At Level 5 the Inquisitor gets the "bane" ability. It allows him to imbue the "bane" special ability on one of his weapons.
When he does so, he has to select 1 creature type (or subtype in case he picked humanoid or outsider)
So to use that ability properly, you will somehow need to know, what type the creature you are fighting belongs to.
I thought you would do it with a knowledge check, but in fact, thats not correct.
Knowledge allows you to identify creatures and know about their special powers or vulnerabilities.
So a use of a sucsessful knowledge check would be: i know that worgs that can speak common, and use their voice to trap people.
so it gives very specific information about that creature.
The use would not be: okay, that creature there is a magical beast, or an animal or whatever.
But this would be the only thing i need, to use my bane ability properly.
Can you take it for granted, that a character simply knows, to what type the creatures he meets belong? nothing about the abilities, just about the very type of the creature.
Obviously often this would work out pretty good, allowing every character to know, that a goblin is a humanoid.
Sometimes it seems to be fair to have the character do some sort of check. E.g. for knowing that a Wyvern is actually of the dragon type. Or that this big wolvelike looking thing (worg) is actually a magical beast and not an animal.
Im 99% sure there is no raw solution to this. So i´m also asking for advise or experience how you handle or how you would handle it.
You can use this skill to identify monsters and their special powers or vulnerabilities.
So, in addition to knowing a bit about special powers and vulnerabilities you have just identified it. Ie: you know what kind of creature it is.
Frankly, I would be surprised if a GM told you that, yes, you have successfully identified it, but no, you don't know it's type. That seems really bizarre.
I´d disagree on that.
Identifying a monster would mean, i know what specific monster it is.
E.G. that gigantic big thing there is a cloud giant.
But only knowing that this gigantic big thing there is a monsterous humandoid would not require a knowledge check.
Also there is no DC for it in the skill description. only a dc to get to know about " their special powers or vulnerabilities."
lets stick with the giant example:
the smalles DC that the knowledge skill describes would be 10 + 11(CR) so 21. since you can not roll knowledge untrained for DC above 10, noone that has 0 ranks in knowledge nature would ever be able to know, that the giant is a monsterous humanoid.
things get even more hilarious on animals: a brown bear is CR5. so lets face it: the DC to identify him would be 5 + 5(CR). so a fighter, who lives in that world, has a 50% chance of not knowing that this guy is actually an animal. really?
Or Skeletal Champion: probably 10 (not very common) + CR2 = 12. So noone without knowledge religion, would be able to know that this walking skelleton is an undead...
i´m pretty confident that cant be intended...
playing like this, the inquisitor would rarely be able to use his bane ability
Inquisitors are knowledge monkeys. They can identify any creature easily.
As for the DC, yes it is present. 10+monster CR (or 5+CR or 15+CR).
CRB p100 wrote:
A successful check allows you to remember a bit of useful information about that monster. For every 5 points by which your check result exceeds the DC, you recall another piece of useful information.
I would call "creature type" to be a useful piece of information to an Inquisitor wanting to use Bane. Wouldn't you?
This is the rules forum and the rules cover it.
I didn't say the rules have to make sense. Just because the rules produce nonsensical results (being unable to identify a bear) doesn't mean the rules don't cover it.
We are actually talking about the rules.
Sometimes, if its arguable what the rule says and what not, it helps to think what makes sense and what not.
The rules talk about "useful information". So we need to know: What are useful information in the context of a skill, that is available for any given class in pathfinder.
I would highly question, that the creature typ is a "useful information" in the sense of the skill.
the skill is available for any sort of class. the information about the creature type is only useful for the specific class of the inquisitor.
"useful information" for any class are e.g. the special abilities of a creature.
