Recalling knowledge can be fun

[Unicore]

It is not uncommon to encounter an attitude on these boards that recalling knowledge is a useless activity. I am not going to try to argue that individual players might have experiences that lead them to believe this, largely because the handling of recalling knowledge is incredibly GM dependent and experiences will obviously vary.

However, I think it is worth pointing out to people who have this experience that that is really an unfortunate situation to be in and that it is probably worth talking with your fellow players/GM about why it feels that way and figuring out as a table how to change that dynamic. The reason why I think it is important to push back against letting recalling knowledge be a frustrating or wasteful activity is that it really is one of the central ways a GM needs to be giving information to players beyond direct sensory experiences of their characters and is how you bring the world alive and help dungeons feel like an ecosystem and not a series of random encounters.

This is something that I would love to see turned into a guide, but as I am not able to sit down and write it myself, maybe starting out as a thread where people just toss out ideas for how recalling knowledge is fun for them will suffice for now, or inspire someone to compile it all into a sharp looking guide.

In that regard here is one idea I have for now:

GMs
As the GM, you are the player who probably caries the greatest burden with making recall knowledge feel useful. That can be frustrating when it feels like an added responsibility but there are a couple things to keep in mind.
1. If the idea of making up false information is a nightmare for you, you might as well not make recalling knowledge a secret check. Instead, push it back on your players to make something creative up when they critically fail and it invites them into the story telling process. When a PC crit fails a RK check on a water mephit and decides it is a rare kind of water goblin that other goblins hate and fear because it replaces their children with wet rocks, you end up with a much richer world to play in. If you go this route (making RK checks public) I highly recommend letting players specify what kind of information that they get from you.
2. If you like making up the stories yourself and playing with the ambiguity of secret rolls, the important thing to keep in mind is to make the information the player gets (most important) fun, (next most important) exciting and (ideal but not necessary) actionable in a way that can move the story forward, even if it is not true.

Whether you use secret checks or not, if players succeed in recalling knowledge and don't move forward feeling like they have a better understanding of the question they just asked about, and a sense of something new that they can try because they got that knowledge, they are very likely to start feeling like recalling knowledge is useless.

A really easy way to put this into play when players recall knowledge in combat, spending an action to do so, is to make the knowledge directly related to the upcoming tactics that the creature is about to employ. Is it about to try to bite and swallow a player? Attack with a special move and raise a shield? Describe this as the player identifying the creatures combat style or physiology and it will go a long way to making recalling knowledge feel both fun and useful.

[Unicore]

As a player

It is a lot trickier to make recalling knowledge fun as a player, if the GM seems to be particularly closed lipped with information, but there are some things you can do to express your interest in seeing the mechanic of recalling knowledge brought forward into the game more.

1. Never leave a dungeon room without spending some time investigating it.
This doesn't waste combat actions, but if you ask leading questions about the purpose of the interesting features in the room, like what kind of animal skin is used as a bed in that corner? Do I know what kind of creatures hunt and kill that animal in this area? Are there art objects or daily living objects that might create a sense of continuity in the dungeon? Show that your players are interested in the larger story and how the pieces fit together and you are more likely to get your GM starting to feed you actionable information before you even get into combat.

[WWHsmackdown]

Ill tell my players to disregard feats that give you the weakest save on a recall knowledge check bc that's dumb and if you have a good RK check I wanna give it to you regardless of whether or not you're a rogue with a certain feat. Casters need the smallest of nudges with their magic and RK is an easy avenue for a dm to provide it. Also, recall knowledge is great for going ahead and telling players which strategies straight up won't fly so they won't waste their time (provided a sufficient RK roll). It's the "help me, dm" button and I use it as such.

[Verdyn]

One of the issues with abilities like recall knowledge and especially with divination and knowledge skills of older editions is that it places a large and sometimes unexpected burden on the DM. If your players mostly just want to know about the kind of threats they're facing it can be fine but if they want to know motives, historical facts, or decipher an intentionally cryptic prophecy it can bring a session to a screeching halt. This goes double for DMs running sandbox-style games that may have a broad scope but lack depth in more than a few areas.

[Unicore]

Verdyn wrote:

One of the issues with abilities like recall knowledge and especially with divination and knowledge skills of older editions is that it places a large and sometimes unexpected burden on the DM. If your players mostly just want to know about the kind of threats they're facing it can be fine but if they want to know motives, historical facts, or decipher an intentionally cryptic prophecy it can bring a session to a screeching halt. This goes double for DMs running sandbox-style games that may have a broad scope but lack depth in more than a few areas.

I do run a pretty sand boxy homebrew where the party is pretty free to explore things as they wish. I find having a list of some names, some random descriptions of different kind of commonly found items, and some personality types can allow a character recalling knowledge on an unexpected element of the game to be a moment to fill in the world in an interesting way that you can later develop into something really cool. A couple of Minotaurs hiding in a cave network behind a waterfall as a random encounter to break up overland travel can quickly turn into a maze of tunnels the low level party cannot navigate for now, but leaves a really fun blank spot on the map to come back to later. Having a little clue like, the returning javelin found with the minotaurs having its runes written in an archaic elven script (a random detail) can be a whole jumping off point for something later, or not, the PCs might decide never to return to that cave network. But if they do, I know have some fun seeds planted that are going to be fun to weave into the a developing megaplot that they have no idea about yet.

As long as you keep track of little details along the way, giving more specific details, even if they feel a little disjointed or unexpected, become an easy way to weave things back together later.

[AlastarOG]

Repost from other thread:

As a Dm I often give information on a failed check on RK checks, if it's pertinent.

Like say you're trying a recall knowledge check to learn more about Grothul the destroyer, leader of the orc hordes, and fail. Well... i'm not gonna tell you s*++ about **him** but I will tell you that orcs are hardy creatures who tend to favor might over mind, and usually have the ferocity to stand even after a lethal blow...

Same thing with, lets say, devils. If you fail a check vs a barbed devil, I'm not gonna tell you it's specific powers and resistances, but I **will** remind you that devils are vulnerable to silver and good damage, and immune to fire, because you could have rolled a critical success against an imp who has the same traits.

This type of thinking is especially important in AP's where every monster and their mom is unique, making a lot of the DC'S impossible. You might not know jaggaki can make stone shoot forth from walls and paralyze you with his lich touch, but you can definitely know that you need a blunt magic item to bypass its necromantically infused resistances.

