Like, just looking at them and saying "that's a level 5 ogre in the front of that cave"?
No, there's definitely no reason to think that would be inherent knowledge for characters to have.
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Yes, they just lose a spell under those circumstances.
A reasonable GM will generally, IMO, give whether it's level is higher or lower than the PCs on a successful Recall Knowledge check (along with other info, obviously), but that's technically a generous gesture rather than required by the rules.
Yes, they just lose a spell under those circumstances.
A reasonable GM will generally, IMO, give whether it's level is higher or lower than the PCs on a successful Recall Knowledge check (along with other info, obviously), but that's technically a generous gesture rather than required by the rules.
This. I've also toyed around with a house rule for being able to make a Seek check to evaluate the relative power level of the enemy you're facing unless it is actively concealing it, since some creatures are more powerful than a normal member of their species. But you could also tie that to a Recall Knowledge check, really.
Working competency into your descriptions can aid as well.
"He looks amused that you outnumber him."
"She wields her blade in a style you haven't mastered yet."
"The beast's essence overshadows you all."
Yes, true monsters can be harder to describe this way, yet in many cases the players (though not necessarily the characters) will know that:
One monster = higher level (or minor battle)
Three+ monsters = as high or lower (or major battle you likely should've seen coming)
That works for top level Incapacitation spells.
And a non-meta way you can use is "Ogre-power", much like horsepower for engines. "These creatures can kill an Ogre in one swipe." or "This creature could take on a band of Ogres!" Assuming the PCs have faced Ogres, this will work through the beginning portion of the game until y'all establish a vocabulary for this stuff.
As for picking the exactly right level spell, I can't see informing the players/PCs of specific levels of specific monsters. That's a level of granularity that I don't think exists in the game world given all the weak, elite, leveled, mutated, and variant examples of each monster, especially the (semi-)PC races.
Also, I disagree it's losing a spell, so much as making a poor tactical choice and having natural consequences (not punishment).
Or maybe it's a poor strategic choice for going with spells that you cannot cast with confidence. Either way, I wouldn't put the onus upon the GM to aid my estimating of enemy prowess would I to play a caster focused on Incapacitation spells.
As for spells where you need to know h.p. or level (as several high level spells directly reference), I'm inclined to avoid them because of that X factor. "Oh, he had 51 h.p., not 50." And in fairness, I wouldn't have monsters with those abilities know the PCs' stats either.
Reward players for using recall knowledge in combat. Let general power level be one of the first questions that the party will want to know: In the stories, how does this creature compare to enemies I have faced before is not narrative breaking in scope.
In the PF2 world of Golarion level is the defining feature of difficulty to a very precise degree. It would be incredibly strange for the people living in that world not to notice that.
While you don't know the exact level of creatures just by looking at them, you can definitely get the hang of estimating things that are probably a few levels below the party or thing's that may be too strong for an incapacitate in your highest level slot, especially after there's been a round or two of action.
If you do remove the incapacitate tag as a house rule, though, why would you only increase will saves for higher level enemies, instead of all saves vs formerly incapacitate effects?
I would disagree that getting the idea of how dangerous an enemy is by taking the measure of how effectively it's fighting is bad meta-knowledge to be avoided. It's something that makes sense in character and holds up pretty well as a trope in fiction.
This is fairly distinct from a purely meta calculation like "I've never seen those creatures in the clearing ahead, and have no indication if what they're capable of, but there are 6 of them, so I assume they are 2 levels or more below us."
There are lots of will save effects which don't have the Incapacitation trait though. So giving them a raw bonus increase means it is harder to get spells like Fear to stick, too. It also doesn't make much sense thematically to increase will if it is supposed to be a monster's bad save.
And if you give them a boost to all saves, you've just made most spells worse off instead of the small selection of Incapacitation spells. PF2 is very easy to house rule... If you don't mess with the underlying math.
The best approach, IMO, is to make sure your players are aware of the Incapacitation trait and encourage them to have a varied spell selection.
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I give my players the monster's type and levels if they ask. I don't want them to start metagaming the level of monsters from their number, assuming they will face low to severe encounters only. It also allows me to put monsters out of their power bracket without killing them because "That's above extreme!" as they can know the strength of what they face. It's a bit illogical, but levels are illogical anyway, and the whole Incapacitation rule pushes players to metagame.
Actually, I'm curious about this also. Normally, I'd agree that players should not know monster levels .. BUT ...
