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Hello everyone,
Yeah, I like super titles like that, I just haven't found a place to put trap feat in it ;)
So, I have, as a player, an issue with Recall Knowledge checks. I'll give you an illustrative example of this problem:
My level 1 character has +3 to Religion. And I can face CR-1 monsters to CR3 Uncommon monsters.
If I try to recall knowledge about the former, I'll have 50% chance to have a valid information for 5% chance to have an erroneous one. If I recall knowledge on the latter, I'll have 20% chance to get valid information and 35% chance to have incorrect one. So, at first, it's not good at all, as I'll have a whole lot of misleading information in the middle of the proper ones. When you consider that it costs an action, I feel quite screwed.
And that is without taking into account the reflex of many DMs when you make a critical failure to give you a very misleading information like speaking about fire resistance or cold weakness on a white dragon. Basing the party tactics on a misleading information is a good recipe for disaster.
The whole system of recall knowledge forces you to assess the DC before rolling the check as a high DC can result in your check being detrimental on average, and sometimes a lot. Like if you cast a fireball on the white dragon because its cave is freezing cold, it's acceptable before making the recall knowledge check, but not after if your DM told you it's fire immune. So, to solve this problem, there's not lots of solution: recalling knowledge about small enemies but not about bad ass bosses, maxing the skill so you should not see any DC against which it's not interesting to recall knowledge, in one word: metagaming.
I think the critical failures on recall knowledge checks are a bad idea. So, I encourage all DMs to give irrelevant pieces of information on a critical failure instead of very misleading ones. Stating that a white dragon is fire resistant will shut the recall knowledge checks of your player in the long run, stating that it's negative energy resistant should amuse them and not have too much of a negative impact.
Give me your thoughts!
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To have a +3 check instead of +7 (for wizards or druids/clerics) or even a higher modifier for a character which wants to rely on recall knowledge (which won't have +0 on int/wis) is bad
This sums up my thought exactly.
I do understand where the OP is coming from. GMs would probably have more appreciative players if the results of a bad check were inconsequential or funny instead of detrimental, but at the same time if your modifier is only +3, hopefully you have something more worthwhile you can be doing.
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The whole system of recall knowledge forces you to assess the DC before rolling the check...I don't find that any more true for this check in particular than for other rolls that players choose to make all the time.
Metagaming means that you alter your course of action because of out of game knowledge. I don't find other cases where we do that on a regular basis, but maybe I'm missing something.
To have a +3 check instead of +7 (for wizards or druids/clerics) or even a higher modifier for a character which wants to rely on recall knowledge (which won't have +0 on int/wis) is badThis sums up my thought exactly.
I do understand where the OP is coming from. GMs would probably have more appreciative players if the results of a bad check were inconsequential or funny instead of detrimental, but at the same time if your modifier is only +3, hopefully you have something more worthwhile you can be doing.
In fact, it goes even further. There are cases where rolling a knowledge check doesn't have consequences (like if you are speaking of the vampire that you should soon meet) and where it's better not to roll to get information than to roll. So, I think it's more than just having something better to do, it's non maximized knowledge check that you should not be rolling.
Also, even with a +7, if the DM decides that the DC is well above 20, it's better not to roll the check than to roll it. I don't find that fun, as it pushes to inactivity.
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I know a player who didn't see a point in spending money on a sheath, because they thought they could just store their weapon in their backpack. When I showed them the obscure table subtext that explains you need to spend an extra Interact Action whenever you pull something out of your backpack, they quickly bought a sheath.
Metagaming is unavoidable. It can be both conscious, and subconscious. But it's how we respond to it that matters.
If you have a low modifier and are faced with a difficult check, whether it's attacking the APL+2 Boss or rolling that Background knowledge about Farming Lore, you can either choose to take the risk for a chance at greatness (crits are always possible) or not roll at all and automatically fail.
That's really always been how dice rolling games have worked.
I know a player who didn't see a point in spending money on a sheath, because they thought they could just store their weapon in their backpack. When I showed them the obscure table subtext that explains you need to spend an extra Interact Action whenever you pull something out of your backpack, they quickly bought a sheath.
I have never thought about that, as having a sheath for all my weapons is just basic logic. That's not metagaming.
If you have a low modifier and are faced with a difficult check, whether it's attacking the APL+2 Boss or rolling that Background knowledge about Farming Lore,
Even if you can't do anything else with your action (like if you are paralyzed), you should avoid to roll the Recall Knowledge check. That is way different than having low chances to succeed, it's having more chances to critically fail than to succeed.