I know this isn't RAW, but pf2e is a system with 4 results not 3, and it's important to grade those results in that scale. So for RK: Crit success= all info, including weakest save. Success=weaknesses and resistance, if those don't exist then an outline of its abilities. Failure: broad info about the creatures group if relevant, or maybe some fun obvious information for very straightforward monsters(you roll nature to identify the smilodon and realise.... its bigger than most cats!) critical failure: Vastly misleading information (Most people assume this gelatinous cube is acidic, but a little known secret is that it's actually... delicious...)

[Unicore]

Another GM trick I use:

Sometimes players just get it into their heads that they just don't need to recall knowledge, sometimes it might be because the players think they already know what kind of threat the enemy will pose, either because they have seen something like this before, or sometimes, especially in online games, they might be doing the mechanical in-game work of recall knowledge in the form of reading monster stats in advance (if you are playing a pre-written module) or making meta-game inferences.

This can be frustrating as a GM, and may even feel like it could be cheating to you, the danger of feeling this way is that it can make you feel like your players are trying to get one over on you as a GM, and it might lead to you wanting to get back at your players. DON'T EVER let these kinds of suspicions affect the way you arbitrate things at your table though. This is the path to the darkside of antagonistic GMing and creating a situation where players and GM see each other as competition instead of collaborators. If you suspect your players like to do their research outside of game instead of inside of it you have a couple of options.

1. Let them. There is a good chance they are only ruining their own fun. If they start telling other players how to act, especially when their characters might not have any reason for telling their fellow players to do things that way, then maybe you ask them if they are spending an action to recall knowledge to know this thing they are saying to the other player, and if it starts to drag the game down because they are doing it all the time, then you probably need to have a bigger conversation with your players again, similar to your session 0 conversation.

2. Let your players know that you are using the pre-written material, but that you are placing your own spin on things and that that will include changing creature types, NPCs motivations, and other elements to make it a unique experience. This is totally fair in any AP or module, and will only be a problem in PFS. Switching high and low saves, HP values by +/-5, even weaknesses or resistances are totally fair game, all you have to do is make sure it makes sense in story. describe the elite skeleton guard as having metal holding its joints in place and maybe it becomes weak to electricity but resistant to bludgeoning damage. or maybe it has living wood weaving its bones together so it has a weakness to fire and slashing but extra resistance to bludgeoning and piercing.

The key to making this work is small visual clues that you describe when they first see a monster that set it up as something different than what they were expecting. Even color variations or ways of moving can justify different kinds of abilities, weaknesses and strengths and can keep players on their toes. Work some of these changes into the plot of your story by having various NPCs leave notes (especially in thematically appropriate languages) around talking about their methods for making or finding these variant creatures and you will again encourage your players to make choices that will merge their character with the setting in more organic ways.

If your players continue to never make recall knowledge checks, then keep throwing enemies at them with different resistances and weaknesses and let them stumble and struggle through those encounters as they see fit. Just be sure to reward them when they start making recall knowledge checks even if they fail. Maybe you don't tell them what the weakness is exactly, but you let them know something is definitely different about the creature and possibly even a clue that might narrow it down to a choice of 2 instead of a choice of all.

[Unicore]

Another way to make recalling knowledge more fun, is to offer up different information based upon the skill used to recall knowledge.

A lot of GMs do this in different ways. Some don't tell the player what skill was used (especially those doing secret checks); some ask the player what skill they want to use; others just tell the player what skills might be applicable and then the player chooses.

This technique can work for any of those methods, the important part is that you make it clear what skill is conveying the information when you give it to the player. This also works well for giving useful and interesting information, even when you are dealing with a failure.

For example, when your player recalls knowledge on a cockatrice, and maybe they failed their arcane check but have nature trained much higher, you might say, "At first this creature appears to be some kind of strange bird, but its hybrid form of scales and rooster like qualities don't look natural to you. Perhaps this creature was the result of an experiment gone wrong and as such, it might have more powers and abilities that make it a serious threat to your group. If you wanted to learn more about it, you might be wise to spend time researching it with a wizard, or a site that has access to arcane texts."

[Goblin Guard]

Recall knowledge is also fun in RP encounters.

There was one scene in a game I ran where the PCs encountered a big strong lizard guy, who was heir to the throne of a lizard tribe. He had been sent to capture the PCs.

A medicine check allowed them to understand that he was some sort of mutant.

A society check allowed them to understand that a lizard his age would normally be chief already. (His responses also suggested that this was a sore spot for him).

A perception check to sense motif revealed that he wasn't really all that gung-ho about capturing the PCs.

Some diplomacy, seduction and persuasion later, and they're working together with him to overthrow his father.

[SuperBidi]

In my opinion, there are 2 pitfalls people fall in when it comes to Recall Knowledge.

Some monsters have absolutely no interesting features. Like the Ogre Warrior. It just smashes heads. If you add on top of that the features that the party already knows about because they witnessed them before your roll your check, you end up with next to no information to give in a lot of cases. And sometimes, the information you can give are not very useful because the party can't really use them.
On the other hand, Recall Knowledge can save lives (Basilisk) or give you information that are paramount in killing the enemy (Worm that Walks death condition, Golems).
As such, you can't expect Recall Knowledge to be "always useful", it's very random in it's nature. It's important to assess if a monster is one that is interesting to recall about or not.

Also, I've seen a lot of people using Recall Knowledge on a monster without a single feat investment and not even high proficiency/attribute. I mean, no one would try to trip an enemy with Trained proficiency in Athletics, 12 Strength and no feat, but periodically, you have people trying to Recall Knowledge about a monster with such a horrible bonus.
In PF2, to properly use a skill, you need the proficiency, the attribute bonus and in general a few feats. If you are not at least a little bit specialized in Recall Knowledge, forget about Recalling Knowledge.

Now, if you have the proper skill bonus and feats, and if you use Recall Knowledge either as a free action (Monster Hunter) or with added benefits (Mastermind Rogue) or against monsters that are obviously weird and may have strong abilities/weaknesses, you should be fine with it. There's no need to artificially beef up Recall Knowledge as it will just force every party to have a Knowledge oriented guy.

[Unicore]

SuperBidi wrote:

In my opinion, there are 2 pitfalls people fall in when it comes to Recall Knowledge.

Some monsters have absolutely no interesting features. Like the Ogre Warrior. It just smashes heads. If you add on top of that the features that the party already knows about because they witnessed them before your roll your check, you end up with next to no information to give in a lot of cases. And sometimes, the information you can give are not very useful because the party can't really use them.
On the other hand, Recall Knowledge can save lives (Basilisk) or give you information that are paramount in killing the enemy (Worm that Walks death condition, Golems).
As such, you can't expect Recall Knowledge to be "always useful", it's very random in it's nature. It's important to assess if a monster is one that is interesting to recall about or not.

