It can be argued that a lack of an answer counts as a piece of erroneous information, such as if the entity can reconstitute via a Soul Cage, or if the entity can be affected by Spirit Damage.
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Interesting, it makes Dubious Knowledge much less of a pain in the *** for the GM. It's the kind of feats I was forbidding around my tables as I have other things to do than making up believable stuff. Now, it is much more interesting as I can say that "You know this creature is weak to something but you don't remember what exactly!" and other half-answers.
I think it's meant to be more like "you know this creature had something to do with Fire, but you don't recall if it resisted it or was weak to it."
You know the significant object, but not how it's significant.
Simply "it has some weakness" doesn't reveal the significant object, but it reveals how it's significant. Which is the opposite of what the feat is saying.
I hope my players will forgive me, then. Because for me it's a distinction without a difference.
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I think that "Fire is important, but you don't know if it is weak to it or has resistance to it" matches the example listed in the Dubious Knowledge feat better.
But I also don't think that one example is exhaustive of the concept. "This creature has a weakness, but you don't remember what it is weak to" also fits the basic idea. Even if it doesn't match up with the example as exactly.
Its like in some movie I saw where a bull is about to charge and the other guy says to stay perfectly still and it cant see you.
If everyone remembers that was the advice from Jurassic park for the T-rex. The bull here just had an easier target to gore.
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Basically if you simply say "it has some weakness" you are cheating your players out of their feat, since that's so extremely vague that's functionally no different than saying "you got nothing".
When saying "Fire is important, but you don't know if it is weak to it or has resistance to it" you either give the same information than on a success (if the monster as a weakness to fire as your player will certainly test it somehow) or no information at all (if it has a resistance to fire as noone cares about that).
By stating "it has a weakness" I actually give an information that is less interesting than on a success but still much better than on a failure (as you should rather quickly find the monster weakness with a couple of tests). So I think it respects the power level of the feat much better than your sentence.
And the whole "You should give a good and a wrong information" of Dubious Knowledge is why I decided not to play it at my tables. It's a pain to find 2 pieces of information that seem equally probable and that somehow satisfies the player (because as you say if the "good" piece of information is not interesting at all the player can be sad). "The monster either has a weakness or a resistance to fire" is the kind of answer I don't want to look for.
SuperBidi's example was correct information that is not specific information
shroudb's example was information that is about the monster but Edit: doesnt say what is correct about it
The movie reference i gave would be correct information but wrong monster.
I think in order to make that feat give what its supposed to give some part of the information needs to be correct or true and some part of it needs to be incorrect.
Good information about the wrong monster seems to me to fit this.
Actually giving the player a weakness and saying it is a resistance seems to fit.
It may be too generous to give them vague information that has no incorrect aspect to it.
To add to this it may be better to give them a weakness and a resistance but one of them is wrong.
It may be too generous to give them vague information that has no incorrect aspect to it.
Well, it depends. By trying different elements to find the weakness the players may end up using a subpar strategy or hit a resistance. So there's a cost to actually use the knowledge, a gamble as you may even never find the actual weakness.
Also, honestly, the last sentence is apparently wrong. Also, it's too complicated for me to understand it precisely (I'm no native English speaker). So I think it gives me enough leeway to play Dubious Knowledge in an interesting (for me) way instead of ignoring it because I dislike it. It's a clear improvement for any of my players who wants to use it.
By no means "a few tests" are enough. There's literally 2 dozen different weaknesses across monsters.
Fire, Cold, Holy and Positive cover most weaknesses.
Also you are not facing the bestiary, you are facing a single creature. If it's not roten or skeletal, chances are high that you don't have to test Positive. If it's aflame, maybe Fire is not a good bet but Cold is. In most cases, you'll need a couple of checks to find the good one if you are not playing silly.| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
By RAW of the feat, you should say "The creature is either weak to Fire damage or Electricity damage, but you can't remember which".
Saying "The creature is weak to something, but you don't remember what" doesn't seem that far off the mark. Maybe better to limit it down to 'weak to an energy type' because, yes, there are a ton of different damage types.
