I'm curious as this could help in building future characters. How do you personally handle putting ranks in a knowledge skill?
Do you put just a few or even just one rank in it and let your bonuses do the work?
Do you max the knowledge skill?
Just curious on how the community goes about this and why they do it that way. Thus far I've maxed out Knowledge Arcane for my wizard, but I could see stopping that to get another Knowledge skill under way.
My wizards usually max out as many knowledge skills as they can. Depending on the personality of the character, I may get less in some, or none in some, and pick up other skills.
I've rarely had the need to pick up other skills for my wizard (although I almost always pick up a perform, craft, or profession skill). Spells pick up the slack, and what I can't do with spells, I have friends or hirelings to do the rest.
Well the DC for knowledge checks is 10+monster's CR. But, you also know more about the creature for ever 5 you beat the DC so...
Personally, I would put full ranks in it. As I do with all my skills really. Better to be a master of a few skill than a jack of all trades in my opinion.
I've given this question some thought, as my current PC is a magus with a significant intelligence who at level 4 has enough skill points to cover all his "must-haves" with a couple points each level to spare.
I figure I'll continue to max those knowledges I picked up from 1st-level that I felt best suited his personality, background, and interests. Those would be Arcana and Engineering. From here on out I will start putting a single point in various knowledges just to represent random bits of information he's picked up, either tangentially in his preferred reading (a bit of knowledge religion while studying how arcane and divine magic interact, for instance,) or through reading for entertainment (a bit of dungeoneering and geography reading the adventures of a famous explorer, for instance.)
Events in the campaign may cause him to start focusing on a knowledge with serious study (perhaps planes if we start to encounter outsiders frequently) but otherwise, this is my plan.
I think it totally depends on the character. A Wizard would probably keeped Knowledge arcana maxed out with a healthy smattering of skill points in other knowledge skills here and there. Same with a Cleric with religion. A lore oracle with Focused Trance revelation with a generalist attitude might keep at least one rank in ALL skills so as to take advantage of his revelation.
Also depends on campaign/adventure if there's gonna be a heavy involvement of a particular monster type. In the Carrion Crown AP, several members of the party should probably max out knowledge (religion) in order to increase chances of knowing useful offenses/defenses undead has. Whereas the new Wrath of the Righteous AP, one definitely wants knowledge (planes) maxed out.