Also, I've seen a lot of people using Recall Knowledge on a monster without a single feat investment and not even high proficiency/attribute. I mean, no one would try to trip an enemy with Trained proficiency in Athletics, 12 Strength and no feat, but periodically, you have people trying to Recall Knowledge about a monster with such a horrible bonus.
In PF2, to properly use a skill, you need the proficiency, the attribute bonus and in general a few feats. If you are not at least a little bit specialized in Recall Knowledge, forget about Recalling Knowledge.

Now, if you have the proper skill bonus and feats, and if you use Recall Knowledge either as a free action (Monster Hunter) or with added benefits (Mastermind Rogue) or against monsters that are obviously weird and may have strong abilities/weaknesses, you should be fine with it. There's no need to artificially beef up Recall Knowledge as it will just force every party to have a Knowledge oriented guy.

Even when players attempt to trip an enemy without investment, they begin learning a floor of what a monster’s reflex DC could be. Recall knowledge, even on a failure should be that useful. As a GM , I can see how it might feel like there is nothing to learn from some creatures, but the assumption there is assuming that the knowledge needs to be mechanically actionable in order to be useful or interesting.

For example the ogre was”shown its hand” as far as doing the things it is going to do in combat. Instead of saying “there is no more to learn here” or repeating what is obvious, you have a couple of options is the ogre string as a body guard? Is it in its home? Does it have some kind of desire or motivation for attacking the party? Giving players, at a minimum, narrative clues everytime they recall knowledge, even when they fail will at least make the action interesting, and at best might get them to start treating the encounter as more than just another monster to smash. Players may start trying to negotiate more often with creatures they sympathize with, or get a clue how to proceed from this encounter to the next, while the creature is still alive.

Players don’t chose to recall knowledge to gotcha the GM or cheat the game, they do it to allow their characters to make choices informed by what their characters know of the word. It can be a lot of fun to encourage that.

[SuperBidi]

Unicore wrote:

Even when players attempt to trip an enemy without investment, they begin learning a floor of what a monster’s reflex DC could be.

Remember the critical failure of Trip, and you'll change your mind: Just don't do it at all if you are bad at it.

Unicore wrote:

For example the ogre was”shown its hand” as far as doing the things it is going to do in combat. Instead of saying “there is no more to learn here” or repeating what is obvious, you have a couple of options is the ogre string as a body guard? Is it in its home? Does it have some kind of desire or motivation for attacking the party? Giving players, at a minimum, narrative clues everytime they recall knowledge, even when they fail will at least make the action interesting, and at best might get them to start treating the encounter as more than just another monster to smash. Players may start trying to negotiate more often with creatures they sympathize with, or get a clue how to proceed from this encounter to the next, while the creature is still alive.

I tend to disagree. You are blocking actions behind Recall Knowledge checks. If I play a character who's good at Diplomacy, I'll try to handle the situation through Diplomacy. If you don't allow me to do so unless I succeed at a check to Recall Knowledge, I feel I can't play my character "as is". It may be interesting to have a synergy between party members, but when the synergy is always the same with Recall Knowledge checks being a mandatory part of any attempt at Diplomacy, it's a bit too strong.

And if you are not blocking actions behind Recall Knowledge checks, then I've already used Diplomacy when seeing the Ogre as it's my thing. Or if I've made the choice not to use Diplomacy, there's no point in giving me the hint that it could work: if we are in combat, there are chances I actually want to kill that ogre, not negociate with it.
And if you create actionnable features, like if the Ogre was not supposed to be dealt with through Diplomacy but you suddenly decide it is because of a successful Recall Knowledge check, you're strongly increasing the efficiency of said Recall Knowledge checks.

Unicore wrote:

Players don’t chose to recall knowledge to gotcha the GM or cheat the game, they do it to allow their characters to make choices informed by what their characters know of the word. It can be a lot of fun to encourage that.

Recall Knowledge is a combat action, like Demoralize or Feint. It has a direct impact on combat by giving to players actionable information. At least, that's the way I see it.

Of course, I also provide lore information with a successful Recall Knowledge check and even other pieces of information with other checks (like the Diplomatable ogre through Sense Motive, or through its actions as it would start by speaking). It's just that when a character rolls a Recall Knowledge check during combat, I try to provide pure combat information as at that stage, I estimate it's what the player wants.

[Captain Morgan]

Recall Knowledge DCs tend to be lower than Trip or there combat DCs, though. At least until you start getting into rare creatures.

[Unicore]

SuperBidi wrote:

Unicore wrote:

Even when players attempt to trip an enemy without investment, they begin learning a floor of what a monster’s reflex DC could be.

Remember the critical failure of Trip, and you'll change your mind: Just don't do it at all if you are bad at it.

Unicore wrote:

For example the ogre was”shown its hand” as far as doing the things it is going to do in combat. Instead of saying “there is no more to learn here” or repeating what is obvious, you have a couple of options is the ogre string as a body guard? Is it in its home? Does it have some kind of desire or motivation for attacking the party? Giving players, at a minimum, narrative clues everytime they recall knowledge, even when they fail will at least make the action interesting, and at best might get them to start treating the encounter as more than just another monster to smash. Players may start trying to negotiate more often with creatures they sympathize with, or get a clue how to proceed from this encounter to the next, while the creature is still alive.

I tend to disagree. You are blocking actions behind Recall Knowledge checks. If I play a character who's good at Diplomacy, I'll try to handle the situation through Diplomacy. If you don't allow me to do so unless I succeed at a check to Recall Knowledge, I feel I can't play my character "as is". It may be interesting to have a synergy between party members, but when the synergy is always the same with Recall Knowledge checks being a mandatory part of any attempt at Diplomacy, it's a bit too strong.

And if you are not blocking actions behind Recall Knowledge checks, then I've already used Diplomacy when seeing the Ogre as it's my thing. Or if I've made the choice not to use Diplomacy, there's no point in giving me the hint that it could work: if we are in combat, there are chances I actually want to kill that ogre, not negociate with it.
And if you create actionnable features, like if the Ogre was not supposed to be dealt with through Diplomacy but you suddenly...

If that approach is working for you and your players, great! If they are recalling knowledge as frequently as they like and feel like they are getting all the information they need out of it, then it is working as a fun mechanic at your table.

