| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
You know basic facts off the top of your head. Choose a skill you’re an expert in that has the Recall Knowledge action and for which you have the Assurance feat. You can use the Recall Knowledge action with that skill as a free action once per round. If you do, you must use Assurance on the skill check.
Does anyone actually take, much less use the above feat?
It's nice to be able to get a free RK check when your lore comes up, but um, how often will it really matter the round after that, or the round after that?
The primary benefit of being able to use it every round as a free action seems, well, like it wouldn't come up very often. As written it just doesn't seem like it's likely to be applied practically.
Say I have Zon-Kuthon lore on my total edgelord character. Does he just not shut up ever about his dark lord? XD
| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
It kinda feels like Paizo don't know how high the RK checks need to be to pass most of the time.
I'm legit curious as to what % of the time Assurance RK would ever work. You'd need to be targeting PL -2 foes or something.
And lets not forget this seems to get worse as the Lvls go up, so no testing at L3 and calling it a day, lol.
| 5 people marked this as a favorite. |
It just seems like a pretty raw deal. Free action is significantly better than normal, but "will fail against on-level enemies and locks you out of further checks" seems significantly worse than normal.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I'm of the opinion that a thaumaturge's esoteric lore and the commander's warfare lore are specific lores for the purpose of RK since, well, they are lores that are used specifically to identify creatures. I get why people would be against that, but I also think RK is highly overrated (but that's another story).
Still, a thaumaturge probably won't be taking Automatic Knowledge anyways since the most important aspect of RK is already built on exploit weakness and most thaumaturges are taking Diverse Lore as well anyways. For a commander though? I have a player that took Automatic Knowledge with her commander and its really cool when she's shouting her tactics to her allies while also providing important information about the foe every turn.
The only other class I think could probably use it if its a specific lore is enigma bards.
| 7 people marked this as a favorite. |
Bardic lore, Loremaster lore, esoteric lore, and warfare lore are the textbook examples of unspecific lores. A specific lore can only hit a narrow category (e.g. Fey Lore, Undead Lore).
EDIT: As a counterpoint to the idea that esoteric and warfare lores are specific lores, consider how odd it would be if taking diverse lore made your recall knowledge DCs for the same creatures higher because it lets you use RK for anything (unspecific, on your view) instead of just creatures and haunts and curses (specific, on your view).
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I haven't, but if you had Dubious Knowledge, you would probably guarantee no crit fails. So if you're good at detecting BS info, or your GM likes being funny, you would learn something useful every time.
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
It kinda feels like Paizo don't know how high the RK checks need to be to pass most of the time.
I think this is real answer to the value question of Automatic Knowledge. That, and lack of consistency.
The highest an Automatic Knowledge check can be is 38, which requires you to be 20th level and legendary in that skill.
Depending on the skill and enemy in question, you can still fail to meet the DC for PL-6 at this point.
But this isn't even consistent across types of lore. For example, At 20th level, if you have Demon Lore at legendardy, counting it as an Unspecific Lore, you can exactly hit a Balor or Vrolikai just fine. But if you had Dragon Lore at legendardy, also as a Unspecific Lore, you would miss on every 20th level dragon.
You know basic facts off the top of your head. Choose a skill you’re an expert in that has the Recall Knowledge action and for which you have the Assurance feat. You can use the Recall Knowledge action with that skill as a free action once per round. If you do, you must use Assurance on the skill check.Does anyone actually take, much less use the above feat?
No. Never even considered it.
The things assurance for recalling knowledge is good for are almost always out of combat things.
| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
While it's an interesting idea/concept for a skill feat, but it is terrible. You're more likely to fail than succeed on anything at or above party level, so forget about making multiple free checks.
If it just granted you 1 free recall knowledge check without requiring the use of Assurance that would be great.
| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
Bardic lore, Loremaster lore, esoteric lore, and warfare lore are the textbook examples of unspecific lores. A specific lore can only hit a narrow category (e.g. Fey Lore, Undead Lore).
EDIT: As a counterpoint to the idea that esoteric and warfare lores are specific lores, consider how odd it would be if taking diverse lore made your recall knowledge DCs for the same creatures higher because it lets you use RK for anything (unspecific, on your view) instead of just creatures and haunts and curses (specific, on your view).
