Bonuses to knowledge checks from sense motive?

[foolsjourney]

Hello team.

I have a PC (rogue charlatan) who's invested highly in sense motive, bluff, diplomacy... you know, the usual. Her only knowledge ranks are in local and nobility.

She's doing some investigation on a plot device she's uncovered (it's homebrew sandbox), and she's ended the session in Bernard's Bookshop with access to a set of Spectacles of Understanding.

She is trying to finding out about a Drow. She only has the name so far, but from the family name she could potentially find out where they are from, some family history and the Demon Lord they follow.

Obviously she'll be reading books from different sources- human, elven, dwarven, which while not necessarily dishonest or untrue, they'll be written from the perspective of those races.

How would you handle it? Would she have any chance of understanding the texts about Demons with zero ranks in knowledge planes or knowledge religion? Would she have any chance of picking through historical and mythical tales?

There is a cleric, a paladin and a wild mage in the party, but she is currently separated from the party so will be doing this alone.

Bernard the NPC bookshop owner is very intelligent, though socially inept and seldom sober enough to be much help for her in her quest.

Any help appreciated.

[Cpt_kirstov]

foolsjourney wrote:

Hello team.

I have a PC (rogue charlatan) who's invested highly in sense motive, bluff, diplomacy... you know, the usual. Her only knowledge ranks are in local and nobility.

She's doing some investigation on a plot device she's uncovered (it's homebrew sandbox), and she's ended the session in Bernard's Bookshop with access to a set of Spectacles of Understanding.

She is trying to finding out about a Drow. She only has the name so far, but from the family name she could potentially find out where they are from, some family history and the Demon Lord they follow.

Obviously she'll be reading books from different sources- human, elven, dwarven, which while not necessarily dishonest or untrue, they'll be written from the perspective of those races.

How would you handle it? Would she have any chance of understanding the texts about Demons with zero ranks in knowledge planes or knowledge religion? Would she have any chance of picking through historical and mythical tales?

There is a cleric, a paladin and a wild mage in the party, but she is currently separated from the party so will be doing this alone.

Bernard the NPC bookshop owner is very intelligent, though socially inept and seldom sober enough to be much help for her in her quest.

Any help appreciated.

I would get together some titles and what languages they are in....

'Myths of the Dark Ones' (Dwarven) might not be as helpful as 'Myths of the Dark Ones'(Elven), but even that would be less helpful than 'An Encyclopedia of Underdark History: the Wars Below Our Feet' (Some weird language). To be honest, I would say linguistics checks to see if you can spot turns of phrases would be more important

Also, if you have the Carrion Crown adventure path, I think there are rules in there for researching things in Libraries.

[TobiasBlues]

I would suggest for researching the information through books and whatnot, let her roll a knowledge check (perhaps with some sort of bonus due to the amount of information she has) and treat it as if she has a rank in the appropriate knowledge skill. That way she can get results higher than the usual "commonly known" information.

[foolsjourney]

Ta muchly.

I think I'll make her do some suitable rolls to see which books she finds, and then some linguistics rolls to see if she actually understands what she's reading. If she's successful in discerning information, I will give her some situational bonus ranks in the appropriate knowledge.

Thanks for the heads up on Carrion Crown too Cpt Kirstov, I shall try to get hold of it before we next game. :-)