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Which is fine in and of itself. You can make an argument the game runs better if the GM is completely in charge of doling out information.
Sure you can, and that’s a fine justification for a house rule. But that’s not RAW.
It is strange to try to frame the decision to not allow the player to choose as somehow increasing their freedom of choice and ability to influence the game on their own terms, though.
Allowing players to ask a question to get information they want their characters to know is absolutely greater freedom of choice than having the GM decide what information the PCs may possibly know.
A reasonable argument can be made that the decreased player freedom of having the GM make that decision is worth whatever that adds to the game, but that’s still a decrease in player agency.
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Allowing players to ask a question to get information they want their characters to know is absolutely greater freedom of choice than having the GM decide what information the PCs may possibly know.
I know, I'm agreeing with you. I'm saying I think thenobledrake's position is a reasonable one, but that I think it's strange to characterize not letting the player choose as giving them more freedom.
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The GM is now in a position of needing to choose whether A) only respond with information about the specified category even if there is nothing useful to learn within it, or B) provide information in identical fashion as if the player had not been more specific than strictly necessary.
And if the GM chooses A, that's not an enhancement of player agency. It's messing with them for using the wrong words while playing the game.
"Agency" doesn't mean effectiveness, it means capacity to make decisions. Sometimes agency means players will make less effective decisions. Also, that's not about "using the wrong words," it's about asking about a less pertinent topic. I'm not talking about a player trying to ask about a monster's attacks but "using the wrong words" and asking about defenses by mistake, I'm talking about a player making the decision that he wants to know about defenses because he (or his character) believes in overwhelming the monster's defenses before it has a chance to injure him.
Sometimes that isn't necessarily the most useful information about a monster, but even if the answer is "this monster has no unusual defensive abilities," that information, too, is useful.
And if a player doesn't want to make that call himself, he can always just roll a Recall Knowledge check and tell the GM to give him something the GM thinks is useful.
You attempt a skill check to try to remember a bit of knowledge regarding a topic related to that skill.Am I attempting to remember a particular piece of knowlege, i.e. asking a specific question of the GM? Or am I hoping to recall any old piece of knowledge, i.e. the GM tells me what he thinks is useful? That sentence supports both readings, so let’s keep going and see what else we can figure out.
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So my reading is that the rules support both methods. With that in mind, I’ll probably let my players choose on a check-by-check basis whether to ask a specific question or to have me pick something I think is useful.
The GM advice chapter on pp505 & 506 explicitly tells the GM how to adjudicate Recall Knowledge for Creature Identification.
RECALL KNOWLEDGE
On most topics, you can use simple DCs for checks to Recall Knowledge. For a check about a specific creature, trap, or other subject with a level, use a level-based DC (adjusting for rarity as needed). You might adjust the difficulty down, maybe even drastically, if the subject is especially notorious or famed. Knowing simple tales about an infamous dragon’s exploits, for example, might be incredibly easy for the dragon’s level, or even just a simple trained DC.
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ADDITIONAL KNOWLEDGE
Sometimes a character might want to follow up on a check to Recall Knowledge, rolling another check to discover more information. After a success, further uses of Recall Knowledge can yield more information, but you should adjust the difficulty to be higher for each attempt. Once a character has attempted an incredibly hard check or failed a check, further attempts are fruitless—the character has recalled everything they know about the subject.
CREATURE IDENTIFICATION
A character who successfully identifies a creature learns one of its best-known attributes—such as a troll’s regeneration (and the fact that it can be stopped by acid or fire) or a manticore’s tail spikes. On a critical success, the character also learns something subtler, like a demon’s weakness or the trigger for one of the creature’s reactions.
The skill used to identify a creature usually depends on that creature’s trait, as shown on Table 10–7, but you have leeway on which skills apply. For instance, hags are humanoids but have a strong connection to occult spells and live outside society, so you might allow a character to use Occultism to identify them without any DC adjustment, while Society is harder. Lore skills can also be used to identify their specific creature. Using the applicable Lore usually has an easy or very easy DC (before adjusting for rarity).