If you say that knowing the type of the creature is a useful information, the skill gets useless for any other class but the inquisitor. At least it would give them "useful information" that are not actually useful for them at all.
how could it be useful for a rogue knowing that the creature is an animal? That won´t help him in any way. the special powers or vulnerabilities would be a useful information for him, just as for any given class.
so you would say other classes get to know about powers or special defenses like damage reduction or supernatural abilities, but the inquisitor only gets to know about the type? Thats a pretty big difference in the quality of information for the same roll, on the same creature depending on what charater class made the roll.
going with your understanding, you would need to define for every class what a "useful information" is, depending on their class abilities.
if you read the full description in the knowledge skill completly it says: "A successful check allows you to remember a bit of useful information about that monster."
so would say "a useful information about a bear is, that its an animal"? probably not.
if i remember a useful information about a bear, because of my knowledge of the nature i wont go like "hey buds, i got something useful here. that guy is an animal!!!".
It would be things like they are afraid of fire or sth like that.
if a skill, thats available for every class gives you "useful information", then these are probably informaton that are useful for any kind of character, not only for an inquisitor.
also: to make a knowledge check in order to get information about a creature you need to know what type it is. if i want to know something about a worg, i need to roll knowledge arcana, since its a magical beast. if i dont know, that its a magical beast before, i cant even roll the correct skill in order to get information.
You are into GM territory now. What constitutes useful information is something that has never been defined and is something that the GM and players have to discuss and work out.
But, the rules are clear in that there is a DC to identify a creature.
As for knowing what type it is before the check, no you don't need to know since the GM can roll it for you.
Alternately, the player can roll but that does not mean that the player's PC knows what the type is. That would be "player knowledge".
Nothing in the rules state that you know what type the creature is but the rules do state that you "identify" the creature with a successful check. Clearly, identification would include type.
But, if that is not good enough for you, then you must not be giving the name of the creature either when they identify it since that too would be 'useful information'.
once again. i never questioned that the rules are clear about the dc of identifying something.
but you are neither using the word identify in the sense of language nor int he sense of the game.
Identifiying a creature means:
"that is a bear" or "that is a wolve"
it does not mean: "that is an animaly"
if you go in the forest and identify a tree you dont say:
"yep i have identified it. its a plant"
u say:
"yep i have identified it. its an oak"
identifying means you know what specific creature it is. not what type of creature it is.
i identify a dragon i know: "i have identified it, its a red dragon".
thats how its used in language. i identify the killer by his name, not by knowing he is a humanoid.
even in the context of the pathfinder rules, the word identify is used in a sense, that you know very very specific things. like identifying a longsword as a longsword +2. not identifying a longsword with the result of knowing its a martial weapon.
i dont see this getting any further with us.
if somebody else had something new to the topic, i´d be pretty thankful.
you are relying way to hard on that word. its in the opening sentence, that you can use knowledge to identify a creature. What it means to identify the creature in the context of the skill, is described in the following 3 sentences. in the same paragraph. identifying a creature in the sense of the skill means, that you remember useful information about it. all you rely on is the opening sentence, without setting in into context with the following sentences, that actually explain what it means and how its used.
Talk to a scientist sometime, identifying something also identifies what family it is in (ie type). So yes, linguistically it works too.
Ultimately, you will not get a rules answer that you want here. The rules state you identify it and get a bit of info. What that means to different people is different and there is virtually no guidance in the rules on this.
Here is the analysis of the skill in a spoiler if you are interested.
Spoiler:
The opening sentence. what can u do?: use that skill to identify AND get to know about powers and vulnerabilities
You can use this skill to identify monsters and their special powers or vulnerabilities.
the second sentence: what do you do, and how hard is it?
In general, the DC of such a check equals 10 + the monster's CR. For common monsters, such as goblins, the DC of this check equals 5 + the monster's CR. For particularly rare monsters, such as the tarrasque, the DC of this check equals 15 + the monster's CR, or more.
and finally, what is the gameplay effect of using knowledge to identify a creature and their specia abilities:
A successful check allows you to remember a bit of useful information about that monster. For every 5 points by which your check result exceeds the DC, you recall another piece of useful information. Many of the Knowledge skills have specific uses as noted on Table: Knowledge Skill DCs.
you can just cut away the first 8 words of the first sentence "You can use this skill to identify monsters" and then then explain the word "identify" in another way, then the rest of the actual skilldescription does it.
identifying in the sense of that skill means: getting to know useful information about the specific monster.
thats the gameplay effect of rolling knowledge in order to "identify monsters and their special powers or vulnerabilities."
thats one thing. its not: throw knowledge to identify the creature OR his special abilities.
