the like in D&D, HD is not a reliable guide to a monster’s difficulty,
rarity, or anything else. The appropriate measure of when a character should be able to know something about
a monster is when it’s an appropriate challenge for them: in other words, CR.
If your Knowledge check beats a DC of 10 plus the target monster’s CR, you know basic details about it,
such as its type (and subtypes, if applicable), typical alignment and habitat, a rough idea of its intelligence and
societal organization (if any), and whether its CR is above, below, or about the same as your character level.
For each two points your check beats the DC, you know another piece of useful information, such as a special
ability or something about its combat stats (such as ”has a high AC” or ”has a low Reflex save”). If you beat
the DC by 20 or more, the DM should let you look at their notes.

You should probably be able to get basic information about powerful, well-known things (i.e., big dragons, the Tarrasque, and the like) more easily than that.

I don't know... Regularly you'd get more myth than facts when you talk about legendary creatures like that. But I guess that would depend on how frequently people actually run into those things in any given campaign world.

Just myth would be fine, but being able to say "That big monster over there is an aged red dragon. Might be Old, might be Ancient, might be a Wyrm. Can't tell" is something that anyone should be able to do. Anyone should even be able to identify dragons by their markings if they grew up in the area that specific dragon hunted in.

True but I'd be more worried about fending off claims that they should also know special abilities the dragon may or may not possess. I can't stand it when a rules lawyer who makes a knowledge check starts making assumptions about a monster I brought to the field. It creates all kinds of problems...

IGTN wrote:Just myth would be fine, but being able to say "That big monster over there is an aged red dragon. Might be Old, might be Ancient, might be a Wyrm. Can't tell" is something that anyone should be able to do. Anyone should even be able to identify dragons by their markings if they grew up in the area that specific dragon hunted in.

Yeah. In my games if people are trying to ID something that has been advanced to a higher CR by template or aging (dragons) or is just really similar to a lesser creature (ghasts and ghouls) I'll use the lower DC for all of the common elements. So IDing dragons and learning some stuff about them is really really easy because hatchlings have such a low CR, but noting which special bits the one you're actually facing has is a more level appropriate check.

For creatures that have a special place in the myths of an area, I'll give people mixed information on a failed check. If it has enough of a 'presence' in the world that they should have heard stories about it, they get stories about it, complete with exaggeration, misrememberings, and even tiny kernels of truth. Professionals know better though.

MGuy wrote:True but I'd be more worried about fending off claims that they should also know special abilities the dragon may or may not possess. I can't stand it when a rules lawyer who makes a knowledge check starts making assumptions about a monster I brought to the field. It creates all kinds of problems...

Wait, what? That's the only legitimately level appropriate thing that knowledge skills do. If you're going to take issue with that, why do you let people take knowledge skills at all?

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As to the main idea, it's not bad. In games where players ran with what they knew instead of what their characters were supposed to know and dealt with monsters appropriately, knowledge skills are worth a lot less. And this decreases their costs nicely, putting them in line with the reduced necessity of carrying them. I'd go one step further with the trained bonus though, and just make it equal to half character level, +3. That would bring the total up to the expected ranks for the level, and save you from reworking check DCs.

In games where people restrict themselves from tactics based on things their characters don't know I'd probably skip this, as there is a higher value in the skill by itself.

Yeah, seriously. Greek mythological heroes are known for fighting monsters like the Medusa (CR 6), Minotaur (CR 4) and Chimera (CR 6).

A level-appropriate 4th-level Knowledge character might have a +11 or +12 bonus to Knowledge checks (7 ranks, 18 int). A level-appropriate 4th level melee combat character is enough for our hero-starved world to mythologize them. Such a character would be accompanying Theseus, pulling his weight, and have the schtick, among others, of knowing things.

Such a character should be able to identify special kinds of monster, even if they're unique. They should be able to look at a monster and say "by the number of arms and the color of the flames surrounding it, I'd say that that would be a five-armed fire troll. It's not vulnerable to fire and is strengthened by cold, but acid should still work, and it looks like it's also vulnerable to lightning," and be right (when Togor the Five-Armed Fire Troll is a level-appropriate monster).

Well, just seemed stupid to me that high level characters might not know *anything* about their enemies or the world at all, since they don't have Knowledge as a skill or ranks in it.