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Metagaming means that you alter your course of action because of out of game knowledge.And that's precisely why there really is no such thing as that definition of metagaming - what you are describing as a case to be avoided is actually the entirely unavoidable: players are always using out of game knowledge because that's the only knowledge they have.
Basing your choice as to what to have your character do on how the game works is playing the game. Full stop.
Give me an example. The only one I see is encounter building guidelines, which is highly metagamy. But I don't see a single other case, and I would be happy to get your input.
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In-game, every character would want to automatically recall knowledge every time they see a new creature. I mean, why wouldn't you? You either don't remember and nothing happens, or you do and you are better prepared for the fight.
What the OP is complaining about is that the actual in-game paradigm punishes you for just "trying" (by getting detrimental info, not just the action loss) so there's an incentive for characters to not want to recall knowledge at all unelss they specialize in it. This is further amplified when the enemy is obviously "high level", so recall knowledge becomes a very tactical thing that requires weighing pros and cons, rather than expected behaviour for a party.
Granted, this has always happened for chars with low social skills /low athletics (punishment for failing so dont even try), but I agree that the game should be moving away from intimidating players into not rolling dice.
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My biggest issue with metagaming and recall knowledge checks is in case someone critically fails, if the erroneous information they receive is too "obviously wrong" there's a tension between "roleplay the potentially silly thing" and "conclude that you rolled poorly" that is unfortunate.
Never forget that as a GM you have the final say on what is and is not common knowledge in a given area. I've found the easiest way to deal with Knowledge checks is to provide a baseline amount of information to the party based on where they are from/ what they do with no check needed in the same way that any "action" that is so easy as to be automatic shouldn't be rolled.
A troll being weak to Fire/Acid is pretty much automatic knowledge for anyone who grew up with trolls around, so I tend to grant that sort of thing to my players with no check needed.
Imagine if your party were to enter a City on a quest to find a character at a famous Inn. If no one from the party has ever been to that city, perhaps they would need to gather information to find that Inn. If however one of the party members is from a neighboring town, or even the same city, no such check should be necessary. Grant the player that knowledge to keep the plot moving.
Any information that is not strictly speaking "common knowledge" for someone in the game world would require a check. However finding out that a Leaf Leshy has Fire Weakness (I mean... it's a plant) probably falls under common knowledge. Now whether that extends to the fact that a Gourd Leshy does NOT have fire weakness is another issue.
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Any information that is not strictly speaking "common knowledge" for someone in the game world would require a check. However finding out that a Leaf Leshy has Fire Weakness (I mean... it's a plant) probably falls under common knowledge. Now whether that extends to the fact that a Gourd Leshy does NOT have fire weakness is another issue.
Depends if Pokemon is common knowledge haha! It has made my players make some weird decisions as far as damage types in PF1e.
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My biggest issue with metagaming and recall knowledge checks is in case someone critically fails, if the erroneous information they receive is too "obviously wrong" there's a tension between "roleplay the potentially silly thing" and "conclude that you rolled poorly" that is unfortunate.
This.
And that tension is further exacerbated by the stronger relationship between tactics and survivability.
Like, do you really want to roleplay your character to death?
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Wait a sec, how is searching over and over in the same place because you the player know something is there from previous playthroughs cheating? That's an action my character could possibly take, just like searching once or not searching at all, and I don't need to justify it because it's what I want my character to do. You're just punishing me for having played the AP before and forcing me to pretend I don't know there is a hidden treasure there (and we all know choosing a different action pretending I don't know something is impossible, this isn't play pretend dagnabit this is D&D!). In fact you're the one metagaming for not allowing my character to search multiple times at this particular spot when I could have done it anywhere there wasn't treasure.
So what if a character shouldn't make a knowledge check because they aren't proficient in it? How many times in fiction do we see the protagonist take a few seconds to stare blankly at a monster before reacting?
Frankly speaking, I see both the decision to not make a check because you are untrained and the decision to make the check because you are trained as essentially meta gamey, and that's okay. There will be some meta gaming at any table. Choosing what weapon to attack with, what feat to use, what bomb to throw, etc... are going to be "meta game" decisions because you as the player have all the time in the world to think on it. Your character has a few moments. Unless you blindfold your players between turns and use a stopwatch to time out there decisions, you are going to get meta decisions, because your players are going to use player knowledge to decide what to do.
