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My previous argument about common monsters being Common and thus easy to get even untrained sort of falls apart if the Judge doesn't give out "hit skeletons with blunt weapons" and "use fire/acid on trolls" with the basic success.
The exact language is: "For every 5 points by which your check result exceeds the DC, you recall another piece of useful information."
The DC is the DC, there is not a different DC to recall more information, just different degrees of success based on the DC vs your roll.
IMO that means if the DC is 10 or less, you can still get additional information for rolling well, even if you are untrained in the skill.
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I can understand why there is the check against knowledge.
At the Stonelords table I sat at, we had two individuals with near-eidetic memory from the same home-group.
They were slowing down play during combat rounds when they'd start rattling off all the things that a given creature *might* have depending on which variant of which book of which spell of which...
Suffice to say, as an experienced player who didn't know much about PFS play at that point (and it being the second Special I'd played in) it felt raw, uncut, and... very non-immersive.
The counter, of course, is to assume that one knows 'nothing'.
This leads to the other situation hinted at above, where an entire party failed their knowledge rolls in a Confirmation run and nearly had a TPK because they weren't doing enough damage with 'off-DR' weapons, despite all the players at the table being veteran players.
If we're facing off against demons(for example), and the Venture Captain at the briefing tells us 'Oh, hey, you WILL be facing demons, so prepare for them', do we still need to make that knowledge check to verify that yes, Cold Iron would be *pretty darn handy* to have?
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But alignment is one of those things that is only representative of the average member of the species. IOW the average hobgoblin is LE but just by looking at the one trying to bash your head in how do you know this particular one isn't N?
I've never gotten alignment, and would never dream of asking for such a "crunchy" detail, but type when it is not obvious from the name of the creature is something I do expect to get.
eyup. For a diplomat its a pretty important piece of information I wouldn't USE the word alignment but...
but that can be said about almost anything to do with what knowledge skills return to you...
Try it like this "But Energy Resistance is one of those things that is only representative of the average member of the species. IOW the average Tiefling is resistant to Cold, Electricity and Fire but just by looking at the one trying to bash your head in how do you know this particular one doesn't have the Scaled Skin racial trait that replaces most of its' fiendish resistance? So this one is resistant only to Cold - and due to the deity it worships has Resistance Acid added on. SO, unlike most of it's kind, this Tiefling is resistant to Cold and Acid... not Fire and Electricity."
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The GM in this instance has made a terrible call, I think. The Pathfinders are supposed to record information so that they and others can use it to their advantage, and your character learned about a monster "on-screen" from another Pathfinder. Good on you for not flipping the table and calling the guy SOB or GDMF.
(This issue is a berserk button for me; can you tell?)
As for fighters at high levels not knowing about monsters, although they might not be able to make the Knowledge roll ("book learnin'") they can still record observations about how hard a monster hits, what damage works or doesn't work well against it, its magical abilities, etc. that the fighter observes while fighting said monster. The fighters are Pathfinders, so they are totally doing that, right?
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The GM in this instance has made a terrible call, I think. The Pathfinders are supposed to record information so that they and others can use it to their advantage, and your character learned about a monster "on-screen" from another Pathfinder. Good on you for not flipping the table and calling the guy SOB or GDMF.
(This issue is a berserk button for me; can you tell?)
As for fighters at high levels not knowing about monsters, although they might not be able to make the Knowledge roll ("book learnin'") they can still record observations about how hard a monster hits, what damage works or doesn't work well against it, its magical abilities, etc. that the fighter observes while fighting said monster. The fighters are Pathfinders, so they are totally doing that, right?
Right, but can he tell the monsters he fought before are the same ones he's fighting now?
is a timber rattler. One is venomous, one isn't.
I guarantee you when one decides that your lap would be a great spot to warm up they are VERY hard to tell apart to a degree of certainty that you're comfortable with :)
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heck, the first skeleton a Pathfinder is apt to encounter is a Burning skeleton... there are some in an Evergreen scenario after all. A LOT of 1st level Pathfinders to be are going to have encountered them...
Now - how come the second time they encounter skeletons they don't worry about the way they blow up doing fire damage to everything close (which burning skeletons do - but other kinds don't)? I mean, I can see this not...
Experienced PC to his buddies: "Ha! Skeletons! I encountered these guys last week! gotta keep your distance and shot them with missile weapons! They blow up when you kill them!"
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heck, the first skeleton a Pathfinder is apt to encounter is a Burning skeleton... there are some in an Evergreen scenario after all. A LOT of 1st level Pathfinders to be are going to have encountered them...
Now - how come the second time they encounter skeletons they don't worry about the way they blow up doing fire damage to everything close (which burning skeletons do - but other kinds don't)? I mean, I can see this not...
Experienced PC to his buddies: "Ha! Skeletons! I encountered these guys last week! gotta keep your distance and shot them with missile weapons! They blow up when you kill them!"
I have seen PCs do this before! It's hilarious. (And should totally be encouraged, if that's how the character's career plays out.)
