Dubious Knowledge Tips and Suggestions

A post in a different thread got me thinking, sometimes it's hard to come up with the purposely wrong answers for Dubious Knowledge on the fly. I thought it might be helpful if we came up with a range of ideas to tweak information that DK gives to hopefully reduce that cognitive load a bit.

While specific scenario suggestions are welcome, I suspect that tweaks to existing information are going to be more helpful in the long run. Ideas such as,

For Creatures
1. If a creature is immune/resistant/weak to a specific damage type, swap that damage type.
2. If a creature deals a specific damage type, claim it uses another one.
3. Claim a creature's strongest save is its weakest, or vice-versa, or move each save value over one space to keep a party guessing.
4. If you know other creatures the party will be facing after the current encounter, claim their current encounter has one of those future abilities. Bonus points if the two encounters have similar abilities that use different damage types or saves.
5. Tell your party the creature has different traits than they assume. This option is mostly useful if your party have options for dealing with a specific creature type.

For NPCs
1. Invert a relationship an NPC has to someone else. Tell the party they love someone they actually hate, or despise someone they adore, etc.
2. Invert the NPC's general disposition. A kindly NPC is only kind-seeming and is actually cruel, or a cruel NPC is just gruff, and actually a sweetheart.
3. Exaggerate or downplay an NPC's sphere of influence. A humble shopkeeper is actually the leader of the local merchant's guild, for example.
4. Erroneously connect an NPC to an organization the party should be interacting with. If the party are looking for a cult, for example, claim that there are rumors that a given NPC is a member of said cult.

TL;DR: I like to lean on inverting relationships, powers, and story roles for NPCs and monsters as a quick way of giving out Dubious Knowledge to try and sell the party on what I say being true.

I'm sure I could come up with more, but that's what I have so far. Has anyone else got any helpful, general tips or specific suggestions?

Its a little harder in the remaster with the more player-facing question/answer, since they may ask for something that's harder to adlib. However your list is still a good starting point. A couple of points:

For creatures
When dealing with IWR, I often find its easier/more believable to flip an I/R <-> W. Ie, Fire immunity/ resistance <-> cold weakness. For me this at least is easier to present without triggering my 'I'm obviously lying voice'

Having a reaction to say a creatures has (even if its just Reactive Strike) when they don't have one is another thing that's worth having in your backpocket.

Oh, I like the idea about saying a monster has a reaction. That's something that can impact the battle, and is really easy to just spit out if you're caught unprepared.

I like to lie about how smart a creature is or what languages it has - in a party with a Bon Mot swashbuckler and an oracle that likes to target Will, misleading the players about which creatures are intelligent enough for linguistic effects to work is a pretty helpful trick, though obviously it doesn't work so well for humanoids.

I try to vary this a lot as a GM.

Most of the time, I will try to give something believable. Bluff a key attack ability, a resistance, or a high save that might match the monster.

Sometimes, I will just go for a laugh with the off one... esp when it's a lower-than-party-level monster.

I think the key is just reading the monster before hand and having some idea of what the monster would do. This'll guide you on all the things you might wanna do. Make it a laugh, make it an easy-to-solve puzzle, make it a good bluff.

Just feel out your table. Is it sluggish and they need a pick up? Maybe give them a laugh. Are they power gaming? Bluff hard. Are they really into story and lore? Maybe give the DK haver a lie and let another player sort it out.

TL;DR - there's no one good answer to what to do with this feat. It *really* is GM fiat and feel. Just know your group and solve errything with the question 'What's the most fun right now?'

Cheers!

My preference for running knowledge is to have the player pick a category of information they'd like to know when rolling. As a result, if dubious knowledge procced, I'd just give them the correct information in an "or" statement where one clause is false and one clause is true. E.G.:

Player: "I'd like to RK on this monster. Can I see if I know its worst save?"

*player blind rolls a failure, but has dubious knowledge*

GM: "The worst save is either reflex or will."

I try to vary this a lot as a GM.

Most of the time, I will try to give something believable. Bluff a key attack ability, a resistance, or a high save that might match the monster.

Sometimes, I will just go for a laugh with the off one... esp when it's a lower-than-party-level monster.

I think the key is just reading the monster before hand and having some idea of what the monster would do. This'll guide you on all the things you might wanna do. Make it a laugh, make it an easy-to-solve puzzle, make it a good bluff.

Just feel out your table. Is it sluggish and they need a pick up? Maybe give them a laugh. Are they power gaming? Bluff hard. Are they really into story and lore? Maybe give the DK haver a lie and let another player sort it out.

TL;DR - there's no one good answer to what to do with this feat. It *really* is GM fiat and feel. Just know your group and solve errything with the question 'What's the most fun right now?'

Cheers!

I do this too. Sometimes its easy to just take something it already has and change the value. No weaknesses? Say it has cold weakness. Its got a poison sting as a special attack? Well, say it has Grab instead.

Other times it's more fun to come up with something completely wild like "this is Mithril Fang, the legendary thief known for earning his fortune by stealing from other thieves." I did this one recently with my players when they were trying to recognize someone specific and totally bungled it. It was great, especially when they realized after the fact.

Personally I love this feat when players take it because it takes a situation of "you fail and nothing happens" to "you fail, so you get something useful AND I get to have some fun with you."

