| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
The Recall Knowledge, Additional Knowledge Rules state:
"Sometimes a character might want to follow up on a check to Recall Knowledge, rolling another check to discover more information. After a success, further uses of Recall Knowledge can yield more information, but you should adjust the difficulty to be higher for each attempt. Once a character has attempted an incredibly hard check or failed a check, further attempts are fruitless—the character has recalled everything they know about the subject."
https://2e.aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?ID=565
Now suppose a Thaumaturge is fighting a group of four enemies of the same variety, let's say Vampire Spawn. The use find Weakness on the first Spawn and the DC is a normal Level based DC. They kill that one. Now they want to Use Find Flaws on a second one is the DC another noromal DC because its a new individual or is it a hard DC now since it's another recall knowledge on the topic of Vampire Spawn?
If it's the first one than fighting groups is essentially a way to get around the increasing difficulty of Recall Knowledge checks. If it's the second Thaumoturges (and to a lesser extent mastermind rogues and others with recall knowledge based abilities) have a severe disadvantage vs groups of similar enemies as their ability becomes harder and harder to proc.
Am I missing something? I want to playtest this properly but this playtest is pointing out how unclear the recall knowledge rules are.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
If it's the first one than fighting groups is essentially a way to get around the increasing difficulty of Recall Knowledge checks.
I wouldn't think so.
. . . rolling another check to discover more information.
In Find Flaws, at least, you're looking for the same information (weaknesses).
Even at baseline, Recall Knowledge for Creature Identification is individual specific, although we generalize because why wouldn't we? That anthropomorphic flame is a fire elemental vulnerable to cold and it has three identical buddies, so you use cold on all of them, but the character technically doesn't know it will work the same.
I'm not entirely certain Additional Information interacts with Creature Identification, a thing you do by looking at a creature vs. investigating in books where you might find something by rereading.
But that's neither here nor there.
There is uncertainty.
That's a good point about more information. I think I'll let my Playtest thaumaturge keep rolling against the base DC. They don't learn any additional information but they also don't risk getting a crit fail on an Incredibly Hard check just to use their main ability.
Still the Identify Creature rules need clarification.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
From my reading of the rules it seemed clear to me that the DC wouldn't change for Find Flaws Definitely not for if it was another of the same type and probably not even if you crit failed the first check
But I had to carefully read and could easily see how people might rule otherwise.
But equally I could have been looking for the generous ruling as I like the class
I wkind of wish the survey had a question for that.
I added it in additional comments at the end.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Yeah, Guidance seems really important.
On the one hand you have a relaxed GM who will let the player make endless FF checks without any issue and might even ignore or mitigate rarity while giving generous lore benefits.
And on the other you could have a GM who rarely gives out discounts, applies rarity very strictly, does not let you retry any FF check and might even say you can't make an FF check on another instance of the same creature either.
The latter example would absolutely ruin the class' playability but seems like a perfectly valid way to read the rules too. I mean any GM doing that is basically telling you not to play a thaumaturge and it's an extreme example but it highlights just how big the potential variance is.
My advice, which I forgot to add to the Open Survey before clicking done, is not to base the class on RK.
Agreed. I'd prefer that myself. If it must stay a recall check then make it a single lore check [like lore: weaknesses] and have it auto level up. It'd also feel better to roll up Find Flaws and Antithesis together into a single action.
RK really needs improvement, but this should be divorced from the class specific mechanisms.
Well, I'm not sure where else they'd put additional guidance for Recall: if you have a class that revolves around a specific type of check, it's as good a place as any for it. Even if they change it to something else, I do hope that do some quality of life improvements to RK.
Make a check vs. average DC for level of monster would be straight forward. Either add text using the proficiency of the same skill used to RK or grant Esoteric Lore at baseline, though I think Esoteric Lore would fall off too quickly.
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
This sort of issue also came up with the Mastermind Rogue Racket: I don't recall any clarification ever being issued, but I might have just failed my check and can't roll again...