Under the default rules, using recall knowledge to identify creature abilities is a bit vague - you get 'one of the creatures best-known attributes' on a success, and need a critical success to learn about 'something subtler, like a demon's weakness or the trigger for one of the creature's reactions'.
I'd like to make creature identification more useful, and more under the player's control, as I think it adds to the tactical fun if the player's have more information to go on. I've played quite a bit of the Kingmaker cRPG recently, and it's really helpful being able to see a creature's saves and key powers before deciding what spell to launch at them.
My suggested tweaks are:
When you recall knowledge on a creature, pick one of the following types of fact to find out: offensive abilities, defensive abilities, or other ability. If you get a success on the recall knowledge check, the GM will tell you one thing from the relevant category. If you get a critical success, the GM will tell you two things (or maybe the player can pick one thing??).
If you asked to learn about offensive abilities, the GM will tell you about a single attack ability, including a narrative overview of its range, damage etc. For example, "the river drake can launch a blob of caustic mucus over a medium range, that does acid damage in a small burst" or "the wolf get a bonus to damage if it attacks a target that's adjacent to the wolf's allies". Any power that hurts the PCs falls into this category, and the GM will start with the most dramatic/cooler powers first. An offensive reaction power (like attack of opportunity) falls into this category
If you asked to learn about defensive abilities, the GM will tell you about one of:
* the creature's general HP, resistances and weaknesses in narrative terms. E.g. "it's not got very many HP for something of this level, but it's resistant to acid and weak to fire", or "this flesh golem is empowered by lightning and vulnerable to cold"
* the creature's AC and saves. e.g. "it's physically very tough and hard to hurt, but weak-willed and slow, so focus on Reflex and Will!"
* a defensive power, e.g. "the animated statue is hard to hit and resistant to damage - but once you break its armour, it's much more vulnerable. You can do that either with straight damage, or with a critical hit"
If you asked to learn about other abilities, the GM will tell you about a relevant type of ability. Not all monsters will have these, but examples could be: "barghasts can take the shape of a wolf or goblin, as well as their natural form" or "ghosts often reform after being killed, unless you can fix the curse that anchors them". If the creature has no weird abilities, the GM might be nice and give you something from the offensive or defensive category.
What are people's thoughts on this? Is it too complicated, or too powerful? Are there any major flaws with the categorisation of powers/information?
RPG Superstar 2008 Top 32
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Whatever serves your game best, is the correct answer.
I believe the designers left the Recall Knowledge action vague so that individuals could decide just how much info to dole out with each success check or critical failure, rather than calling out what the exact DCs are as well as what kind of information can be sought.
But i also think they left it *too* vague.
YMMV.
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Personally I think the game works best when recall monster knowledge is strong. Casters need a way to figure out non-obvious monster saves without metagaming.
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My suggested tweaks are:
When you recall knowledge on a creature, pick one of the following types of fact to find out: offensive abilities, defensive abilities, or other ability. If you get a success on the recall knowledge check, the GM will tell you one thing from the relevant category. If you get a critical success, the GM will tell you two things (or maybe the player can pick one thing??).
I used essentially those three categories in my Pathfinder 1st Edition houserules for Knowledge checks. "Do you want Offense, Defense, or Special Abilities?" (Also described here) PF1 does not have critical successes on skill rolls, but Knowledge checks have a "+5 over success" system that acts a lot like crits. For a +5 I let them learn from a second category.
Personally I think the game works best when recall monster knowledge is strong. Casters need a way to figure out non-obvious monster saves without metagaming.
Yes. I also suspect that a lot of game sessions with weak monster knowledge end with, "Finally, the monster is dead. What was it?" And if the fight is quick, then the players might never learn about the cool special abilities it had, unless one was a victim of such an ability. "You made your save. So you don't know what the monster tried to do."
For my PF2 games, I went into full overdrive on Recall Knowledge. A description is at How are GMs determining the result of Recall Knowledge regarding creatures? comment #19. The summary is that a successful Recall Knowledge roll gives a story about how the character learned the information, so it is an integrated piece of knowledge tied into the character's background. I have a little trouble telling stories about the druid character who has no backstory, but I can base the story on his Herbalist background or Storm Druid order.
I'll have to borrow "pick a category," that sounds pretty clean. Probably give them a second category on a critical success.
I'm a big fan of Recall Knowledge being an active and useful part of combat.
Is house ruling that recalling knowledge on a creature as a free action too much? just hate that it takes an action to think.
Is house ruling that recalling knowledge on a creature as a free action too much? just hate that it takes an action to think.
I dunno, I think stopping to take a moment to wrack your brain about the difference between a ghoul or ghast in the middle of a chaotic combat is pretty reasonable.
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What about an Enhancement that mitigates the risk of Critical Failure somewhat?
[Concentrate] [Secret]
You attempt a skill check to try to remember a bit of knowledge regarding a topic related to that skill. The GM determines the DCs for such checks and which skills apply.
Critical Success: You recall the knowledge accurately and gain additional information or context.
Success: You recall the knowledge accurately or gain a useful clue about your current situation.
Critical Failure: You recall incorrect information or gain an erroneous or misleading clue.
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.
[Concentrate] [Secret]
You attempt a skill check to try to remember a bit of knowledge regarding a topic related to that skill. The GM determines the DCs for such checks and which skills apply.
Critical Success: You recall the knowledge accurately and gain additional information or context.
Success: You recall the knowledge accurately or gain a useful clue about your current situation.