Should I flurry of blows this guy? I know he's taken a bunch of damage, so it could be a waste. Should I try casting this spell at that guy? Wait, I'm just out of range.
Things like this happen. Do you rage at your players for meta gaming everytime they plot out their turn? Cause it sounds like you should, otherwise your overreacting to knowledge checks in specific.
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I had a discussion at my table like this that went something like:
Barbarian: What is this thing? Can I make a Recall Knowledge check on it?
Alchemist: No offense, but I'm not trusting anything that the 10 Int goblin is going to come up with.
Barbarian: That's fair.
I get the "Am I metagaming/Is this metagaming?" argument, but there are limitations at a certain point. It is still a game and people are going to engage with it as such. I much prefer my players using the system and having fun than constantly thinking, "Is this metagaming?"
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Certain parts of metagaming are necessary for the game. For example, the party stops in a tavern for dinner. An unshaved bard with a weird Scandinavian accent and no reputation asks to join the group in their adventure. Sensibly, the party would say no. At the gaming table, the bard is the PC of a new player, so they have to take him in. The metagame overrides what the characters would do in game.
Character knowledge is too big to set in advance. We can't say that Sven knows about trolls because he grew up in the Land of the Linnorm Kings were trolls are common, because the setting material is too vast to check whether trolls are common in the Land of the Linnorm Kings. Therefore, we use dice rolls on knowledge skills. The GM reads that a troll is a level 5 common giant, so it would be a DC 20 (TABLE 10–5: DCS BY LEVEL) Recall Knowledge check using, er, TABLE 10–7: CREATURE IDENTIFICATION SKILLS does not mention, so let's call it the player's choice of Occultism or Society since trolls feel like an abberant humanoid to me.
4th-level Sven the bard is expert in Occultism with Intelligence 12, so he has +9 Occultism bonus and can learn about the troll's regeneration on a roll of 11 or higher. He has a 50% chance of success and a 5% chance of false information. Alas, he rolls a 1, so as a mischievouss GM I tell him, "Trolls are a kind of undead with regenerative healing for 10 points per turn. The only way to permanently kill them is to cut off their head."
Lady Anna the cleric, on the other hand, is trained in Society with Intelligence 12, so she has a +7 Society bonus and can learn about the troll's regeneration on a roll of 13 or higher. She has a 40% chance of success and a 10% chance of false information. She rolls a 15, so I honestly tell her, "Trolls are not undead. However, Sven is right that they are hard to kill. They have regeneration 20, deactivated by acid or fire."
The players know out of game that trolls have regneration deactivated by fire, so the other two characters roll Recall Knowledge untrained to try to confirm the correct information. That is a degree of metagaming that I find acceptable. They both have regular failures. if one rolled another critical failure, I would have made up different false information than Sven's, just for the laughs.
If the players of Sven and Anna are like my players, they will ham up a disagreement about the troll's regeneration ability while attacking the troll. Sven will insist the Anna should hit the troll with Disrupt Undead and she will insist that Sven should throw his Alchemist's Fire and neither follows the other's orders. The troll's regeneration is obvious, but telling the difference between regeneration 10 and regeneration 20 is difficult. Amazo the wizard settles the argument by hitting the troll with Acid Splash, which deactivates the regeneration for a round.
Skipping the failed Recall Knowledge would have skipped the roleplaying silliness. Some forms of metagaming are just no fun.
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Way way wait.
How did Amazo know to believe Lady Anna over Sven after failing his own roll?
Especially because it is conceivable that, in game, the wizard probably has some sense that the bard is more an authority (expert) on the topic than the cleric (trained)!
Because science!
My players have scientific training. See the introduction to my Iron Gods campaign for details: Iron Gods among Scientists. For Iron Gods, they made high-Intelligence characters who tended toward scientific experiments. I had a lot of fun setting up situations in Iron Gods where the PCs could follow their scientific inclination. The theme of that campaign became the contrast between the science-creating party and the technology-hoarding Technic League.
In my players' hands high-Intellignce Amazo would have thought scientifically, too. This is not metagaming, this is character design.
Amazo had two hypotheses. (1) The troll has regenertion 10 deactived by beheading, and (2) The troll has regeneration 20 deactived by fire and acid. He wants to test the hypotheses. He had no way of beheading the troll, he did not prepare Produce Flame nor Burning Hands that morning, but he did prepare Acid Splash. Therefore, he could test the hypotheses by casting Acid Splash. It's a classic use of the scientific method.