Eh, its not like I give it much thought because, as I said, I think RK is highly overrated both from Paizo and the players.
For most martials it really doesn't matter if you know to what the foe is weak or resistant against because at best you can deal 2 types of physical damage and that's it. Even knowing the highest and lowest save doesn't matter much because for most martials that only affects if you are going to use grapple or trip, and even if you happen to target the highest save first, the result of your die alone probably is already telling you that's the target's highest save.
For casters it only really maters for prepared casters and if they somehow have a way to know exactly the enemies they are going to fight against that day.
And even then, a GM isn't going to design an encounter where the PCs are utterly useless against unless there's a narrative weakness of some kind (like a ghost being weak against the weapon that killed it which was part of the loot a few sessions ago).
And the fact that you can't make more checks if you fail? Nah, RK isn't that good.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
The problem with Assurance and RK is that it gets really messed up by rarity and their DC increases: if you're going up against a common PL+0 enemy at level 20, like a Bikkhasura, then even unspecific Lore will be enough to automatically succeed at the RK check. The moment the creature is uncommon, however, those checks auto-fail, and because increasingly more monsters are uncommon or rare at higher levels, that tends to make RK in general increasingly difficult, let alone Assurance with those checks. In theory, Automatic Knowledge is great if you have a Lore skill you're maxing out and applying to certain enemies at your level or below, but on top of that being a fairly niche benefit overall, it gets scuppered by even the smallest DC increase, and those DC increases happen quite often.
This I think is also not a problem isolated to Automatic Knowledge: RK in general is fairly difficult and expensive to achieve consistently against monsters in combat, despite being pretty important to the effectiveness of many classes, casters in particular. Unless you're a Thaumaturge or opted into the Loremaster archetype, your only recourse is going to be to put increases into lots of different RK skills, and even then you will often fail your checks, especially if a monster's not common. I personally don't think rarity should increase DCs for combat-relevant information in an encounter, even if it could still be a factor out of combat.
| 11 people marked this as a favorite. |
Those 50/50 numbers aren't true.
A character maxed out at a skill rolling a standard difficulty for their level starts at 65/35 (a +7 rolling against DC 15 at level 1) and slowly climbs, to 95% at level 20 if that investment includes an Item bonus (+38 against DC 40) or 80% if it doesn't (+35 against DC 40).
Recall DCs can be very hard when rarity also comes into play. (It's also important to note that there are a lot more factors in setting RK DCs than people point at in these discussions, and it's a very squishy system, but it's true that hard RK DCs come up a lot, even accounting for all of that). But adding inaccurate numbers on top doesn't help.
Unfortunately, Automatic Knowledge is still really bad in spite of that.
Those 50/50 numbers aren't true.
A character maxed out at a skill rolling a standard difficulty for their level starts at 65/35 (a +7 rolling against DC 15 at level 1) and slowly climbs, to 95% at level 20 if that investment includes an Item bonus (+38 against DC 40) or 80% if it doesn't (+35 against DC 40).
Recall DCs can be very hard when rarity also comes into play. (It's also important to note that there are a lot more factors in setting RK DCs than people point at in these discussions, and it's a very squishy system, but it's true that hard RK DCs come up a lot, even accounting for all of that). But adding inaccurate numbers on top doesn't help.
Unfortunately, Automatic Knowledge is still really bad in spite of that.
I think the problem here is, while you math is right, it kind of means only someone who is very dedicated to the skill should even bother.
If you try to dabble, your investment is basically non-existent. You might as well not bother. Unless your GM does actually give you a fair amount of encounters/challenges that are below level those people will fail far more often than they succeed.
| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
Those 50/50 numbers aren't true.
A character maxed out at a skill rolling a standard difficulty for their level starts at 65/35 (a +7 rolling against DC 15 at level 1) and slowly climbs, to 95% at level 20 if that investment includes an Item bonus (+38 against DC 40) or 80% if it doesn't (+35 against DC 40).
Recall DCs can be very hard when rarity also comes into play. (It's also important to note that there are a lot more factors in setting RK DCs than people point at in these discussions, and it's a very squishy system, but it's true that hard RK DCs come up a lot, even accounting for all of that). But adding inaccurate numbers on top doesn't help.
