Critical failing recall knowledge

[batimpact]

The critical failure result of RK is like a success but with false information. Unlike a regular failure, you won't know that you failed. Failing an RK roll also means you can't attempt to RK for additional knowledge.

How do you hide the crit fail result when they want to attempt to roll for additional knowledge since they didn't know they failed?

Do you just roll for it but declare it as a regular failure despite the actual result?

[The Raven Black]

Another failing of RK to me.

My houserule is that you can still try RK after fail (even crit fail) until the DC gets too high.

Basically I ignore the "or failed a check" part in "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."

[batimpact]

I think we've been doing it differently as well. We usually allow RKs until they "attempted an incredibly hard check" or "failed a check" AFTER succeeding at least once. Not RAW but it was how we first interpreted it and it has worked out so well so far that we just rolled with it.

I think Im just lucky enough to often avoid the RK crit fail result that I never pay attention to that interaction.

[Ravingdork]

I've been pretty curious about this as well, since my players use it quite heavily and I'm about to play a Monster Hunter ranger.

[Themetricsystem]

Yup, since it's a hidden roll should have no idea what the die result is, and the only way to accomplish that would be to pointlessly roll behind your screen and announce the result as a failure.

[Cylar Nann]

Themetricsystem wrote:

Yup, since it's a hidden roll should have no idea what the die result is, and the only way to accomplish that would be to pointlessly roll behind your screen and announce the result as a failure.

This seems the right answer to me. That would be the only way to keep from knowing the player crit failed. I am not sure I would like this ruling going in as a player though, kind of would make me even more hesitant of trying multiple recall knowledges.

A question was brought in my game yesterday for secret recall knowledge checks. For characters like Mastermind Rogue if they crit fail and the monster isn't flat footed to them they automatically know if the check was a recall knowledge.

Seems like crit fail recall knowledge checks in combat are nullified with some characters unless people have ideas to make this less apparent. Technically I guess you could have the Rogue attack then say. "The monster actually isn't flat footed because you crit failed". That seems like it would get messy quick though and the whole table would probably feel bad with this sort of thing.

[breithauptclan]

OK. A few questions I have about this question:

Where are we getting the idea that critical failure means that you can't make further attempts? Not disagreeing with the idea, just trying to find the rule that says this. I don't see it in the Recall Knowledge skill action rules.

Where are we getting the idea that Recall Knowledge in general can be used more than once on a particular target? The Success level of the action kind-of implies both that you recall (all of) the information correctly or that you get a (single) useful clue about your current situation. Which sounds like the first part - recalling the information correctly - would be meant for recalling information about a particular type of enemy, while the second part - getting a clue about a situation - is meant for exploration mode investigation of an area or object. Which would mean that recall knowledge used in combat would be once per target and crit success has the same effect as regular success - both giving you all of the relevant information about the enemy.

And that argument works fine until you read the Critical Success entry for Recall Knowledge and see that in that case you get both the creature centered information and the environment centered information. So I am not sure what to make of that.

Last question: Assuming that we are going with the idea that one Recall Knowledge action on an enemy only gives one piece of information and so using the action again on the same enemy is beneficial - Why are we having the player roll again? Most of the time for things like spells that allow a save against an ongoing effect, you only roll once and continue using that same result for the duration. Why not do the same thing for Recall Knowledge - roll once per target. If it takes multiple actions to find out the needed information, continue using the same roll result for the additional checks.

[Cylar Nann]

Here is the rule in additional knowledge, not sure how to format it better

Additional Knowledge

Source Core Rulebook pg. 506 2.0

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

[breithauptclan]

Cylar Nann wrote:

Here is the rule in additional knowledge, not sure how to format it better

Additional Knowledge

Awesome. Thanks.

And for formatting instructions there is the 'How to format your text' help button at the bottom of this page.

[thenobledrake]

This is solved by ignoring the "if you fail you can't keep trying" clause that isn't even shown on the results description of the action itself so should be ignored even for regular failures until such a time as errata adds that failure clause to the action so it's player-face instead of a surprise for anyone that didn't read the GMing section of the book (which a lot of players that don't also GM likely haven't read on purpose because it seems like clearly labeled stuff they don't need to know).

That second section regarding recall knowledge seems like a great candidate for the ambiguous rules that don't function advice provided by the book; forgot what it actually says and do something that works for your group.