.... This is rediculous. How can I be confused by something so simple?
So, my character has studied Giants and finds them fascinating. I wanted to take the appropriate Knowledge skill to reflect that.
Am I supposed to take Knowledge (Local) or Knowledge (Nature)?
Knowledge (Nature) specifically mentions Giants in the description.
Knowledge (Local) pertains to Humanoids, which Giants are.
Is either one acceptable? It really seems odd that Giants would be the only creatures in all of Pathfinder that had 2 Knowledge skills that apply to them, but that seems to be the case?
Officially, it should be local (for them being Humanoids).
I think that the entry in Nature is a relic from 3.5, where they were classified as Monstrous Humanoids... which use Nature, rather than Local.
Where are you looking? I don't see it in the PRD.
Copy/paste dev errors make me a sad panda.
Just do what I do: Get rid of the "subtypes are their own type" nonsense.
"Humanoids" covers your Humans, Dwarves, Elves, etc.
"Monstrous Humanoids" covers your Goblins, Giants, Orcs, etc.
It's easier to manage and your Ranger players will love you for it.
|
Copy/paste dev errors make me a sad panda.
Just do what I do: Get rid of the "subtypes are their own type" nonsense.
"Humanoids" covers your Humans, Dwarves, Elves, etc.
"Monstrous Humanoids" covers your Goblins, Giants, Orcs, etc.It's easier to manage and your Ranger players will love you for it.
That would make my Ranger sad.
Either your homebrew is more inclusive than mine, or you're not thinking "retroactive change" hard enough. :)
Knowledge: Giants. You know whatever you want about giants.
| 5 people marked this as a favorite. |
I suppose the morale of the story is to use the official PRD when possible.
I suppose, but I find the pSRD to be better organized and easier to use. thanks =p
No offense to the d20PFSRD folks but I always use the Paizo PRD as I have run into a few errors like this. That and it seems that they put any and all 3rd party stuff on there and my players are constantly trying to slip it past me. Like Are said "use the official PRD when possible."
Then again to each his own so...
Side question on Knowledge (Local), I had a DM once say that I needed a "new" Knowledge (Local) for each new locale that we visited. I thought this was silly as not only was it not supported in the rules, but it made for a very cumbersome and odd way to allocate skill ranks.
Knowledge (Local), other than just suffering from maybe a poor word choice for it's descriptor, is just a catch all for legends, personalities, laws, customs, tradition, and humanoids and it is not specific to each locale. Correct?
Or is there a Knowledge (Local) in Korvosa and another one in the Shackles, etc?
Side question on Knowledge (Local), I had a DM once say that I needed a "new" Knowledge (Local) for each new locale that we visited. I thought this was silly as not only was it not supported in the rules, but it made for a very cumbersome and odd way to allocate skill ranks.
Knowledge (Local), other than just suffering from maybe a poor word choice for it's descriptor, is just a catch all for legends, personalities, laws, customs, tradition, and humanoids and it is not specific to each locale. Correct?
Or is there a Knowledge (Local) in Korvosa and another one in the Shackles, etc?
Some settings use that variation; In Forgotten Realms, for instance, you had to designate a specific region for each rank in knowledge (local).
But that's not the normal rule, and the Golarion setting doesn't use that form of regional local knowledge.
lol, I've run into the same problem countless times Hendelbolaf.
In my case the GM was aware of the rules and specifically house-ruled so you needed different Knowledge (locals) for different locations. His game, so his call.
However, officially you are correct. It's poorly named, but there's no such thing as Knowledge (Local - Absolom) or Knowledge (Local -Korvosa). Knowledge (Local) is not tied to a specific location, other than the fact I suppose that it generally pertains to the denizens of the material plane.
Side question on Knowledge (Local), I had a DM once say that I needed a "new" Knowledge (Local) for each new locale that we visited. I thought this was silly as not only was it not supported in the rules, but it made for a very cumbersome and odd way to allocate skill ranks.
Knowledge (Local), other than just suffering from maybe a poor word choice for it's descriptor, is just a catch all for legends, personalities, laws, customs, tradition, and humanoids and it is not specific to each locale. Correct?
Or is there a Knowledge (Local) in Korvosa and another one in the Shackles, etc?
By default, Knowledge(Local) covers all areas. There aren't individual Knowledge(Local) skills.
However, some campaign setting could change this. In 3.5 Forgotten Realms, for instance, each individual area does have its own Knowledge(Local) skill. The same could apply to other skills. You could have Knowledge(Sembian History) and Knowledge (Sword Coast history).
