Been having some issues with these lately related to the logic discontinuity and differences in how a particular GM applies them.
- Knowledge local (also nobility, geography, history though these don't come up as often) - PC is in a new place that maybe he has never even heard of. But he can roll a DC=10 knowledge local check to know who is the local sheriff or a DC=20 to learn about the local thieves guild. That seems ridiculous even to me. But then another GM will say you've never been here you don't know anything. Now it is a useless skill.
- Knowledge religion (also planes, dungeoneering, nature, and arcana) - PC can roll DC=15+CR check to learn about monsters weaknesses. How exactly is the PC supposed to know that this in particular is an advanced, feral, champion gray render with 8 levels of monk to know what abilities it has. I don't care that he rolled a 20 with a +27 skill modifier. It is a unique creature. That seems way too powerful. However, a different GM says all you can find out about it the base gray render abilities. Of course he doesn't use anything without a template and/or class levels. So it is again a virtually useless skill.
- No one ever knows the wrong information. You either know the information with absolute certainty or you know nothing. Doesn't it seem more likely (especially with the fantastical and rare) that the legends or stories you read have the wrong information rather than nothing at all. This seems like a situation where the GM should role in secret and if the role fails by a bunch "You have heard in the legends that the Slurgimeisteesh are very resistant to all but silver weapons" (though it is really DR 10/cold iron). But I've never heard of any GM doing that. And every player I've talked to said that would be cheating, unfair, mean, offensive, etc... if the GM did that.
No, I don't know how to resolve any of this. Any of you have headaches related to knowledge skill checks? What have you done?
Knowledge(local) can represent your ability to find out the scuttlebutt in any given region. I see it as a replacement for the old Gather Information skill.
Studying religion in the world of PF includes learning about the abominations created by evil gods, often in the form of stories. In the same way that any educated person in ancient Greece would know that a creature dipped in the River Styx would have a weak point wherever they were held. They would also know that a mirrored surface is the only safe way to view a Medusa.
So long as everyone agrees to a system beforehand, you can do whatever you like with failed rolls. We often say you get nothing on a failed roll. But if you fail by more than 5 you get bad information. The worse you fail, the worse the information.
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First off, remember that the knowledge skill is a measure of how much a PC has studied a particular subject, whether through actual study or personal experience...or both. It is somewhat abstract and there is a lot of room for GM fiat based on rarity.
1. Knowledge local, to me, means you have spent time studying different cities and towns. The PC has probably never been to 95% of the towns he's studied but that doesn't mean he's never heard of it. There is nothing in the skill description that requires you to have been somewhere to know stuff about it.
2. I'm sure many GMs handle this scenario differently. For me. this type of creature is rare and would be a DC 15+CR (as you have said). Now, if you make this check I, as GM, would explain that it looks more "advanced" and somewhat "feral". I may also say that it seems to favor the fighting style of the monk based on its stance. I wouldn't give away any of the monk abilities it may have though. There is no way for the PCs to know that without first-hand experience with this creature. If they met the DC for the base creature (DC10+normal CR of grey render) they would know it was a gray render. That's how I would do it anyway.
3. Giving out bad/wrong information for a knowledge check would severely cripple the skill and is against what the skill is intended for. First, you need to be trained in the skill to even use it (past DC 10). Second, there are so many of them that most characters will only have a couple that they specialize in anyway.
Is this specific to one GM you are talking about? If so, it seems like you'd be better off discussing this with them and voicing your concerns.
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Been having some issues with these lately related to the logic discontinuity and differences in how a particular GM applies them.
Okay, let's hear 'em.
Knowledge local (also nobility, geography, history though these don't come up as often) - PC is in a new place that maybe he has never even heard of. But he can roll a DC=10 knowledge local check to know who is the local sheriff or a DC=20 to learn about the local thieves guild. That seems ridiculous even to me. But then another GM will say you've never been here you don't know anything. Now it is a useless skill.
Well, first I'd like to note that Knowledge (Local) is also the Knowledge skill for monster knowledge about humanoids, so that puts it into the second category as well. That said...it's a poorly named skill. What it really represents is knowledge about people and the civilized world in general. A guy with sky-high Knowledge (Local) is the one who knows the name of every every city in the Inner Sea and every major crime boss in all of them, not just the name of his home city and the nightlife there. And is similarly well informed on a lot of other subjects dealing with the basics of life and society, such as different countries' laws (though probably not details of governmental politics, which are more Knowledge - Nobility). It's also, as mentioned, a skill you can use to effectively gather information, which helps explain this.
Another way to look at it is that, as a monster knowledge skill, it tells you how humanoids and humanoid society works, making it somewhere between a psychology skill and anthropology skill, meaning that your character may not know the name of the local crime boss...but he knows where crime bosses tend to live and exactly where to go to find out that kind of information in more detail. He knows what kind of secrets powerful people hold, and can guess with eerie accuracy after hearing only a bit about one which they are hiding. All that kind of thing. Thought of this way, a lot of what Sherlock Holmes does with the classic 'Sherlock Scan' is probably just applied Knowledge (Local)...though his actual investigations are more Perception and Sense Motive.