As a player taking that feat means the player knows they are going to get bad information when they fail but there needs to be good information too for their to be a benefit to taking the feat.
So first off all RK rolls at least from that player need to be secret checks, cant be lax about it and let them roll it.
Whenever they crit succeed or fail they always get extra information than their question.
On a crit they get true information for thier question and the extra information is true. On a fail they still get an answer to thier question and some extra info. You just decide whether the extra info is true or the answer to their question is true but one will be false info.
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By RAW you need to give "a significant something" and do not say if that's "good significant" or "bad significant".
Again, that is not 'By RAW' that is 'by example'.
This can occur as not knowing something is significant, but not whether it’s good or bad.
That is one option. Not the only option.
The RAW is that you learn the correct information and some extraneous incorrect information.
By RAW you need to give "a significant something" and do not say if that's "good significant" or "bad significant".Again, that is not 'By RAW' that is 'by example'.
This can occur as not knowing something is significant, but not whether it’s good or bad.The RAW is that you learn the correct information and some extraneous incorrect information.Raw means Rules as Written. That is a written example of the rule.
Yes.
And not the only possible one.
I do not read that as example.
I read it as specific exception of the normal rule.
An exception would be better if it was written differently. The bolded words are pretty standard for meaning an example.
An exception would be more like:
"You’re a treasure trove of information, but not all of it comes from reputable sources. When you fail (but don’t critically fail) a Recall Knowledge check using any skill, you learn the correct answer and an erroneous answer, but you don’t have any way to differentiate which is which. Or you know something is significant, but not whether it’s good or bad."
I feel there would be a lot of metagaming around the information given depending on how its given.
If you give one answer to their question then they know they cant really trust it fully.
I think the only way to get around that is to give 2 answers one true and one false.
Added: Ideally the player should not know they failed and that some of the information they have is untrue.
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Dubious Knowledge is quite popular in my local PFS group. It leads to a lot of roleplay interactions my group quite enjoys. Granted, this group also likes to fish for critical fails on the mission briefing recall knowledge checks, so we might not be the average group.
I personally would find simply, "The monster has a weakness," quite unsatisfying. Giving a right answer a and wrong answer creates a lot more interesting scenarios, personally. Incomplete information that hints at a course of action can also work (Letting the players know Wrecker Demons don't like mirrors, but not telling them it specifically drives them berserk)
I think in order to make that feat give what its supposed to give some part of the information needs to be correct or true and some part of it needs to be incorrect.
Good information about the wrong monster seems to me to fit this.
Actually giving the player a weakness and saying it is a resistance seems to fit.Both of those are simply false answers (so are for crit fails).
"There's A and there're two options about it, one of which is true" and "False statement about A" are really different things. You are not satisfying your own requirements in your first sentence.
At least there should be a clear statement about importance of A, so it would be close to the default 'the truth and a lie'.
To add to this it may be better to give them a weakness and a resistance but one of them is wrong.Yeah, which is the default and clear option.
Your right Errenor.
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"You know the obelisk is important to the villain's ritual. You could destroy it to stop her. Or maybe she's trying to break it and you should protect it? You're pretty sure it's one of those."
"This creature is weak to fire. Or was it resistant? Fire is relevant to this creature."
This was my preferred way to do Dubious Knowledge all along. Not every time, but those are pretty typical to how I like to do it. Tie the truth and the lie together by linking them to uncertainty about the same factor.
I'd also do something like: "It's weak to cold! Or was that fire? Eh, one of those," which doesn't quite match that example but is among the same idea.
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And what if you DON'T metagame based on % of monsters in a book that an actual Character has no access to?
Ho please, here comes the great metagame hammer. So you never Step because "the enemy can have AoO" as it's metagame? You never cast 3-action Heal in the middle of apparent Undeads unless you have specifically rolled an RK check to know that they have Negative healing?
This is not metagame to know the world of Golarion and the fact that Fire and Cold weaknesses are common unlike Electricity and Acid weaknesses. Asking players to play in an idiotic manner is not fighting metagame.
