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Dealt with in the Knowledge skill description.
"* Arcana (constructs, dragons, magical beasts)
* Dungeoneering (aberrations, oozes)
* Local (humanoids)
* Nature (animals, fey, giants, monstrous humanoids, plants, vermin)
* Religion (undead)
* The planes (outsiders, elementals)
In many cases, you can use this skill to identify monsters and their special powers or vulnerabilities. In general, the DC of such a check equals 10 + the monster’s HD. A successful check allows you to remember a bit of useful information about that monster."
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What would be nice is if the DC=10+CR, as HD don't scale with CR especially well, and it seems silly that its harder to know something about a level-appropriate Monstrous Scorpion than it is some weird aberration, outsider, or undead creature.
Seconded. More dangerous critters are assumed to be rarer and they leave fewer survivors to tell the story.
Dealt with in the Knowledge skill description.
I think what he's saying is it would be useful to find that in the monster description. All it would take is a word or two. e.g.:
Iron GolemKnowledge skill: Arcana
Just something to remind me what critters are based on. For a couple of years now, I've been running Humanoids and Giants under Knowledge (local), blissfully unaware (until I noticed it a couple of weeks ago) that they are covered under Nature. I just figured Local would cover "creatures not necessarily magical who naturally live in the local area"... who figured?
I would like to see this in the knowledges as well as there monster manual entries
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I partially agree with Meep on this. Does it make sense to know more about the infant form of a dragon than its adult form? Theoretically, few people would know about its child stages, but it's easier to know about those type than about the full-grown adults that would be more commonly (on the relative scale) encountered.
The issue lies in the question of where this information is coming from.
Does this knowledge come from adventurers who have slain dragons? Then it's more likely to be pertinent to adult forms. Does this knowledge come from experts who have done field work? Then, perhaps, it's more likely to be pertinent to juveniles, who are correspondingly less dangerous than their parents. Maybe this is knowledge coming from druids who have befriended and allied with dragons?
On top of that, all of these sources are going to be biased. It's exceedingly less likely to find out about the beautiful and intricate mating flights of the White Dragon from adventurers or experts studying juveniles than from druids; on the other hand, the druid is less likely to know that red dragons have glass jaws and a simple black arrow passed down from father to son has a better than average chance of bringing an ancient red down in one shot.
So, let's say that the Knowledge check applies to ALL of these sources. In that case, the DC is based on entirely on how difficult it would be to obtain this information, regardless of source. Any jackass with a parka and binoculars can see the mating flight if they're patient; DC 10! Perhaps only Bard of Lake-Town knows the secret of one-shotting an enraged Ancient Red, and he, like all of the Lake-Men, is close-mouthed and chooses his confidants carefully; DC 40!
Basing it on hit dice or challenge rating opens all sorts of cans of worms. Why should it be easier to know things about the obscure and extraplanar Tojanida (CR5) than the majestic and common as mud Elephant (CR7)? Does the Dragon Turtle's 12 HD make it a simpler subject of study than the 14 HD Frost Giant?
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The issue lies in the question of where this information is coming from.
Does this knowledge come from adventurers who have slain dragons? Then it's more likely to be pertinent to adult forms. Does this knowledge come from experts who have done field work? Then, perhaps, it's more likely to be pertinent to juveniles, who are correspondingly less dangerous than their parents. Maybe this is knowledge coming from druids who have befriended and allied with dragons?
I think you may be collapsing the various Knowledge skills. Dragons and dragon turtles are covered by Knowledge (arcana), tojanidas by Knowledge (the planes) and elephants by Knowledge (nature). This moderates the odd effects you mention.
Also, the source of the knowledge is glossed over in the core rules. You spend the skill points, you get the ranks and the bonus to the roll.
Also, the SRD states that "In general, the DC of such a check equals 10 + the monster’s HD"
I see this as an invitation to add modifiers based on the ecology of the critter and its place in the world. Knowledge checks for small and reclusive creatures (including juveniles) are harder than for larger and common creatures, especially if the latter are not very aggressive.