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Side question on Knowledge (Local), I had a DM once say that I needed a "new" Knowledge (Local) for each new locale that we visited. I thought this was silly as not only was it not supported in the rules, but it made for a very cumbersome and odd way to allocate skill ranks.Knowledge (Local), other than just suffering from maybe a poor word choice for it's descriptor, is just a catch all for legends, personalities, laws, customs, tradition, and humanoids and it is not specific to each locale. Correct?
I think Kn(local) is just a badly designed skill. The problem, of course, is that "laws, customs, traditions" and whatnot are, in fact, specific to each locale. Just try to buy beer in Pennsylvania or Utah and you'll see what I mean.
The designers of Pathfinder decided to deal with this problem by pretending it doesn't exist, so if you have Kn(local), you know how to buy a beer not only in Pennsylvania, but also in London or Riyadh.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Orfamay Quest:
I don't have a direct argument against that point, although I will bring up something that relates that I saw when I was searching the forums trying to find the answer to this before I just made a new topic.
Another poster pointed out that it's simply the case that this is more *noticeable* with Knowledge (Local), it's easy for this to strike us as odd that beer-buying in wildly different civilizations ought to be covered by the same skill.
But this is actually no different then every other knowledge skill in the game. Take Knowledge (Nature) as an example. A high Knowledge (Nature) check allows you to know not only the what months are Tornado Season in Kansas, but also the typical daylight hours at the North Pole during July, when the rains are coming in the Amazon rainforest, and the relative frequency of earthquakes in Taiwan.
To make a mirror argument, "plants, seasonal cycles, and weather" are in fact specific to each locale, and can vary widely by location.
Orfamay Quest:
I don't have a direct argument against that point, although I will bring up something that relates that I saw when I was searching the forums trying to find the answer to this before I just made a new topic.
Another poster pointed out that it's simply the case that this is more *noticeable* with Knowledge (Local), it's easy for this to strike us as odd that beer-buying in wildly different civilizations ought to be covered by the same skill.
But this is actually no different then every other knowledge skill in the game. Take Knowledge (Nature) as an example. A high Knowledge (Nature) check allows you to know not only the what months are Tornado Season in Kansas, but also the typical daylight hours at the North Pole during July, when the rains are coming in the Amazon rainforest, and the relative frequency of earthquakes in Taiwan.
To make a mirror argument, "plants, seasonal cycles, and weather" are in fact specific to each locale, and can vary widely by location.
I agree and we need to just remember that it is a game mechanic and not meant to emulate the real world perfectly. I think the word Local was a bad choice. I would prefer Knowledge (Humanoid) with the understanding that it is many aspects of humanoid culture not already associated with a different skill like (Nobility) or (Religion) for example.
The only time I house-ruled to have 'local' Knowledge(local) ranks, I gave out a free rank each level based on where you were for that level (and you could spend more points/ranks to get more for a specific place).
That was far too cumbersome, FYI.
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
If I was looking to houserule something I would say that each rank in the Knowledge local skill gave access to another area. So 1 rank, you know Absalom. 2 ranks Absalom and Varisia. I would just allow checks for different regions to use the total of Knowledge local ranks.
If regional knowledge is am issue, you could easily increase the DC by 5 until the character has succeeded on a DC 20 gather information check.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I usually just don't allow a roll on Kn(Local) for any places the PC has not been before, because they don't know anything about the locale. On the other hand, I'll allow a Kn(History) check in case they've heard any historical information about them.
If the Player takes time to visit a library or find people from the area before they go, then they get a Kn(Local) check at a higher DC until they've been there awhile and learned enough for a normal check. It avoids the issue with multiple skills by location, but still prevents someone from making a Kn(Local) check when they find themselves crash landed on a deserted island.
Play it how you want of course, but that doesn't make a lot of sense to me. I can know plenty of stuff about the customs and culture of Berlin without ever having actually been there.
Play it how you want of course, but that doesn't make a lot of sense to me. I can know plenty of stuff about the customs and culture of Berlin without ever having actually been there.
And how did you learn plenty about the culture of Berlin and it's customs?
Internet : Don't exist
Books : No global distribution system, what royal library do you have access to? Is there a 'book of Berlin' on your character sheet?
Talking to People : (A), Why are you asking about places you never heard of that are on the opposite side of the world? (B) Who are you asking about these places on the opposite side of the world? (C) Do you have anything in your backstory about knowing someone from Berlin, or your ancestors came from Berlin? (D) Even if you know about Berlin, do you know about Moscow, which is close in distance but far in culture from Berlin? How about Sweden? Denmark? Austria? Does your character even know that we went from Cities to Countries? What's the difference between me upping the DC to 35 because it's so obscure from where you lived for 30 years (when you can't make a 35 on a natural 20) and me just saying 'no roll allowed'?
