Hello, I have a question about organsight spell.
When you Cast the Spell, attempt a special Recall Knowledge check using Medicine to spot and discern a vital organ. If you have a Lore skill appropriate to the creature, you can use that skill instead of Medicine. If you succeed, the next time you deal piercing or slashing damage to the target with a Strike or spell, you deal 4d6 additional precision damage. Once on each of your subsequent turns, you can use a single action to attempt the special Recall Knowledge check again. The extra damage isn't cumulative, so making the check more than once before a Strike or spell has no extra benefit.
What is the DC for the special Recall Knowledge ? The same DC that a character attempts to make a Recall Knowledge to identify a creature ? (For example, DC 19 for a barghest)
On each of its subsequent turn, can a character choose a new target ? If the characters chooses the same target, the DC increases ?
Thanks for your future answer.
IMO the DC increases normally. There's no other described exception for RK than that you will use Medicine or a better Lore and that this RK will give you the Precision damage, the rest of RK mechanics keeps same.
If the designer wanted that you just do a normal DC check vs opponent level's DC he/she wouldn't use RK for this instead the check would be "make a Medicine check vs target level's DC" or something like this.
This is an strange habit that many of us (including myself sometimes) to take only the machanic part of modified subordinated actions that interest and ignore the rest. When you have an subordinated action applies it entirely and modify only what is written to be modified.
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There's actually a lot of issues with the spell. The DC to know someone is a human is like, DC 10. However, a level 11 Unique Human would have a DC of 38. A level 11 person and a level -1 person are likely to have the same anatomy, so it wouldn't make sense to be more difficult for the higher level character (unless they did something to move their organs around, which would be revealed in the super high DC check).
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There's actually a lot of issues with the spell. The DC to know someone is a human is like, DC 10. However, a level 11 Unique Human would have a DC of 38. A level 11 person and a level -1 person are likely to have the same anatomy, so it wouldn't make sense to be more difficult for the higher level character (unless they did something to move their organs around, which would be revealed in the super high DC check).
That's not really an issue with the spell. It is an issue with the conceptualization of the spell.
A level -1 common human (whatever) has a RK DC of 13 [society]
A level 8 common human (whatever) has a RK DC of 24 [society]
etc..
Does this make a lot of sense because they are both/all humans? No. Does it matter that it doesn't make sense? Also, no. Mechanics are mechanics, regardless of whether they make conceptual sense or not.
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The spell also doesn't tell you what DC you're targeting. It just says to make a Medicine check to "spot and discern a vital organ". Is that a level based DC? Is it the same as recalling knowledge on that creature? Do you need to crit to know the organs? None of these are answered by the spell, so it's entirely up to the GM to set the DC.
For example, a Dracolisk is an uncommon creature. If it were just targeting a level based DC, it would be DC 26. If it targets the same DC to Recall Knowledge with Arcana or Nature, it would be DC 28. Assuming you are level 7, and are only trained in Medicine with 16 Wis, you would have a +14, giving you a 45% chance at success on a level based DC. Expert would be 55%, and Master would be 65%. You would have a +5% if you have 18 Wis or an item bonus, and -10% if it's the same DC as a standard recall knowledge.
So even a PC who is maxed out on Medicne would have, at best, a 75% chance to get the bonus, and they still have to spend an action each round to get it for a single strike. It's not really a good spell in the end.
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Your dracolisk example is perfect. It would target DC 28 because it is a recall knowledge check. As such, the answer to the question "what DC?" would default to the DC for a recall knowledge check. This is supported by a specific lore being a possible to interchange.
As for it being a bad spell, yes, yes it is. Because it gets worse. If it is treated like a recall knowledge check, which I can't conceive of why not, if you fail a RK you can't try again.
GMs should adjudicate this spell differently because of how it interacts with the established rules in order for it to not be so terrible.
Remaster has significantly changed RK checks. There's this line that I don't remember preremaster: "General vs. Unique: Some elements, such as creatures or items, might require you to draw a distinction between a general concept and a unique individual, such as “pirates” vs. “Tessa Fairwind, the Hurricane Queen” or “a harrow deck” vs. “the Deck of Harrowed Tales.” When a PC tries to Recall Knowledge, let them choose whether to ask about the general category or the unique person or item, and determine the DC and specifics based on that choice. If the unique character or item is famous enough, the DC might even be easier than for the general topic!"
I think it greatly changes the DC for Organsight as now the player can choose to RK about a "human" and get a ridiculous DC when facing a level 8 Commoner.
P.S. Bidi!!! What have you done?! You caught me in a thread necromancy!! >:-(
I'm evil! Ho no, I'm not since evil doesn't exist anymore!
Yeah, thread necromancy, but the remaster potentially changed the issue so I think it's better than to create a new topic. There's a potential new reading, Cordell issue is fixed by the remaster. But I expect table variation so I'm interested in knowing what others think about this.