Forked Thread: Knowledge skills in combat

Forked from: Knowledge skills in combat

MeMeMeMe said:

As has already been mentioned, this is answered on pg 180 of the PHB.
It's "No Action" - you get one roll, you either know it or you don't.
I allow players to roll whenever a creature is mentioned, or encountered.
So, if the oplayers are hired to clean out a kobold lair, they would roll immediately to find out how much they know about kobolds.
Then in that lair, when they encounter a Guard Drake, they roll to see if they know what it is and and how much they know about it.

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Has anyone noticed that monster knowledge skills are very good now? My PCs know every resistance, power, weakness, name, type, and keyword of approximately 95% of every encounter they come across. Is this intended? If so, why even bother with things like DM screens?

Furthermore, when you learn an enemy's "powers", does that mean you know all of their at-will & encounter powers, or do you get the entire list? If the rest of them aren't powers, what are they? Features?

Anyone else getting tripped up by these rules?

Yeah. I upped the DCs for it just because it was getting a little rediculous (for us at our table), we have enough people in our group that between all the PCs, all the knowledge skills were covered by exceptionally high skill levels.


If we were fewer people , it wouldn't be as big a deal because while some knowledge skills would be covered, others wouldn't -- and with enough variety in the moster types, they won't know everything about all of them.

Old Gumphrey said:

Has anyone noticed that monster knowledge skills are very good now? My PCs know every resistance, power, weakness, name, type, and keyword of approximately 95% of every encounter they come across. Is this intended? If so, why even bother with things like DM screens?

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I don't think it is quite as potent as you claim.

Heroic level: DC 15 for Name, Type and Keywords

This information might be a little helpful, but knowing that a Kobold is a Humanoid is not really that helpful. There are some Names that give more info (like a Kobold Minion is a minion), but that is the exception and not the rule.

With +5 for training and +4 for ability score at first level, this is a 75% chance of success. At level 8, it's a 95% chance of success, but some monsters will be Paragon level at that point and drop it to 70%. But, this is general information which is not really that tactically helpful.

DC 20: Powers

With +5 for training and +4 for ability score at first level, this is a 50% chance of success. At level 8, it's a 70% chance of success, but some monsters will be Paragon level at that point and drop it to 45%. Knowing the powers helps tactically, but again it does not give serious advantage to the players unless the DM gives every detail of the powers.

DC 25: Resistances and Vulnerabilities

With +5 for training and +4 for ability score at first level, this is a 25% chance of success. At level 8, it's a 45% chance of success, but some monsters will be Paragon level at that point and drop it to 20%.

Granted, a player could up his odds with Skill Focus, but that's ok. He only does it for one skill for a feat, not all such skills. And, some magic items might help in some cases.

Note: This does not give the players the monster's role, its defense totals, how many action points it has, its speed, its modes of movement, etc.

Old Gumphrey said:

Furthermore, when you learn an enemy's "powers", does that mean you know all of their at-will & encounter powers, or do you get the entire list? If the rest of them aren't powers, what are they? Features?

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The thing about the powers is that a DM should give a general idea about the power, but not specific details.

For example, the Drider Fanglord uses a Greatsword, has a poisonous bite, can shoot darkfire and can shoot a web. That's it.

The PCs do not actually know how potent the poison is, do not know the extra ability of the darkfire, etc. They do not know that the bite is a minor action and the darkfire is a minor action. They will discover this in combat, but it is not the type of information the DM should hand out.

They just know basically what to expect in melee and at range.

The rule of thumb is to not hand out metagaming information (e.g. is it a standard action or a minor action, does it do 1D6 or 2D6 of damage, does it have other special conditions, etc.).

If the DM gives out every detail of the powers, then yes, he might as well get rid of his DM screen. The DM should give general information on the powers so that the players know that the Drider Fanglord can shoot a web at them.

Old Gumphrey said:

Anyone else getting tripped up by these rules?

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I think you should consider a single die roll for the entire group for determining abilities.

If you allow 5 players with +3 to +9 to each roll a D20, then yes, the odds are going to go up that someone in the group has the information.

But, if you allow one D20 roll and each PC gets to add their skill bonus to it, then the odds will match what the designers appear to have intended.


Additionally, only allow one D20 roll for each type of monster. That way, the PCs might know about the Drider Fanglord, but not the Drider Shadowspinner standing next to it. For multi-type monster groups, the PCs should often miss at least one of the (DC 20 or above) rolls. Who really cares if they make the DC 15 roll? It gives really basic info.


Finally, give the die roll when the PCs first spot the monster. This will minimize the number of times that the PCs use some type of power to boost their bonus to their skill modifier. Do not allow them to re-roll after boosting a skill modifier, otherwise, that will become SOP.

Yeah, I'm not really worried about the DC 15, or even the DC 25 checks. It's that DC 20 check. Suffice to say, after reading your post, I feel as though I've given out far, far more information than I ever should have. I pretty much ruined the most important encounter of the campaign so far.

Oh, well. You live, you learn.

I think this is by design, so that players aren't too surprised by monster abilities. This is important because most monsters work differently than PCs; if players can't predict what kinds of stuff the monsters are capable of, they can't make intelligent decisions about what to do in combat, and it becomes one big boring slugfest rather than an engaging tactical battle.

Of course, it's OK for a monster to have a surprising ability from time to time, but that should be the exception (it makes that particular monster more interesting).

-- 77IM

If you want a guideline on how much info to give out, read the pre written knowledge check information in the monster manual and see how the designers did things. They don't list specific abilities and how they work, they allude generally.

Cadfan said:

If you want a guideline on how much info to give out, read the pre written knowledge check information in the monster manual and see how the designers did things. They don't list specific abilities and how they work, they allude generally.

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I've been using the checks written in the MM - having forgotten about the rules in the PHB about using Knowledge checks. Obviously my players aren't as switched on to this sort of stuff!

Cadfan said:

If you want a guideline on how much info to give out, read the pre written knowledge check information in the monster manual and see how the designers did things. They don't list specific abilities and how they work, they allude generally.

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Sound advice, but that's not what the rules actually say. The rules say "make a DC 20 check, learn the monster's powers". So once you hit level 4, you're working with over a 50% chance per character per fight of knowing what the opponent can do.

Cadfan said:

If you want a guideline on how much info to give out, read the pre written knowledge check information in the monster manual and see how the designers did things. They don't list specific abilities and how they work, they allude generally.

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Monster Knowledge checks and Monster Lore checks are two different things - one gets you crunch on a specific creature, the other gets you fluff for a species.

Don't use the Monster Lore entries in the MM as a guide to what should be revealed by a Monster Knowledge check.

On a related note, my players and I have agreed to conduct monster knowledge as Passive knowledge checks exclusively. This allows me to know in advance what information the PCs will know and prepare a paragraph that is more "lore-ish" concerning keywords, powers, etc. and less "here are the monster's keywords ..."