Check out the Bind Undead spell. It says you have to target a creature of the same level as the spell or lower. Not that you can target a creature, cast it, and then see if it's same level or lower. The spell description implies that a creature has to be X level before you can even target it. Which implies that the player would have to know first.
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I find the game to be more fun when the decisions players make are reasonably informed - there's fun in mystery, but there's also a level of risk assessment that goes into real peoples actions on a constant basis as well.
If something isn't particularly mysterious, I'm happy to provide a 'sense' of relative power that is 'weaker than you'/'about as powerful as you'/'more powerful than you alone', with more specific information on a successful Recall Knowledge. It also helps to set the tone of a scene to be clear up front that "Yeah, this guy is looking at all four of you and doesn't seem particularly upset with the odds."
Similarly to how I'll definitely allow players to determine 'best/weakest save' on a successful check - it helps player engagement.
I assume that no one in setting refers to monster-level or will saves for anything, but its a valid translation of relative power to the players that they can interpret back into how their character approaches the situation - after all, I assume the characters have a good understanding of the limitations of their abilities.
Also, it reminds me of the good old days of /con ing on every monster in sight in Everquest, to try and get some idea of how terrible an idea it is to engage them :D
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Unfortunately, my experience in playing under quite a few different GMs in PFS is that what one gains from a successful recall knowledge check is even more variable in PF2 than it was in PF1 (and it was quite variable in PF1).
I have a Bardic Knowledge based bard (L3 right now) who just about always spends an action in the first round to gain knowledge and I'm seriously considering retiring/retraining him since (with some exceptions) recall knowledge has so far been, uh, not living up to my hopes. While he routinely did a recall knowledge check I also do them from time to time with other characters (PFS, max level 6) with, again, wildly varying utility.
Maybe it gets better at higher levels but at higher levels there is the new issue that so many creatures have so many interesting things to reveal. I know that I've run into that problem when GMing Age of Ashes.
I really do think it was a mistake for recall knowledge to have a failure that does nothing. With 4 tiers of success, failing could easily give the equivalent of 1 somewhat useful piece of information, starting with power level, and ten moving on to defenses.
I also think it would have made sense for recall knowledge, used in combat, for combat specific information to be a separate action than recalling information in a more broad and general sense. The broader version could be a 3 action activity instead of a one and have more powerful and broad applications, not relevant to combat statistics, but a tactical appraisal action could be the one action activity to learn directly relevant combat information.
Then if the difficulty increased by 5 on the tactical appraisal each time you got any information about the target, and you could not retry on any given creature after experiencing a failure, it would be a lot more clear to GMs about how to use it in combat.
Information flow: Level, Special attacks (the first thing anyone would know about creatures, if none, skip), Special weaknesses (if none, skip), Best defense, Weakest defense, Any additional information a player asks for.
Critical success: learn 3 pieces of info.
Success: learn 2 pieces of info.
Failure: Learn 1 piece of info, cannot retry.
Critical failure: 1 piece of false information (specifically about the next piece of information the player would receive), cannot retry.
This would streamline in combat knowledge checks, remove the headache of trying to create false information on the fly ( add or subtract a few levels based on whether the creature looks like it should be intimidating or a push over, or misrepresent a defense as strong or weak).
I just came up with this off the top of my head, but I am probably going to start using it in the games I run immediately.
Recall Knowledge failures not allowing you to retry is a bad way to go, there's a reason why the default rules don't include that clause at all.
Especially since the success rates of PF2 are set up in a way that even a character built for a particular kind of knowledge has a reasonably solid chance of failing a check. I dunno about your players, but most I've played with over the years would be pissed if "I rolled a 2" meant they didn't know much and couldn't spend actions to keep learning more.
For my system, that would only be for the in combat battle analysis. Not for general knowledge checks. In combat, you have a lot of other ways of discovering specific combat information about an opponent. Either you know about the creature or you don't, and you learn about it by interacting with it.
I agree completely about knowledge checks in other situations, although I do think it is fine for GMs to decide that there is an eventual limit to what you know without investigating the subject/doing research.
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"I didn't roll high enough to identify the creature, and instead of trying again like the book rules would let me do, my GM says I have to gamble not just actions and die rolls but also resources like spell slots or consumable items if I'm going to learn any resistances or weaknesses of the creature I'm facing" doesn't make for an improved play experience.
It does make for players that are more averse to using limited resources, though, since it increases the chance that they will feel that they "wasted" something.