I still think it is a good idea to check in with your players and make sure they are on the same page as you are with recalling knowledge, because it is also a game mechanic that players will quickly give up on rather then risk upsetting the GM by asking too many questions or being seen as asking for too much.

[graystone]

Unicore wrote:

It is not uncommon to encounter an attitude on these boards that recalling knowledge is a useless activity.

I wouldn't say useless. Wildly variable in usefulness, yes. Unknowably true with secret rolls and false info, yes. Super hard to build around without knowing a particular DM and game, yes.

It has the potential to be a fun and worthwhile action that is severely maimed by it's almost total lack of guidance, past "gain a useful clue", which is adjacent to meaningless, that makes it wildly unpredictable and crit fails making even what seems useful suspect. So as a player, I WANT to be able to use Recall but with it being an action that might be useless, or worse actively lying to me, I might be better to throw some bolos as a monster to see how well it's Ref save in instead of Recall.

[Unicore]

graystone wrote:

Unicore wrote:

It is not uncommon to encounter an attitude on these boards that recalling knowledge is a useless activity.

I wouldn't say useless. Wildly variable in usefulness, yes. Unknowably true with secret rolls and false info, yes. Super hard to build around without knowing a particular DM and game, yes.

It has the potential to be a fun and worthwhile action that is severely maimed by it's almost total lack of guidance, past "gain a useful clue", which is adjacent to meaningless, that makes it wildly unpredictable and crit fails making even what seems useful suspect. So as a player, I WANT to be able to use Recall but with it being an action that might be useless, or worse actively lying to me, I might be better to throw some bolos as a monster to see how well it's Ref save in instead of Recall.

If you feel really strongly about this, I highly recommend talking to your GM about the first GM suggestion I made which is to evaluate whether your game needs recalling knowledge to be secret checks or not. Even in Pathfinder Society play I see a lot of swinginess about how the secret check element of recalling knowledge is handled.

I agree that it is a mechanic that swings in usefulness. The point of this thread is to try to help GMs and players find ways to make it the most fun element it can be. It is great seeing people share their ideas.

[Alchemic_Genius]

I know this is houserule territory, but of we are opening with nixing secret checks and letting players take autonomy over their crit fails, it's the right place for this.

When players recall knowledge on a foe, I ask them if they want something specific, or if they want toblet me just give them a fact. Usually, they ask about defenses, or go with dealer's choice, with the majority if the time opting for dealer's choice.

In combat, if they pick dealer's choice, I give them something that can change the fight, such as a battle tactic or revealing an ace in the sleeve, or give plot related info that advances the campaign. My group's lore mystery oracle has me pick out everything about their free recall knowledge, so I roll against the creature's most plot relevant stat, and deliver the information as a cryptic augury.

In exploartion, I have a recall knowledge tactic that instead of asking for 100 recall knowledges, I have them roll once and I give a success 3-5 facts along with context.

I also have a houserule thats basically a relevance scale for recall knowledge. Basically, I'll let my players roll almost any recall knowledge skill to learn about a specific subject, as long as they explain how their knowledge is applicable. Usually, it's something as simple as "well druids follow a philosophy that shares similarities with religion, can I use religion to learn about this mysterious order?" or "I have Legal Lore, can I use that to learn find a loophole in the demonic contract?" Typically, I just make a hard adjustment to the DC for skills that are reasonably close, and hard for applications that are kind of a stretch, but are better than nothing.

It gets my players getting creative, and makes lore skills pretty popular, since even a low int character can take a plot relevant lore via additional lore and contribute to the brainy bits of the adventure

[TheGoofyGE3K]

Just because I'm not sure, I'll ask-whats a regular Recall Knowledge check supposed to get you when made in regards to a creature? Yes information, but what specifically, does it say anywhere

[graystone]

TheGoofyGE3K wrote:

Just because I'm not sure, I'll ask-whats a regular Recall Knowledge check supposed to get you when made in regards to a creature? Yes information, but what specifically, does it say anywhere

"You recall the knowledge accurately or gain a useful clue about your current situation." That it... So you can get a nebulous "useful" answer that might not be straightforward but a "clue". It can be anything from super useful like 'here, look at the Bestiary' to something maybe useful like 'some spells are less effective against it' to somethng not useful now like 'Daemons often carry soul gems': this of course assumes the DM didn't roll a few 1's for you and it's all BS. ;)

Unicore wrote:

If you feel really strongly about this, I highly recommend talking to your GM about the first GM suggestion I made which is to evaluate whether your game needs recalling knowledge to be secret checks or not.

I will if I plan on a character that revolves around the checks [like investigator and/or mastermind rogue]: otherwise I generally just assume it's going to be useless as there are SO many things to ask about in the game that boil down to 'ask your DM', that it's just easier to prune down what's worth it to go over. The 'DM empowerment' aspect of the game is great for the DM but a huge pain for a players that moves around between a lot of DM's and each individual game might play completely differently from the one before it.

[Laclale♪]

Like Loremaster Lore and Bardic Lore, gain a +1 circumstance bonus per related category when Recalling Knowledge is also nice(even if considered as homeblew and not to be official).

[Unicore]

TheGoofyGE3K wrote:

Just because I'm not sure, I'll ask-whats a regular Recall Knowledge check supposed to get you when made in regards to a creature? Yes information, but what specifically, does it say anywhere

Personally, I think it would have been a huge mistake to try to make more explicit rules about how to give out information to players about different monsters. While a DC chart of facts to learn about X monster sounds kinda cool in theory, monsters do not exist in a vacuum by themselves, and if you are a GM giving out exactly the same information about creatures, regardless of the tone and the setting of the adventure you are playing in, it is going to make monsters feel like flat sacks of numbers instead of creatures tied to the place you encounter them.

Recalling knowledge really is one of the places where the skill of GMing gets tested and challenged the most. Which is why it makes total sense to want more guidance on how to do it, but I think it is a skill that is much easier to develop in practice, and from watching others GMs do it and trying to figure out if it feels like the activity is increasing the fun for the people at the table or getting in the way. If any of those savvy youtuber folks read this thread, I think you could make a fairly successful video or two about this topic, not just talking about the idea generally, but talking about specific instances you think you did a good job or bad job of responding to a player's attempt to recall knowledge.

