My personal rule is to give weakest save and weaknesses on a success. On a crit I give that and special abilities. Without it, I feel spending incorrect save spells for a caster feels too punishing without recourse. Any feats that codify rules like this I ban bc I'm making it a base game feature (except the coming thaumaturge finding weaknesses).What about if you have a party of martials? Or the casters are down to cantrips and the enemy has a particular weakness that could change the whole approach of the party to the encounter?
Most of my experience with RK has been casters trying to make informed spell choices in combat. In those situations I would have to switch it up though
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Most of my experience with RK has been casters trying to make informed spell choices in combat. In those situations I would have to switch it up thoughMy personal rule is to give weakest save and weaknesses on a success. On a crit I give that and special abilities. Without it, I feel spending incorrect save spells for a caster feels too punishing without recourse. Any feats that codify rules like this I ban bc I'm making it a base game feature (except the coming thaumaturge finding weaknesses).What about if you have a party of martials? Or the casters are down to cantrips and the enemy has a particular weakness that could change the whole approach of the party to the encounter?
I think this is exactly the point of this thread though. GMs need to be careful about falling into routines with giving out information that do not help the party within the context of the immediate situation, whether that is an encounter, an exploration activity or a downtime activity. Right now, there is some assistance with this in some APs, but it is currently an under-utilized feature of the game that can be challenging for GMs to arbitrate well on the fly, and the consequence can be players assuming that recalling knowledge is a useless activity.
I had really hoped that there would be a section in the Dark archive about recalling knowledge and how to make it more useful to players. Now I am not really sure where such information could go, but I think it would be very useful. The flow of information from GM to Players is one of the most important aspects of the game, and yet it is generally left to GMs to rely on past experiences, often with other games to sort out. And yet, there are many ways in which PF2 is trying to be more intentional about that than past systems would be, but it is not fully developed yet.
Maybe it won't be, and it will be something left for a future edition of the game, but there is a whole lot of potential for helping GMs in the same way that so many other systems in PF2 have been streamlined (NPC/Monster creation, DCs by level and how to modify them, etc.)
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Dang necromancers have been active lately... [waves around handful of various holy symbols]
I think it is a wise time to resurrect this thread, as I had high hopes that the Dark Archive Book was going to include a lot of GM information about recalling knowledge, but from all the advanced discussions I have seen so far, it seems like there are some specific skill feats tied to Occultism, but not really a general discussion about incorporating the skill into play.
I just got my copy but haven't had a chance to look through it. I'll get back here after I get a chance to skim over it.
I often see as a suggested house rule to let the players ask questions, such as "what is the lowest save", but to me that always felt like you're giving your players enough rope to hang themselves with.
The golems are the easiest example here but let's say a player asks about saves like they always do and find out that golems have bad reflex, now on a successful skill roll they are actually worse off as they are about to use the fireball that the golem is immune to.
I think saves are a good actionable thing to give but it feels like it can become a crutch when the interesting information is not something you know to ask for.
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Having gotten a chance to be a player in a lot more games of 2E in the last year, as well as continuing to GM for 3 tables pretty consistently in this time, I can say that as a player, I definitely notice when GMs are tight lipped with recalling knowledge and when they are employing something like the the paragraph method of giving out information.
I have very much enjoyed games where GMs employ the paragraph method and when I find GMs that do so, I am much more likely to value the recall knowledge action and build characters around it. As a GM, I very much enjoy seeing players build characters that seek to interact more with the world (whether I am running a pre-written adventure or my own homebrew).
Paradoxically, in the year and a month since this thread was previously active, my players have used Recall Knowledge less often and I painted myself into a corner by giving away excessive information.
They switched to Gather Information. Technically, they don't make Gather Information checks either. They befriend the locals through Diplomacy, Deception, or a friendly contact from a previous module and then ask them questions about the hazards ahead. The locals described their battles with the neighboring monsters.
They still made an occassional Recall Knowledge check, such as identifying Virulent Twilight Mushrooms, Hazard 10, from a distance (growing on a dead body was a forewarning). They learned of its deadly spores and its weakness to cold, so neutralized the hazard safely far away with Ray of Frost.