Unfortunately, Automatic Knowledge is still really bad in spite of that.
I think the problem here is, while you math is right, it kind of means only someone who is very dedicated to the skill should even bother.
If you try to dabble, your investment is basically non-existent. You might as well not bother. Unless your GM does actually give you a fair amount of encounters/challenges that are below level those people will fail far more often than they succeed.
That's where it gets more into a judgement call. What level of investment are you talking about, and how low of a chance do you consider "non-existent:.
The numbers I gave are A ceiling (not quite THE ceiling since I'm not including temporary buffs like consumables or Aid) but there's a whole spectrum between "maximized skill" and "I got Trained, never increased it, have+0 in the attribute and have no items to help". Points on that spectrum have very different success chances.
If you feel that a given point on that spectrum of investment at a given level should be higher, that can be a valid judgement, but let's please not act like it's a binary. I have seen secondary skills hold up as useful into higher levels with moderate investment, but if they have no investment beyond Trained, they do definitely drop off.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
You know basic facts off the top of your head. Choose a skill you’re an expert in that has the Recall Knowledge action and for which you have the Assurance feat. You can use the Recall Knowledge action with that skill as a free action once per round. If you do, you must use Assurance on the skill check.Does anyone actually take, much less use the above feat?
It's nice to be able to get a free RK check when your lore comes up, but um, how often will it really matter the round after that, or the round after that?
The primary benefit of being able to use it every round as a free action seems, well, like it wouldn't come up very often. As written it just doesn't seem like it's likely to be applied practically.
Say I have Zon-Kuthon lore on my total edgelord character. Does he just not shut up ever about his dark lord? XD
I've taken Automatic Knowledge (Society) with my Mastermind Rogue. I've gotten pretty good mileage out of it when fighting multiple foes (ie PL -1 or more). Keeps them flat-footed for my sneak-attack which is nice since I'm playing a thrower. Otherwise it's hard to get flat-footed on enemies at range consistently.
I should note that I worked it with my GM that so long as I'm not seeking additional info after the initial roll, the DC doesn't increase round to round.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Those 50/50 numbers aren't true.
A character maxed out at a skill rolling a standard difficulty for their level starts at 65/35 (a +7 rolling against DC 15 at level 1) and slowly climbs, to 95% at level 20 if that investment includes an Item bonus (+38 against DC 40) or 80% if it doesn't (+35 against DC 40).
Recall DCs can be very hard when rarity also comes into play. (It's also important to note that there are a lot more factors in setting RK DCs than people point at in these discussions, and it's a very squishy system, but it's true that hard RK DCs come up a lot, even accounting for all of that). But adding inaccurate numbers on top doesn't help.
Unfortunately, Automatic Knowledge is still really bad in spite of that.
I think the problem here is, while you math is right, it kind of means only someone who is very dedicated to the skill should even bother.
If you try to dabble, your investment is basically non-existent. You might as well not bother. Unless your GM does actually give you a fair amount of encounters/challenges that are below level those people will fail far more often than they succeed.
That's where it gets more into a judgement call. What level of investment are you talking about, and how low of a chance do you consider "non-existent:.
The numbers I gave are A ceiling (not quite THE ceiling since I'm not including temporary buffs like consumables or Aid) but there's a whole spectrum between "maximized skill" and "I got Trained, never increased it, have+0 in the attribute and have no items to help". Points on that spectrum have very different success chances.
If you feel that a given point on that spectrum of investment at a given level should be higher, that can be a valid judgement, but let's please not act like it's a binary. I have seen secondary skills hold up as useful into higher levels with moderate investment, but if they have no investment beyond Trained, they do definitely drop off.
I don't disagree with what you're saying....I just don't see it happen commonly that you have invested more than trained but didn't take it to legendary. Like it's possible, but with the default amount of skill proficiency increases I think you end up with 3 legendary skills and that's it. Now, there are definitely things you can do that will grant other trained skill and sometimes additional proficiency scaling/increases but it's not guaranteed or "easily accessed".
So it often feels like the dichotomy is trained or max investment (or maybe 1 step behind because you increased another skill first).
