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Up to you isn't it? Casters are meant to have full meta knowledge of monsters for summoning spells to function so you can take that as far as you want.
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Metagaming gets a bad rap from previous editions. Editions where the only way that the GM could challenge the players was by surprising them and playing to their build's weaknesses. Essentially: by tricking the players into doing something sub-optimal so that they wouldn't steamroll the encounter without difficulty.
PF2 doesn't work that way. With the d20 being the final arbiter of whether something succeeds or fails, the GM doesn't actually need to do anything to make things challenging. They don't need to hold their cards so close.
Knowing what the enemy's weakest save is doesn't mean that the spellcaster will always be able to land their spells. It just means that they won't be wasting time and spell slots on something that is almost certain to not work.
Knowing if the enemy is going to be invoking the Incapacitation trait is similar. If the spellcaster has spell slots or repertoire slots filled with Incapacitation spells that aren't likely to work in this combat, that is punishment enough. They don't need to be tricked into actually wasting spell slots on casting such things in order to make the fight harder - it will be hard enough as it is.
There is a certain amount of metagaming that is needed in order to make the game run well, play well, and be fun.
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I give the monster level in successful RK with the traits and most relevant information about the monster. In the beginning I didn't give this information but after release of SoM and the book confirming that spell levels was used to classify spells even in the game lore I started to do the same with bestiary with some well know schools and organization classifing the monsters dangerous in numeric levels.
I know this looks like a bit "metagame" but helps a lot the players to do decision with RK checks a gives an additional utility to RK. In the end works like some isekai novel world where some numeric thing as part of the world common sense.
Metagaming gets a bad rap from previous editions. Editions where the only way that the GM could challenge the players was by surprising them and playing to their build's weaknesses. Essentially: by tricking the players into doing something sub-optimal so that they wouldn't steamroll the encounter without difficulty.
PF2 doesn't work that way. With the d20 being the final arbiter of whether something succeeds or fails, the GM doesn't actually need to do anything to make things challenging. They don't need to hold their cards so close.
Knowing what the enemy's weakest save is doesn't mean that the spellcaster will always be able to land their spells. It just means that they won't be wasting time and spell slots on something that is almost certain to not work.
Knowing if the enemy is going to be invoking the Incapacitation trait is similar. If the spellcaster has spell slots or repertoire slots filled with Incapacitation spells that aren't likely to work in this combat, that is punishment enough. They don't need to be tricked into actually wasting spell slots on casting such things in order to make the fight harder - it will be hard enough as it is.
There is a certain amount of metagaming that is needed in order to make the game run well, play well, and be fun.
Agreed. I also think there are ways to make this nice in narrative. I rather like the anime solution of people being able to feel how dangerous a creature is unless that creature is trying to hide its prowess. Weaker, even with you, or stronger will generally suffice for top level slots at least. It gets harder if the caster is trying to milk their lower level slots, though.
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And before people jump on me for this making monster knowledge checks worthless or something...rules-as-written those checks don't give you monster level anyway, just monster weaknesses and prominent abilities.
Rules as written, those checks give you useful information. If you're a caster with incapacitation fetish very little else will be as useful as the creatures level.
Agreed. I also think there are ways to make this nice in narrative. I rather like the anime solution of people being able to feel how dangerous a creature is unless that creature is trying to hide its prowess. Weaker, even with you, or stronger will generally suffice for top level slots at least. It gets harder if the caster is trying to milk their lower level slots, though.Metagaming gets a bad rap from previous editions. Editions where the only way that the GM could challenge the players was by surprising them and playing to their build's weaknesses. Essentially: by tricking the players into doing something sub-optimal so that they wouldn't steamroll the encounter without difficulty.
PF2 doesn't work that way. With the d20 being the final arbiter of whether something succeeds or fails, the GM doesn't actually need to do anything to make things challenging. They don't need to hold their cards so close.
Knowing what the enemy's weakest save is doesn't mean that the spellcaster will always be able to land their spells. It just means that they won't be wasting time and spell slots on something that is almost certain to not work.
Knowing if the enemy is going to be invoking the Incapacitation trait is similar. If the spellcaster has spell slots or repertoire slots filled with Incapacitation spells that aren't likely to work in this combat, that is punishment enough. They don't need to be tricked into actually wasting spell slots on casting such things in order to make the fight harder - it will be hard enough as it is.
There is a certain amount of metagaming that is needed in order to make the game run well, play well, and be fun.
Just chiming in that I agree 100%.
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Rules as written, those checks give you useful information. If you're a caster with incapacitation fetish very little else will be as useful as the creatures level.