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I think you may be collapsing the various Knowledge skills. Dragons and dragon turtles are covered by Knowledge (arcana), tojanidas by Knowledge (the planes) and elephants by Knowledge (nature). This moderates the odd effects you mention.
For the purposes of my example, I was collapsing them. It's still a more difficult check to know about elephants than tojanidas, regardless of what skills you use.
Also, the source of the knowledge is glossed over in the core rules. You spend the skill points, you get the ranks and the bonus to the roll.
Which was precisely my point, actually. Which lead into:
Also, the SRD states that "In general, the DC of such a check equals 10 + the monster’s HD"
It's a stupid generality. We know less about dogs than mice? (Which I assume have a fractional hit die; even if not, you get my point) There should be a set of guidelines based on the obscurity of the information, with, perhaps, a modifier based on the type of creature.
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My biggest probelm with the Knowledge checks is determining what amount of information to give at each "level" of success. For example, in RotRL, when the time came to fight
I was particularly pleased with the charts in the giant writeup in PF #4 that listed specific information at various Knowledge DCs, and I would very much appreciate that sort of thing in the monster writeups themselves.
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This has nothing to do with the game as a simulation. Trying to handle creatures based on some concept of rarity and likelihood of the information being known would require individual tables for each monster, and that's just silly and a lot of work.
I'm not a game designer, and I don't even play one on TV, but:
DC 10 - Name of creature
DC 15 - General Ecology - diet, activity cycle, habitat
DC 20 - Combat knowledge - known weaknesses, exploitable behaviors
DC 25 - Specific knowledge - statistical outliers, rare variations
DC 30 - Intimate Knowledge - religious secrets, obscure weaknesses
Aberrations add, say, +5 to the DC, Animals -5, and so on.
One table that can go at the beginning of the Monster Manual, and none of this crap where the more dangerous something is, the less likely anyone is to know anything about it, or where the bigger something is, the harder it is to remember what it's called.
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I'm pretty flexible on which knowledges work for the monster types. For example, a Lich is undead, and therefore would normally require a Knowledge Religion check. But Because a ton of liches are high level arcane casters, I'd let the wizard player in my campaign make a Knowledge Arcane check - perhaps with a higher DC.
Another example of this type of crossover would be certain types of outsiders. I imagine a Cleric of Drauga, a deity who is known to be "The Father of Demons" could probably use Knowledge Religion to get info on demons, rather than having to rely on Knowledge Planes.
So you're being flexible to keep the story going forward and to avoid the odd effects of fairly vague rules. If you're running a game in Europe at some point, I'd love to join. :-)
A few years back I rolled a '1' on a knowledge check for vampires and ended up stuffing his mouth with parsley to prevent it returning. of course every player knew i'd fumbled, but since IC I was the wizard they had to take my word for it...."Of course you don't use garlic, thats a common misconception based on a garlic and herb crouton defeating the mighty vampire olav the old..." [/Reminisce]
Anyhow, although DC10+ CR is a reasonable base-line for SA's and SD's, i'd suggest that you leave a bit of GM discretion by stating that for truly rare creatures the DC could be as high as 20 +CR, whereas for truly common creatures the DC could be as low as 0+CR. Make it clear that the definition of rare / common is setting specific and so can be ignored by a GM if he wants
I'm not a game designer, and I don't even play one on TV, but:DC 10 - Name of creature
DC 15 - General Ecology - diet, activity cycle, habitat
DC 20 - Combat knowledge - known weaknesses, exploitable behaviors
DC 25 - Specific knowledge - statistical outliers, rare variations
DC 30 - Intimate Knowledge - religious secrets, obscure weaknessesAberrations add, say, +5 to the DC, Animals -5, and so on.
One table that can go at the beginning of the Monster Manual, and none of this crap where the more dangerous something is, the less likely anyone is to know anything about it, or where the bigger something is, the harder it is to remember what it's called.