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Even if we grant that the first successful check on a troll always gives its regeneration, and the first successful check on a manticore reveals its tail spikes, that doesn't help for most of the monsters in the Bestiary who don't necessarily have a single super obvious attribute.
And even in the case of the troll or manticore, the very next sentence says that on a critical success says that "the character also learns something subtler. like" examples from not only a different type of creature, but not even a specific other creature.
So, on a critical success rolled against any given demon, the character learns "one of its best known attributes," with zero guidance what that means, and it's "weakness," singular. Literally every demon in the Bestiary has at least two weaknesses, and we get zero guidance on which one of those we are supposed to reveal for a critical success.
Additionally, on up the page we have this:
ADDITIONAL KNOWLEDGE
Sometimes a character might want to follow up on a check to Recall Knowledge, rolling another check to discover more information. After a success, further uses of Recall Knowledge can yield more information, but you should adjust the difficulty to be higher for each attempt. Once a character has attempted an incredibly hard check or failed a check, further attempts are fruitless—the character has recalled everything they know about the subject.
How is this to be adjudicated? By the general rules for Recall Knowledge, which say that on a success "You recall the knowledge accurately or gain a useful clue about your current situation" or do we randomly pick "something subtler" each time?
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Wow. This blew up while I was at work.
I really don't understand what you're talking about here. Are you saying the GM takes away the player's agency by respecting the player's choice to ask a question that turns out to be a poor one?(...)
Why are you trying to rip off your players? Why are you devaluing their choices in building characters and choosing how to spend resources? THAT’S why it’s removing player agency.
Talk about putting words in my mouth.
I don't see a huge difference between PF1 and PF2 knowledge checks. In both cases, a success earns the player some useful knowledge.
It's long been customary in PF1 to let people ask questions because the idea is that players know best what sort of information would be useful to them. This isn't necessarily a correct belief - I've seen a lot of people ask for vulnerabilities in PF1 while in PF1 monsters with vulnerabilities are quite rare. And some things people never think to ask about, such as "does it have a gaze attack that will mess us up if we come within 30ft?"
Interestingly, PF1 doesn't really codify in the rules that players can pose questions, it's just a service the GM provides to help ensure "useful information". It would be perfectly acceptable by PF1 RAW for the GM to decide by himself what information to give. It would be a breach of the rules though if he gave useless information.
PF2 isn't all that different. The cost of attempting Recall Knowledge has gone up a bit; it takes an action, and there's a chance of misinformation, and success doesn't yield as much pieces of information as a dedicated lore character could get in PF1. So it does seem fair that the GM be extra diligent in ensuring any information really is useful.
Still, we have this habit of saying "so what kind of information would be useful to you?". If a player has a burning question ("will my favorite spell work on it") then there's nothing wrong with that.
On the other hand, the rules don't stop the GM from supplying different information if he thinks it would be more useful. "You don't know if your spell will work, but it has a nasty gaze attack."
Here you basically get an inter-agency squabble:
- The first agency was the player choosing to spend an action on Recall Knowledge to learn something useful. The GM can fulfill this choice to the best by deciding what information to give.
- The other agency in having your choice of question honored, even if it was not actually (20/20) the best question to ask.
That's a very theoretical issue and I don't think it's that relevant. Because the accusation here seems to be that the GM maliciously answers your bad question (fulfilling one of your agencies) while using that to withhold other more useful information (frustrating your other agency). If the GM is actually being malicious though, and hiding behind technicalities, your problem isn't some esoteric agency-theoretic problem, but that the person across the table from you is not being a good friend to play with.
Well Dragonstriker, I think you've ended the thread ;)
No, because the line that Dragonstriker marked in bold is one of the most annoying lines about Recall Knowledge. Other descriptions of Recall Knowledge say useful. That one says best-known. Those are two different selections that overlap for only half the creatures in the bestiary. For the manticore, the tail-spike information is useful, since a flying creature with ranged attacks is a big problem. For the troll, the regeneration information is also pretty useful, though the party could just keep stabbing the prone troll while making more Recall Knowledge checks.
