Knowledge skills house rule - Planescape related

Hello. I have recently acquired a nearly complete collection of Planescape books. I'm currently reading through them and taking lots of notes, as well as starting to convert concepts to 3E.

One problem I have ran into is knowledge skills, especially the Knowledge (The Planes) skill. It seems way too broad for a Planescape game. So I started thinking of a variant and came up with the following. I'd be grateful if people commented on it, both its mechanical feasability (and balance) and its workability in a Planescape game.

Specifically, the situation I want to avoid is a situation where one PC in the party has a maxed out Knowledge (The Planes) skill and everytime the party is in a new environment, everybody turns to the wizard and he spouting off detailed data. I want everybody to feel like they contribute, and I want the archetype of the knowledgeable planewalker to be available to more than one class.

So here it is :

- First of all, I'm nixing the Knowledge (The Planes) skill altogether.

- Instead, there will be a bunch of different skills, one per plane (plus one for Sigil), all based on the Knowledge (Local). Thus, a character can have Knowledge (Local - The Beastlands) and/or Knowledge (Local - Paraelemental plane of Ice).

- Thus, if your party barbarian is from Ysgard and he's the only one in the party with that knowledge skill, even the wizard will be asking him for what he knows.

- For some types of knowledge checks, I will be asking for TWO rolls. For example, the barbarian from Ysgard would know of the inhabitants of that plane and its physical conditions, but not necessarily its effect on arcane spellcasting. For such rolls, I would ask for both a Knowledge (Local - Ysgard) AND a Knowledge (Arcana) checks before giving that knowledge. This aims at preserving the secrets of the planes, while still making knowledge worthwhile to possess.

- Because there are at least 37 planes, plus an infinity of prime material planes, this would be a lot of skills. The goal is that nobody knows everything. I would probably make ranks in Knowledge (local) cost half as much, though, because there are so many of them. Also, if a PC has spent any significant amount of time on a plane since he last gained a level, I'd make the knowledge skill for that plane a class-skill, temporarily.

- General planewalking knowledge, such as how portals work, what conduits are, and so on, would be covered by the Profession (Planewalker) skill.

- Lastly, I would let knowledge skills apply to adjacent planes, with a -5 penalty. For example, if someone had Knowledge (Plane of Air) +10, they could make knowledge rolls for the planes of Smoke, Ice, Vacuum and Lightning at +5. The Outlands, the ethereal and the astral planes would be exceptions, since they touch too many planes and the last two are supposed to be mysterious.

So, do you think it's workable ?

Are there any holes I forgot to think about ?

One effect of those rules is that players are liable to get a lot of skills with a couple of points each, but I'm fine with that.

Or you could always just set the knowledge DCs for certain planes higher.

Frankly, I think if you implement your system, the players will simply not buy knowledge skills - they're already fairly unpopular, and I think your serious reduction in their power is going to make them dead-set non-starters.

Remember - the other knowledge skills are pretty broad too. Knowledge(local) isn't actually restricted to a certain area - it's just used to know things about cities(ANY city), ordinary people and legends.

Once you start making things too specific, the players will stop putting ranks into the skill, and start relying on their own personal knowledge. Noone will spend ranks on knowledge (negative energy plane) - they'll just hunt down an NPC using gather information and convince him to tell all and then write down everything he says.

Saeviomagy said:

Remember - the other knowledge skills are pretty broad too. Knowledge(local) isn't actually restricted to a certain area - it's just used to know things about cities(ANY city), ordinary people and legends.

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Hey, you're right ! Never noticed that in 3.5. Makes sense, what with the more tightly defined knowledge skills in 3.5.

I got the idea of splitting the knowledges per plane from a Planescape 3E document I found on a website. After all, in 2E, each plane had its own proficiency to know what was what. Just upping the DCs won't do - I want top simulate the fact that a guy can be an expert on Baator without knowing squat about, say, the Inner planes. Having people who know nothing and others who know everything is exactly what I plan on avoiding.

Having PCs who consult experts is great. Very much on-target, as far as Planescape mood is concerned. I doubt my players would avoid putting any skill point in knowledges at all. I mean, they do that when I run a dungeon crawling game, but when I run more mystery-related games, they tend to spread their skill points around more.

But that makes me think.... hey, maybe I could give them some free knowledge points to compensate. Something like, if they spend 3 months living in the branches of Hygdrasil, I can give them 2 free ranks in Knowledge (Ysgard) or something.

Might I suggest grabbing a rule from Earthdawn? In Earthdawn, knowledge skills are open-ended. The thing is that the more specific your knowledge skill is, the lower your difficulties would be. You can also sometimes use a tangentially related knowledge skill, but the DC would then be even higher.

So, let's say you run into a bearded devil. Someone with Knowledge (Devils) might need a DC of 10 to know something about it. Someone with Knowledge (Baator) or Knowledge (Fiends) might need 15. Knowledge (Lower Planes) or Knowledge (Outsiders) would take a 20, and Knowledge (Planes) 25. Someone with Knowledge (Gehenna) might also be able to know something, because devils do a lot of fighting on the plane of Gehenna due to the blood war, but the DC would probably be around 25 there too.