I never said it said "OR" so please do not misrepresent my position.
You said that identifying it (ie: name) did not include the type. So I suggested to you that it could be the first piece of useful information.
Frankly, knowing type is extremely useful as you will the know all of that types general abilities.
You are making a much larger issue out of something which I doubt anyone has a problem with.
Either it is A) part of identifying the creature or it is B) the first useful piece of information.
Either answer works fine with the way the rules are written.
Frankly, I think your question isn't a rules question since there is no rules covering which exact pieces of information are revealed. You may want the advice or PFRPG discussion forum instead where you can ask what GMs like to reveal with a bare minimum check.
I know this oppinion. Also read a thread where a pfs GM had the oppinion that the INQ just knows the Type...
Gauss wrote:
Talk to a scientist sometime, identifying something also identifies what family it is in (ie type). So yes, linguistically it works too.
If a sientists "identifies" a mammoth tree, by saying its a plant he is probably bad. if you meet a biologist that said he sucesfully identified a new species by saying: "thats an animal" he is probably jobless.
Gauss wrote:
Ultimately, you will not get a rules answer that you want here. The rules state you identify it and get a bit of info. What that means to different people is different and there is virtually no guidance in the rules on this.
I dont want a specific answer here. i want to widen my hozizon on this topic, to find a good way to play it. and arguments that ignore any principle of ruleinterpretation are not widen it in any way.
its just bad technique to cut out 8 words of a whole paragraph, and interpret them by ignoring the rest of the paragraph.
so however, thats my last post about the meaning of the word "identify" in the context of the knowledge skill, the game and linguistics.
A) I am sitting next to a biologist and I have two in my gaming group. You misunderstood my post. I was equating identifying the family (real life) with identifying the type (PF). Even that is an inexact comparison since "type" could be kingdom, family, or even species (in the case of humanoid sub-types).
B) You are trying to get a specific answer, I am not ignoring the principle of the rules here.
Based on this question:
Baumfluch wrote:
Im 99% sure there is no raw solution to this. So i´m also asking for advise or experience how you handle or how you would handle it.
What you want is not something for the rules forum, it is something for the Advice or PFRPG discussion forum.
The rules forum are to discuss the rules, not to discuss how people run/houserule things when the rules are inadequate (which, for this skill they have been inadequate since 3.0).
Honestly, when I'm GMing, I'm perfectly fine with Inquisitors saying "I make my weapon that-thing bane!", and having it work unless their target is deliberately hiding it's true creature type. But that's a stylistic rather than rules-based answer.
In all of the games I've been in where it's mattered, hitting the basic DC to identify a creature included knowing it's type. Most of the suggested breakdowns of knowledge checks on a creature I've seen include knowing what the creature's type is and what abilities that confers as the most basic successful check, the 10+CR one. I'd point out some examples, but I can't get to the d20pfsrd from here at the moment. I suppose a particularly pedantic GM could argue that it would be one of your 'useful pieces of information' and make up some bizarre way of randomly determining which pieces of information you recall, but the general assumption I've seen in all of the 3.X monster books (which is, unfortunately, not spelled out in the Knowledge skill) is that your first 'useful piece of information' is the creature's type and the corresponding strengths & weaknesses common to that type.
That being said, I'd even argue that it would be reasonable for a character to *guess* a creature's type. I don't know much about entomology, but I can look at just about any six-legged thing and guess it's an insect. I will occasionally be wrong, but 99% of the time I'd be right. Likewise, if you're facing some big scaly winged thing and you guess it's of the dragon type, most of the time you'll be right.
Frankly, knowing type is extremely useful as you will the know all of that types general abilities.
in order to make that statement work, you need to take for granted, that any given character knows the general abilities of magical beasts, a dragons, a plants and so on. Otherwise getting to know the type would not be a useful information at all.
so what you are saying is:
You know e.g. any sort of dragon has an odem, but you don't recognize a a dragon in front of you without hitting the DC on knowledge arcana.
To me that sounds weird and not being intended at all.