Fail: You fail to recall knowledge about a creature, but may retry at a higher DC or using a different applicable skill.
Critical Failure: You fail to recall knowledge about a creature, and cannot retry until you have gained a level. If you get this result on a retry attempt, you recall incorrect information or gain an erroneous or misleading clue as an additional effect.
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IMO the best approach to RK on creatures is that the GM should provide useful info. I dislike the categories approach because players can make a bad choice and get nothing. Every party and creature is different, and the GM is the only person who knows both sides, so they should curate info accordingly.
It also doesn't fit well with how trying to recall facts in a fight would work or the rule about getting the most well known info first. If you see a green dragon and actually about green dragons, you won't be running through a check list of damage types searching for a weakness that isn't there. You'll think "Ah breath weapon spread out!"
My favorite approach is to start reading the creature's flavor text aloud until I read something the party can actually use and that will change their tactics accordingly, and then stop until they roll another check. I also usually give the traits if they're relevant. "This is a demon and you know all demons are weak to cold iron and goodness."
I also may need to parse the flavor into gameterms to make it useful. Knowing a Medusa's gaze turns you to stone isn't helpful if you don't know the particulars of gaze mechanics.
I'd allow players to pick the weakest save if that is the the most useful information, but I'd maintain the right the veto it if I think there's something more pressing. Knowing a creature has a bad reflex save doesn't matter if all your reflex spells are electric damage and the thing is immune to electricity.
I also like allowing for retries if you get new information that could jog your memory. That includes a creature displaying a new ability since your last check.
What about an Enhancement that mitigates the risk of Critical Failure somewhat?
** spoiler omitted **
** spoiler omitted **
I like this for several reasons.
1. Having multiple skills relevant to a check is rewarded.
2. Moving the crit fail erroneous information to retries gives the party a little more agency on whether they want to roll those dice. Players don't know if something has a DC adjustment for rarity or is otherwise too high to be worth the risk. Now they can infer they shouldn't bother with untrained skills.
3. You have less need of secret checks for initial rolls, just retries, which speeds up play.
4. Less erroneous info is easier on the GM and causes less confusion at the table. It is hard enough to remember all the details of a game without slipping random false info in there, IMO.
5. It seems to get rid of the increasing DCs on a success rule. That rule makes it impossible to learn more than 4 things about a topic and had crappy interactions with the erroneous knowledge rule.
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I don't think the problem is critical failure misinformation. I think the problems are:
- High DC to get a success.
- Blocked from retries on a failure.
Lemme explain. A normal level-based DC is reasonable for someone who's good at a skill. So at level 10, the DC is 27. If you're a Master, have a 20 in the stat, a +2 skill item, you have a +23 to your check. That's looking fine. But what if you're not a specialist in that skill? You have only a 16 stat, trained, and no skill item (because there's a max on how many items you can invest). You have a +15. Your odds on that DC 27 are only 45%.
Now, when you're recalling knowledge, it's often about monsters above your level. Because then you really need the edge. That level 12 monster is a DC 30 to know about. Your specialist still 70% odds but the amateur is down to 30%. And that's just a +2 level monster.
Now let's look at a boss monster who's level+3 and Unique because he's a special creation just for this AP. A level 13 unique monster is DC 41. Even the specialist needs to roll an 18 to know anything. The amateur needs to roll a 20 to get a success and critically fails at a 15 or lower.
Conclusion: these DCs are too high to make Recall Knowledge viable.
Blocked from retrying makes it worse. Even on a normal creature where you have so-so odds, if you could try several times, that'd be okay. It's a bit like making attack rolls, not all of those hit either, and we can live with that. But that's not the case; as soon as you fail you can't try again. This always frustrates me with my Investigator with Known Weaknesses. I get free RK checks each round when I devise stratagems, except quite quickly you get locked out, because your chance of failing any given roll are just plain high. Remember, even the specialist against a level+2 monster (a Moderate solo!) has a 40% chance of failure.
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My houserules for this:
* Rarity doesn't raise the DC if you're facing the monster directly in an encounter, only when doing research at a distance. If you're examining a footprint, it matters because you might not have seen many drawings of that footprint in books. If the monster is in the room with you, you can observe how it looks, smells, moves, sounds. Draw conclusions from that. ("With that smell of sulphur, I bet it's fire aspected. With that bright coloration, that usually signals this is a poisonous animal.") It's not rare if it's actually there.
* You can retry RK if you get new information. If you're investigating a creature that commits murders on the full moon and you examine a crime scene, you can do RK. If you investigate another crime scene, there might be new clues there, so you can do a new RK check even if you failed the previous one. And if the DC had gone up because of a previous success, that resets as well.
* In combat, each round the creature acts, it provides you new information. So you can try RK again at the fresh DC even if you tries and succeeded (raise DC) or failed (blocked) last round.
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I agree there should be more room to retry, but that's what my new information house rule is for.
I don't think I agree with the DCs being too high, or at least that being the main problem. Certainly lowering the DCs doesn't remove my issues with erroneous knowledge, just lowers the odds of encountering them. You should have lower odds of having read about a rarer creature.
I feel like examples you give for ignoring rarity feel more like observations than identifying what the creature is. Personally I'm more inclined to give those sorts of things out as consolation prizes on a failed RK than lower the DC, or even allow someone to observe the fact with a perception check. Side note: I think telling someone a creature is poisonous isn't good RK info. You learn that fact very quickly anyway, and there is very little you can do to change your tactics in the moment to counter it. And "try not to get hit" applies against every monster. Useful = actionable.