And before people jump on me for this making monster knowledge checks worthless or something...rules-as-written those checks don't give you monster level anyway, just monster weaknesses and prominent abilities.
...well. They definitely should give useful information. Though the word "useful" doesn't actually appear in the rules:
A character who successfully identifies a creature learns one of its best-known attributes—such as a troll’s regeneration (and the fact that it can be stopped by acid or fire) or a manticore’s tail spikes. On a critical success, the character also learns something subtler, like a demon’s weakness or the trigger for one of the creature’s reactions.
"Troll regeneration gets shut off by fire and acid" seems more like a well-known troll trait than "baseline trolls are level 5 rather than level 4". Which, if you're level 6, is relevant for slot usage. Because "it's lower level than you" could mean you can use 2nd rank spells or that you have to use 3rd ranks spells.
Personally, I can see tailoring it to the PC and what they're trying to learn (lowest save, creature level, et cetera), and give some sense of equal level vs. higher vs. lower without requiring a check like you said.
But the rules are opaque, and do not mandate giving you the most useful piece of info for your PC. Which is why I asked the question, really. Since the rules weren't helping.
So, precise level from Recall Knowledge, general sense without a check is your thought?
Yes, that seems like a fair solution to me.
You're correct that useful isn't specified... In that section of the core rulebook. However, it is specified in the Recall Knowledge actions:
Recall Knowledge
[one-action]
Concentrate Secret
Source Core Rulebook pg. 239 4.0You attempt a skill check to try to remember a bit of knowledge regarding a topic related to that skill. The GM determines the DCs for such checks and which skills apply.
Critical Success You recall the knowledge accurately and gain additional information or context.
Success You recall the knowledge accurately or gain a useful clue about your current situation.
Critical Failure You recall incorrect information or gain an erroneous or misleading clue.
While you could read the monster identification rules about "best-known" as specific rules trumping the action's "general," I prefer to think of them as working together-- you give the players something well-known AND useful. (Which the troll example qualifies as, I'll note.)
My preferred approach to RK is that on a success I will do 3 things:
1. Tell the players the traits the creature has, and any universal abilities those traits entail. (If it is a demon, I'll mention that demons are generally weak to cold iron and good, for example.)
2. Start reading the flavor text of the creature until I reach something actionable for these PCs. Flavor text is fun and contextualizes the creature in the world for players beyond just being a sack of hit points, and will often be an indicator of what is well known about the creature.
3. If necessary, I translate the useful flavor info into hard mechanics. Ie, if they identify that a Medusa's stare turns you to stone, I'll probably need to walk them through gaze mechanics and the Avert Gaze action.
That's more robust than the rules dictate, but doesn't actually violate them. Seifter liked the approach when he wasn't wearing his Paizo hat, FWIW.
(For a flat-out house rule, I recommend ditching the increasing DCs with repeated successes rule. That one isn't good.)
I will totally admit the rules are a problem for a big chunk of tables and need cleaning up. Regardless of whether the RAW works well, if a huge chunk of the player base misconstrues the RAW you've done something wrong. Luckily, Sayre already told folks they are revamping RK in the Remaster. :)
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Hopefully they make it a lot more transparent and easier.
It feels weird how hard the RAW of RK wants to hide information from the players (strictly speaking, you don't even get to know what check you're making when you try) especially when PF2 wants to also be a tactical combat system that encourages players to play around enemy actions, strengths, and weaknesses.
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As a DM, I just tell the player. I tell all my players to avoid incap spells as much as possible. If they use them, I tell them when they're screwed.
Nothing is less fun than casting a spell and having it fail due to a rule like the Incap rule. I don't do it at this point.
I've been playing for 30 plus years. I don't need to torture my players by making them guess about something like Incap, cast their highest level spell, then tell them as a DM it failed due to Incap.
I don't like screwing around with stuff like that given I make the fights hard enough without incap spells factoring in.
The Incap rule itself is metagaming. I don't see any reason to pretend it isn't.
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Hopefully they make it a lot more transparent and easier.
It feels weird how hard the RAW of RK wants to hide information from the players (strictly speaking, you don't even get to know what check you're making when you try) especially when PF2 wants to also be a tactical combat system that encourages players to play around enemy actions, strengths, and weaknesses.
Yeah, the not even knowing what you roll thing is... weird. I'm not sure anyone at Paizo intended that, and thankfully I don't know anyone who tried to run it that way. I think a lot of this comes from the PF1 mentality breith outlined. It is definitely a thing for the player base, and was probably at least a little a thing when the rules were being written.
ooooooh they are? That'd be great! It's a cool mechanic, just could use some work. Did Sayre say how?