Even the chance of not being able to recognize a bear or a dog as an animal is so rediculously weird that its obviously not RAI.
Also giving the INQ a classfeature to use bane on a specific type, but not giving him all knowledges required to identify a given creatures type as classskill can't possibly be intended.
Even on the the skills he has as classskill he will have a hard time keeping them up to a level, where he can reliably use his bane ability. A fighting INQ will have WIS14-16 and INT 7-8 wich means his maximum bonus is level +4 or +5 on a classskill. basic DC is CR + 10 so he will always run with at least a 25% chance of failure in order to use his signature ability.
For me that all points in the direction, that detecting a cretures type cant be at the same DC as getting to know about specific weaknesses.
Gauss wrote:
What you want is not something for the rules forum, it is something for the Advice or PFRPG discussion forum.
You are right, would have probably a better place for it. so to me thats closed here.
I've always house ruled a DC 11 of the appropriate knowledge type to identify a creature's type. So basically, if you're trained in the appropriate knowledge you instantly recognize when a creature belongs to a category, and you know things about generic creatures of that type but unless you make the actual DC to identify the creature you don't know more than that.
It's certainly not official, but I like it.
It represents that you can identify a type of creature more easily than you can necessarily know everything about the specific creature you're seeing. Which seems realistic to me. It also means that you can make mistakes as players.
As an example, you see a duck billed platypus and think "That's one weird looking mammal, but I'm pretty sure it's a mammal because of all the body hair." Later on, you're very confused when you see it lay eggs instead of having viviparous birth, and you're very confused.
Keep in mind that the rules allow the GM to give you adjustments to skill checks. If your character grew up in a region where bears were common then that might warrant a +5 or more, but if you grew up in a desert then a bear would be new to you.
Depending on the knowledge check used to identify the creature, that would narrow down the type/subtype. But I agree that if you are successful in identifying a creature, then you should know at least on of it's types/subtypes.
I don't think we can use real life examples here, as we simply don't have a lot of creature types that exist in pathfinder. How would a character in golarion know that a bear is an animal rather than a magical beast? What sets it apart from an owlbear?
Likewise that very large humanoid shaped creature could be a monstrous humanoid just as likely as a humanoid (giant). There aren't really a lot of creatures that could be classified easily.
As a GM I usually give players some information as long as they beat the DC for a lesser version of what they are facing. If they know what a Sahuagin is but not the four-armed variant, they may still be able to reason it might belong to the same creature type. Same deal with different age categories of dragons.
Depending on the knowledge check used to identify the creature, that would narrow down the type/subtype. But I agree that if you are successful in identifying a creature, then you should know at least on of it's types/subtypes.
Yes, as a GM I am aware of how much information I give away about a creature's type by simply saying, "Make a Knowledge(relgion) check to identify it." Only undead are routinely identified by Knowledge(religion). Or when the unidentified creature looks like an animal, if I ask for Knowledge(nature) it is probably an animal (or less likely, a fey that resembles an animal) and if I ask for Knowledge(arcana) it is probably a magical beast.
I could avoid this by having the player simply roll a d20 and adding the appropriate Knowledge skill bonus to that roll in secret, but keeping secrets is not worth the extra effort.
Some people in this thread argued that identifying the specific creature species does not give the creature type. The species is merely a name, such as ankheg, barghest, chuul, darkmantle, ettin, etc. I just pulled some weird names out of Bestiary I, to illustrate that the name alone provides no useful information except to a player who has studied mythology or who has encountered the species in another campaign. The Knowledge skill rule for identifying says, "A successful check allows you to remember a bit of useful information about that monster." Creature type and the general traits of that type are the most obvious useful information to follow the name. Not including the creature type along with the name on a successful identification roll would be misplaying the Knowledge skill.
Sadly, RAW is extremely vague on the issue of Knowledge checks regarding creature information. It would be nice to see some additional rules on this (hint, hint).
It is really up to each GM on what info (beyond name) to provide by RAW. Personally, I go with not keeping my players in the dark and provide type and subtypes if a Knowledge check was attempted (essentially at DC 0). But it would be completely within RAW to provide type at a DC of CR + 40, and provide mating habits, size of private parts, and food preferences first. It comes down to how badly you want to screw your players out of their abilities and "cool stuff" and how useless you want to make skill points.