[Perpdepog]

Unicore wrote:

Personally, I think it would have been a huge mistake to try to make more explicit rules about how to give out information to players about different monsters. While a DC chart of facts to learn about X monster sounds kinda cool in theory, monsters do not exist in a vacuum by themselves, and if you are a GM giving out exactly the same information about creatures, regardless of the tone and the setting of the adventure you are playing in, it is going to make monsters feel like flat sacks of numbers instead of creatures tied to the place you encounter them.

Not to mention that such DC charts for every individual monster would take up a huge amount of space, which in turn would mean having to cut down on the number of flavor and background lore sidebars, which would double up on the same problem. The sidebars are, IMO, a really good place to look for mini adventure hooks, as well as being good guides for what kinds of facts a Recall Knowledge would grant.

Also, just wanted to say thanks to peeps posting in this thread. I want to start running a PF2E game over the summer, and these posts are giving me good ideas on how to include RK checks in my future game.

[thenobledrake]

And to add to what Unicore and Perpdepog are saying, let's not forget the effect a chart listing out DCs and pieces of information can do to the psychology of the GM: it can make the GM think that's all there is to know, and that's the only way to know it.

That's why I don't really want to see further advice on what information to give, but would enjoy seeing advice on why to give information. Helping GMs realize that the point is to make the action feel useful to your players, and make them feel like their characters actually know stuff about the world they have lived their lives in, would be good - but a chart that says "say this, even if it seems irrelevant to your players and their characters" wouldn't be.

[graystone]

I'd have liked to have seen some concrete examples of what info was with modifiers for how hard/easy it was. There isn't a need to cover every option but at least give the DM an idea of what useful means [monster entries could always give specific options]. Telling people why doesn't seem to be as useful, IMO, as having the info actually feel useful to the player: if the gives info at the right time but it doesn't help in the situation you're in, it's as bad as not giving any.

[Unicore]

I think the place for more concrete information would be in APs and modules, not bestiaries, as that is the place where the information can be connected from the monster to the world most concretely. The problem with that is that providing enough examples to make the information uniquely useful to the party playing through the adventure would requiring writing a bunch of information that most parties will never see.

The flow chart of possibilities is just too wide to want to list what can be learned about each creature from each of 5 different base knowledge skills and an infinite number of lore skills.

I think what @thenobledrake is saying is that this conversation "How to make recalling knowledge be a fun and useful part of the game" is something that the rulebooks we have now don't really cover well. It is kind of left feeling like it is one of those categories where some GMs might already know how to do this well, as revealing the useful information that characters should know, but players may not, is an aspect of most RPGS, but PF2 goes several steps farther in codifying it than games in the past, and it takes some thought to make sure that the GM understands that adding an action cost to the activity requires that they spend a little more time making sure that cost is worth it...Or realizing that they really don't want to handle it that way and that they need to discuss how they might handle it differently with their table.

[thenobledrake]

graystone wrote:

Telling people why doesn't seem to be as useful, IMO, as having the info actually feel useful to the player:

I'm confused as to why those are different things to you. If the GM knows that the point of the action is to provide information that actually feels useful to the player, then isn't that the same as the info actually feeling useful to the player?

graystone wrote:

if the gives info at the right time but it doesn't help in the situation you're in, it's as bad as not giving any.

This bit is exactly the reason I think it'd be good for the books to tell GMs out there why they should give their players good, useful, and not just "matches the letter of what the book says to give" information. Because it absolutely is just as bad as saying "okay, you succeeded, but so what?" if the info you give the successful check doesn't do something in the given situation.

Unicore wrote:

I think what @thenobledrake is saying is that this conversation "How to make recalling knowledge be a fun and useful part of the game" is something that the rulebooks we have now don't really cover well.

Exactly.

The book as it is currently has some GMs reading it and realizing they should be giving players information that their characters can use in an immediate sense to do something relevant, whenever is possible, and has some other folks reading the same words and coming away with the impression that there are things Recall Knowledge cannot possibly tell the player using it (and that's why you see disagreements about whether or not Recall Knowledge can result in the player having a better idea which saving throw is a good choice to target on a particular creature).

And I think the book should have, or a book in the future should, address that. Teach people the intended use of the tool, rather than just hand it over with a vauge description of what it does.

[graystone]

Unicore wrote:

I think the place for more concrete information would be in APs and modules, not bestiaries, as that is the place where the information can be connected from the monster to the world most concretely. The problem with that is that providing enough examples to make the information uniquely useful to the party playing through the adventure would requiring writing a bunch of information that most parties will never see.

IMO, I think bestiaries entries would be for monsters for something particularly unique to them.

Unicore wrote:

The flow chart of possibilities is just too wide to want to list what can be learned about each creature from each of 5 different base knowledge skills and an infinite number of lore skills.

I don't think anyone wants this: Think a list of 20 or 30 examples that give an idea what/how players might find out about different kinds of things about a monster. Like should you tell saves and what modifier to the roll? How about special attacks? Special defenses? Casting abilities? Lair/terrain info? Once you have the generics down for monsters, you don't need a flowchart, you just need to find something close in the examples if you're unsure.

Unicore wrote:

I think what @thenobledrake is saying is that this conversation "How to make recalling knowledge be a fun and useful part of the game" is something that the rulebooks we have now don't really cover well.

I'd say recalling knowledge in general isn't covered very well: I'm not disputing thenobledrake point, but it seems like putting the horse before the cart as you need to know what to give before you can debate how and when to give it.

[Unicore]

The thing about the “what” should be given is that it is subject to 3 variables:
1. Party composition.
2. The setting the monster is encountered in.
3. The goals of the both the party and the creature in this specific encounter.

When you are the GM, and you line up these 3 elements in the information you give, you have very happy recalled of knowledge. If the knowledge you can think to give out doesn’t interact with any of these, your encounters may have become boring and predictable.

[graystone]

Unicore wrote:

The thing about the “what” should be given is that it is subject to 3 variables:

1. Party composition.
2. The setting the monster is encountered in.
3. The goals of the both the party and the creature in this specific encounter.

When you are the GM, and you line up these 3 elements in the information you give, you have very happy recalled of knowledge. If the knowledge you can think to give out doesn’t interact with any of these, your encounters may have become boring and predictable.

That seems pretty nebulous IMO, especially for a newer DM. I've seen it quite often that what a DM thinks is useful isn't what the PC or party think is. This is especially true as your numbers 1-3 aren't included in Recall to help those in evaluating those criteria and then you still don't even know what you should allow with the skill.