Meikle641 wrote:Well, just seemed stupid to me that high level characters might not know *anything* about their enemies or the world at all, since they don't have Knowledge as a skill or ranks in it.

Agreed lots, which is why I went on a rant about divorcing 'stuff you know' from your ranks in knowledge skills in my skills thread.

Meikle641 wrote:Well, just seemed stupid to me that high level characters might not know *anything* about their enemies or the world at all, since they don't have Knowledge as a skill or ranks in it.

This is actually my point really. A lot of time mentioned rules lawyer won't spend the skill points to get the knowledge needed to know the monster, making claims that they "should know the monster already" because they are high level though they haven't run into one kind of the monster for the entirety of the campaign. If its a particularly knowledgeable character (like the 18 intelligence and ranked example) then I'd feel more comfortable but to let any fighter wielding a sword to be able to spout on about how about how the insides of an aboleth works is a bit much. I could understand maybe here and there they might pick up a story or two but I have hardly seen a player go to a tavern and say "I'm going to listen to the gossip and tales about the area". About the only use such gossip gets is if it pertains to the gather info check they just made.

IGTN wrote:Just myth would be fine, but being able to say "That big monster over there is an aged red dragon. Might be Old, might be Ancient, might be a Wyrm. Can't tell" is something that anyone should be able to do.

Identifying it as a red dragon is of course the problematic bit. I mean, how are they supposed to tell what colour it is just by looking at it? :D

MGuy wrote:

Meikle641 wrote:Well, just seemed stupid to me that high level characters might not know *anything* about their enemies or the world at all, since they don't have Knowledge as a skill or ranks in it.

This is actually my point really. A lot of time mentioned rules lawyer won't spend the skill points to get the knowledge needed to know the monster, making claims that they "should know the monster already" because they are high level though they haven't run into one kind of the monster for the entirety of the campaign. If its a particularly knowledgeable character (like the 18 intelligence and ranked example) then I'd feel more comfortable but to let any fighter wielding a sword to be able to spout on about how about how the insides of an aboleth works is a bit much. I could understand maybe here and there they might pick up a story or two but I have hardly seen a player go to a tavern and say "I'm going to listen to the gossip and tales about the area". About the only use such gossip gets is if it pertains to the gather info check they just made.

On the other hand, there are players. Such as myself, that have characters whose Fighter has an even +20 in all of the 10 Knowledge skills.

That may be more "power gamer" than "rules lawyer" though.

If you've got a player that argues that they "should" know about a monster, tell them flat out....

"No. you did not spend the character resources to have that knowledge. You got other abilities for your character. So you don't deserve that in-game knowledge in exactly the same way that a Wizard doesn't get Full BaB or 8 skill points a level; or that a Fighter doesn't have Sneak attack Dice or Wizard Spellcasting.

So, fuck you, your Character is ignorant as to what this creature is. Now deal with it. If I so much as suspect that your meta gaming; I'm going to start giving this creature more abilities until its CR is appropriately; fuck that, I'm going to make them inappropriately equivalent against YOUR PC. It's abilities won't work on any other party member, unless they also decide to meta game. You just pissed me off, and the creator Dieties of this monster have suddenly noticed a massive anomaly in your Character's brain, and have decided that they need to "set things right". They're boosting their monster against you in order to 'set things right'. Yeah, I can fuck you over at the meta-game level, and still have it all be somewhat logical at the in-game level. I'm the referee, and like Tyler Durden said do not fuck with us."

Then again, when I'm the GM in a game, I always keep my players in the dark unless they have found something out in-game.

They don't learn ACs, I never tell them the total on an attack roll; I just tell them "you miss/hit" or "the monster [something descriptive about how well or just barely hits] or misses [just barely, or completely and utterly, maybe even pathetically] the player character in question".

In our game things like ACs are learned quickly enough, as are approximate attack/damage, but saves are usually left as a question.

That being said, NOT knowing about a monster is usually quite fun (provided it isn't something like "only vulnerable to cold damage). However, our compromise was that you could add 1/2 character level to a in-class knowledge skill. We also allow for 'closer examination' checks after you inspect a dead monster, with a +5-10 circumstance bonus. This usually allows for a "you know what it can do AFTER you beat it" type of scenario, which allows for the fun of not knowing. Also, you can fairly readily determine lower level monster's information, so you don't look ignorant.

Anyways, that's what we play, just my 2cp.