Or just use abilities from somewhere else. Identifying an animal with Grab? Tell them it that it has the ability to devour the soul of a creature if it starts a turn with them grabbed... which is a real ability that Astradaemons have. They'll likely realize that's wrong, but they might think about it first because Bears are actually pretty good at Grapple.

I think people stress too much about trying to make it so believable that players can't tell which is which all the time. That's definitely nice and there's a place for it, but it's also okay to give something that's totally out there and just let people have fun with it. They're remembering wrong information after all: it doesn't have to be perfect.

I tend to say that they remember something from a very biased source. You know what Cheliax says about the Bellflowers, but you can't really tell truth from propaganda. The bestiary you read said that hydras can be defeated with acid, but he says everything can be defeated with acid so who knows.

A few ideas off the top of my head:

1) I agree with yanking info from other creatures, especially creatures of the same group. If a PC fail RK against a Jiang-Shi vampire, they learn that they're vulnerable to ringing hand bells (true) and people announcing their personal secrets (false, that's vetalarana vampires). Kind of hard to come up with those ideas off the top of one's head, of course.

2) If the creature looks reasonably natural, you can make it more or less unusual. If it's a normal bear, say that its fur pattern indicates that it's actually a were-bear in its animal form, or maybe a kind of fey-touched bear that has a roar that causes confusion. On the other hand, if they meet a magical creature like a Silvanshee Agathion, say that it's just a regular cat, people around here are just fond of breeding kitties with funky fur patterns.

3) Meddle with their movement abilities. Yeah, this guy can totally fly, or climb, or burrow, or sprint, or make massive leaps, or run on water, or teleport.

4) If the creature has abilities that only work in certain situations, subtly alter those situations. Hounds of Tindalos can normally teleport to/from any angled surface, so tell the player that they can only teleport to/from surfaces with a gentle curve.

5) Add some on-death effects to creatures that don't have them. Yeah, this guy gives you a death curse, or explodes a round after death (especially funny if the PCs run for cover after killing it and spend an awkward amount of time waiting for it to blow up but nothing happens).

6) If they have fast healing, change what counters it (to avoid player frustration, tell them that the fake counter does not work the first time they try to use it, or else they may spend a painful amount of time trying again and again).

7) Alter the creature's personality. If an NPC is actually very prim and proper, tell the player that they can get in their good books by telling a bawdy joke. If a creature is highly untrustworthy, tell the player that they aren't nice but will follow any agreements they make to the letter.

Taking inspiration from various fantasy stories I've read: if there's something that has multiple IRL versions of it in fiction, use one of the things from there. Vampires are prolly the easiest for this, since not only is there a lot of different types of vampires in fiction, there's also a lot of different vampire stories where someone goes "yeah XYZ only works in STORIES, in REALITY it's ABC".

Human brains aren't super great at remembering WHERE they came across a concept before, but they're good at going "this seems familiar".

I like to lean on inverting relationships, powers, and story roles for NPCs and monsters as a quick way of giving out Dubious Knowledge to try and sell the party on what I say...

Inverting powers is a good idea. I also mix up identification and abilities. For example, they might misidentify a lizard-like swamp humanoid as a lizard folk (even though it isn’t) and correctly identify that it has a weakness to fire.

Taking inspiration from various fantasy stories I've read: if there's something that has multiple IRL versions of it in fiction, use one of the things from there. Vampires are prolly the easiest for this, since not only is there a lot of different types of vampires in fiction, there's also a lot of different vampire stories where someone goes "yeah XYZ only works in STORIES, in REALITY it's ABC".

Human brains aren't super great at remembering WHERE they came across a concept before, but they're good at going "this seems familiar".

I like to mix up similar monsters if possible. EG, giving the weakness for a jiang-shi instead of a nosferatu.

Haven't had much chance to do it, but when I did it, and the player knew it was a lie but comittied to it anyway was a great moment. I was so impressed I remembered to give out a hero point.

A few general pieces of advice:

1. Dubious Knowledge is a skill feat, meaning the player experience should be slightly better for having it over not. This is usually a mix of player fun and tactical value; using it as a way to entangle parties in meaningful tactical missteps is rarely fun, unless they can fail forward into more hijinx.

2. Dubious knowledge that is paired (like earlier examples of a resistance/immunity and corresponding weakness, only one of which is true) is unintuitively easier to create on the fly than two unrelated facts which both sound convincing while not being unduly dangerous.

3. 90% of player questions will be discerning the lowest and highest saves, weaknesses and resistances/immunities, notable abilities in combat, and relative level/threat rating. If you develop a framework for answering each dubiously, you’ll be well equipped in the actual moment.

4. There is an extraneous “not” in the last sentences of the feat - telling the player something is important or distinctive but not why is another easy tool to offer stuff on the fly. So you could say Lightning is very important but not why (it quickens the enemy, they are immune, it slows them, or maybe it’s a weakness, etc).

This thread was wildly helpful, and exactly what my DM needs. I compiled the majority of these suggestions into a printable PDF, available here:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1JGlspI6s_RmqXFNlKTjNbZiCUUcWFUAA/view?usp= sharing

I also posted it on Reddit:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder2e/comments/1id1yg2/recalling_dubious_kn owledge/

All credit goes to you guys for the excellent ideas. I am willing to take the post down if there are objections, I just thought it might be useful to other DMs as well. Thank you very much.