You could also seperate planes into groups -
Elemental Planes
Quasi & para Elemental Planes
Lower Planes
Upper Planes
Chaos Planes
Lawful Planes
Transitive Planes

and I would include magical effects on any plane known -
but allow KN Arcane to be used at a much higher DC for unknown planes.
7 different Knowledge skills -
hmm still pretty clunky, I like Stefan's suggestion
of easier checks for more specific skills -
I would assume that 90% of charaters would have less than 3 Kn skills
unless you raise everyone to 4 pts per level instead of 2
You also have to give most classes Kn(planar subtypes) as a class skill.

Saeviomagy said:

Knowledge(local) isn't actually restricted to a certain area - it's just used to know things about cities(ANY city), ordinary people and legends.

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It is in FR, and a recent article on WotC's site suggested that it should be that way in Eberron as well.

HeavyG said:

- First of all, I'm nixing the Knowledge (The Planes) skill altogether.

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I'd leave it, but make it specific to planewalking (maybe rename it Knowledge (Planewalking)). This would give the character general knowledge on portals, keys, vortices, color curtains, planar pathways, etc. Your general planar knowledge. Then the Knowledge (Local) is used for planes and locales. I would make a single skill Kowledge (Planar Magic) to cover the effects of each plane on magic. I mean, seriously, a couple years ago, I knew all the effects of the planes on magic. It is not a big leap for some wizard to know all about the effects of Ysgard on magic, but still know little about the plane.

Keeping Knowledge (the planes) as Knowledge (planewalking) sounds good. I don't know about planar magic, I think I'd just use Knowledge (arcana) and up the DCs. I'd use the following Knowledge skills instead of Knowledge (local):

Knowledge (Inner planes)
Knowledge (Transitive planes)
Knowledge (Upper planes)
Knowledge (Lower planes)
Knowledge (Boundary planes)
Knowledge (Planes of Chaos)
Knowledge (Planes of Law)
Knowledge (Planes of Conflict)

There is some overlapping for flavor purposes, but I think it can work out.

Sammael said:

There is some overlapping for flavor purposes, but I think it can work out.

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One suggestion when dealing with overlapping knowledge skills is to let them synergize with one another: someone with 5 ranks in Knowledge (Lower Planes) would get +2 on his Knowledge (Planes of Law) check when dealing with Baator or Acheron (or the other way around if he's better at Lower Planes than Planes of Law).

Staffan said:

Might I suggest grabbing a rule from Earthdawn? In Earthdawn, knowledge skills are open-ended. The thing is that the more specific your knowledge skill is, the lower your difficulties would be. You can also sometimes use a tangentially related knowledge skill, but the DC would then be even higher.

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I considered that. In fact, it was my inspiration for letting people make knowledge rolls for adjacent planes, but with a penalty.

The thing is, I love having a list of knowledge skills. It makes it easier to design NPCs. Also, if you can literally take knowledge skills in everything, then it means that there is so much more than you know nothing about.

Both approaches have their advantages, of course.

Sammael said:

Keeping Knowledge (the planes) as Knowledge (planewalking) sounds good. I don't know about planar magic, I think I'd just use Knowledge (arcana) and up the DCs. I'd use the following Knowledge skills instead of Knowledge (local):

Knowledge (Inner planes)
Knowledge (Transitive planes)
Knowledge (Upper planes)
Knowledge (Lower planes)
Knowledge (Boundary planes)
Knowledge (Planes of Chaos)
Knowledge (Planes of Law)
Knowledge (Planes of Conflict)

There is some overlapping for flavor purposes, but I think it can work out.

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Yeah, the knowledge (planewalking) thing is good. I'll replace profession (planewalking) with that. Also, I won't be calling them Knowledge (local) skills, but new knowledge skills altogether.

As to the skill groups, I think that's a good idea. However, what made me choose my way initially was that in all my Planescape readings (I'm practically breathing the setting, these days), I come across a ton of people who know about one or two planes, and that's it. For instance, I just read the Plane of Minerals blurb in Inner Planes and that dwarf narrator, he knows a lot about the plane of minerals, a little about the plane of earth, but don't ask him to tell you about the plane of lightning. And he knows nothing about magic. I want to be able to simulate that.

Another way to do it would be like the Perform skill used to be in 3.0. Say, you have Knowledge (The Planes) with 8 ranks, you choose 8 planes you are familiar with. Any other plane, you either can't make rolls for or get a large penalty.

Evilhalfling said:

I would assume that 90% of charaters would have less than 3 Kn skills
unless you raise everyone to 4 pts per level instead of 2
You also have to give most classes Kn(planar subtypes) as a class skill.

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I doubt I'll do that, or munch-boy will just invest more in Tumble or Use Magic Device. I might give everyone 2 more skill points per level that can only be spent on knowledge or profession skills, however. Or give free ranks in the knowledge skill of whatever plane the PCs spend time in.

Also, I haven't worked this out yet, but some of the factions will probably give bonuses to skills (or at least make certain skills into class skills, no matter what class you are). Also, it could be an advantage of Planars over Primes that all of those knowledge skills would automatically be class skills for them. Something like that.