I tried fixing two problems with Siege of Stone, 4th module of Ironfang Invasion, with information from allies. I belatedly realized that I had given so much information that I had generated a side quest.
The plot of Siege of Stone is that the party followed the path of General Azaersi and her companions to learn how Azaersi had acquired the Onyx Key artifact that was the enabling tool behind her Ironfang invasion. Shards from the Onyx Key could open Stone Tower portals so that her army could quickly move across Nirmathas. Alas, details of the Onyx Key are of little use until the 6th module. In the 3rd module, Assault on Longshadow, the party had already encountered and destroyed a Stone Tower, so they already knew of the military applications and limitations. Furthermore, the plot hook for the 5th module, Prisoners of the Blight, was weak: the dwarves of Kraggodan wanted the party to investigate the Darkblight in the Fangwood and renew an alliance with the fey court.
I decided that given the full dwarven records on the Onyx Key that the party recovered, the Kraggodan Royal Archivist Karburtin could magically trace the locations of the Stone Towers and the magical shards that created them. Since one shard was in the Darkblight region, that would give the party another reason to go to the Darkblight.
However, given a full map of all the Stone Towers, and knowing that re-establishing a tower required transporting a new shard to the location, the party decided to destroy one or two Stone Towers on their way north to the Darkblight to slow down the invasion. Oops, I had to create battlemaps for those locations. Furthermore, I put a tower at Hunthul, which the PF2 Lost Omens World Guide described as the future capital of Azaersi's conquered territory. That capital city is not on any map in Ironfang Invasion, so I might have to create an entire city.
Information risks derailing a campaign. Though my wife tells me that being able to slow down the invasion makes them feel better about taking time to visit the Darkblight, so perhaps it helped stabilize the campaign.
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Maybe a good place for all of this to come together could be a cloak and dagger martial book, but with a focus on skills, kingdom/organization building, and could be a place for the warlord/commander class, more stuff with mounts and mounted combat, and stories of great marital leaders, either across Golarion, or in, most ideally or especially (in my dream world), Casmaron.
I think really breaking down the GM art of delivering narrative details and options over the course of the 3 different phases of the game (Encounter mode, Exploration mode, and Downtime) and how to do so in ways that don't feel inevitable (like the players can just expect for someone to force them to go on a quest when the time comes, rather than discover it for themselves), but also avoid frustration and feeling lost is underdeveloped GM advice space in most RPGs.
I think making this the book for exploring sandboxy adventuring from both player and GM side, perhaps with a little extra support for GMs running no level to proficiency (since that can lend itself well to sandboxing adventures), but also just lots of skill feats and player options for building and running organizations and Kingdoms would give it a lot of appeal. The reason I think a book like that would be the best place for really breaking down recall knowledge and gathering information is because I think folks primarily running APs would just benefit more from having those kind of research and exploration activities worked directly into the narrative of the APs, but exemplifying how to avoid frustrating players with useless information in encounter mode would still be useful to all GMs.
I often see as a suggested house rule to let the players ask questions, such as "what is the lowest save", but to me that always felt like you're giving your players enough rope to hang themselves with.
The golems are the easiest example here but let's say a player asks about saves like they always do and find out that golems have bad reflex, now on a successful skill roll they are actually worse off as they are about to use the fireball that the golem is immune to.
I think saves are a good actionable thing to give but it feels like it can become a crutch when the interesting information is not something you know to ask for.
Yup, this is why I'm not generally a fan of of the categories approach.
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This makes me think that better guiding questions should probably relate to "what stories have I heard about..."
Like, for encounter RK checks, "What stories have I heard about how to kill this monster?" would lead to the GM determining what Defense, weakness, or Resistance/immunity would pose the the greatest advantage or disadvantage to the party and giving that information would be useful to the party...And if it is a creature that has very high defenses, immunities/resistances, and only one weakness that the party is not well suited to target, shaping the response into talking about how difficult this monster is to defeat without targeting that weakness would also help the party understand that being unable to target that weakness at this time might be a strong sign that the creature might be particularly dangerous to approach with the party's normal tactics.
Meanwhile, "What stories have I heard about how this creature hunts?" could be about particularly dangerous attacks if the creature has them, but it could also point towards the tactics the creature is going to employ or even prey it conventionally avoids (like the prey can target a particular weakness of the creature, or is resistant to its attacks).
