Zapp wrote:
The Raven Black wrote:
Confronting an enemy and discovering early on that it has weaknesses but you are not equipped to take advantage of them is IMO a very clear clue that retreating now and coming back later with the proper preparations done is the way to go.
Except for a very small subset of monsters and encounters, the fact is that you can always brute force your way through these weaknesses.
Published adventures are 99.9% written in such a way that WITHOUT knowledge you get a tense challenging difficult fight... and WITH knowledge you get a comfortable pushover completely winning fight.
But since the game is about exciting combats (with a thin layer of story wrapped around it) what is meant as a reward is actually a punishment.
I dare anyone to find an official encounter where the writers rely on the RK subsystem to provide hints and clues to monster weaknesses where not finding them means death or defeat (and not just having to deal 10 more damage per hit or whatever).
I submit none exist, and in the few cases the monster can't be beat without proper preparation, the adventure will bend over backwards to provide the heroes with the hints they need. In fact, often the heroes will need to actively avoid getting the hints. Sometimes, the hints will be shoved into the heroes faces no matter what.
Thus I maintain the best use of the un-fixed (RAW) RK subsystem is to ignore and avoid it entirely.
Feature, not bug.
You did well to houserule it since it does not fit the style of game you enjoy.
That still does not mean the system is complete trash. It definitely has room for improvement, as I and others stated before. No need to just throw it away though.