[The-Magic-Sword]

I run it RAW, which is to say when you declare you're recalling knowledge, I need to know what piece of information you're recalling, which means what information you might get on a successful check depends entirely on what you ask me. Critical Successes give additional information beyond that of course and hyper-cognition/true hyper-cognition, could pretty much let you lay out a statblock on the spot.

Recall Knowledge can also allows the party to gain useful information and context, this can result in knowledge that will allow them more control over the various situations they find themselves in through world lore, or it can result in material rewards, like helping them to discover additional rooms with treasure, or optional boss fights with cool rewards.

[Perpdepog]

graystone wrote:

Unicore wrote:

The thing about the “what” should be given is that it is subject to 3 variables:

1. Party composition.
2. The setting the monster is encountered in.
3. The goals of the both the party and the creature in this specific encounter.

When you are the GM, and you line up these 3 elements in the information you give, you have very happy recalled of knowledge. If the knowledge you can think to give out doesn’t interact with any of these, your encounters may have become boring and predictable.

That seems pretty nebulous IMO, especially for a newer DM. I've seen it quite often that what a DM thinks is useful isn't what the PC or party think is. This is especially true as your numbers 1-3 aren't included in Recall to help those in evaluating those criteria and then you still don't even know what you should allow with the skill.

Which is kind of the point of having this thread, to give newer GMs examples and ways to look at statblocks that can fulfill those points, help their party, and make the action feel more helpful.

It also helps because, just like with newer GMs, newer players may not know what kinds of questions to ask the GM. It's one way we've run those kinds of checks in my games, where the player is given a number of questions they can ask, and the GM gives them facts, but the player may not always ask the questions that could be most helpful to them, and having this conversation can help the GM steer them toward more helpful information. As an example, we have a newer player in a couple of my games, and one of their most common questions when fighting a monster is "What's its weakest save?" They'll ask this question even when their character may be out of spells and unable to act on it, or when the creature may have another weakness, possibly one in the encounter setting, that they could take advantage of.

[Unicore]

Of course it is nebulous. That is the point. What knowledge to give out is a decision that really has to be decided upon in the moment to be useful. If a GM just slips into the habit of always giving information about lowest saving throw, because that feels like it should be universally important, that may not be the information the player/party really cares about, and it might not do anything to make the encounter of this specific monster in this specific setting more interesting or connected to the story. At the very least, you should aim for doing one, if not both of those things: help the players make better choices in the encounter and understand the connection between the encounter and the plot in a new way.

Doing this in the fly is not always possible. A lot of people will start off by beginning to read the bestiary entry for the creature from the beginning until they get to something good. Sometime that doesn’t do it though because the bestiary entry might not connect the dots between this creature and the context of the encounter. I recommend trying to draw those connections with every piece of information you give and my players almost always lap it up when I do so. Sometimes I give too much information, at least in the context of what is recommended by the core rule book, but I’d rather do that everytime than leave the Player feeling like there was no value to even trying to recall knowledge.

[graystone]

Unicore wrote:

Of course it is nebulous. That is the point.

LOL That just tells me, as a player, that I should expect to write off Recall checks as I have no clue what questions to ask or what answers to expect even if I do ask the right question as it's all a free for all. Hearing "Of course it is nebulous. That is the point" would be why it's "not uncommon to encounter an attitude on these boards that recalling knowledge is a useless activity". Even if I hash out these questions with one DM, it's all out the door with a new DM. :P

*shrug* It's clear that I'm coming at this from a different perspective so I'll wander out now. Just wanted to say that the lack of a basic framework to work off of really hurts the reputation of Recall's usefulness as it varies so much from Dm to DM: even if I later play with a DM that reads this thread and improves how they use it, there is a good chance I'd never know as I wouldn't plan to use it because I'd have no way to know that before hand.

[thenobledrake]

Graystone, what Unicore and I are trying to get at is that if what was said in the book were not a nebulous "tell the player something that they can actually use" but a specific "tell them [insert an exact example of a game trait]", you'd have your expectation of whether the action will be useful or not set in much the same way as it currently is: probably not, unless the GM is doing something special, which if they don't take an effort to tell you means you'll probably never know.

But if what you could see in the book was "spending this action is supposed to be useful, so make sure your player gets something out of succeeding at it that they can actually use in the situation", you could develop a reasonable expectation that, no matter which GM you're with this session, if they've read the book, they will make using Recall Knowledge actually do something for you.

[graystone]

thenobledrake wrote:

Graystone, what Unicore and I are trying to get at is that if what was said in the book were not a nebulous "tell the player something that they can actually use" but a specific "tell them [insert an exact example of a game trait]", you'd have your expectation of whether the action will be useful or not set in much the same way as it currently is: probably not, unless the GM is doing something special, which if they don't take an effort to tell you means you'll probably never know.

If I knew that the game allows me to know save, special defenses, weaknesses, ect because they give examples of such, I can expect do be able to do that and that DM I met would expect that too: I'd even have an expectation that similar things would be possible. Right now, I'm throwing a dart at a board and I don't know what answer I could hit or even what is possible. Even with some basic examples, both players and DM's know what is expected as it gives a framework to work off of.

thenobledrake wrote:

But if what you could see in the book was "spending this action is supposed to be useful, so make sure your player gets something out of succeeding at it that they can actually use in the situation", you could develop a reasonable expectation that, no matter which GM you're with this session, if they've read the book, they will make using Recall Knowledge actually do something for you.

That in no way tells me to expect something useful... That might get me something the DM thought was useful but that isn't the same as something I think is useful... There is nothing to hint at a meeting of the minds over what is useful or or what is even possible to get with a roll. I'm spending resources to be good at this, so I'd like some assurances it's worth it and 'something useful' doesn't cut it for me.

[thenobledrake]

Book: "Hey GM, be helpful to your players"
Reader: "...but how will I know if the GM will even try to help me?"

The above is what it appears you are saying in regards to not knowing whether a meeting of the minds will be happening between you and your GM.

"basic examples" are a lot easier for a GM to misunderstand as "exhaustive list" and players to not realize there's an issue with that than direct suggestion to have a goal of being helpful to your player so their action doesn't feel wasted to them can be misunderstood by both GM and player in such a way that the GM isn't being helpful, and the player doesn't realize they aren't getting what the book expects them to have.

[graystone]

thenobledrake wrote:

Book: "Hey GM, be helpful to your players"

Reader: "...but how will I know if the GM will even try to help me?"

The above is what it appears you are saying in regards to not knowing whether a meeting of the minds will be happening between you and your GM.