And when you say: "The monster is either weak or resistant to Fire." expect your players to try to determine which one it is from deduction and not actual tests. That's the issue with Dubious Knowledge: You need to be an excellent lier for both answers to be equally valid. And the reason why I just don't play it as I'm not confident enough I'll make up believable lies in the middle of a fight where I have so many other things to handle. So giving a partial information is actually nice as it allows me to play the feat instead of handwaving it entirely (which would be much more detrimental to the player, don't you think).
Now, you can blame me for lacking skills. It's fine, I know I'm far from the only one.
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I really can't understand the last sentence: "You’re a treasure trove of information, but not all of it comes from reputable sources. When you fail (but don’t critically fail) a Recall Knowledge check using any skill, you learn the correct answer and an erroneous answer, but you don’t have any way to differentiate which is which. This can occur as not knowing something is significant, but not whether it’s good or bad." Scratch that. I can't even parse it at all. What do they even mean simply in English, if not in terms of rules? Even in the context of the previous sentence. Could you help?
Your party is attending a fancy gala, when, shock-horror, a guest has been found murdered in a quiet part of the manor. The body is managled, both ribbed to shreds, but curiously, drained entirely of its blood.
Thinking back, you felt that the towns mayor was acting unusual all evening.
You recall knowledge on the mayor, but fail. You have the Dubious Knowledge feat, and your GM presents you with the following:
You recall that the mayor didn't use the silverware that was at the table, instead you think he ate with his own utensils.
and
You recall that the mayor said he was too tried to walk in the gardens with the other guests. He retired to his room, only appearing again after sundown for the evening meal.
I agree that Dubious Knowledge is a terrible feat, I ban it on my tables, but allowing someone to pick it up and then straight up refuse its benefits is not what a GM should do.
This is why I LOATHE that they attached the feat automatically to the Thaumaturge: its really kills my enjoyment of the class.
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I agree that Dubious Knowledge is a terrible feat, I ban it on my tables, but allowing someone to pick it up and then straight up refuse its benefits is not what a GM should do.This is why I LOATHE that they attached the feat automatically to the Thaumaturge: its really kills my enjoyment of the class.Meh, just don't use it.
On my Thaum I have never asked for it to be applied regardless the result of a recall check.
I don't think my gm even remembers, or care, for it either.
I do not remember seeing anything in the RAW that said you can choose to NOT use Dubious Knowledge.
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I don't think my gm even remembers, or care, for it either.
If every DM I would ever play with thought like this, I'd have a lot less issues with the feat.
I do not remember seeing anything in the RAW that said you can choose to NOT use Dubious Knowledge.
yeah, this. The player gets NO say in its use.
It's a feat. It's supposed to be an advantage.
If your GM is so inexplicably hostile about this feat that you're better off without it, letting you skip it is a downside, not a benefit.
I don't think hostile is the correct term or that disliking it is inexplicable. I've had some allow me to not have it but if I'm going to use up some of my DM's good will, I'd rather do it for something better like getting a uncommon/rare ancestry/feat/spell/ect.: Starting off by asking for a houserule of a classes base abilities kind of sucks.
It's a feat. It's supposed to be an advantage.
If your GM is so inexplicably hostile about this feat that you're better off without it, letting you skip it is a downside, not a benefit.
Also, this is PF2... The GM doesn't need to keep everything secret and uncertain in order to have tension and drama in the game - especially combat. It is quite possible for all of the players to look up on AoN all of the enemies that they are facing - and still TPK the encounter.
Being stingy with knowledge gained - especially if that knowledge comes because of a feat (or base class ability) - is something that may very well come across as inexplicably hostile.
I have a table of players that really hate secret checks generally, so we have had a lot of talks about recall knowledge in particular and I have been working on some variant rules for removing secret checks.
As a player, I love dubious knowledge and I think, as a GM, the secret to responding to it is to make sure you generally are just giving so much information ion recall knowledge checks, that the players don’t feel cheated o when one aspect of that knowledge isn’t so accurate. I also tend to tell players that they failed when activating dubious knowledge so they doing feel cheated when they critically succeed, but are worried that the extra piece of information is false.