You know basic facts off the top of your head. Choose a skill you’re an expert in that has the Recall Knowledge action and for which you have the Assurance feat. You can use the Recall Knowledge action with that skill as a free action once per round. If you do, you must use Assurance on the skill check.Does anyone actually take, much less use the above feat?
It's nice to be able to get a free RK check when your lore comes up, but um, how often will it really matter the round after that, or the round after that?
The primary benefit of being able to use it every round as a free action seems, well, like it wouldn't come up very often. As written it just doesn't seem like it's likely to be applied practically.
Say I have Zon-Kuthon lore on my total edgelord character. Does he just not shut up ever about his dark lord? XD
I've taken Automatic Knowledge (Society) with my Mastermind Rogue. I've gotten pretty good mileage out of it when fighting multiple foes (ie PL -1 or more). Keeps them flat-footed for my sneak-attack which is nice since I'm playing a thrower. Otherwise it's hard to get flat-footed on enemies at range consistently.
I should note that I worked it with my GM that so long as I'm not seeking additional info after the initial roll, the DC doesn't increase round to round.
You're very lucky. Most people consider mastermind rogue unusable because of how much the roll knowledge check scales after the first attempt. This tweak actually makes it usable, even it's not guaranteed.
Arguably, you're only allowed to do it once on an enemy because it does say "when you identify a creature". What's worse there's even an argument (that I can't say is wrong) that once you've identified a creature, all subsequent uses of that creature would be "immune" to your ability. Like the first skeleton you identify prevents you from ever using it on a skeleton again. Obviously that's a too bad to be true interpretation, but I can't say it's 100% wrong either.
You know basic facts off the top of your head. Choose a skill you’re an expert in that has the Recall Knowledge action and for which you have the Assurance feat. You can use the Recall Knowledge action with that skill as a free action once per round. If you do, you must use Assurance on the skill check.Does anyone actually take, much less use the above feat?
Mainly as a feat tax for Enigma's Knowledge (for basic facts using all Trained skills, as well as Expert or better).
| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
Eh, its not like I give it much thought because, as I said, I think RK is highly overrated both from Paizo and the players.
It kind of really is, which frustrate me as a GM because sometimes I like being able to let characters who want to be smart feel smart and give them info but the baseline framework for RK is so wretched. Highly action intensive, highly volatile even with training, low payoff (you essentially get one piece of information). Even purists tend to rarely run RK strictly by RAW because it's so bad, sometimes even without realizing it.
... Reminded of another tabletop I play where its RK mechanic has no failure feature (you spend the action and just get the info) and gives you the monster's entire statblock instead of just answering one question and even then it's kind of a pain to get players interested in using it.
The PF2 version is so so so so so bad and so limited it always kind of baffles me when people worry about the power level of RK options.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
It kind of really is, which frustrate me as a GM because sometimes I like being able to let characters who want to be smart feel smart and give them info but the baseline framework for RK is so wretched. Highly action intensive, highly volatile even with training, low payoff (you essentially get one piece of information). Even purists tend to rarely run RK strictly by RAW because it's so bad, sometimes even without realizing it.
... Reminded of another tabletop I play where its RK mechanic has no failure feature (you spend the action and just get the info) and gives you the monster's entire statblock instead of just answering one question and even then it's kind of a pain to get players interested in using it.
The PF2 version is so so so so so bad and so limited it always kind of baffles me when people worry about the power level of RK options.
Yeah. I've drastically buffed RK at my table. It is a free action, lets you select what kind of info you want from several categories, rewards an additional single piece of info for every 5 over the DC you hit (though I don't refund you if you hit a category with nothing), requires you to be at least trained for topics DC 15 or higher, and cannot be tried again. The only change I ever made to this rule since I adopted it was changing it from 2 pieces of info per to 1 piece per because I hadn't really accounted for multiple players being invested in RK.
This is a massive change.
The effect is that RK simply now functions instead of never getting used.
|
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
The PF2 version is so so so so so bad and so limited it always kind of baffles me when people worry about the power level of RK options.
I'm in the same category. I've made RK significantly better (open roll, no lying on critical failure, can keep trying if you succeed at DC that does not increase, fairly generous in what situations allow a reroll after a failure) and PCs still rarely even bother.