Luckily, Sayre already told folks they are revamping RK in the Remaster. :)
Afraid not. Here's his exact wording from twitter: "I have this sneaking suspicion that one of the things in the #Pathfinder2e remaster that people are really going to be happy about is the expanded guidance and clarifications for the Recall Knowledge action."
So this might be more clarifying how the rules were intended in the first place rather than really changing them, but in that comment thread he says something very reassuring about that intent (which I have been saying for years):
"Current RAW on Recall Knowledge is that the GM is supposed to give you *useful* information. If the information they're giving you isn't actionable, it isn't useful, and they're not actually adjudicating Recall Knowledge RAW.
But there does seem to be some confusion, there."
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Metagaming gets a bad rap from previous editions. Editions where the only way that the GM could challenge the players was by surprising them and playing to their build's weaknesses. Essentially: by tricking the players into doing something sub-optimal so that they wouldn't steamroll the encounter without difficulty.
PF2 doesn't work that way. With the d20 being the final arbiter of whether something succeeds or fails, the GM doesn't actually need to do anything to make things challenging. They don't need to hold their cards so close.
Knowing what the enemy's weakest save is doesn't mean that the spellcaster will always be able to land their spells. It just means that they won't be wasting time and spell slots on something that is almost certain to not work.
Knowing if the enemy is going to be invoking the Incapacitation trait is similar. If the spellcaster has spell slots or repertoire slots filled with Incapacitation spells that aren't likely to work in this combat, that is punishment enough. They don't need to be tricked into actually wasting spell slots on casting such things in order to make the fight harder - it will be hard enough as it is.
There is a certain amount of metagaming that is needed in order to make the game run well, play well, and be fun.
I agree with this a lot. I've found that you don't need to be secretive as a GM, and it may be even better to be open about a lot of things. Bunch of examples;
Everyone who's played this game a couple of times knows that skeletons need to be bludgeoned and almost nothing else. Let's say you play PFS, you have seven characters and one of them runs into some skeletons. At this point you as a player might not remember if that particular character fought skeletons before and found out this information. If you go with "I have to recall knowledge all over again" you might be "unrealistic" because that character already did all that in the past. If you don't do it, are you evil metagaming and ruining everyone's fun? Or is everyone just going to shrug and go "yeah yeah skeletons, we knooooooow"?
That's a case where I think the monster is so common both in the world and in how often it's used in adventures, that it's not really one player cheating by reading the bestiary and upsetting the GM's cleverly laid surprises.
Another one: you're playing on a VTT and the way the game is configured, you can see the monster's final dice result and also what they had to roll to get that result, so you can also calculate the monster's stats. So if the monster rolls a reflex save, after that you know what it's reflex bonus is. You can use an electric arc to test the waters, to see if you're going to blow your one remaining high level AoE spell on this fight. Is that bad metagaming? It's a bit meta because you're mixing the mechanical and descriptive layers, sure. But is it bad?
I don't think so. Your character can see things in the world that the GM doesn't have time to describe in detail all the time. Sometimes the monster succeeds at a save because even though it's clumsy it got lucky; sometimes it succeeds because it's reacting really efficiently and has a good bonus. Your character as an experienced adventurer can tell that when observing. So your character is getting the same information that you as a player are getting, it's just that you as a player are seeing it numerically.
Also, you actually need to interact with the monster for this. You won't know it's reflex save before you use some effect on it that requires such a save or is against such a DC. It's not like looking up the stats in the bestiary. Your character is experimenting on the battlefield and changing tactics based on that. That's good. You're engaged with the game and taking a real interest in the situation the GM has set up.
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So I guess for this situation. If you haven't seen the creature do anything at all yet, I dunno if I'd tell you the creature's level. But as soon as you get engaged with the creature (observe it for a while, fight it for a round) you should be able to tell whether it's below, equal or above you. Enough information to tell whether your top shelf incapacitation effects would work well.
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So I don't spend much time balancing encounters; so if they pick fight with much weaker enemies, I normally make is a skill challenge, and if they fight a really powerful monster, I'll tell them that they "feel the monster's power is probably much beyond their normal abilities"; and if they decide to run away; I don't really make a big fuss about it unless the monster has a reason to chase them down or something, and in that case, I bust out the chase rules, and just give the monster an automatic regular success to pass obstacles (this is mostly to avoid the monster just critting past everything and gaining on them too fast). The chase rules are usually forgiving enough though that it's very likely fot the player to succeed
If players want specific levels to dial in incapacitation levels; I gove that to them automatically on the first successful RK on top of a monster fact
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There is no wrong skills with Recall Knowledge, only less appropriate ones.
