High level knowledge checks - nations, religions etc

[Lanathar]

Is there any information out there about what a knowledge check about something high level would reveal e.g. a golarion country or religion

I am interested in what players are likely to know
Most knowledge checks in PFS or adventure paths are far more specific

But say someone wanted to roll on what they knew about Andoran or their deity.
How much would people know? Taking a 10 means many should know Dc10 info but what would that be?

Is this kind of information written anywhere (or an example associated with one religion or country to be used as a template...)?

[Wultram]

There isn't a massive list somewhere but I can try to give an idea.

Knowledge local about country X.

DC 10: Know the name, roughly what type of culture(as in nomadic, tribe based, feudal etc.), Who is the ruler
DC 15: Regonize the country's uniform/symbol of the military. More spesifics about the culture.(Like say dueling is socially acceptable and even expected in certain circumstances), The basics of the ruler beyond name(how long has this dynasty ruled, rough estimate of popularity) The major cities of the country. Major exports/inports and where they are going.
DC 20: Know that the real person of power is the court wizards and the king is just figurehead. Knowledge of the secret police and rough understanding on how they operate.
DC 25: The king's claim to the throne can likely be disputed since his father was known to womanize.(this might actually fall under knowledge nobility, perhaps with lowered DC) Have very accurate picture of the political field, inside the country and the countries relations with it's neighbours.
DC 30: The recent murders in the capitol, are actually a secret society in the court that use the city and undesirables as prey to hunt.
DC 40: The court wizards who actually hold the power, are actually a vampires. They are also the above secret society and the hunting is to sustain their need for blood.

Now that is not really anything more than my opinion. But it should give an idea what level of obscurity each DC means.

[VRMH]

I've never seen a knowledge DC below 10, but characters should get circumstantial bonuses to their roll for really easy questions.

[Tacticslion]

EDIT:

Man, when I started this, no one had answered yet!

But I'm needlessly wordy, so I was ninja'd hard!

Oof!

Anyway...

There is no easy-to-use template, and, unfortunately it does tend to vary a bit, even in published stuff.

Nonetheless, what I'd recommend is either making it up yourself, or looking at various published examples and extrapolating from there.

You can also get the vague gist based off of the knowledge skill itself.

In your specific case, of a DC 10

- K (engineering): Identify dangerous construction
- K (geography): Identify a creature’s ethnicity or accent
- K (history): Know recent or historically significant event
- K (local): Know local laws, rulers, and popular locations
- K (nature): Identify a common plant or animal
- K (nobility): Know current rulers and their symbols
- K (religion): Recognize a common deity’s symbol or clergy

These are the things that people who aren't really trained in can generally tell you.

You can also adapt things by using the "Monster Lore" section as a template of your own:

Quote:

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. 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.

... so depending on how common the information is, you may adjust the DCs up or down by 5 to 10 points.

So, if, for example, someone has lived in an area their whole life, you might presume they've just picked up more about it (or, at least, their hometown).

In your specific case, of a DC 10 (really DC 15 for most) that'll net you:

- K (engineering): Determine a structure’s style or age
- - ex: "Oh, that 'un was clearly built after the fire. Really, y'all c'n see it don't match th' older stuff what used to be more common 'round here. Ev'rybody 'round here knows that."
- K (geography): Recognize regional terrain features
- - ex: "Oh, that's jus' Ol' Faithful. She's said ta be some kinda water-spirit 'r somethin' as she keeps pushin' up outa tha groun' ev'ry short time; we ask f'r her blessin', but iff'n she's listenin', she don't talk much ('least, not 's far 's I c'n tell) so I reckon she's likely jus' some sorta boiler inna earth, but I dunno."
- K (history): Determine approximate date of a specific event
- - ex: "Welp, I reckon-uh... that, uh, that there murder spree you're askin' 'bout, it took place-uh... herm, I'd hafta say, it took place 'bout sixty five years ago, yup. 'Bout sixty-five, if I recall what my grandpappy said. Grandpappy used to go on-and-on 'bout all sorts o' stories that didn't mean nothin', though, like this one time..."
- K (nature): Know a common rumor or local tradition
- - ex: "You know they say that iff'n ya declare y'r intent while whisperin' the name of y'r dearest loved one to them there echo caves, y'll get y'rself a vision that'll teach ya what ya need ta do! As a result, ev'ry year in our town, we likes ta host a 'caver whisper' - where we make sure that anyone what thinks they want ta do so c'n be guaranteed privacy while theys makes their intent known ta the local spirits!"
- K (nature): Identify unnatural weather phenomenon
- - ex: "Saints'v'Sarenrae preserve us! That t'ain't no weather ta be here in tha summer! That ain't right, an' it ain't natural!"
- K (nobility): Know proper etiquette
- - ex: "No, no. We're s'rry, folks, we're tryin' ta teach 'er proper manners, but she's only three. She still ain't learned that pappy's gotta take first bite ta show th're t'ain't no poison, then the guests gotta be th' ones what get served for real dinners. Here's y'r chopsticks, so we'll jus' pour ya tha beef-an'-veggies noodly-soup riiiight up!"
- K (religion): Know common mythology and tenets
- - ex: "I don' know nothin' 'bout all that, but the preacher-marm was all tellin' us this Sunday past 'bout how Sarenrae used her fiery sword to smite the devil Rovagug while makin' sure he couldn'ta do anymore harm. She tricked 'im right inta that there hole in tha ground she did! Wooo-heee, was that great! I lurve that story! An' then she convinced the devil hisself ta do a selfless act an' lock th' beast away f'r all eternity! 'Course the devil wasn't totally selfless - 'e's the devil, ya know - an' that slick willy kept tha key f'r hisself, but Sarenrae knew he'd try ta pull somethin' like that, an' the preacher-marm told us, she did, she said, that - an' here's tha great part - she said that the key made-a shadows was then placed inta tha sun! And th' devil thinks he's got th' real one, but the lady keeps the real one f'r herself in th' sun so's the rough beast ain't escapin' that way, neither! Woo~!"

... and so on.

But that's generally only for natives of a region that are more or less paying attention to their own cultural stuff. Someone visiting likely wouldn't have that much exposure to the local flavor, and the DCs remain as listed; on the other hand, said locals might be baffled if they were placed somewhere other than their hometown - their knowledge and lore might be treated as if it were worse than it is, if the local flora and fauna are so alien to their own experiences as to be entirely unrecognizable.

And that's the secret about the knowledge checks.

Quote:

You are educated in a field of study and can answer both simple and complex questions. Like the Craft, Perform, and Profession skills, Knowledge actually encompasses a number of different specialties.

<snip>

Answering a question within your field of study has a DC of 10 (for really easy questions), 15 (for basic questions), or 20 to 30 (for really tough questions).

<snip>

Training You cannot make an untrained Knowledge check with a DC higher than 10.

All that tells us is how "difficult" something is... relative to the general knowledge-base of the people putting in the skill ranks.

This has rather far-reaching implications.

Let's say, for example, that a person from Golarion were suddenly plopped here on our own, modern-day Earth. Let's ignore pretty much... everything about the logistics of that, and look purely at skills. What would those mean to them? I recently contributed to an interesting conversation and it clarified something to me: Golarion characters would be deeply and emotionally confused and shaken by the really friggin' weird things that we do in the real world.

Let's look at these things one at a time:

- K (engineering): Identify dangerous construction
- - > There are enough similarities that they could probably do so to some extent, but as soon as you get super-tall pointy towers that spire to the heavens, or large arches of stone that sway gently in the breeze, there are likely going to be really confused and worried Golarionites. Any given skyscraper, and the Mississippi Gateway Arch, by the way. The latter makes me nervous when I've been on it, too!

- K (geography): Identify a creature’s ethnicity or accent
- - > Ahahahahahahahahah~! Good luck with that!

- K (history): Know recent or historically significant event
- - > Ahahahahahahahahah~! Good luck with that!

- K (local): Know local laws, rulers, and popular locations
- - > Ahahahahahahahahah~! Good luck with that!

- K (nature): Identify a common plant or animal
- - > Some of this might overlap, but, in truth, even their entirely mundane animals don't quite synch up with ours - they are likely going to have at least more-than-a-little difficulty guessing at what's really going on in our world.

- K (nobility): Know current rulers and their symbols
- - > Ahahahahahahahahah~! Good luck with that!