I know that some GMs don't want to create a story on the spot, but this is where looking at the description of the creature can come in useful, especially if that description can be related to the dungeon environment the creature is being encountered in. APs should make this connection as Paizo is usually pretty good at thinking through dungeon ecologies, and learning how to integrate creatures sensibly into the environments that they are found in is a skill that should be cultivated every bit as much as mechanically balancing an encounter, when it comes to home brewing.
I think the best RK implementations foster a collaborative spirit between GM and players about making the current situation more fun/engaging but also more manageable on a success or better, or lightly complicating, without over punishing the party on critical failures.
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TBT, the relevant info useful in combat is either defense-related (how do we kill it) or offense-related (how does it kill us).
I would ask which of those the player wants to know.
I recall a counterexample from almost a year ago in my campaign. The most important information about a nuckelavee is the mortasheen disease it spreads. And that disease takes a day to manifest debilitating symptoms, so it does not directly affect combat. But if the players know about the disease, then their tactics in combat include trying to avoid infection.
Here is a summary of that battle, What Skills for Recall Knowledge, comment #76:
But for the most part, I like the players to make successful Recall Knowledge rolls. They fought a Nuckelavee when 6 out of 7 PCs were trained or expert in Nature, so they knew about its mortasheen disease. Thus, the combat had the tactical tension of them trying to avoid the disease. Two still ended up with mortasheen and the real result was anticlimactic. One rolled well after 8 hours with Treat Disease and the other didn't. So they went to town, purchased antiplague, and spent another 8 hours Treating Disease. They had some other errands in town, but otherwise the adventure was put on hold. Knowledge creates dramatic tension. Ignorance has to clean up the unexpected result.
And since my players like diplomacy, they also like information on avoiding combat entirely. But they use a Glad-Hand Diplomacy check rather than a Recall Knowledge check.
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TBT, the relevant info useful in combat is either defense-related (how do we kill it) or offense-related (how does it kill us).
I would ask which of those the player wants to know.
I recall a counterexample from almost a year ago in my campaign. The most important information about a nuckelavee is the mortasheen disease it spreads. And that disease takes a day to manifest debilitating symptoms, so it does not directly affect combat. But if the players know about the disease, then their tactics in combat include trying to avoid infection.
Here is a summary of that battle, What Skills for Recall Knowledge, comment #76:
But for the most part, I like the players to make successful Recall Knowledge rolls. They fought a Nuckelavee when 6 out of 7 PCs were trained or expert in Nature, so they knew about its mortasheen disease. Thus, the combat had the tactical tension of them trying to avoid the disease. Two still ended up with mortasheen and the real result was anticlimactic. One rolled well after 8 hours with Treat Disease and the other didn't. So they went to town, purchased antiplague, and spent another 8 hours Treating Disease. They had some other errands in town, but otherwise the adventure was put on hold. Knowledge creates dramatic tension. Ignorance has to clean up the unexpected result.And since my players like diplomacy, they also like information on avoiding combat entirely. But they use a Glad-Hand Diplomacy check rather than a Recall Knowledge check.
It is information related to killing the PCs IMO, even if the result happens later, so I would give it if they ask for this kind of info (and they roll high enough).
I want to give the players the info that will most benefit them on the whole, so that it is more fun for all involved, myself included, and it rewards using the RK action.
I do think the key is to remember that there are three modes of time in PF2, so your approach to recall knowledge needs to be aware of the scale of time and effect that spending time doing the activity entails.
Many players coming from 5e or PF1 are going to be use to recalling knowledge having no cost, and even in exploration mode and downtime mode, choosing to recall knowledge is choosing not to do something else. Sometimes there will be nothing more to learn about a topic, but often times there can be if the GM has spent a little prep time thinking about the pace of information revealed to the players.
In all three modes of time, the key things to think about are: Party composition, purpose of the party, and pertinence to the existing situation. Ignoring any of these 3 variables will eventually result in players feeling like recalling knowledge is useless.
Errenor brings up an interesting point that demonstrates just how intrinsic to the nature of the game the relationship of GMs giving information to PCs at a processable but engaging pace.
