Other than the fact that my GM would probably hate me forever, this seems like a delightful combo for the know-it-all bard.
Most of the time you use this skill combo, you will fail, but in failure, you know you are going to get 1 piece of correct information, which when used in combat to know what save to target, you are likely narrowing your options down to one half instead of a third, and it will likely help you narrow it down to choices that can be logically reasoned through, because if the false information looks obviously false, then the other option is true.
Occasionally, you will only get one piece of information, but it will be extremely rare that, if you do only get one piece of information, it will be a critical failure, unless you are in way over your head on a task, and if you are not aware that you are in way over your head on a task, then you are probably in big trouble anyway and your GM would be pretty cruel to use your false information to push you into something that would kill yourself or the party.
Yeah, I would hate to play at a table with someone doing that. Half of the fun of taking Dubious Knowledge is acting on BOTH of the things you know, not on your meta knowledge that one of the things is wrong.
As a GM, I think it would be fun for a player to have it.
"you are almost certain this strange lizard creature is immune to fire. Unless it is actually extremely vulnerable to fire, that seems plausible too."
You can either take a chance on one of the two being correct, or avoid fire attacks all together but it does give you a basic direction. Or even when talking about saves the information you get could be,
"Well, you are fairly certain the creature has a low will save, but might be immune to most spells that target will."
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I'm dubious of the assumption that the GM is going to give you information you want (saves) rather than a true resistance and a false save bonus.
I'm dubious of the assumption that the GM is going to give you information you want (saves) rather than a true resistance and a false save bonus.
Yeah, assuming your GM is going to give you any information about saves is a bad assumption.
Some GMs might let you ask for information.
Some might give you saves.
Some just might tell you "This creature has fire resistance and a is known for it's AoE fire attack."
Personally, if I were the GM, saves are only going to be given as information if the creature doesn't have anything else in special offenses or special defenses.
Like, I might tell you "This creature is renown for its immunity to sleep attacks" but I'm never going to tell you "This creature has a low will save, except that its immune to sleep attacks".
|
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
Yeah, I would hate to play at a table with someone doing that. Half of the fun of taking Dubious Knowledge is acting on BOTH of the things you know, not on your meta knowledge that one of the things is wrong.
That would make having the feat worse than not having it. It would make a critical success indistinguishable from a failure.
I don't think the feat is meant to weaken your critical successes.
That said, the GM should definitely not be making one obviously wrong, so OP's suggestion that you can immediately determine which is correct is questionable.
"Oh! I know this kind of creature! They're vulnerable to electricity. Or did it make them stronger? I'm sure it was something to do with electricity," is kind of how I've interpreted it. The character is perfectly aware one is wrong, but doesn't know which. I like directly contradictory information, so that it's very obvious they can't both be right, but that's not necessary or always feasible.
Yeah, I would hate to play at a table with someone doing that. Half of the fun of taking Dubious Knowledge is acting on BOTH of the things you know, not on your meta knowledge that one of the things is wrong.That would make having the feat worse than not having it. It would make a critical success indistinguishable from a failure.
I don't think the feat is meant to weaken your critical successes.
What do you mean? Having 2 pieces of correct information and acting on them is not the same as having both correct and incorrect information and acting on them. The 2 pieces of correct information is a better position to be in. Your critical success has not been weakened.
|
|
What do you mean? Having 2 pieces of correct information and acting on them is not the same as having both correct and incorrect information and acting on them. The 2 pieces of correct information is a better position to be in. Your critical success has not been weakened.Yeah, I would hate to play at a table with someone doing that. Half of the fun of taking Dubious Knowledge is acting on BOTH of the things you know, not on your meta knowledge that one of the things is wrong.That would make having the feat worse than not having it. It would make a critical success indistinguishable from a failure.
I don't think the feat is meant to weaken your critical successes.
Having two pieces of good information is better than one good and one bad.
Knowing that you have two pieces of good information is better than not knowing whether your information is good. Normally, a character who critically succeeds at a Recall Knowledge check gets the two pieces of good information. The ruling that Dubious Knowledge means you can't tell the difference between Failures and Critical Successes means that your crits are weaker than those of a character who doesn't have the feat.
Yes, they're better than failure; that wasn't the objection I raised.
Not knowing if the check was a critical success or a failure is definitely intended. Not knowing the result of the check is the whole point of dealing with the hassle of doing recall knowledge as a secret roll in the first place.
Having a dent in your metaknowledge that two pieces of information is a good sign is not a defect.
|
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
It's a rule for determining character knowledge. That's pretty far from metaknowledge.
It is normal to know whether you failed or critically succeeded a Recall Knowledge check. The roll is secret so you don't know whether you critically failed, which appears to be the same result as a success.
A feat weakening your critical successes absolutely strikes me as a defect, especially since the benefit isn't huge. It's not really supported by the text anyway.
And again, the flavor of it works better for me with the character who isn't quite sure of the answer coming up with contradictory things.
"I think that's a sinspawn! They're resistant to magic. ...or, uh, maybe it's a ghoul? Those are undead that spread disease. They've both got the claws and the tongues, so I'm not sure."
"Oh, that's an elixir of life! ...or maybe alchemist's fire? I can smell an ingredient often used in both." (Okay, Dubious Knowledge doesn't actually apply to this one since Identify Alchemy is distinct from Recall Knowledge, but it was an example that came to mind of the kind of thing.)
That's what makes it dubious.
The two facts (or two "facts") that you know are character knowledge.
Whether they came from a critical success or a failure is metaknowledge.
There's a difference.
For my home games I outlawed that particular combination. I don't mind dubious knowledge on its own, but building a character that's basically guaranteed to trigger dubious knowledge every roll(and can/wants to roll on everything) is not a fun place to be for the GM.
I'm ok if someone wants to trigger dubious knowledge/a named lore|skill/assurance, just not the bardic knowledge I know everything, but I'm always wrong.
see this is why I love the idea of combining assurance and dubious knowledge (as both a player and a GM). You will not always be able to boost all of your knowledge skills high enough to be useful all that often, but these two feats together do give a player a reliable way of getting some useful information, rather than none, even if it comes with the price that half of what you know is probably wrong.
To me, this is a great way to encourage players to fail forward rather than end up often feeling like they are just learning one piece of information and have no idea how accurate that might be. Encouraging players to put themselves in a situation where they are choosing to act between two pieces of information, knowing one is right, is a lot more fun than encouraging players to second guess whether they ever know anything.