I'd love to see and would gladly purchase a supplement that has four bits of info for every monster in the bestiaries, like the later Monster Manuals had in 3.5. Included could be some greater guidance on what to reveal and when (like type information). If nothing else, it would be a great standardization tool for PFS.
The "useful information" you gain through Knowledge checks is solely up to the GM.
If you are planning on creating a Knowledge-focused character, consult with your GM beforehand to determine how they'll run things.
If this is for PFS, ask your GM before game how they handle Knowledge checks. And be prepared for different GMs to run things differently.
If you are the GM, determine a method that is fair and rewarding to your players.
This is truly the only answer to this question.
How I run things, FWIW:
Each "bit of information" is a section of the creature's statblock. I give out Name, Type, Subtype (with all associated traits) on a successful check. Beyond that, for every 5 they beat the DC by, I ask whether they want to know 1) Lore, 2) Special Defenses, 3) Special Attacks, or 4) Special Abilities.
That way, if they beat the DC by 20, they get everything about the creature. It's a system I've found that rewards investment in Knowledge.
So would it be useful to know if a large bear-like creature is an animal or fey? It could be a bear or a bear with a fey creature template. I think this is useful information.
So a use of a sucsessful knowledge check would be: i know that worgs that can speak common, and use their voice to trap people. so it gives very specific information about that creature.
It gives specific information about that type of creature, not that individual.
Quote:
The use would not be: okay, that creature there is a magical beast, or an animal or whatever.
But this would be the only thing i need, to use my bane ability properly.
I disagree. Part of identifying a creature is knowing what that creature is, not just what it is called.
Quote:
[Can you take it for granted, that a character simply knows, to what type the creatures he meets belong? nothing about the abilities, just about the very type of the creature.
No. Unfortunately, there is a huge gab in the Knowledge rules regarding things we would know by default. Or to put it another way, the Knowledge rules have been expanded to include things like common knowledge and folklore in way that does not accurately represent the concept.
A five year old can tell you bear is an animal and not a vermin or a plant. Not so in PF.
I believe it may have been a 3.5 book, but creature type was based on the lowest CR of a creature in that category. So if there is some devil with a CR of 4, then identifying something is from that type would be a DC of 14. So you could know the type without specifically identifying the creature.
Quote:
Im 99% sure there is no raw solution to this. So i´m also asking for advise or experience how you handle or how you would handle it.
For better or for worse, there isn't. I personally provide creature type as well as HD, AC, and other basic information if you hit the exact CR. The way the rules are written and often played, you could successfully identify a goblin and a dragon and know which one was harder to kill. That's just stupid.
I personally believe that knowing about a creature should be as valuable as being able to do massive damage. So even in PFS, I reward characters that can make Knowledge checks. Making the information valuable and useful encourages a wider range of builds and rewards people for investing in K. skills.
I also don't give out the information to the group, but to the individual and let the individual communicate it. That makes the character more important and let's the player roleplay the info.
Sorry, OP. You're straight up misreading the rules. Arguing with everyone that responds to your thread won't change that. It's one of the most basic and commonly used rolls in the game.
Sorry, OP. You're straight up misreading the rules. Arguing with everyone that responds to your thread won't change that. It's one of the most basic and commonly used rolls in the game.
for sure you noticed i only argued with gauss, as you propably read the thread carefully ;)
thats why you also read, that 10 posts ago i already called that thread done for me. i dont see a point in you post at all. its not on the topic, its not helping anyone and its not even true, so...
i´m well aware now, that 90% of the players say that RAW is what gauss explained, so as gauss mentioned correctly: a discussion about weather it makes sense or not doesnt belong in here. thats why i called that topic closed and thanked him for his opinion and advice.
However if its RAW or not, i discussed it with my group and in another players forum and roughly everyone agreed, that playing it strictly this way is hilarious bullcrap, so we decided to screw RAW and play it pointfully. but that is nothing that belongs here, thats why i called that topic closed that early.