No it's Book: "Hey GM, be helpful to your players"

PC getting answer: "Well, this is interesting but we can't exploit that now..." or "cool, it's vulnerable to that spell but the wizard doesn't have it memorized" or 'we only have 1 of that kind of scroll so I don't want to use it now' or...

thenobledrake wrote:

"basic examples" are a lot easier for a GM to misunderstand as "exhaustive list"

And it's SUPER hard to say 'this isn't an exhaustive list'?

thenobledrake wrote:

players to not realize there's an issue with that than direct suggestion to have a goal of being helpful to your player so their action doesn't feel wasted to them can be misunderstood by both GM and player in such a way that the GM isn't being helpful, and the player doesn't realize they aren't getting what the book expects them to have.

It doesn't have to be an either or though does it? Nothing about giving a framework prevents suggestions on how to answer.

The whole reason I started posting was Unicore's comments about people thinking Recall was useless. My point has been that it doesn't matter how well the DM plans for answering Recalls if the player already thinks it's useless and doesn't invest in it: giving those examples helps overcome that preconception that it's not worth it, where the Dm just saying 'but it'll be super useful, honest!' might not when the last DM told them th same thing and that didn't happen.

[Unicore]

I gave one example of how to test the waters as a player and push the GM to make recall knowledge use in the second post of this thread, and that is to make sure you are doing it out of combat and asking leading questions that could connect to future encounters, so that the GM gets the sense you are interested and might give you a clue before hand, but might say you need to see X creature before you can try to recall something specific about them. This way the GM knows what you are specifically interested in before it happens.

If other people have ideas about this specific aspect of recalling knowledge they should totally share those too.

[Verdyn]

Unicore wrote:

I gave one example of how to test the waters as a player and push the GM to make recall knowledge use in the second post of this thread, and that is to make sure you are doing it out of combat and asking leading questions that could connect to future encounters, so that the GM gets the sense you are interested and might give you a clue before hand, but might say you need to see X creature before you can try to recall something specific about them. This way the GM knows what you are specifically interested in before it happens.

If other people have ideas about this specific aspect of recalling knowledge they should totally share those too.

Pushing a DM is rarely going to work out well for a player especially if that DM is an online rando and not a close personal friend. If a DM doesn't like knowledge skills and divination spells using more knowledge skills and divination spells won't change their mind or make them give you better answers.

[thenobledrake]

graystone wrote:

And it's SUPER hard to say 'this isn't an exhaustive list'?

Hard? No. Ineffective at actually stopping people from misunderstanding? Yes, as far as my experience with games that have taken the approach indicates.

[thenobledrake]

Verdyn wrote:

Pushing a DM is rarely going to work out well for a player...

Alternatively, responding poorly to feeling pushed by a player is rarely going to work out well for a GM (at least not unless their players are all such close and long-time friends of the GM that they are going to choose to cave to whatever the GM wants instead of even risk someone getting hurt feelings, no matter if they are genuinely being unreasonable about a game).

GMs are supposed to be working with their group of players to the goal of a fun gaming experience for all - that means getting over foibles like "I don't want the players to know things", and letting character actions and abilities be actually worth the players choosing to do.

[graystone]

Unicore wrote:

I gave one example of how to test the waters as a player

By the time I'm far enough into a game to do this, I've already put a lot of time and effort into a character and game: as such, I've already decided if I'm focusing on Recall, like if I'm a mastermind rogue. Ideally, it'd be best to not have to test the water because there was something you could point to and agree on. As it is, I have to spend almost as much time as I do with the other aspects of the game to try and figure out how 'useful' the DM's useful is and hope that that translates into actual usefulness. It's a HUGE pain in the behind and that is the kind of thing you have to overcome in getting people to change their mind on Recall.

I mean, I totally get where you're coming from but educating DM isn't going to affect those that have already run into issues with Recall as they have already been burnt. That's why I suggested a set of examples as that's something that WOULD get me interested as a player as it's something concrete to expect.

Verdyn wrote:

If a DM doesn't like knowledge skills and divination spells using more knowledge skills and divination spells won't change their mind or make them give you better answers.

For myself, I'm not even really talking about those DM's that hate Recall: I've had them but they have been pretty upfront with it. It's more those that really don't know what to give out or don't want to give too much out. Do I give out all their saves? The lowest? The highest? Tell them the number? Just vaguely like high or low? Do I say vulnerable to weapons or specify piecing? Or weak to elemental damage vs specifically fire? What about it's reaction? Do I tell them it's nocturnal so they can try to attack them later in the day? Do I tell then they are normally in pairs even though this current encounter is with one?

How vague or detailed it is can make it's value vary wildly as can overall usefulness vs current usefulness [IE, this encounter vs future encounters]. As such, it's not about mean or uncaring DM's but differing views on 'useful' since there isn't ANY guidance on what the game means by it.

thenobledrake wrote:

graystone wrote:

And it's SUPER hard to say 'this isn't an exhaustive list'?

Hard? No. Ineffective at actually stopping people from misunderstanding? Yes, as far as my experience with games that have taken the approach indicates.

If someone reads 'this isn't an exhaustive list' and thinks 'that must mean it's an exclusive list' then it's not the game that has a problem. :P

[thenobledrake]

graystone wrote:

If someone reads 'this isn't an exhaustive list' and thinks 'that must mean it's an exclusive list' then it's not the game that has a problem. :P

That's true, and I wasn't meaning to be coming off as saying that it wasn't.

It's just my experience has shown me it's a lot easier for everyone else to notice the problem - the reader not reading what was intended to be read - when you don't have both the table that looks a like maybe it is an exhaustive list, and also some text that says "that table isn't an exhaustive list", but just the singular thing that is the more useful (generally speaking) out of the table of examples and the actual advice part of the text.

[Temperans]

I don't see how having good examples for what you can use recall knowledge hurts at all. In fact its weird that they gave a list of what the different recall checks can give, a sample list of recall society/religion at various proficiency, a table of what knowledge to use with which creature (in general). But then only one example of how to use recall knowledge to identify a creature.

Lots of examples for the general recall knowledge. But then almost nothing for the one part that matters most during combat.

[Alchemic_Genius]

I mean, given how very literal minded people get when they read the rules, I can understand the concern for the potential of an example list being taken as an exhaustive list, but imo it would help a lot of folks

[Unicore]

I am not arguing against examples, in fact I think examples are great. I just think that it is important that examples be situationally contextualized instead of just tied to specific monsters. That is why I think the most useful tool for GMs in improving their recall knowledge game might be something more like a youtube video of experienced GMs talking about times they were able to connect the recalled knowledge to the encounter in a way that really drew the players into the encounter in a more interesting way.