Knowledge religion (also planes, dungeoneering, nature, and arcana) - PC can roll DC=15+CR check to learn about monsters weaknesses. How exactly is the PC supposed to know that this in particular is an advanced, feral, champion gray render with 8 levels of monk to know what abilities it has. I don't care that he rolled a 20 with a +27 skill modifier. It is a unique creature. That seems way too powerful. However, a different GM says all you can find out about it the base gray render abilities. Of course he doesn't use anything without a template and/or class levels. So it is again a virtually useless skill.
Again, these skills give in-depth knowledge about the creature in question. An advanced, feral, champion Grey Render is almost certainly not going to look like a normal grey render, nor will one who's a Monk move or act like a normal one. All those divergences from the norm are potentially obvious to someone with the skill who makes their Knowledge check.
Bear in mind also how Monster Knowledge checks actually work. If the creature in question is CR 17 (I'm not doing the math, this number is arbitrary) your DC is 32, and getting a 47 means you get 4 bits of useful information about the creature, not a full stat rundown or anything. That could easily be:
"This is a Grey Render, they are usually solitary predators, just intelligent enough to be able to speak, with most speaking Giant. Most are relatively peaceful unless provoked, and usually have a herd of herbivores they protect viciously. They're very nasty in melee combat, but have no particular defenses against spells. They are also notably and unusually good at destroying objects. This one in particular seems larger and more savage than usual and thus likely more dangerous, and, as a separate issue, it moves in a strangely studied manner."
That's actually debatably six or eight pieces of information, there, and nothing a sufficiently skilled observer couldn't perceive. And I can add a couple more in pretty readily, too.
No one ever knows the wrong information. You either know the information with absolute certainty or you know nothing. Doesn't it seem more likely (especially with the fantastical and rare) that the legends or stories you read have the wrong information rather than nothing at all. This seems like a situation where the GM should role in secret and if the role fails by a bunch "You have heard in the legends that the Slurgimeisteesh are very resistant to all but silver weapons" (though it is really DR 10/cold iron). But I've never heard of any GM doing that. And every player I've talked to said that would be cheating, unfair, mean, offensive, etc... if the GM did that.
Honestly? It's only unfair if you don't warn them about it first...as long as you do it on a failed roll. A successful roll should never be worse than a failed one (which wrong information is)...but few players will object if you tell them, prior to starting a game (not game session, a new game) "If you fail a Knowledge roll by 5 or more, you'll not only know nothing, but get incorrect information." Few will object to that, and if you don't trust them not to metagame you can take over Monster Knowledge rolls just like you presumably have Perception rolls. It's a House Rule, but a perfectly reasonable one.
No, I don't know how to resolve any of this. Any of you have headaches related to knowledge skill checks? What have you done?
Nah, I generally feel they work fine and make Knowledgeable characters feel useful and important, without notably breaking the game, which is a good place for them to be.
Deadman hits everything right on the head. I'd just add in something else about knowledge checks that I use on a regular basis. If it's knowledge that is necessary, or is going to help push the PCs along, I allow the skill check to determine how long it takes for them to ferret out the info.
Example: If they absolutely need to find information out about the artifact they just found, and it's not just because they want to know what it does, I'll have them roll their KS checks. The lower the roll, the longer it takes to get the info. A fumble may mean it takes days to research the info, while a critical success may mean that the they remember something from their past that pushes them directly to the right information, and it only takes minutes or hours. In this manner they receive the information that's necessary, but time is the scale. You could also in the case of the artifact throw in information on what it can do with a highly successful roll.
I don't have trouble with KS, and my players actually take the skills, since they find they come in useful. I do run a gameworld of my own creation, so KSes also allow the players to learn more about the world too. If you use the KSes to provide flavor to an interesting setting, it'll engage your players more too.
Knowledge(local) can represent your ability to find out the scuttlebutt in any given region. I see it as a replacement for the old Gather Information skill....
That seems reasonable. I've always seen people do that with a diplomacy check. Knowledge Local was always used for what you somehow know.
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1. Knowledge local, to me, means you have spent time studying different cities and towns. The PC has probably never been to 95% of the towns he's studied but that doesn't mean he's never heard of it. There is nothing in the skill description that requires you to have been somewhere to know stuff about it...
The specific 2 examples I was thinking about were ones that there is no reasonable way the PC's could have studied. The first was the group was sucked into another world-ish place. Think how people got pulled into Ravenloft in 3.x games. The other was the group going to an island that had been closed off from the rest of the world for centuries and was just recently rediscovered. They were the second group to arrive (just shortly after the re-discoverers) there is nothing for them to have learned from. The whole point of the adventure was learning about this new place that no one knows anything about.
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That seems reasonable. I've always seen people do that with a diplomacy check. Knowledge Local was always used for what you somehow know.
It's actually pretty explicit that you can use either of those skills for that. Check out the Affable Trait, which grants both as Class Skills and a +2 when using either to do this.
The specific 2 examples I was thinking about were ones that there is no reasonable way the PC's could have studied. The first was the group was sucked into another world-ish place. Think how people got pulled into Ravenloft in 3.x games. The other was the group going to an island that had been closed off from the rest of the world for centuries and was just recently rediscovered. They were the second group to arrive (just shortly after the re-discoverers) there is nothing for them to have learned from. The whole point of the adventure was learning about this new place that no one knows anything about.
It's perfectly legitimate to entirely ban the use of just about any appropriate skill in cases like this. Until they're familiar with the area, of course.