Thaumaturges & Esoteric Lore

[ElementalofCuteness]

Is there anything actually stopping you in the Lore Skill from actually picking up Esoteric Lore as a Wizard? Just a weird question I had thought about to be fair which I would assume the answer is no but is there anything truly stopping this? Out side of the switching Int for Charisma of course.

[YuriP]

No but it will work like a normal lore not getting the thaumaturge class benefits of the lore that allows you to RK every creature (and every topic with a feat).

A non-thaumaturge Esoteric Lore is basically an Occult skill restricted to RK.

[NoxiousMiasma]

If it's the entirety of the Occult RK + Earn Income, that's definitely too broad for a Lore. Maybe instead it works kinda like Heraldry Lore, but for secret societies and unusual codes?

[YuriP]

I don't think it goes that far because occultism doesn't just do RK, you have other uses like Decipher Writing, Identify Magic, Learn a Spell and more specific extra uses like Disable a Device for most supernatural hazards, in addition to skill feats.

So I don't think that an exoteric lore with a similar scope to occultism would be something broken because even with a similar scope in RK to occultism it doesn't have the rest of the benefits.

[ElementalofCuteness]

If I did do this at a table could I then pick up the Thaumaturge feat Diverse Lore since I now have Esoteric Lore?

[YuriP]

ElementalofCuteness wrote:

If I did do this at a table could I then pick up the Thaumaturge feat Diverse Lore since I now have Esoteric Lore?

No, that's forcing the issue.

Understand that Esoteric Lore says that the feat Diverse Lore refers to a class feature and not a skill itself. Just because it has the same name doesn't mean it's the same thing.

It's like the Kineticist's Elemental Blast is not the Sorcerer's Elemental Blast focus spell, you can't use it as a requirement or in any similar way just because it has the same name.

[HammerJack]

ElementalofCuteness wrote:

If I did do this at a table could I then pick up the Thaumaturge feat Diverse Lore since I now have Esoteric Lore?

Of course not.

[Red Griffyn]

So the rules for lore read:

Quote:

You have specialized information on a narrow topic. Lore features many subcategories. You might have Military Lore, Sailing Lore, Vampire Lore, or any similar subcategory of the skill. Each subcategory counts as its own skill, so applying a skill increase to Planar Lore wouldn't increase your proficiency with Sailing Lore, for example.

Most backgrounds make you trained in a specific subcategory of the Lore skill. The GM determines what other subcategories they'll allow as Lore skills, though these categories are always less broad than any of the other skills that allow you to Recall Knowledge, and they should never be able to take the place of another skill's Recall Knowledge action. For instance, you couldn't choose Magic Lore to recall the breadth of knowledge about magic covered by Arcana, Nature, Occultism, and Religion, or choose Adventuring Lore to give you all the information an adventurer needs, or choose Planar Lore to gain all the information spread across various skills and subcategories such as Heaven Lore.

So if your GM decided to allow an equivalently 'spelt' Esoteric Lore then by definition it couldn't be equivalent to the series of 'special lore skills' that allow you to recall knowledge across a wide range of topics like Esoteric Lore, Bardic Lore, Folktale Lore, Gossip Lore, Loremaster Lore or the other various lores that let you do a broad set of recall knowledge.

Those broad 'special lores' are called out as such and have a particular text that allows them to be used for broad recall knowledges like:

Quote:

You are trained in Loremaster Lore, a special Lore skill that can be used only to Recall Knowledge, but on any topic.

Quote:

You become trained in Esoteric Lore, a special lore skill that can be used to Recall Knowledge regarding haunts, curses, and creatures of any type, but that can't be used to Recall Knowledge of other topics.

This is doubly true for Esoteric Lore which is a Class Feature that allows you other benefits (like being able to use CHA for the check instead of INT).

If all you want is a esoteric lore/diverse lore combo for INT on a wizard then literally take any of the other options (e.g., loremaster) that all give you an INT based special lore skill to do the same (and which come from the dedications) instead of a dedication + a L4 feat.

Wizards or other INT based casters can actually be ahead on arcana/occultism and keep pace on the general recall knowledge skills with the proper builds. With free archetype (and GM waving the exit fee tax so you can have Loremaster Lore sooner they can also do far better on the general recall knowledges as well).

I did some generic numbers a long while back here to combat the frequently over estimated superiority of a thuamaturge using diverse lore vs. a caster that builds for it (instead of assuming they should be better just because their key stat is INT/WIS). At the end of the day there are 3 skill monkey classes with very different flavours:

- Rogue (I am generally good at all skills, which can include specialized RK skills)
- Investigator (I 'discover' information through inspection of things and am also generally good at all skills)
- Thaumaturge (I broadly will know more than anyone else, but I'm not a subject matter expert in any one thing... also what I know is super weird and not generally known by others because I found it in the draft ledger notes of some necromancer's spell book vs. in well circulated texts).

If Esoteric Lore was poachable it would undercut a key component to the thaumaturge's class identity.

TLDR: Take Loremaster on an INT class instead of what you're trying to do with esoteric lore (which won't work RAW or RAI). The thaumaturge's skill niche is generic lore rolls so others shouldn't be allowed to poach their niche.

[QuidEst]

ElementalofCuteness wrote:

Is there anything actually stopping you in the Lore Skill from actually picking up Esoteric Lore as a Wizard? Just a weird question I had thought about to be fair which I would assume the answer is no but is there anything truly stopping this? Out side of the switching Int for Charisma of course.

From Thaumaturge:

"You become trained in Esoteric Lore, a special lore skill that can be used to Recall Knowledge regarding haunts, curses, and creatures of any type, but that can't be used to Recall Knowledge of other topics. Unlike a normal Lore skill, you use Charisma as your modifier on Esoteric Lore checks."
Esoteric Lore is a special lore skill, and it is also not a normal lore skill.

From Lore Skills:
"Most backgrounds make you trained in a specific subcategory of the Lore skill. The GM determines what other subcategories they'll allow as Lore skills, though these categories are always less broad than any of the other skills that allow you to Recall Knowledge, and they should never be able to take the place of another skill's Recall Knowledge action."
and
"You can learn any Lore skill your GM gives you permission to take. The following list covers a wide variety of common Lore topics appropriate for player characters in most campaigns. Backgrounds often grant you a Lore skill from this list. "
Since Esoteric Lore isn't on the common list and/or from a background, the answer is "the GM would need to give you permission".

So, the answer is "Yes, there are several things stopping you".

[Tridus]

ElementalofCuteness wrote:

Is there anything actually stopping you in the Lore Skill from actually picking up Esoteric Lore as a Wizard? Just a weird question I had thought about to be fair which I would assume the answer is no but is there anything truly stopping this? Out side of the switching Int for Charisma of course.

Yes.

Lore Skill wrote:

You have specialized information on a narrow topic.

What Esoteric Lore covers is not "a narrow topic", so the first sentence of the Lore skill blocks this.

You could try to argue with your GM that you're taking a different skill that also happens to be called "Esoteric Lore" that only covers "some specific esoteric thing", and if your GM allows that then you have an ordinary lore that covers those topics. But it won't qualify you for things like Diverse Lore.