- K (religion): Recognize a common deity’s symbol or clergy
- - > Ahahahahahahahahah~! Good luck with that!

I don't mean this to be harsh on the characters - it's just that they'd genuinely have no way of remotely guessing where various accents and ethnicities come from - heck they don't even share ethnicities with real-Earth humans (though several come close) - and neither our rulers nor symbols mean anything to them.

Sure they might be able to guess, but they're just as likely to guess that the flag's star field represents our current President's personal symbol as they are to recognize that said imagery is not for the man, but the nation - at least, once they figured out that we have a president and not a king or any such ruler: not that it is an alien concept on Golarion, but it's not all that common, over-all... and there is no way they could reliably guess we have a three-branch governmental structure or that one of those branches is divided into two bodies made of two different sets of representative members - one of 100 and one of 435 -, while another is made of 9 appointed members, and the last is held by electoral college as encouraged by general election.

There is no real way they could name the local senator, mayor, governor, or what-have-you, no matter how high their knowledge skill is - it's just entirely alien information to them.

Quick: tell me the difference (without looking) between the (general) presidential seal, the congressional seal, and the supreme court seal! (They are all different, for the record.) Or the difference between the presidential seal and the presidential standard! (Also different).

Some people will be able to reliably do so - most will need to look them up.

For someone who's never even heard of our world, such things are effectively meaningless.

On the other hand, drop a physicist and/or biologist into Golarion. Ho-lee-carp. His knowledge means nothing. Giant humanoids walk the earth without collapsing inward; dragons actually fly by their tiny, tiny wings and (even more of an absurdity) breath cones of cold; while men chant and wave their hands like morons until a bead of fire shoots forth and then explodes... except, you know, not really, it just kind of heats everything up upon "detonation" and doesn't change the local air pressure or anything like what "real" fire would do. Also trolls. Trolls are stupid and make no sense.
Of course, if he's also an RPG nerd - something that is not entirely terrible odds for a cross section on a Venn Diagram - he'll quite possibly have plenty of other knowledge - godlike knowledge, really - about the setting and powers and rules and places that even the people of Golarion can only guess at, making him the most valuable (and most targeted/coveted) individual in the planes in short order, especially if he's got his book collection with him...

And that's the thing.

It seems that those skill DCs are based on the general level of available knowledge in broad-strokes terms.

So if, for example, modern humans seem like we're smarter than ancient humans (because of all the stuff we know) - we're not. Generally speaking, we're the same, just with access to more readily digestible information. For us, the DCs are lower, is all. Things aren't as obscure anymore, because stuff has bee collected, processed, and presented as easy-to-digest-and-understand lore that's broadly available to all.

Anyway, I hope that helps!

[Komoda]

Tacticslion wrote:

EDIT:

Man, when I started this, no one had answered yet!

But I'm needlessly wordy, so I was ninja'd hard!

Oof!

Anyway...

There is no easy-to-use template, and, unfortunately it does tend to vary a bit, even in published stuff.

Nonetheless, what I'd recommend is either making it up yourself, or looking at various published examples and extrapolating from there.

You can also get the vague gist based off of the knowledge skill itself.

In your specific case, of a DC 10

- K (engineering): Identify dangerous construction
- K (geography): Identify a creature’s ethnicity or accent
- K (history): Know recent or historically significant event
- K (local): Know local laws, rulers, and popular locations
- K (nature): Identify a common plant or animal
- K (nobility): Know current rulers and their symbols
- K (religion): Recognize a common deity’s symbol or clergy

These are the things that people who aren't really trained in can generally tell you.

You can also adapt things by using the "Monster Lore" section as a template of your own:

Quote:

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. 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.

... so depending on how common the information is, you may adjust the DCs up or down by 5 to 10 points.

So, if, for example, someone has lived in an area their whole life, you might presume they've just picked up more about it (or, at least, their hometown).

In your specific case, of a DC 10 (really DC 15 for most) that'll net you:

- K (engineering): Determine a structure’s style or age
-...

I'm pretty sure a young girl scout could have beaten you to post with that lengthy missive. You can't really claim ninja on that.

[Vlaeros]

Have you seen how fast those "young girl scouts" are with their sell-you-lard devices, these daze?! All those greasy fingers just fly across the screen!!