While I understand what you're saying, you're suggesting that someone would recognize a dog, a kobold, a mind flayer, and the terrasque all equally well. While as a DM we can abjucate accordingly, it fits better to scale with HD or CR. I personally have been using CR for the exact reasons given above- "tank" creatures have much more HD compared to CR, where "controllers" like mind flayers have much less HD compared to CR but have more odd abilities to remember.
On the other hand, let me open another can of worms here- Let's say you're facing a 9th level orc fighter. Is it harder to identify this orc as an orc than the 1st level warrior guards? Is it more difficult to identify a 20th level wizard lich than the basic 11th level kind? Obviously it shouldn't be, but technically it is. While it's easy to ignore the character levels when determining knowledge checks, templates become slightly more complex. Liches have a minimum level to become a lich and you could use this, but it's not neccessarily accurate. And vampires need 4HD to become a full vampire and not just a spawn, and then gain a +2 to CR but HD just change to D12s. If you have a troll vampire, what do you learn from what knowledge check?
My suggestion is this:
DC 10+CR= Identify the creature and basic information on the creature. It also reveals the creature's type and if requested basic information on that creature type (humanoids have D8 HD, etc)
DC 15+CR= Common tactics employed by the creature and any offensive abilities poseessed (spell-like abilities of devils, etc)
DC 20+CR= weaknesses the creature has (liches have DR vs silver magic weapons, etc)
DC 25+CR= extremely rare information about the creature.
Also, we need to establish other types of information for other purposes- what do you learn from a knowledge (religion) check to identify religous information. But obviously that is a separate topic.
I would definatley like to see this included in the Monster Stat block as well. Even if its listed elsewhere, its still nice to have it at your fingertips.
As an aside, it would also be kinda cool to have a single creature listed under multiple types of knowledge (which makes more sense), and simply assign different DC's (So humans could be under local and nature).
I'm also in favor of having the DC scale better - I think a well-known CR20 monster will be better understood then a CR3 monster that is from another plane (and I don't see how 'planar knowledge' would help at all for something from an alternate prime, which has nothing to do with the cosmology - like a Dragonlance critter showing up in FR).
One last thing - aberrations should get some kind of negative to the roll (a harder DC) because by their very definition, they are "unlike anything else" - for instance, no two beholders are exactly alike (unless they are from the same hive). The one in the DMG is just one variant - it has always been part of the rules that a DM could change up the eyestalk powers, or even the number of eyestalks, so knowing about Beholders isn't really going to help you much in an encounter(unless your DM always runs the MM variant, which is pretty lazy).
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While I understand what you're saying, you're suggesting that someone would recognize a dog, a kobold, a mind flayer, and the terrasque all equally well.
Assuming they had Knowledge (Nature), Knowledge (Dungeoneering), and whatever the appropriate knowledges for Kobolds and Terrasques are, all at equal ranks, yes. Knowledge skills are incredibly abstracted in this game, and yes, I don't have ANY problems with someone with 4 ranks in Knowledge (Dungeoneering) having the same chance to know what an Illithid is as a Gelatinous Cube.
By having a flat "Meet this DC, get this knowledge" table, applicable to *all* monsters it doesn't matter if it's got class levels, advanced hit dice, or albinism. You meet the DC, you get the knowledge. As I said, aberrations are weird and supposedly rare, so up their DC. Common animals are just that, common, so lower their DC.
But cappadocius, you say, what about an Eskimo ranger making his knowledge (nature) check to identify an elephant! To which I reply, thanks for spelling my name right, and then, a GM has every right to say "you've never seen or heard of this thing in your life!" or to handwave and say, "Oh, yes, you heard about this from a shipwrecked pirate before you set him adrift on an ice floe as polar bear bait!"
Basing the DC of the knowledge check on HD or CR just leads to knowing all sorts of things about sharks, until you meet a big one, and then you forget how to spell shark.