What I don't want is a list of DCs and specific sentences of information that the GM can give the players tied to each monster.

[Mathmuse]

For as long as I have gamemastered (i.e., since 2011) I have given more information to a successful knowledge check than the rulebooks recommended. I wanted the result to feel like knowing something, not just trivia.

Pathfinder 2nd Edition introduced another reason to give more information. In Pathfinder 1st Edition, I gave a knowledge check as a free action upon encountering a new creature type. When information is free, people don't mind a tiny sample as the result. In contrast, Pathfinder 2nd Edition is clear that Recall Knowledge is an action, not a free action. Therefore, for players to willingly spend an action on Recall Knowledge, the result has to be worth the action.

During the playtest for Pathfinder 2nd Edition, the In Pale Mountain's Shadow chapter of Doomsday Dawn, my wife made a suggestion to make player characters' backgrounds more important, using backgrounds to fill out skills. It worked out well for Recall Knowledge checks, so I kept it as a houserule for the final version of PF2.

The houserule is that when I give a player the information from a successful Recall Knowledge check, I tell a story about how the PC learned that information. The story ought to be based on the background of the character, but sometimes I use heritage or class or even the player-invented backstory.

For example, in the PF2 conversion of Trail of the Hunted at 2nd level, local retired Chernasardo ranger Aubrin guided the party and many refugees to a collapsed farmhouse for shelter for the night. The party had to check out the house by torchlight. The Chernasardo-hopeful ranger (background adapted from the campaign trait) made a Survival check to spot wildlife and spotted many tiny tracks. He failed the Recall Knowledge Nature check to identify the creatures that left the tracks.

The herbalist druid succeeded at the Recall Knowledge Nature roll. I told them that as an apprentice druid she had been taught about forest creatures to avoid and their signs. The tracks belonged to a centipede swarm. The druid had been warned to kept her distance from such swarms, because they were fast with 30-foot speed, could climb at that speed, too, and had a nasty venom in their bites.

The criminal rogue also succeeded in her check. The killers she had worked with in her former career liked Centipede Venom as a poison. I gave the exact stats on the venom.

That rogue also threw her torch into the building and illuminated the swarm to the low-light vision of the PCs. Since the Chernasardo-hopeful ranger could now see the swarm, I allowed her a second Recall Knowledge roll (another houserule: new data on a creature allows a Recall Knowledge check to further understand the data). The ranger saw the chitin on the centipedes and deduced their AC and resistances from that natural armor due to her nature-focused combat training as a ranger.

After the Recall Knowledge checks, the animal-whisperer rogue/sorcerer climbed the chimney stealthily to cast Produce Flame on the centipedes from that vantage. He failed his Stealth check against the centipedes' tremor sense, which the party did not know about, so the swarm climbed up to attack him. He still cast Produce Flame and jumped off the chimney to escape. The centipedes followed, bit, and poisoned him. The others attacked from range. Produce Flame spells from the rogue/sorcerer and the druid were more useful than the arrows. A bottle of Alchemist's Fire thrown by the ranger helped, greatly, due to the swarm's weakness to splash damage. Aubrin had a scroll of Neutralize Poison to save the rogue/sorcerer from the venom.

The basic principle in background-based Recall Knowledge is to tell a story about how the character learned the knowledge. It could be a tale that the hunters of a nomad barbarian's tribe told at the campfire. It could be an entry in a book the scholar wizard read. It could be common knowledge in the village near ogre territory where the farmhand swashbuckler grew up. I include numbers, such as AC 17 and HP 50, to help the players interpret descriptions such as, "The clumsy ogre warriors dodge poorly, but they can take a lot of hits."

graystone wrote:

For myself, I'm not even really talking about those DM's that hate Recall: I've had them but they have been pretty upfront with it. It's more those that really don't know what to give out or don't want to give too much out. Do I give out all their saves? The lowest? The highest? Tell them the number? Just vaguely like high or low? Do I say vulnerable to weapons or specify piecing? Or weak to elemental damage vs specifically fire? What about it's reaction? Do I tell them it's nocturnal so they can try to attack them later in the day? Do I tell then they are normally in pairs even though this current encounter is with one?

A one-paragraph story serves as a natural limit on the amount of information to provide, so I don't have to carefully measure how many bits of data I gave. A story related to the character's background tends to provide information useful to that character. The part that will be hard for inexperienced GMs is inventing a story on the spot.

graystone's examples focus on throttling the information flow. Why bother? Unless a monster has a very specialized attack or a secret extreme vulnerability, the information will only aid the battle, not win it. And some information, such as AC, can be easily deduced after a few attacks, so hiding it matters only for the earliest rounds. An artisan fighter's realization, "The scales on that creature's hide have the glint of polished steel. Its AC is 26 but that hard natural armor provides no resistances to damage," is more awesome than, "I missed on a 21 and 25, but hit on a 27 and the 8 damage went through without change. Okay, it is AC 26 or 27 with no resistances against my sword." Either way, the fighter switches to one attack each turn and defending himself with his other actions rather than multiple attacks to reduce the effect of the high AC.

[SuperBidi]

The rules don't need to be clear and precise when everyone knows when and how to use them.
My experience is that Recall Knowledge works more or less the same whatever GM you play with. And I play PFS.

For example, every time I've seen a character successfully recalling knowledge about a Golem, the GM has given Golem Antimagic as an information.
So, it looks like the guidelines are not that nebulous if every GMs play them the same.

Now, when there's no information to give, like when you are facing an Orc Warrior, it's true that depending on the GM you have more or less useless information. But anyway there's nothing interesting to get out of this check, so your GM won't make up something.

Asking for all Recall Knowledge checks to give usefull information is a bit like asking for no enemy to resist Precision damage because you play a Rogue. There's no such certainty in the game. Applying the same strategy against every monster is not the way PF2 has been designed.

[Verdyn]

SuperBidi wrote:

The rules don't need to be clear and precise when everyone knows when and how to use them.

My experience is that Recall Knowledge works more or less the same whatever GM you play with. And I play PFS.

I suspect that PFS GMs get more guidance from Paizo with regards to running certain rules than the rest of us do. After all, the entire goal of PFS is for a consistent drop in experience for the players. The GM is just there as a way to provide that experience.

[Temperans]

Oh look, Golem antimagic is just like one of the examples from the book. Something that golems are known for. Yet that is the reason why recall is being seen as consistent?