It was funny, I had a Champions Game awhile back. I set the game in 1981, because I had 30 years of history to play with that was set in stone, so I could tweak it, look up when disasters happened, etc.
The players became incredibly frustrated because every time they didn't nkow about something, someone would say 'I go look it up on the inter... crap... uhm, library? College library? Shoot, I sign up at the college for night classes so I can use the library.' Or, they'd say 'I look up any places that sell glassware on the inter... shoot, uhm, yellow pages and call around repeatedly?'.
What you don't understand is, you live in an Information Technology Society. We have more knowledge at our fingertips, literally, than all the people who lived in England from 1500 to 1700 combined. Think about that. You would expect a very competent cleric from a monastary in 1712 London to know about Fiji? Or Hawaii? And monks were some of the most well educated people in the world. A king probably hadn't heard of Fiji. A professional sailor might have, an import merchant might have, but he guarded that knowledge of where coconuts or whatever came from.
Also, magic.
Even if not available to all, magic fills a role in the advancement of societies throughout Golarion.
Yes it does, but there is no equivalent of 'internet spell'. Scrying doesn't get you words, just visuals. And even then, you have to be pretty high level to scry on the other side of the world, have to know about he place to scry it, and have to have a good reason to do it.
That could be an interesting thing to take into account during a campaign...
I actually wish 'monstrous' were a subtype of humanoid, along with giant, so poor humbaba from Bestiary 3 would be allowed to have the giant subtype. (Humbaba is a colossal monstrous humanoid, but giant is only a humanoid subtype.)
I guess the monstrous humanoid type is sufficiently different from the humanoid type that it isn't practical though? (d10 HD instead of d8, and corresponding difference in BAB, two good saves instead of one, differences with racial skillpoints, and more....) But couldn't that be rectified by having the 'monstrous' subtype grant the benefits?
Maybe, but that's a houserule and not part of the official books.
I am talking about Teleporting Scholars, Whispering Wind, Raucous Cancards and Scrivener's Chant.
Passing information much faster and more efficiently than was available in, say, Medieval Europe.
That still doesn't mean that knowledge of something on the other side of the world is common knowledge. It just makes it more likely that high level merchants and kings know about them. The average 1st to 10th level adventurer is ot going to be spending the gold needed for all those spells by all those high level casters. :)
Maybe, but that's a houserule and not part of the official books.
Yeah, I know. Just commenting. It's not something I use, just something I wish were the case. I think the question about which Knowledge skill to use for giants was already answered above. (Knowledge: local)
There might be laws in a given country / nation limiting or outright prohibiting the use of Scrivener's Chant by commoners...
That still doesn't mean that knowledge of something on the other side of the world is common knowledge. It just makes it more likely that high level merchants and kings know about them. The average 1st to 10th level adventurer is ot going to be spending the gold needed for all those spells by all those high level casters. :)I am talking about Teleporting Scholars, Whispering Wind, Raucous Cancards and Scrivener's Chant.
Passing information much faster and more efficiently than was available in, say, Medieval Europe.
Legend Lore is a hell of a drug.
Yes, I know Legend Lore is rather high level (bard 4, sorc/wiz 6) and has a super-long casting time measured in days, and has a 250gp material component, so it's completely impractical for casual use. But if you really really want to know something about something, it's still there.
As far as it concerns Golarion, that's what Pathfinder chapbooks are good for though. The in-setting Pathfinder Society does tend to circulate knowledge about other parts of the world as part of their function. (Of course their chapbooks are intended for members of the society only, but that shouldn't stop them from getting into general circulation from time to time.)
Yep, and I agree all the things posted can make it easier to find out about Berlin, if you are looking for information on Berlin.
What it doesn't do is make it likely that you've ever heard of Berlin unless something caused you to want to find out about Berlin. Which means that the first time someone asks you about Berlin you respond with 'Those little sausage things Dibbler sells at the city gate? Eww, don't eat those!'.
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
The flip side of that, though, is that by taking levels in Knowledge (local), you're making a point of saying, "I'm one of those people who actually goes looking for information on places like Berlin." All of the reasons you've just postulated are why you can't make the check untrained beyond DC 10 - but by putting skill ranks in, you're stipulating that your character goes beyond the hearsay level to actually gain access to resources with that kind of information. Much like taking ranks in Knowledge (arcana) means you spend time keeping up on new discoveries in magic or Knowledge (religion) means you've probably read the major holy books for your world's big faiths, Knowledge (local) means you go hunt out good sources in the community, read travelogues and the like when they show up at the local bookseller, and generally study your subject in a meaningful way.