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
I'm in the same category. I've made RK significantly better (open roll, no lying on critical failure, can keep trying if you succeed at DC that does not increase, fairly generous in what situations allow a reroll after a failure) and PCs still rarely even bother.
The PF2 version is so so so so so bad and so limited it always kind of baffles me when people worry about the power level of RK options.
While I do agree Roll Knowledge is bad and has lots of problems, I have to admit as a GM I like the secret rolls and the misinformation on critical failures. The critical failures have sometimes lead to very funny situations and RP which I enjoyed (and the secret rolls are kind of needed to to prevent metagaming, though depending on your group you can ignore secret rolls altogether if you trust players to have their characters act on what their characters would know and not what their players know).
But the first time you get a critical failure on something like a fire elemental where the roller is convinced that the target has a fire weakness and the rest of the party is looking at them like "You're an idiot".
Anyways, I don't know what to do to keep those bits that I like while making RK worth using. I feel like letting everyone use RK once per round for free is a step in the right direction.
| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
The group I run in Abomination Vaults uses Recall Knowledge a lot, and has found it really, really useful. I mostly try to abide by this suggestion from the GM Core:
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 find most things my players run into have something general to fall back on.
We enjoy it, if only for the comical value of having a PC claim something truly outrageous and we all get the chance to play along. So our arcane expert RK'd the dragon and found out it's a vegetarian. That's good for at least a half hour of ribbing the player who failed while our characters act out believing it.
My group is much the same way.
as a GM I like the secret rolls and the misinformation on critical failures.As a player I hate this with a fiery passion, as a GM I "only" intensely hate it.
It is very un fun and very bad game design
I'm with you, hate it so, so much. For instance, I refuse to use a Thaumaturge unless the DM allows me to NOT take the Dubious Knowledge feat. I have no interest in increasing the amount of incorrect info i get. :P
We enjoy it, if only for the comical value of having a PC claim something truly outrageous and we all get the chance to play along. So our arcane expert RK'd the dragon and found out it's a vegetarian. That's good for at least a half hour of ribbing the player who failed while our characters act out believing it.as a GM I like the secret rolls and the misinformation on critical failures.As a player I hate this with a fiery passion, as a GM I "only" intensely hate it.
It is very un fun and very bad game design
Same, that's why I like it.
The secret roll is necessary depending on your group and if you have any players likely to metagame. It really only takes one player to act based on the knowledge of a failed roll (even if it's not their roll) to make a GM use secret rolls.
And the misinformation, well I guess it depends on the GM but I always make it very obvious that it's wrong information (or I'll just decline to give wrong information if I can't think of something that doesn't make for a good joke).
|
|
I should maybe add some nuance to my position.
I agree that it can sometimes be amusing to get the wrong information and go with it. But I prefer for all the players to be in on the joke.
And in a trivial encounter it can sometimes be amusing to hit the fire elemental with fire. You still win, no harm no foul.
But having a character die because they are reacting to bad information, or wasting an hour of game time as you frantically pursue a red herring I find much much less fun. And I’ve seen both of those occur.
I especially dislike the latter when I as player know the character is wrong. Either the GM is a bad liar, maybe I the player know the right answer, maybe the lie is just too silly to believe.
And all this can be greatly exacerbated by how much information the GM hands out for “free”. If the GM makes sure you know that your fireball isn’t hurting the fire elemental it can be annoying. If the GM tries hard to NOT let you know the fireball did no damage then it can be infuriating.
I'm with you, hate it so, so much. For instance, I refuse to use a Thaumaturge unless the DM allows me to NOT take the Dubious Knowledge feat. I have no interest in increasing the amount of incorrect info i get. :Pas a GM I like the secret rolls and the misinformation on critical failures.As a player I hate this with a fiery passion, as a GM I "only" intensely hate it.
It is very un fun and very bad game design
skill issue shrimply ignore the information
Secret rolls and false information are extremely table specific. Some players really like those mechanics and others absolutely despise them. The secret check rules themselves understand that which is why they say straight up that the GM should feel free to just ignore them. Even PFS fully allows a table to ignore secret checks and roll them openly.
