Knowledge (local)

[khul]

There is already a thread concerning this knowledge, but I would like to propose our solution that we have playtested for a while now and it works very well.

Ranks in Knowledge (local) would enable your character to use knowledge skills untrained in a specific location (great city, smaller country, barony/province, coast... whatever DM decides that is logical whole). Further, for each five ranks in Kn(local) trained characters would get +1 on the appropriate knowledge checks.

Example:
If Roger Wilco has knowledge (Local) for the Cursed valley (estranged part of a large kingdom) he can try his local knowledge check to see if he would recognize heraldry of local houses (nob&roy), remember the history of the valley (history), tell about local temperatures and terrain (geography), even know something about vampires that haunted the valley 30 years ago (religion), so on.

Roger has studied history for some time now and after a while he became a teacher (Kn(Hist): +6). He now knows a bit more about the history of the valley than his even-leveled colleagues from the great city because he has +2 on history checks due to his kn(Local): +7.

This check can only be allowed by DM for a character to know something from other knowledge skills that is specially tied to the appropriate locale. Other than these conditions it cannot be used to simulate other knowledge skills.

1-5 +1
6-10 +2
11-15 +3
16-20 +4

thanks.

[JoelF847]

I like the basic concept, but would probably execute it differently. I think that simply allowing a knowledge (local) check in place of the other knowledge check (history, nobility, etc.) would be a lot easier and would pass my sense-check of not seeming wrong in any way.

However, I'd probably limit which knowledge skills could be used - maybe only geography, history, nature, nobility, achitecture, and religion (but only to know about faiths in the city, not to know about undead abilities.)

[khul]

We think that the goal is to make all skills equally desirable (like the Pathfinder did with base classes :) ). In my experience local knowledge is very low priority skill for ranking and characters use it rarely. Before our revision it was used for npc's or pc's solely for roleplay purposes. And it should be used that way, but it should mean something, it should give visible benefits. It would prove very useful for local-based adventures or campaigns.

thanks for your feedback.