Uh, the GM IS following the rules as written. Page 506
"Once a character has attempted an incredibly hard check or faileda check, further attempts are fruitless—the character has recalled everything they know about the subject"
Its the rules that are at fault here, not the GM. Unless you choose to fault the GM for following the rules :-) (Which, admittedly, may sometimes be a reasonable position to take)
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This exact situation is why it's a bad idea to give a player-facing version of a rule and a GM-facing version of a rule.
If you look up the action the player is having their character use when they Recall Knowledge there is zero mention that failure prevents you from trying again. That definitely shouldn't be proven false elsewhere in the book.
Agreed
IMO, the best way to handle retry on Recall Knowledge is too allow it *if* you get new information. If you fail to recognize a monster before it demonstrates its signature ability, you should be able to try again once it does. It is perfectly reasonable to fail and recognise a Slaver Demon, but have your memory jogged when it tries to Enslave your Soul.
I always says, as long as there is a knowledge check, if the level of the monster is equal, inferior or superior. Even if the KC is a failure. For me it is the “action tax” to be able to have an idea on the level of the monster. After that I can give other informations depending on the check, but Iwill very rarely give the exact level, just equal over or under.
Except for Battle Assesment from the Rogue, à critical sucess on the knowledge check or some Divination shenanigans. However I will always try to make some roleplay happens at the same time: “As you look at his posture, he screams En Garde! And fiery runes appears on his blade. He’s got a witty smile on his face and does not seem to fear the fact that he is alone!” Clearly, he is from a superior level!
And finally juste a piece of advice but I use Society for monsters knowledge on NPCs (is that a Cleric or a Wizard, what Kind of Martial schools are the guard, ...) Works well.
I was about to say that my group will do as SteelGuts suggest.
As long as someone does a recall knowledge check of the appropriate kind (and is trained) then at the very least they can identify the relative power level between themselves and the enemy.
Either the enemy is weaker, equal, or higher power. Yes this basically translate to telling the player the enemies level, but it works for our group and is within the scope of the rules in my opinion.
Here's a silly question this discussion raises in my mind. How does the NPC/creature know the level of the PCs? There are a number of monsters with incapacitate spells. Do they automatically know the level of the PCs, or do they also have to recall knowledge?
I mean, what is fair for the player/character divide is fair for the GM/NPC divide.
Why is the monster looking confident when outnumbered 4 to 1? Has it been studying the characters for their last few fights, or is it assuming the 10th level characters are 1st level peasants (especially if its a party of 4 monks...)
I don't run monsters as assuming they know anything about the party that they haven't witnessed/seen evidence of/had reported. Not level, not favored spells, not who has reaction abilities.
I don't understand how that's even a question.
I don't run monsters as assuming they know anything about the party that they haven't witnessed/seen evidence of/had reported. Not level, not favored spells, not who has reaction abilities.
I don't understand how that's even a question.
My thinking was provoked by statements like:
"Yeah, this guy is looking at all four of you and doesn't seem particularly upset with the odds."
Working competency into your descriptions can aid as well.
"He looks amused that you outnumber him."
Which made the fact that an intelligent enemy is standing there, at 4 to 1 odds and not trying to escape imply they must have assessed the party's overall power level without a recall knowledge check, or that they are exhibiting confidence that they have no reason to have. Or the NPC is aware of the metagame Low, Moderate, Severe, Extreme encounter concepts and the players can't be too far out of their league.
Otherwise, why did they engage a larger group if they don't know if they're more powerful than even one of them? Or if engaged by the party, why aren't they spending an action to assess them (i.e. recall knowledge on their gear to get an estimated value), escaping, or trying to talk the party out of a fight?
Well, our level 13 boss creature may well just be used to assuming it's stronger than some pack of humans/elves/leshies without worrying much about sizing them up, because it's legitimately a big deal.
Bad guys are arrogant. That's part of why they think they can get away with their evil schemes, with no justice or accounting finding them.
Alternatively, they've always won against the odds to this point.
Pragmatic, intelligent badguys do not look at any odds and assume they are favorable ;)
I've had a big problem with my NPC's dieing horribly because "There's no way that two-handed-hammer fighter has TWO AOO's, right? What are the odds?"
Yeah, I'm fine with a NPC using a check to figure out the relative level of the party, same as PCs can do to them. Many enemies won't have the capacity or presence of mind to do so, and I don't know that I as a GM would ever bother using the actions to, but the option is on the table.
I've actually had drow do it to the party and realize how mismatched it would be and let the party go with nothing but a respectful nod. Worked well to reinforce that the world doesn't just scale to them and they are legit badasses.