There's really no right or wrong way to run that end of it, it's really about how your table wants to work. Personally? My players dislike watching me roll dice when they could roll dice instead, so I don't use secret checks in person. I do use them in Foundry because the action macros do it automatically and the player is still the one actively rolling, so it doesn't feel bad to them.
False information? Dubious knowledge is literally my favorite feat in the game as a GM. I have so much fun because of it! I mix it up: sometimes the information is clearly, obviously nonsense and my players run with it. Other times it's reasonable enough that it could be real. I mix it up just to keep it from getting stale.
But if a player said they hate Dubious Knowledge and wouldn't play a Thaumaturge with it? Eh, I'd probably let them remove it. It's thematically fun, but I don't want a player stuck with something they hate. (And removing it nets you less overall information, so its not like its buffing the character to do so.)
I find the core RK knowledge rules too restrictive and running those, almost no players I have would ever do it except as a Thaumaturge and that's because Exploit/Diverse Lore is doing it for them (and maybe a Commander). A lot of players just don't do it now even with my heavily buffed version of it.
It's one of the parts of the rules that need the most house ruling and tailoring to your players, IMO. If someone actually wants to be a character that knows a lot about their enemies and puts skills/feats into that? I think the rules should let them actually feel good while using it and "oh I rolled a 3 on my first attempt and so now Analyze Weakness is shut off against the boss" isn't that.
skill issue shrimply ignore the informationI'm with you, hate it so, so much. For instance, I refuse to use a Thaumaturge unless the DM allows me to NOT take the Dubious Knowledge feat. I have no interest in increasing the amount of incorrect info i get. :Pas a GM I like the secret rolls and the misinformation on critical failures.As a player I hate this with a fiery passion, as a GM I "only" intensely hate it.
It is very un fun and very bad game design
Sure I can ignore it, but I find the whole rigmarole pointless and annoying and since the character is based around rolling Recall Knowledge all the time, I'd rather not buy into it. It's simply anti-fun for me and would suck all the enjoyment out of the experience for me. I'd rather get no right answer than get 2 even is I can figure out which one is true: often i already know the right answer before the roll but I'd rather not play along wrong answers. When a 'smart/knowledgeable' keeps coming up with wrong answers, they don't seem very smart/knowledgeable anymore IMO. I know some people love it but I'd rather not.
|
|
Currently playing a Witchwarper in a 2E conversion of Shattered Star and have it automatically for Arcana (through Core Memories Anchor), and I have yet to ever use it because it's more accurate to say that I'm "taking 3" as opposed to "taking 10" because of how many modifiers get stripped out for Assurance.
Also playing with the Scrollmaster Archetype and have Bestiary Scholar, so I can use my Legendary Arcana for every creature type except those that fall under Society. Still very unappealing to use.
If Automatic Knowledge was more like Glad-Hand, where there was effectively no penalty or consequence for failure, then I think it'd be a lot more appealing.
But yeh, I get it for free and I still don't use it xD
EDIT: Though I DO have the Recognize Threat feat (Pathfinder Agent Archetype) which allows a free action RK check at the beginning of my first turn of combat, and since that's at my full bonus it's MUCH more valuable.
Sure I can ignore it, but I find the whole rigmarole pointless and annoying and since the character is based around rolling Recall Knowledge all the time, I'd rather not buy into it. It's simply anti-fun for me and would suck all the enjoyment out of the experience for me. I'd rather get no right answer than get 2 even is I can figure out which one is true: often i already know the right answer before the roll but I'd rather not play along wrong answers. When a 'smart/knowledgeable' keeps coming up with wrong answers, they don't seem very smart/knowledgeable anymore IMO. I know some people love it but I'd rather not.skill issue shrimply ignore the informationI'm with you, hate it so, so much. For instance, I refuse to use a Thaumaturge unless the DM allows me to NOT take the Dubious Knowledge feat. I have no interest in increasing the amount of incorrect info i get. :Pas a GM I like the secret rolls and the misinformation on critical failures.As a player I hate this with a fiery passion, as a GM I "only" intensely hate it.
