The Pathfinder series looks great, congratulations on continuing to produce very organized, intriguing and exciting adventures. “Burnt Offerings” will surely whet my player’s appetite for the continuation of this newest drama and I anticipate many hours of play and fun.
As you are open to suggestions for improving your products, might I suggest you add Knowledge checks to your bestiary entries? This will make overly prepared and meticulous DM’s, such as myself, ready to answer the anticipatory query:
Player: “Do I recognize or have I heard of this creature during my studies or travels?”
DM: “You may have, make a Knowledge (Nature, Religion, Undead…etc) roll.
Those DC entries (such as those found in Monster Manual 4 & 5 and among the Ecology articles) add a wonderful flavor to all classes. Druid and ranger characters especially become more (game) worldly, and I like to let clerics and paladins also shine with Knowledge (Religion/Undead) for those variant undead monsters that always tend to manifest.
Thank you for your attention.
Creative Director
|
Early in the design of the Bestiary, we had Knowledge check sections, but in the end I decided to take them away and replace that quarter page of space with more information. Why?
Because those knowledge check tables are a little dangerous and wasteful.
Dangerous, because they quantify what you can and can't learn about a monster. It's better, I think, to leave what a PC learns to the GM's discretion. The basic rule of thumb is that by making a 10 + the monster's CR DC check, you get the name and basic role of the monster. Every 5 points above that, you learn a little bit more. What you learn should be related to what the player asks about, I think. Furthermore, this system is kind of broken. Slavish devotion to it means that a super rare CR 2 fey from the moon is a simple DC to learn all about, whereas for legendary monstrers like the Tarrasque, the check is ridiculously high even though these monsters are truly legendary and EVERYONE seems to have heard about them. Frankly, using Knowledge checks for monsters is a bit awkward and clumsy in the rules currently, and by not printing knowledge check tables in Pathfinder, we're doing our best to not draw attention to clunky awkward rules, thereby leaving them in the domain of individual GM's comfort to house rule as they will.
Wasteful, because they just parrot information we just gave you, often on the same page. With each new monster in Pathfinder having only two pages (or in some cases, only one) to get what we want to say about it across, spending a quarter of a page repeating the information seems almost criminal. Take the Sandpoint Devil for example. If we'd included a knowledge check for it, we would have had to cut the "Facts" sidebar, and would have lost all sorts of fun in-game lore. Or the Attic Whisperer: we would have lost that creepy, flavorful nursery rhyme.
Anyway, them's basically my reasons for not including a knowldedge check table. I hope you aren't too disenheartened by the loss of the tables, and hopefully you'll agree that it's better to load up the new monsters with new stuff rather than repetition. I do agree that allowing characters with ranks in Knowledge to learn more about monsters adds a lot of value to those skills, particularly ones like Dungeoneering that have little other use in game. I just don't want to spend valuable page space in the bestiary to do so.
Disenchanted? Actually, no more like thrilled. The basic rule of thumb rule actually makes the monsters more mysterious and legendary. Is this a standard rule suggestion or something that is new? I am unaware of this ruling, being somewhat of a 3.5 neophyte.
I can easily live without Knowledge checks and implement this ruling with little ease. Being that I am a bit meticulous, I have already begun to create my own checks utilizing the monster's individual descriptions. Having this under my control, I can make the descriptions as terrifying as possible with regard to say the Sandpoint Devil and even the Attic Whisperer.
Truly, thanks for the quick response and an alternative method to implement Knowledge checks. Another fine reason Paizo is superb, you hear our suggestions and offer suitable and ingenious alternatives.
A devoted consumer.
Disenchanted? Actually, no more like thrilled. The basic rule of thumb rule actually makes the monsters more mysterious and legendary. Is this a standard rule suggestion or something that is new? I am unaware of this ruling, being somewhat of a 3.5 neophyte.
This is covered on page 78 of the 3.5 Player's Handbook, although there it uses the creatures HD instead of CR (I've found it's one of the more overlooked aspects of the Knowledge skills).
I do agree with James that the current system is a good bit unrealistic. For example, a character without Knowledge (Nature) can't identify a dog (a DC11 check; untrained, you're limited to DC10 checks or less).
One of the rare bad 2E to 3E/3.5E decisions was removing the Frequency stat. That would have made a great variable for Knowledge checks - say DC +0 for Common, +5 for Uncommon, +10 for Rare, +15 for Very Rare, and +5 for Unique (the Tarrasque example James gave explains this one). Drop the base DC to 5 to allow the average man to be able to identify the livestock and working animals on his farm.
, because they just parrot information we just gave you,
The Devil you say!?!
I do agree with James that the current system is a good bit unrealistic. For example, a character without Knowledge (Nature) can't identify a dog (a DC11 check; untrained, you're limited to DC10 checks or less).One of the rare bad 2E to 3E/3.5E decisions was removing the Frequency stat. That would have made a great variable for Knowledge checks - say DC +0 for Common, +5 for Uncommon, +10 for Rare, +15 for Very Rare, and +5 for Unique (the Tarrasque example James gave explains this one). Drop the base DC to 5 to allow the average man to be able to identify the livestock and working animals on his farm.
I was so sad to see those Frequency statistics missing! I'm glad to find there was someone else! I had long ago forgotten about it, but you just reminded me...
*goes off to look at his AD&D 2nd Edition Monstrous Manual*
You could also expand this a bit to factor in that certain types of creatures are more well known by the general populace than others. Your average folk might be well versed in Animals and Humanoids (-2 DC), but they probably aren't familiar with the difference between a Black Dragon and a Wyvern (+1 DC), and would likely know little to nothing of Aberrations and Outsiders (+2 DC).
I used to love the "Frequency" stat, too, but then I started running more than one homebrew campaign. In campaign "A," I wanted goblins Rare, to reflect humans decimating them in war. In campaign "B" I wanted them Common. I didn't want them to exist at all in Campaign "C." And in Gehenna, I wanted fiendish goblins to be Ubiquitous. One stat couldn't really accomplish all that.
