When would you use a Specific Lore DC instead of an unspecific Lore DC, as shown in many monster entries on Archives of Nethys?
Where are the rules covering specific versus unspecific lores?
When would you use a Specific Lore DC instead of an unspecific Lore DC, as shown in many monster entries on Archives of Nethys?
Where are the rules covering specific versus unspecific lores?
The rules about it are in the recalling knowledge activity and are fairly open-ended for the GM. Archives of Nethys inclusion of the DCs is more like how they provide stats for weak and Elite monsters, or creature stats with out level, than they are a hard set rule.
There are plenty of different options for what might qualify as general or specific lore
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I would say Devil and Demon Lore would be an Unspecific lore, and Fiend Lore be too broad of a topic. Undead and Animal Lore get to stay because they're given through backgrounds/archetypes.
A specific lore could be something like Sin Demon Lore, knowing about Demons related to the cardinal sins. One of the players at my lodge picked Arthropod Lore, so they bonuses to know about any animal in that phylum. My Winter Witch has Winter Witch Lore, which only works on one known NPC in all of Society.
Basically, one should get bonuses if their lore is specific. The more broad the topic is (like ALL Undead, which would cover 207 creature entries), the lower the bonus.
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I would say Devil and Demon Lore would be an Unspecific lore, and Fiend Lore be too broad of a topic. Undead and Animal Lore get to stay because they're given through backgrounds/archetypes.
A specific lore could be something like Sin Demon Lore, knowing about Demons related to the cardinal sins. One of the players at my lodge picked Arthropod Lore, so they bonuses to know about any animal in that phylum. My Winter Witch has Winter Witch Lore, which only works on one known NPC in all of Society.
Basically, one should get bonuses if their lore is specific. The more broad the topic is (like ALL Undead, which would cover 207 creature entries), the lower the bonus.
Gonna disagree there. Undead lore getting a pass because there's a background is the wrong way to look at it. Undead lore and animal lore being background lores indicates they are fair game examples that you can apply to other creature types.
The idea with lores is that they should be less broad than normal skills. Fiends are one small part of what the Religion skill covers, so Fiend Lore should be fair game. We also get Dragon Lore from a background IIRC.
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Yeah, Fiend or Celestial Lore, like Undead Lore, would only cover something like one-eighth of what Religion lets you Recall Knowledge on. Throw in Monitors and you're only getting 1/4 of the big monster categories and missing out on general god stuff (which could be further subdivided by pantheon/type of god for broad lores and individual gods for specific) and planar stuff (which definitely has lots of further subdivision potential to general/specific lores).
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I think undead lore is showing a bit of a shift in designer ideas from the CRB. The CRB lists demon lore and vampire lore as reasonably narrow categories. But there are a lot more demons and across different levels than vampires, so one of those lores is (in general, may vary per campaign) better. The requirement not to use a top-level creature trait works better when there's a sub-top trait that's still very broad, such as "demon" as a subspecies of fiend. But it fragments into irrelevance with some other types that have very small families of creatures like wraiths.
There are now 8 backgrounds with undead lore spread across three books (World Guide, Book of the Dead, Knights of Lastwall). If the first ones had been a mistake, they didn't have to keep repeating it in two more books published a couple of years later.
The Religion skill does a lot. It covers celestials, monitors, fiends, undead, theology, religious customs and some hands-on things like disabling haunts. Compared to that, undead lore is solid but it's maybe not over-broad after all.
I would still rate undead lore as a "broad" lore, with no DC reduction, but I would not consider it over-broad.
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Letting someone use Fiend/Celestial/etc. as lores still means you'd still need four lore skills just to cover creature identification and a dozen more to cover everything else religion does. That seems more than fair.
Like I even think
I would still rate undead lore as a "broad" lore, with no DC reduction, but I would not consider it over-broad.
This seems a bit on the harsh side. A minor DC reduction for undead lore seems reasonable to me, but not as severe as for Vampire or Ghost lore, which would get a much more significant DC reduction.
I have at least one "giant hunter" character with...
...Giant Lore,
...Halfling Lore,
...Ogre Lore,
...Tanning Lore, and
...Troll Lore.
I wanted to include Ogres and Trolls, because they aren't really considered "true giants" in previous editions and I didn't want a GM jipping me on that point.