I have a table of players that really hate secret checks generally, so we have had a lot of talks about recall knowledge in particular and I have been working on some variant rules for removing secret checks.
As a player, I love dubious knowledge and I think, as a GM, the secret to responding to it is to make sure you generally are just giving so much information ion recall knowledge checks, that the players don’t feel cheated o when one aspect of that knowledge isn’t so accurate. I also tend to tell players that they failed when activating dubious knowledge so they doing feel cheated when they critically succeed, but are worried that the extra piece of information is false.
When someone picks up this feat they really are asking to be mislead some of the time. The only way to really do that is keep the checks secret. But when your group has fun with the misinformation and plays it faithfully when they know its false but their character doesn't I think that makes for best use of the feat.
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I do think, “you’ve heard that this creature has a weakness, but you don’t know what” is a little light on information, but not if if it is a creature who’s weakness would be pretty easy to guess once you know it’s there. One of the tricks of recall knowledge is that almost every scenario is unique, and applying general rules to it can lead to problems.
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I don't think my gm even remembers, or care, for it either.If every DM I would ever play with thought like this, I'd have a lot less issues with the feat.
I do not remember seeing anything in the RAW that said you can choose to NOT use Dubious Knowledge.yeah, this. The player gets NO say in its use.
I don't think hostile is the correct term or that disliking it is inexplicable. I've had some allow me to not have it but if I'm going to use up some of my DM's good will, I'd rather do it for something better like getting a uncommon/rare ancestry/feat/spell/ect.: Starting off by asking for a houserule of a classes base abilities kind of sucks.It's a feat. It's supposed to be an advantage.
If your GM is so inexplicably hostile about this feat that you're better off without it, letting you skip it is a downside, not a benefit.
I just wouldn't houserule it to be detrimental in the first place.
It's a feat. It makes you better at the checks, not worse. If you think it's a bad thing that you want to avoid, there's hostility.
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When someone picks up this feat they really are asking to be mislead some of the time.
That is only half true. The other half of the feat is that you get accurate information on a failed Recall Knowledge check result.
The accurate information is ideally hard to tell from the inaccurate information that you also get. But if all that you are getting is inaccurate information or useless information, then the GM is negating the benefits of an ability that you have.
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The real big brain play is to just give one "answer," but conceal an incorrect detail in there. If someone gets a dubious failure on identifying Nhimbalaoth, you say "You recognize this as Nhimbalaoth, an evil goddess related to the plane of shadow." The bold bit is false, but players tend to expect two separate statements so they don't even realized they failed.
The other thing to remember is that you don't have to provide tactically relevant false information.
https://2e.aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?ID=2488
False Information
Source GM Core pg. 12
A critical failure to Recall Knowledge can result in you needing to convey false information, requiring some improvisation. If you aren't careful, this information can be perceived by the PCs as too silly or could derail the game. For example, if a PC misinterpreted text about the god of commerce, Abadar, telling them that they now believe the god is an incompetent chaotic spendthrift who's bad with money might be too far-fetched. Similarly, if they incorrectly believe Abadar will reward them with great wealth if they ring bells in four different temple corners, this could send them on a tangent.
Providing false information can cause the PCs to make mistakes, but the consequences should typically be immediate rather than continual or far in the future. Avoid dispensing false information that might not be used for hours or entire sessions after the check is forgotten. If you're unsure, the safest form of false information is information that's wrong but not in a way that causes major consequences. Remember that a critical failure says you get incorrect information, not that you get important seeming false information. Erroneously believing Abadar's symbol is a set of scales instead of a key might lead to a miscommunication, but one that's not dangerous, easy to clear up, and only a little embarrassing for the PC.
The examples above are out of combat, but you can apply that to in-combat checks too.
I find threads dealing with RK to be helpful for me. Its probably the most time consuming mechanic to prepare for and dubious knowledge puts you on the spot to falsify something and give it to them along with either the truth to the question they asked or falsify the answer for their question and give something extra thats true.
I can see why some people are happier when none of their players have it.
This feat though feels like its supposed to make failing RK fun and its seems the way its played out for most people is not fun.