It is very un fun and very bad game design
I seen a ton of thaumaturges and I GM'ed for a bunch as well and I feel most people forget the thaumaturge has Dubious Knowledge lol. It could also be that most of the tables I play aren't really a fan of secret checks in general so Dubious Knowledge can't really work in such an enviroment.
At worst you can ask your GM to ignore Dubious Knowledge exists. I don't think most GMs would be angry if you tell them to reduce their workload by having to spontaneously come up with some bullshit fact that isn't true every time you roll RK in case you fail.
I get the feeling the developers underestimated the distaste some players would have for secret rolls when first developing 2e: although I do think they have their place in the game (it avoids presciently knowing you were spotted if you try to Hide), and I also think there's room to feed the players false information if they're into it, some players do react pretty negatively to not being able to roll for their own checks and being misled. Thus, I feel the bit about receiving false information on RK could have worked better as an option for the GM instead of the default.
On my side, I've developed homebrew to address certain issues I take with knowledge-gathering, and it's worked out quite well, but for tables that don't do homebrew I still tend to incorporate a few house rules for RK:
The net result to all this is that it makes RK much more straightforward to run and lets characters succeed more often on RK checks. It does have an impact on Automatic Knowledge, in the sense that you're more likely to auto-succeed against certain creatures with certain Lore skills, but to be honest I don't think those house rules make the feat good, necessarily.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Since several people have mentioned it, I'd like to say I agree that rarity impacting RK DC was a huge miss. It'd be one thing if the bonuses in the game could really get overinflated like 1E. But the end result in 2E is that you normally do the worst at learning about the creatures you would most like to know about, both mechanically and narratively. It's really frustrating.
It's a bit of simulationism the game doesn't really handle well.
as a GM I like the secret rolls and the misinformation on critical failures.As a player I hate this with a fiery passion, as a GM I "only" intensely hate it.I am kinda the opposite - I loathe having to come up with plausible-but-false information everyone crit-fails a RK check (which happens a lot, because the DCs are so high).
I don't mind it so much as a player (although TBF I have GMed a lot more PF2 than I have played). The players in my Abomination Vaults game do not seem to mind it too much either (although I would go so far as to say I like it).
Part of me wants to house-rule it out. But I don't want to invalidate all the stuff that builds on it, plus I am wary of house-ruling things back to how they were in PF1.
Speaking from experience: House ruling it to "you get no info instead of false info, and Dubious Knowledge is removed from the game" doesn't impact things much. If this is a part of the game you loathe, you can safely change it. :)
RK is an area that really works better with house rules to suit your table. You're one of the people at your table. Change it to what feels better to you and your group and everyone will have a better time.
I love the false info aspect of it, but it's in no way required for the game to play well. You won't lose anything important if you don't want to deal with it.
I love the false info aspect of it, but it's in no way required for the game to play well. You won't lose anything important if you don't want to deal with it.
100% this. Getting rid of misinformation doesn't really hurt the game in any way. But I do think it's an opportunity to have a bit of fun, if your GM (like me) primarily uses it as an opportunity to give obviously false information (the players know it's false, and even characters with common sense are likely to suspect it's false, like a fire elemental with fire weakness). But you also have to make sure that as a GM, whether it's plausible or an obvious lie, that you describe for the players the impact of their actions. "You hit the fire elemental with an attack dealing fire damage. While your blade seems to cut its essence, the fire seems to do nothing."
|
|
RK is an area that really works better with house rules to suit your table.
Absolutely. I house rule it at tables I GM. I see if the GM is open to house rules at normal tables and, if they aren't, just pretty much never use RK except with Thaumaturges.
The big issue is with PFS where GMs are not supposed to change the rules and some GMs actually DO try and follow the rules religiously :-).
I think a PFS interpretation of RK does allow for useful information because it's explicit that a successful RK check provides useful information (which I'd say means even if the player asks a dead-end question). GM Core's section on RK also advises generosity, such as leading the player toward pertinent questions and providing extra detail.
Yes, GMs can be stingy or even adversarial, but that'll ruin most any aspect of RPGs. Not that liberal info redeems Automatic Knowledge! Assurance just raises the lowest bar to mediocre, doesn't help much if you're emphasizing that skill already (unless to protect from a Misfortune effect). So in any serious combat, it'll help with the minions, maybe.