That does bring up one other weakness of Recall Knowledge. Why waste an action making an unreliable Recall Knowledge check when the character can test the creature for resistances and weaknesses by simply hitting it with a weapon? "That arrow went right through the skeleton's empty ribcage. Piercing damage is useless. I am switching to my mace." Shooting the skeleton with an arrow took the same amount of actions as a Recall Knowledge check. Experiments are powerful.
By the way, my wife quipped that after the battle, Sven should say, "Well, this was a southern troll. Northern trolls are different. They have to be beheaded." She is a delightful roleplayer.
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Fair enough.
That said, "experimentation" is dangerous, as Encounter Mode is dangerous. I typically feel as though our party (in a given combat scenario) is one or two lucky die rolls away from catastrophe.
If the former sentence holds true, it follows that the "tension" (as Possible Cabbage described it upstream) between wanting to ignore or incorporate meta-game knowledge can be imagined as the silvery cord splitting the distance between the pre- and post- afterlife.
Which, love it or hate it, is a direct consequence of the existence of an equal to or greater than 5% chance of misinformation on player character attempts to Recall - and consequently implement - Knowledge.
If that makes sense.
Not metagaming. A character doesn't need to know what a monster is to choose to throw fire or acid at it.Examples of meta-gaming:
Your character has never seen a troll before, but you as a player automatically choose to attack it with fire or acid because you (the player) know that stops trolls' regeneration.
So, you're both defending my definition of metagaming. If you have a flaming greatsword, it's not metagaming to attack a troll with it, but if you draw a torch, it is. Metagaming is "altering your course of action because of out of game knowledge".
I forgot to answer to this post.
Give me an example. The only one I see is encounter building guidelines, which is highly metagamy. But I don't see a single other case, and I would be happy to get your input.Should I make a second Strike, or Stride over there? Should I drink a potion this round, or just get ready to drink it for next round after I cast a spell?
Any choice of any action cannot be made without the player considering their own knowledge - and any time any mechanic is involved the player can, and should feel free to, weigh the odds just like described in the OP for Recall Knowledge.
This is not metagaming, it's just gaming. You base your choices only on in game knowledge. The "rules" are a way to represent the world. In the world of Pathfinder, if you attack a lot in a row, you lose accuracy, clumsy people take more damage from fireballs and attacking someone in the back gives you an advantage. Your character has exactly the same choices than you do, with the same amount of knowledge.
Now, if you choose to Stride because you have read the module and you know that your position will explode in a second, then it's metagaming. Your character doesn't have the knowledge that allowed you to take this decision..
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So how is using the Recall Knowledge check metagaming? I keep reading and I'm not seeing why that is. They're done in secret and the GM can make the call for critical failure. Your example of a GM saying "The white dragon is fire resistant," isn't a very good use of the critical failure.
Like Maelorn7 said, giving good erroneous information is key. Telling players that white dragons aren't known to be spellcasters and then -BAM- it dimension doors to block the only avenue of escape is flavorful and exciting. So, click-baity title aside, is what you mean to say "Take care when giving critical failure effects" or "Actually make Secret rolls secretly"?
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This is not metagaming, it's just gaming. You base your choices only on in game knowledge. The "rules" are a way to represent the world. In the world of Pathfinder, if you attack a lot in a row, you lose accuracy, clumsy people take more damage from fireballs and attacking someone in the back gives you an advantage. Your character has exactly the same choices than you do, with the same amount of knowledge.
Now, if you choose to Stride because you have read the module and you know that your position will explode in a second, then it's metagaming. Your character doesn't have the knowledge that allowed you to take this decision..
Okay, let's examine what knowledge of the game "system" that your character actually has. Does a Wizard know exactly what every one of their spells does to the smallest detail? Maybe. A Cleric? How about one of the Spontaneous casters? Do they simply know exactly what is going to happen when they cast a spell?
Or do they have an "idea" of what the spell does and apply it in situations it seems suited for?
Does a Monk know that they are gaining an extra d6 of damage when they Ki strike? Or does a Paladin know exactly how much they can heal a person with Lay on Hands?
Your character does not have the same amount of information as you the player have. You have stats given in numbers that tell you fairly accurately how they interact with the world. Your character on the other hand is making due with knowing that "fireball" throws a powerful ball of fire at things that hurts.