But what about a hobgoblin archer (PF2 Bestiary, page 207)? The best-known information about a hobgoblin archer is that it is a hobgoblin. Hobgoblins are cruel, militant, and fight well in formation. (Formation When it’s adjacent to at least two other allies, the hobgoblin gains a +1 circumstance bonus to AC and saving throws. This bonus increases to +2 to Reflex saves against area effects.) However, the most useful information about the hobgoblin archer is that it is a crossbow specialist with Crossbow Precision, Perfect Aim, and Running Reload. (Perfect Aim The hobgoblin archer ignores the concealed condition. Their targets don’t benefit from lesser cover, and they reduce the AC bonus from standard cover by 2 against the hobgoblin archer’s attack.)
Or what about a Mimic (PF2 Bestiary, page 236)? Its best-known feature is its Mimic Object polymorph. Yet by the time the party knows to check Recall Knowledge against the mimic, they have already seen Mimic Object and Object Lesson as an ordinary-looking door shifted into a mimic and grabbed the PC trying to open the door. The players would love to learn about its Adhesive ability before it is demonstrated by miring their weapons, but surely the rule about best-known information means the GM gives them full details about Mimic Object instead.
If the GM is actually being malicious though, and hiding behind technicalities, your problem isn't some esoteric agency-theoretic problem, but that the person across the table from you is not being a good friend to play with.
I worry less about malicious GMs and more about inexperienced GMs who gain the impression from the PF2 rules that information is to be reserved until the players earn it. If the GM throttles down information flow or gives best-known information that does not warn the players about the creature's next attacks, then players might stop using Recall Knowledge due to the low return for an action. The game would lose a tactical dimension.
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I worry less about malicious GMs and more about inexperienced GMs who gain the impression from the PF2 rules that information is to be reserved until the players earn it. If the GM throttles down information flow or gives best-known information that does not warn the players about the creature's next attacks, then players might stop using Recall Knowledge due to the low return for an action. The game would lose a tactical dimension.
Very much this. Why stop to use Recall Knowledge to check for fire resistance if you can also use Produce Flame? Granted it is two actions instead of one, however it also has some potential for damage in addition to the answer to your question.
In my current campaign (currently at character level 3) our GM has not been overly restrictive when it comes to Recall Knowledge (and we passed our check) and we still don't use Recall Knowledge that often because a move, raise shield or additional attack (not 3rd of course) might look more promising. However this might still be attributed to low level where ending a non-boss enemy often seems a lot easier than studying it.
The action declared in the case of Ray of Frost doesn't have it's outcome change if the player includes more words than "I cast Ray of Frost at that target."
Where as in the case of Recall Knowledge there are different outcomes that rely not on declaring a different action like declaring Acid Splash would be, but on whether the player said "I Recall Knowledge about that creature," or something like "I Recall Knowledge to figure out <specific detail the player is guessing about the relevance of>."A centipede swarm has resistances bludgeoning 5, piercing 5, slashing 2. A shortsword deals piercing damage, but has versatile P.
Thus in the case of striking a centipede swarm with a shortsword there are different outcomes that rely not on declaring a different action like declaring a strike with a shortsword or a strike with a hatchet would be, but on whether the player said “I strike with my shortsword” or something like “I strike with my shortsword for slashing damage <which the player is guessing about the relevance of>.”
So, do you allow the player’s successful attack roll to be mitigated by his poor choice not to use the versatile quality of his weapon, or do you instead decide for him that he selected the more effective damage type?
In this case, the player, when he made his successful Recall Knowledge check, realizing his PC has a shortsword wanted to know whether piercing or slashing damage was more effective, but his GM told him about centipede venom instead.
So you are saying that GMs have recall resistance.