So you're saying someone learing Knowledge(Local) learns about the entire world equally, or do they study, you know, the Local areas, and not the stuff on the other side of the world? I'd say they are studying the most relevant, to them, information they can. Or are you saying that all city counsilpersons in Podunk, AL do in depth research on how villages in Madagascar handle their sewage?
The thing with Kn(Local) and its application for your first trip to Berlin is that you already know it is a human society. Right out of the gate you are significantly more knowledgable about Berlin than you are about Menzoberranzan and you can probably make it from the Berlin central train station to your hotel without running afoul of their criminal code. You might have to make a Kn(Local DC+5) check. That same check in Menzoberranzan might have you in a much more dire situation. I think that judicious application of some DC modifiers is a reasonably elgant solution to the the challenge.
It is a game mechanic! Please do not try and interject reality into my fantasy game. I can get reality everyday, all day.
This is no different that Knowledge (History). I put some ranks in it so now I have a chance to know everything about every culture's history and that makes sense but Knowledge (Local) does not. Again, Knowledge (Local) suffers from a poor choice of words by using "local."
That being said once my characters goes from Varisia to Minkai, I can freely increase the DC of a check or require them to do some in game leg work to move the adventure forward. If, however, my game is not suited to that type of extra leg-work and such, I can just let the player roll the dice and we move on with the game.
There is no right or wrong here but Knowledge (Local) does seem in Pathfinder to be a bigger bucket of areas of knowledge and less a measure of how much you happen to know this little region.
James Jacobs on Knowledge (local)
In a rules thread, not his question thread. :)
|
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
That still doesn't mean that knowledge of something on the other side of the world is common knowledge. It just makes it more likely that high level merchants and kings know about them. The average 1st to 10th level adventurer is ot going to be spending the gold needed for all those spells by all those high level casters. :)I am talking about Teleporting Scholars, Whispering Wind, Raucous Cancards and Scrivener's Chant.
Passing information much faster and more efficiently than was available in, say, Medieval Europe.
Bards.
You know the wandering minstrels who go all over the place telling people about where they've been and what they've seen there. These guys exist for one reason and that is to function as the internet for the medieval world. Plus as an organization they are constantly sharing stories with each other to keep the information fresh and new.Anything you ever want to know about anywhere in the world you talk to a Bard and if he hasn't been there he probably has a story or two from someone who has been. That's pretty much how I've always considered the skill, you either are remembering tales and stories you've heard from all the wandering bards who sit in taverns (where EVERY adventurer hangs out) or you looked around the new town you are in until you found a Bard and picked his brain for the rules of the new location.
Fast, quick, easy and makes historical sense. Plus after all, it's just a game. Go with it.
RPG Superstar 2011 Top 32
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Knowledge(local) is poorly named for its current version. I tend to think of it more as Knowledge(people and civilization). The RAW solution to the Berlin issue is circumstance modifiers to the DC based on how well you might know the area.
I actually wish 'monstrous' were a subtype of humanoid, along with giant, so poor humbaba from Bestiary 3 would be allowed to have the giant subtype. (Humbaba is a colossal monstrous humanoid, but giant is only a humanoid subtype.)
I guess the monstrous humanoid type is sufficiently different from the humanoid type that it isn't practical though? (d10 HD instead of d8, and corresponding difference in BAB, two good saves instead of one, differences with racial skillpoints, and more....) But couldn't that be rectified by having the 'monstrous' subtype grant the benefits?
The humbaba could easily have had the giant subtype if the writers wanted it to. Just look at the Ogre Mage; it's an Outsider with the giant subtype.
I've wondered why giant isn't a subtype of monstrous humanoid. A 20 foot tall man who can call lightning storms isn't suitably "monstrous"?
Just look at the Ogre Mage; it's an Outsider with the giant subtype.
To be fair, an ogre mage is an oni, a group of Outsiders who are each based on a different humanoid subtype.
Yes, and they are that because the writers wanted them to be. So, the writers could similarly have given the humbaba that subtype if they wanted to, even if its actual type was not humanoid. That was all I was saying.
Edit: Considering the subtype itself actually does very little, I don't really see why it has been limited to humanoid-only at all. I can easily see a particularly vicious troll or giant as a monstrous humanoid, for instance (3.5 actually made a monstrous humanoid troll, because the giant type wasn't suitable for the concept).