Also, you say that Clumsy people tend to take more damage from fireball. How does your character come to that conclusion? Shouldn't anyone caught in a fireball take a boatload of damage from it? If you are using knowledge that a foe is probably clumsy to decide to hit them with a fireball, isn't that pretty hard core meta gaming? How do you know they are clumsy?
Okay, let's examine what knowledge of the game "system" that your character actually has. Does a Wizard know exactly what every one of their spells does to the smallest detail? Maybe. A Cleric? How about one of the Spontaneous casters? Do they simply know exactly what is going to happen when they cast a spell?
Or do they have an "idea" of what the spell does and apply it in situations it seems suited for?
Does a Monk know that they are gaining an extra d6 of damage when they Ki strike? Or does a Paladin know exactly how much they can heal a person with Lay on Hands?
Yes, yes, yes and yes. Your character doesn't know the dice, but he knows obviously that ki strike is doing more damage and by what amount, that Lay on hands will get someone back by that amount of life percentage, that such spell does that or that.
Ask any seasoned fighter, like a boxer, if he doesn't know precisely what hit at what part of his opponent body will have what effect on his fighting efficiency.Unless your character is a peasant with a weapon, he knows very precisely the effect of his abilities as he used them a lot and trained to master them.
Also, you say that Clumsy people tend to take more damage from fireball. How does your character come to that conclusion?
Even I came to this conclusion...
The Reflex save is supposed to represent the fact that a character jumps out of the blast, which is a very human action that anyone can know of without having ever cast a fireball by just looking at any action movie.All the rule system is supposed to represent the world. So, all the rule system is intuitively known by everyone, like you don't have to know about Newton to know that a rock will go back to earth if you throw it in the air. Everyone knows intuitively the laws of physics, which is the rule system of our world.
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If everyone intuitively knows the rule system (which I don't agree with), why is Recall Knowledge not considered under this blanket, free from "metagame" scrutiny?
Even I came to this conclusion...
The Reflex save is supposed to represent the fact that a character jumps out of the blast, which is a very human action that anyone can know of without having ever cast a fireball by just looking at any action movie.
All the rule system is supposed to represent the world. So, all the rule system is intuitively known by everyone, like you don't have to know about Newton to know that a rock will go back to earth if you throw it in the air. Everyone knows intuitively the laws of physics, which is the rule system of our world.
You kinda dodged a bit there. You said that your character makes all of the same decisions with the "same amount of knowledge" as the player, but that is simply not true.
Your character in game is not aware that they are a character in a game with game like rules right? Because if they did know that they were a character in a game, meta gaming wouldn't matter, it would just be how they interacted with the world. The assumption when Role Playing is that you attempt to put yourself in the shoes of the character you are portraying to the best of your ability. You make decisions on what to do as that character based on the rules, however your character has no idea that they are subject to those rules do they? As you say yourself, to them it's just physics and existence. To you it's roll Xd6 to hurt the bad guy.
The point I'm trying to get across is that Meta Gaming is simply something that is bound to happen at any table. It is a fools errand to try to stamp it out, instead work with it. I already stated that I like giving my players "common knowledge" in the same way that I don't require a roll for every single simple task taken by a character. If a player then wants more information, well that is what the Knowledge Check exists for, and as others have pointed out, even failing a Knowledge check can lead to fun and exciting roleplaying opportunities. Very rarely do I veto a player on a given action simply because it is meta gaming. It takes them wildly reaching to justify an otherwise outrageous action like say killing an NPC in book 1 of an AP because they know they are going to turn on the party later.
So no, I don't believe that Recall Knowledge specifically encourages meta gaming more than any other check in the game. To say they do is kinda missing the point of having them be secret rolls made by the GM. And any meta gaming that does come from Recall Knowledge is largely harmless. Roll with it.
Oh... I see... now we're going to act like there's no difference between "I did a thing that doesn't require any specific knowledge at all to do, and even if it did is something the character may have heard of before in life" and "I didn't tell the GM I've already played this adventure so I could squeeze every advantage out of it."
Hilarious. good times.
(A character hearing of something before in life sounds like some Knowledge they learned that maybe they can Recall...)
Searching the same spot requires no specific knowledge. My character has heard of secret doors and knows they exist, so he's being overly cautious by searching multiple times, it just happens to be in this one location. I thought I didn't have to justify these things.