Picking Esoteric Lore with Additional Lore

[Dabaren]

Greetings,

I'm building a Psychic (Emotional Acceptance) for Fists of the Ruby Phoenix and my group can't reach an agreement about being able to pick up Esoteric Lore with Additional Lore (or any Skill increase).

We play with free archetype and I plan on picking Thaumaturge, refluffing its powers as the Psychic noticing and canalizing emotions the enemies feel in order to turn them into our advanteges. The limited use of Esoteric lore strike me as prefect for this, as it can only be used to Recall Knowledge of creatures, hazards... and thus is not as usefull as a "normal" Lore.

We are willing as a group to "bend the rules" a little bit, but not keen on breaking them, so before making a decision i wanted to ask here, maybe there is a non-official consensus on this since i can't find an official one.

Thank you very much (and sorry about any language-related mistakes since i'm not a native speaker).

[John R.]

Esoteric Lore is a class feature unique to the Thaumaturge that is only obtainable by taking Thaumaturge as your primary class. The lore skill itself is inarguably linked to this class feature and requires houseruling to override the intended default. You might technically be able to take Additional Lore for "Esoteric Lore" but it should not function the same and is quite possibly too broad and vague to be a valid choice (like how Magic Lore would be far too broad vs Arcana and Occultism).

[John R.]

Additional advice: Recall Knowledge on creatures is not to be taken lightly. It is essentially a game legal method of metagaming for monster stats. Rangers have a highly valued feat path focused on this that doesn't even enable identification of all creatures with one skill until 10th level and that still requires active investment into Nature. The Thaumaturge gets that ability at 1st level and is their special thing that nobody but aforementioned Rangers should be getting. Most every other character should have to invest in multiple skills for anything close to this ability.

[Old_Man_Robot]

John R. wrote:

Esoteric Lore is a class feature unique to the Thaumaturge that is only obtainable by taking Thaumaturge as your primary class. The lore skill itself is inarguably linked to this class feature and requires houseruling to override the intended default. You might technically be able to take Additional Lore for "Esoteric Lore" but it should not function the same and is quite possibly too broad and vague to be a valid choice (like how Magic Lore would be far too broad vs Arcana and Occultism).

Agreed.

The skill Lore (Esoteric) and the Esoteric Lore class feature are wholly separate abilities that can't be interchanged in spite of similar naming.

In the same way you don't get access to the bardic lore class feature or benefits by taking the lore skill in "bardic".

[Themetricsystem]

Yeah, this feels about as valid as adding Additional Lore (The detailed plans of the BBEG Lore) to me.

[Dabaren]

Thank you all for your helpful (and fast) answers.

That was pretty much what we thought but I just wanted to make sure before we wrongly dismissed something that looked... Too good to be true.

Thanks!

[Super Zero]

Sure, why not? It follows the rules for Lore: Intelligence-based and lets you know about the things it's named for.

The extra benefits that make it so much more powerful than a standard Lore skill (how is "all creatures" less?) are a Thaumaturge class feature.

Same thing is say to a player who wants Bardic or Loremaster Lore. Sure, if you want to be knowledgeable about bards or Loremasters. You don't also get the benefits of a feat or feature you don't have, though.

(Though reminder that a mechanic for determining character knowledge is still the exact opposite of metagaming.)

[Eoran]

Super Zero wrote:

Sure, why not? It follows the rules for Lore: Intelligence-based and lets you know about the things it's named for.

It sounds like you are deliberately phrasing things to be misleading and provoke arguments.

[Super Zero]

...by being specific and pointing out the distinction between the usual rules for Lore and the specific class features that grant additional or different benefits?

With additional examples? Unless you're trying to mislead or Pettibone an argument, I'm just baffled.

[Guntermench]

"Esoteric" is not really a narrow topic. Like Bardic and Loremaster lore it's too broad to be chosen as a lore outside of from a class feature.

It's also identical to a class feature and people will assume it functions the same. Best to nip that in the bud.

[Super Zero]

I don't think knowing about bards or loremasters is particularly broad, though other names could be chosen (Storyteller Lore).

I suspect "Of course! If you'd like to know about bards, it works exactly like any other Lore. You obviously don't think you'll get any of the extras from a class feature you don't have, right?" will make many players lose interest anyway.

And it makes the point that there was never any rules argument for it, which I hope contributes to said nipping.

Esoterica Lore could be like... Trivia Lore. You know about things that are hard to know about. If it's got a rarity modifier you can attempt it.

[Eoran]

I think Old_Man_Robot has the correct way of saying this.

Old_Man_Robot wrote:

The skill Lore (Esoteric) and the Esoteric Lore class feature are wholly separate abilities that can't be interchanged in spite of similar naming.

If you want to allow Lore(Esoteric) to be taken with Additional Lore, that is fine. But don't deliberately confuse people by calling it Esoteric Lore.

[Sibelius Eos Owm]

It may be worth bringing some semantic clarity to this: It seems that most of the Lore skill categories are nouns detailing the subject matter, where the names of Bardic and Esoteric Lore include adjectives which modify the general concept of lore.

Thus the lore skill to know about bards would be Bard Lore. This slightly ruins the joke but it was already a bit strained.