Title says it all.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
It varies based on type; aberrations are Occultism, celestials and fiends are Religion, and so on. I think it says in the description for each skill, and I think it specifies in each monster statblock - I know it does on the Archives of Nethys.
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
As keftiu mentions, it's helpfully listed for each statblock on the AoN - it's also collated into a table on page 506 of the CRB, accessible here on the Archives of Nethys :)
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
You use any skill that is narratively appropriate to the specific monster. The most commonly appropriate skills by creature type are as follows:
Aberration Occultism
Animal Nature
Astral Occultism
Beast Arcana, Nature
Celestial Religion
Construct Arcana, Crafting
Dragon Arcana
Elemental Arcana, Nature
Ethereal Occultism
Fey Nature
Fiend Religion
Fungus Nature
Humanoid Society
Monitor Religion
Ooze Occultism
Plant Nature
Spirit Occultism
Undead Religion
That being said, that list (and the associated AoN recall knowledge skill/DC listings) are a starting point, not an ending point. You can easily have creatures where other skills outside of this list are appropriate. The example given in the book is "The skill used to identify a creature usually depends on that creature’s trait, as shown on Table 10–7, but you have leeway on which skills apply. For instance, hags are humanoids but have a strong connection to occult spells and live outside society, so you might allow a character to use Occultism to identify them without any DC adjustment, while Society is harder. Lore skills can also be used to identify their specific creature. Using the applicable Lore usually has an easy or very easy DC (before adjusting for rarity)."
Also, certain skills may apply to certain types of knowledge about the creature. The book example is using Crafting for physical resistances of a golem, but Arcana for its magical abilities.
Also, as with any Recall Knowledge situation, an appropriate Lore skill might be used.
Also AoN doesn't factor in anything except the level of the creature and whether it's Uncommon or Rare. So even though AoN might list a DC for a very common creature, it won't be any easier than for a normal creature though it should be. For example, the DC 13 for a Goblin Warrior (which nearly all adventurers will face and all NPCs would have heard about) is the same as for an Animated Broom (which I'm not sure I've seen published anywhere).
One might even adjust the DC based on the PC doing the checking. It'd be strange to tell the guy whose family was killed by Ogres that he doesn't know squat about Ogres and the gal raised in the arctic might have a tougher time IDing a desert scorpion.
And naturally some Unique creatures will be famous with chronicles detailing their exploits while others will be unknown to all scholars (and the roll represents piecing together what info one can upon viewing).
My favorites are those which can hit all the buttons, like the spirit of a famous Fey professor at a magic guild. They could be Religion (undead), Occult (spirit), Nature (fey), Arcana (famous Wizard), and Society (famous professor).
And to restate what Hammerjack said, depending on one's skill used, the information could vary, as long as it's useful. Usefulness is a key part of Recall Knowledge that it sounds like (elsewhere in the forums) some GMs overlook. It's costing an action, generally an early one which is valuable, so it should pay off if successful.
Also, how do you decide the DC?
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
Also, how do you decide the DC?
DC by level table. I typically use standard DC for the creature's level adjusted for the rarity of the creature.
What if the creature in question has a bunch of different "example" stat blocks that are different levels (as most humanoids do)? Just set the DC based on the lowest level example?
None currently. I'm just curious.
|
It is hard to give specific answers to hypotheticals without any context. There is no one-size-fits-all. breithauptclan's method is probably the easiest to follow and fairly consistent. It really doesn't matter if there are multiple versions (re: dragons, etc) focus on the one that is present in your encounter and use that.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
What if the creature in question has a bunch of different "example" stat blocks that are different levels (as most humanoids do)? Just set the DC based on the lowest level example?
Sometimes I may give a bit of info based on the family if the DC succeeded against a lower level version. As an example, if a player beat the DC for a hell hound but not enough to identify a nessian warhound, I have given some info about shared breath weapon rules.
That's certainly not RAW - but feels in the spirit of level-based knowledge to me.