Setting the DC by HD alone makes absolutely no sense.
Imagine the obscurely unique but frail creature called the Xyxlbyx. It has one hit die. So basically everyone with a rank in the appropriate knowledge skill knows everything there is to know about the poor guy, even though he's the only of his kind, and doesn't like to leave home.
On the other hand, next to nobody knows what this gargantuan flying red reptile creature might be because it has loads of hit dice...
This rule really needs some redesign.
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Our wishes are the designers' command. :-)
Alpha 3, p. 60
Knowledge (Arcana) (Int; Trained Only)
[...]
Knowledge (arcana) can be used for a numberof additional tasks as well.
[...]
Identify monster abilities and weaknesses
10 + monster’s CR
With a successful check, you can also identify certain monsters, their abilities, weaknesses, and special powers. Success means that you learn one piece of information (usually its name and purported abilities). For every 5 points by which your check result exceeds the DC you learn another piece of information.
Our wishes are the designers' command. :-)
Identify monster abilities and weaknesses
10 + monster’s CR
This doesn't really change anything about what I said about the rule. CR and HD are roughy equivalent in this regard.
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Can you add a line in the monster stat line that says what knowledge is used to identify the creature? With dc for it to tell if is advanced, elite, etc.
Maybe in a monster manual you could go into a specific table +5 dc to figure DR/, +10 special attacks. etc.
Interesting compilation of monsters and Lore DCs here.
<useless fact>(It's in a cutely named subforum called "D&D Previous Editions")</useless fact>
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One thing from previous editions I wouldn't mind seeing the return of is Monster Rarity. Remember that? Remember how some monsters were Common, Uncommon, Rare, Very Rare and Unique?
Think about how convenient that would be when trying to determine the DC of Knowledge check?
Base DC = 10 + HD
Common -10
Uncommon -5
Rare 0
Very Rare +5
Unique +10
Presto.
Too bad someone decided to remove that whole concept from the game.
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One thing from previous editions I wouldn't mind seeing the return of is Monster Rarity. Remember that? Remember how some monsters were Common, Uncommon, Rare, Very Rare and Unique?
That streamlines the whole thing big time and can also be adapted to the character's background. The elephant is Common for a Southerner but Very rare for a denizen of the frozen North.
I like that very much.
One thing from previous editions I wouldn't mind seeing the return of is Monster Rarity. Remember that? Remember how some monsters were Common, Uncommon, Rare, Very Rare and Unique?That streamlines the whole thing big time and can also be adapted to the character's background. The elephant is Common for a Southerner but Very rare for a denizen of the frozen North.
I like that very much.
Add me to the list of "approves." At first, I think the argument against it was that it was complicated for abishai (for example) to be Common on the 1st few planes of Hell, Uncommon on the lower levels, and Very Rare everywhere else. But if the rating by definition applies to the critter's home plane and climate/terrain, and we assume "very rare" everywhere else, it could work just fine.
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Monster Lore and Knowledge DCs is one of the things I always thought needed GREAT improvement with 3.5, and one of the things I think 4.0 did very right. Nothing based on HD, Rarity, or CR unfortunately (at least in the Rarity part) but the DCs are easy to use and easy to add or subtract based on rarity.
Imagine the obscurely unique but frail creature called the Xyxlbyx. It has one hit die. So basically everyone with a rank in the appropriate knowledge skill knows everything there is to know about the poor guy, even though he's the only of his kind, and doesn't like to leave home.
This is both the funniest and the best counterexample I've seen. You win.
I totally agree that rarity rules are the answer. That way dragon hatchlings (or Xyxlbyx) who nobody ever sees, could prevent becoming common knowledge, but you preserve the basic elegance of the mechanic.
Plus that way if DMs wanted to make goblins super rare and intellect devourers a common threat, it would be a simple affair of adding a +10 to a DC here and subtracting 10 from there.
Easy Peasy.