If you use Religion on a flesh golem because you thought it was undead, you gain the actionable knowledge that it is not an undead creature at all. It is actionable because now you can use a more appropriate skill. (I'd also likely inform my players at that point that it is a construct creature and to use Crafting instead.)
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I hate incapacitation so much I just let my players know if an enemy is higher level than them when we play baseline rules.
Whoever thought it was a good idea giving EVERY even moderately difficult enemy +10 to their saving throws against any good debuff spell when they are already higher level than the players, and spells already have low odds of success, was smoking something.
Recently I've just been house ruling that incap rules only apply to big baddie bosses, and everything else higher level just gets +2 to their saves. My spellcasters no longer feel like they need to be limited to buffs and unavoidable damage for difficult fights anymore, its great.
Fights are more interesting since my players pay attention to the save weaknesses of difficult monsters because it actually matters when they have a real chance of landing a debilitating effect.
There is no wrong skills with Recall Knowledge, only less appropriate ones.
If you use Religion on a flesh golem because you thought it was undead, you gain the actionable knowledge that it is not an undead creature at all. It is actionable because now you can use a more appropriate skill. (I'd also likely inform my players at that point that it is a construct creature and to use Crafting instead.)
Also actionable since the characters would then know that positive energy damage would not likely be effective.
Giving information about attacks and tactics that are not going to work is also very good information to give for results of Recall Knowledge.
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I for one really like the Incapacitation trait, and have got a lot of use out of Incapacitation spells several times. Make me feel powerful they do.
(Just not against bosses.)
It is a little ironic because, as a player, I like secret checks and letting the GM take responsibility for filtering information to me as a player, so I don't have to take any responsibility for metagaming around my rolls...but as a GM I find that it can really slow down my game without really helping me tell a better story around the players die rolls.
I tend to run fairly elaborate encounters, so having to keep track of all the players current bonuses and relevant abilities on top of all the creature features and narrative progression of events leads to a lot more time where I am trying to do a bunch of things at once and the players are all just sitting around, waiting for me to figure things out. Whereas dice rolling is something I can just bounce back at them, so they have something to do while I am trying to sort the 5 or 6 other things going on.
Since I have pretty much given up on secret checks, I use "power level" and basic traits of the creature as something that I give out on a failed, but not critically failed recall knowledge check, reserving "you learn nothing" as the critical failure result. On a failure I tend to only say whether the creature looks equal to or more powerful than the party, or less powerful, but on a success or better, I have reverted just to giving them the exact level number plus a bit of description about the creature that is useful and actionable at this time. If I feel like the first bit of info I give is a stretch to use effectively, then I will generally try to give a second clue that is about as useful so that it becomes more of a "choice" situation than a "do you have this or not" situation. I also will always build in to clue a narrative/plot point that helps explain what the thing is doing here, or at least make it clear that the thing really does not belong here to help make the dungeon ecology make more sense to the players.
My players love recalling knowledge when I play it this way and I almost never see them express dissatisfaction with themselves or each other for someone spending an action trying to recall knowledge. Because of that, and establishing that this is how I run recall knowledge, I don't really worry about players firing off incapacitation spells without anyone in the party having tried to recall knowledge first. The nice thing about public rolls here too is that if someone tries to recall knowledge and sees they rolled a 8 or a 9, and gets told they critically failed, then they at least know that something about this creature is special enough that they might need to be careful around it.
As a DM, I just tell the player. I tell all my players to avoid incap spells as much as possible. If they use them, I tell them when they're screwed.
I also think that telling the players when it is going to be relevant works best and feels fair, but asking them to ignore these spells is telling them to shoot themselves in the knee for no reason. Most AoE incap spells are neat, specially when you are a prepared caster and can just pick them on a whim without any commitment.
Like, at odd levels you can affect party lvl +1 enemies with them, that's nuts considering the effects they usually have.
As a DM, I just tell the player. I tell all my players to avoid incap spells as much as possible. If they use them, I tell them when they're screwed.I also think that telling the players when it is going to be relevant works best and feels fair, but asking them to ignore these spells is telling them to shoot themselves in the knee for no reason. Most AoE incap spells are neat, specially when you are a prepared caster and can just pick them on a whim without any comitment to them.
Like, at odd levels you can affect party lvl +1 enemies with them, that's nuts considering the effects they usually have.
The boss' monolog frequently changes its tune once the boss sees just how easily you defeated their lieutenant. XD
I don't even make them roll Recall Knowledge for level, they can just ask / intuit that from the number of enemies. But then I also changed Incap to only upgrade Critical Failure to Failure so I'm probably not the best to ask for what effects the open level thing has had.