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I have seen PCs do this before! It's hilarious. (And should totally be encouraged, if that's how the character's career plays out.)heck, the first skeleton a Pathfinder is apt to encounter is a Burning skeleton... there are some in an Evergreen scenario after all. A LOT of 1st level Pathfinders to be are going to have encountered them...
Now - how come the second time they encounter skeletons they don't worry about the way they blow up doing fire damage to everything close (which burning skeletons do - but other kinds don't)? I mean, I can see this not...
Experienced PC to his buddies: "Ha! Skeletons! I encountered these guys last week! gotta keep your distance and shot them with missile weapons! They blow up when you kill them!"
yeah, I can see it being a lot of fun ... in a home game once I ran a Bard that often got the Gather Information rolls wrong - so I would just "make stuff up" and the GM played along. Spent like two months looking for the "Lost Ogre Mine" - said to be the hangout of a one eyed Orc bandit lord... only to have to the GM produce something kind of like it, filled with goblin "bandits"... "Hay, this 'mine' looks a lot like a natural cavern." - "They must have moved in and extensively remodeled the old mine...". (Grin! roll a bluff check...)
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Proposal: All Pathfinders can auto-identify creatures with (CR<character level) if they have (skill ranks=character level) in the appropriate skill.
EDIT: "Identify" means "gets to read the monster entry from the bestiary". Simple, consistent, but lacking in accuracy.
Alternative: come up with a standard list of information by DC, so there is no variation between tables of what I learn about the bad guy with a roll of CR+5.
Example:
Roll...Info
CR.....This is a troll, a large humanoid with the giant subtype.
CR+5...They can see in the dark, and have nasty claws that can tear you to shreds.
CR+10..Their tough, leathery hide makes them hard to hit, and they regenerate damage except that caused by fire or acid.
CR+15...Some trolls are aquatic.
Just an example - obviously it would require a lot of work. You could just do it like this instead:
CR....creature name, type, subtypes, common alignment, senses
CR+5... how can I best kill it? AC, DR, resistance/immunities, SR
CR+10... how will it try to kill me? attacks, special attacks, SLAs
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heck, the first skeleton a Pathfinder is apt to encounter is a Burning skeleton... there are some in an Evergreen scenario after all. A LOT of 1st level Pathfinders to be are going to have encountered them...
Now - how come the second time they encounter skeletons they don't worry about the way they blow up doing fire damage to everything close (which burning skeletons do - but other kinds don't)? I mean, I can see this not...
Experienced PC to his buddies: "Ha! Skeletons! I encountered these guys last week! gotta keep your distance and shot them with missile weapons! They blow up when you kill them!"
Other than the part where the burning skeletons are actually on fire and the regular ones aren't.
Makes the distinction a little obvious.
Ha! after 3rd degree burns - I don't check so close any more... looks like the same creature that burnt me before!
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heck, the first skeleton a Pathfinder is apt to encounter is a Burning skeleton... there are some in an Evergreen scenario after all. A LOT of 1st level Pathfinders to be are going to have encountered them...
Now - how come the second time they encounter skeletons they don't worry about the way they blow up doing fire damage to everything close (which burning skeletons do - but other kinds don't)? I mean, I can see this not...
Experienced PC to his buddies: "Ha! Skeletons! I encountered these guys last week! gotta keep your distance and shot them with missile weapons! They blow up when you kill them!"
Other than the part where the burning skeletons are actually on fire and the regular ones aren't.
Makes the distinction a little obvious.
Except that there are so many variant burning skeletons out there, they *aren't* always on fire.
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Proposal: All Pathfinders can auto-identify creatures with (CR<character level) if they have (skill ranks=character level) in the appropriate skill.
Please define "identify".
What does that give you? A name? Type? Magic Resistance, alignment, CR, Best Save, Immunities... what?
Sorry, was editing the post. In the first suggestion, "identify" is everything. You read the book at the Lodge. This system prizes speed over accuracy.
The second one is more granular, but still leaves us with "player knows what it is, but character doesn't".
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Venture-Lieutenant, Finland—Tampere
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I may have to stop reading the forums altogether if I want to continue to have the motivation to keep playing in PFS.oh, I hit this every couple weeks. It's a result of the kind of people who post here (wait - I post here... yeah, "I DON'T WANT TO BELONG TO ANY CLUB THAT WILL ACCEPT PEOPLE LIKE ME AS A MEMBER" - Groucho Marx.)
Oh yeah, I get that feeling pretty much every week. Most of the time, I look at a thread, sigh, shake my head, and feel glad that the problems I face in my area are so minor compared to some of the incredible stuff that goes on Stateside.
Venture-Captain, California—Sacramento
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So... Under the general heading of "GMs can assign reasonable circumstance bonuses..."
Several scenarios have (in the introductory knowledge check) "If the PC has a chronicle sheet from a scenario where they have visited in the past, they can make this knowledge check at +4 and may make it untrained as if they had ranks in the skill."
I am perfectly comfortable extending that to any other similar knowledge check.