Recalling knowledge itself is really not the default skill activity I would associate with processing observable evidence in the moment. That is more like a perception check. But comparing the observed evidence with knowledge the character has gained in the past is difficult to separate from either the memory or the act of perceiving. As a GM, I have no problem with framing the information PCs receive in the context of observations, but the game has created some confusion for itself linking identification of creatures as the same skill activity as having learned about the creatures previously. For example, Mastermind rogues are supposed to get their racket to trigger off of creature identification, but that is just a part of general recalling knowledge in the game so whether the character can identify mutliple of same type of creatures in the same combat, or in future combats becomes something negotiated with the GM, and can make the Mastermind racket very difficult to use.
Or you still from time to time interpret RK as I posted simply because it's not a bad decision and is an actually nice reminder that PCs have their own eyes and reason and do not always rely on third-party info.inventing a plausible story about the source of information on the spot is hardOr you make a couple of notes when you prep. It's not like you don't know what's coming, unless you're reading the book for the first time as you run it.
I tend to wing the storytelling, but I usually dip into the backstory of the characters.
The elf ranger Zinfandel had studied to join the legendary Chernasardo Rangers of Nirmathas. Thus, he was taught how to fight the beasts found in the Fangwood in Nirmathas. He also hung around the Taproot Inn in Phaendar and heard the stories of adventurers.
The leshy fey-blooded sorcerer Honey was a native vine in the Fangwood before being awakened by a traveling druid as his familiar. Thus, she met many creatures in the Fangwood and is familiar with their ecology.
Nirmathas has a strong community of druids. The gnome druid Stormdancer often heard about exotic creatures of the Fangwood from other druids.
The halfling rogue/sorcerer Sam used to be a slave of a Nidalese doctor who experimented on his slaves. Sam developed his Draconic bloodline from those experiments. The doctor had a collection of exotic animals, and books on other exotic animals, so Sam often had seen strange creatures. Once Sam developed arcane powers, he tried to find time to read about arcane magic.
The gnome rogue Binny has a Criminal background, but she reformed and became a messenger traveling between towns in Nirmathas. When she identifies a creature, I often claim that she knows the details of their venom because one of her criminal associates had been a poisoner who bragged about his natural poisons.
The goblin champion Tikti is the only party member untrained in Nature, but she is a bookworm trained in Religion. She usually read about her information in a book.
The catfolk monk Ren'zar-jo is a traveler from the Garund continent without much of a backstory. He has the Untrained Improvisation general feat, so he will try Recall Knowledge in any area, but has a higher chance of failure. I can sometimes attribute some knowledge to his travels, but I more often use Errenor's explanation of deducing from observation. A monk's awareness of martial arts stances can deduce attacks from how a creature is built.
I used a Nuckelavee as an example in a previous comment. I forgot what I actually said, but I can guess. Zinfandel would have been warned about the mortasheen disease, the breath weapon, and its primal innate spells as his teachers instructed him to keep his distance. Honey and Stormdancer's ecology experience would recognize the nuckelavee as a fey with a weakness to cold iron. Stormdancer also has an anti-pollution emphasis as a stormborn druid, so she would know about the nuckelavee's love of water pollution, its blight ritual, and its purity weakness. Honey, in contrast, might feel the Frightful Presence and mortasheen from a distance with her own fey nature. The nuckelavee is not a creature that Sam would have encountered during his slavery, so I would go the magical route and provide primal spells, ritual, and breath weapon. Ren'zar-jo would see the military experience in the nuckelavee's stance and deduce its +21 to hit with its bastard sword, its attack of opportunity, and its speed 40 feet. Binny had been dealing with the river smugglers of Longshadow who might have encountered that particular nuckelavee before, so I would give a tale of its murderous evil and its tactics, such as using Control Water to strand boats on dry ground rather than entering the clean water of the Marideth River. Tikti would not bother with a Recall Knowledge check, since she is ignorant about local monstrosities.
I keep a mental list of what each PC is known to care about. As I read the creature's stat block, I mentally mark anything that matches the PC's interests and see whether I can quickly match up the marked features with the PC's backstory or recent activities to spin a tale.
Sometimes the tale falls flat, but the plain statement, "Its weakest save is Reflex +16," is always flat.