What if the creature in question has a bunch of different "example" stat blocks that are different levels (as most humanoids do)? Just set the DC based on the lowest level example?Sometimes I may give a bit of info based on the family if the DC succeeded against a lower level version. As an example, if a player beat the DC for a hell hound but not enough to identify a nessian warhound, I have given some info about shared breath weapon rules.
That's certainly not RAW - but feels in the spirit of level-based knowledge to me.
I agree. One might be able to get "typical Goblin info" at a lower DC without getting the specifics of a mutated Goblin, and so forth. As in "this is similar to something you do know about" with the overt caveat that sometimes the info might be misleading.
RAW, is there a minimum amount of known knowledge PCs have when they encounter a creature before they they attempt to identify it or no?
Surely it is a highly GM dependent thing, but I know most games I've played, the creature type is often a freebie. To be fair, we do get hit with the "oh no, its wasn't a [insert creature type] all along!"
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
RAW, is there a minimum amount of known knowledge PCs have when they encounter a creature before they they attempt to identify it or no?
I don't think there is a RAW for this, though it is more or less assumed that the GM will describe what the creature looks like if the PCs see it, which will usually be pretty revealing (for example, assuming something described as a skeleton is undead is pretty safe, though in weird cases a high roll on lore might reveal that the skeleton is actually a bone golem, which is a construct)
Yeah, that's kind of the realm of both "doesn't have rules" and "doesn't really need them. (I have heard one horror story in 1E about a GM that refused to describe anything beyond "it's a Medium creature" without a knowledge check, but since playing with someone like that will never be worth anyone's time, it's not really a concern.)
As for creatures with more common types that exist at lower levels, that's pretty similar to the advice to use the common DC for general species traits when dealing with Unique individuals. Similarly, anything famous about a creature may have a DC that isn't in keeping with the creature's level. (Your low level farmer won't fail to recognize the dragon that collects yearly tribute from his village because it's high level.) The formulaic part of RK DCs is only the starting point, basically.
|
An underlying axiom of 2E seems to be giving the GM more tools to help the group tell a story.
Some of the toggles you have, in addition to those mentioned above, are Proficiency levels.
For example, to settle the "How much does my 7th level Master in Arcana already know?" it wouldn't be unreasonable to allow them to automatically (◇) recall some basic information about, say, Common or Uncommon creatures which are already under Arcana's purview, while still gating the rest of a monster's statblock behind an actual Recall Knowledge (◆) check.
|
|
Given how limited skill points are, I don't ask players to have a specific level of skill to perform a recall knowledge check.
Traps, haunts and similar checks mostly ruined our experience rather than anything else, and this is the reason why I simply roll for them and that's it.
I mean, being trained rather than master is already a -4 on the check, which is enough given how even a +1 affects the game mechanics. And this without even considering uncommon/rare traits ( which increase the DC), or anything else.
RK can be done Untrained by RAW.
"... the fact that the majority of characters drop int,..."
Wait, what? Did you mean not increase Int?
And if they are dropping Int, or just not increasing it for that matter, it's not you penalizing them, its themselves. They've traded intel on the monsters for some other advantage, so there's no further reason to reward them.
If the difficulty curve is normal for PF2 (which it should be since it uses the standard charts), it shouldn't be too hard to keep up w/ it. You can get an item, higher stats, or more proficiency. Doing all three would naturally be superlative, but doing two is often enough to stay even. And in the case of Recall Knowledge, there are some feats and spells that can help as well. (Yay, Dubious Knowledge!)
--
And yeah, doing Recall Knowledge checks untrained is a path to misinformation, as my PF1 players learned in the playtest to much amusement by all. Actually that might be a reason to do them!
"Well I think..."
"Have you ever even picked up a book about X??"
"No, but my opinion's still valid, so there."
I mean, recognizing and acknowledging that you don't know something seems somewhat rare among humans. :-)
And that naturally reminds me of the time four PCs rolled to ID the deity of an altar and only the untrained PC correctly did so. Everybody assumed they'd all gotten it wrong (high DC) when it had been bad rolling.