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Venture-Captain, Ohio—Columbus
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It could always be worse. I once had a GM require a Knowledge(Local) check to identify that the creature attacking us was a human.
And the combat's CR was 5 or so, so the DC was ~15+
Could have been a Kitsune or an Aasimar, or who-knows-what-kind-of-shapeshifter just pretending to be human. This way you know for sure. :)
For the DC 15 I would have probably also told you what class(es) it had, so you would have gotten something useful that wasn't obvious.
But I also make characters roll K(Religion) at DC 5+ level for the correct DR on a skeleton, so maybe I'm really one of Those GMs.*
--Ciri
Story time:
Oddly enough, I have never had this happen at any local games. It seems to be standard practice by the local GMs to indicate to the players that "your attack wasn't as effective as you expected." If no one can make the roll to know why, the players will just start randomly switching out to different materials until someone gets the answer. Usually only takes a couple rounds. Unless the one person with the right material keeps rolling nat 1s on his attacks......
Venture-Lieutenant, Netherlands—Leiden
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I like the idea of "three years of training" as an excuse for relatively well-equipped and professional adventurers. I tend to add "conversations around the water cooler in the lodge" as a way for new PCs of experienced players to know about long-running plotlines that most Pathfinders can't help but notice. ("Remember that year we spent wrangling invitations to the most famous martial arts tournament in the world?")
On the other hand, you could flip the training concept around a bit and say that the people who paid attention to the training took ranks in knowledges; that being able to identify a creature in the field reflects really REALLY grasping the material, instead of just cramming for the exam and then forgetting all about it.
That still doesn't help encounters with staple monsters make sense of course, especially if this is the third scenario with Surprise Reveal: The BBEG Is A Ghoul.
Let's just sit back and remember that the Knowledge rules were built with a single constant party in mind, where the GM knows what happened to the party before. Not the PFS ad-hoc environment where the GM has no good way of knowing what the PCs have seen at the tables of other GMs. So it's gonna be a bit rough. If the rules out of the book don't make perfect sense (in this specific case), that's not because they're irreparably broken, but because they're being used in an unintended context.
(The "we don't know about the awesome dragon but we can identify the hatchling" bit is another problem altogether.)
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Venture-Captain, Netherlands
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Given how folklore works, I'm sure your character has heard at some points that trolls are weak to silver weapons, to billy goats, to fire, and even to garlic. Without passing a knowledge check, you don't know which of these is true.We have a lot of biased and anecdotal evidence indicating garlic butter works against trolls. No party carrying it has been attacked by trolls. Troll attacks have occurred against parties that previously consumed their garlic butter, however.
Those anti-polar bear rings the party bought in Katapesh work like a charm! Havent encountered a single polar bear!
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"You identify the small, red scaled, winged reptilian creature, with the smoking nostrils, as a red dragon hatchling."
"And the larger, red scaled, winged, reptilian creature, which looks almost exactly like it, who is nuzzling the hatchling, and licking fragments of egg shell from its face?"
"You have noooo ideeeeeaaaa....."
This is a prime example of the problems of a CR-based Identification system. I don't blame Paizo for it, and I don't have a better system in mind, I just don't think it works well.
I also don't like the boon, and run the game as if it didn't exist.
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For a dragon you would probably have to sit down an map out the DCs by CR as they go up in age and reveal the abilities gained based on those checks.
Using a red dragon as an example.
Wyrmling
DC 16 - You know a bit about their personality and that they breathe a cone of fire.
21 - They have the fire subtype.
Very Young DC 18 - You know they gain the ability to see through smoke.
Young DC 20 - They gain innate spellcasting abilities like a sorcerer.
25 - They can detect magic at will.
Juvennile DC 21 - Their mere presense becomes frightening. 26 - They can cast pyrotechnics at-will.
Young Adult DC 23 - Their hides become resistant to non-magical weapons.
28 - They becomes resistant to magic as well.
Adult DC 24 - Their bodies begin to radiate intense heat.
29 - They can cast suggestion at will.
Mature Adult DC 25 - They are even less susceptible to non-magic weapons. Unless you are really strong, it may take a lucky strike for a normal weapon to damage them.
Old DC 27 - They have the ability to create walls of fire at will.
32 - They can manipulate and move magical flames.
Very Old DC 28 - Most people would have trouble damaging them with most normal weapons, even with a lucky strike.
Ancient DC 29 - Their breath weapon is hot enough to melt stone on contact turning it into molten rock. 34 - They can find the path at will.
Wyrm DC 30 - Their hide is almost completely impervious to normal weapons except from mighty heroes or heroes that hit a vulnerable spot.
Great Wyrm DC 32 - Their breath weapon is so hot that it can turn those it fells to ash, recoverable only by the strongest of magics.
37 - They can discern location at will.
So if you were fighting a great wyrm and rolled a 30 on your knowledge check you would know all the abilities possessed by the dragon that are DC 30 or less which would be everything except manipulate flames, find the path, incinerate and discern location.