D&D 5E Impossible Ability Test

[Riley37]

I'll ask again: Where, in the 5e books, does it give a "Monster Knowledge" skill or other rules for knowing stuff about monsters?

Nature skill should include knowledge about camels, giant camels, dire camels, camelsaurus, and other beasts, even including domesticated varieties of beasts.
Arcana should include knowledge about golems and other magical constructs, such as a camel created by Summon Steed or Phantom Steed.
Would Religion include knowledge about celestials and/or fiends?

I don't have a confident answer on how the owlbear relates to those categories. Nor, for that matter, the were-camel, the blink camel, the fire camel, or a zombie made from an (ordinary beast) camel.

 

[the Jester]

Nature skill should include knowledge about camels, giant camels, dire camels, camelsaurus, and other beasts, even including domesticated varieties of beasts.

Should it? Does it say that in the PH?

Arcana should include knowledge about golems and other magical constructs, such as a camel created by Summon Steed or Phantom Steed.

Should it? Does it say that in the PH?

Would Religion include knowledge about celestials and/or fiends?

I don't have a confident answer on how the owlbear relates to those categories. Nor, for that matter, the were-camel, the blink camel, the fire camel, or a zombie made from an (ordinary beast) camel.

See, those are fine answers- I am not saying they are wrong. What I am saying is that you are making an interpretation of those skills that include such monsters.

Let's look at an alternative to the skill system provided in the DMG. Amongst the options, it suggests that instead of skills, pcs can apply their proficiency bonus to anything that relates to their background. So if you use this variant, what monsters does a Guild Artisan know about? What about a Noble or Folk Hero?

There is NO monster knowledge system built in to 5e, and while it is fine to use one, it's equally fine not to. It's absolutely a matter of playstyle and taste. And while, as I said, it's fine to tell the players whatever they want to know about a monster if they roll a decent skill check, I think it is nigh-infinitely more interesting and fun to make them learn about monsters, at least those outside of the common experience of their race and culture, through experience.

As always, YMMV.

 

[Riley37]

Should it? Does it say that in the PH?

Yes it should, and does, and it says so in Basic Rules. Why are you even asking?

"Your Intelligence (Nature) check measures your ability to recall lore about terrain, plants and animals, the weather, and natural cycles." Camels, and other beasts, are animals. QED.
"Your Intelligence (Arcana) check measures your ability to recall lore about... the planes of existence, and the inhabitants of those planes." Celestials, fiends, and elementals are inhabitants of planes. QED. The Undead are linked to the Shadowfell, and the fey to the Feywild; whether Arcana includes lore on them is less cut-and-dried. (I'm assuming that Arcana covers *other* planes, and not all inhabitants of the Prime Material plane.)
"The DM might ask you to make a Wisdom (Survival) check to ... identify signs that owlbears live nearby..."
If you would tell me that my PC recognizes signs that owlbears live nearby, *and also doesn't have any idea whether an owlbear is Tiny or Huge*, then you can kinda claim RAW but I'm darn glad I'm not at your table.

Lore won't tell you armor class and hit dice, resistances and vulnerabilities, unless your setting includes someone who measures such things and add them to lore. It doesn't mean that the player gets to open up the Monster Manual and treat that information as PC knowledge. If that's what you have in mind, could you please say so? Because the OP wasn't about whether the PC would know stat blocks; it was about whether the PC might know the NAME of the critter they saw.

Lore DOES mean that a PC can reasonably know about dragons - to the extent that people in King Arthur's court knew what the Epic of Beowulf says about dragons, taking that as a typical source of lore for that setting. There's some important info about dragons in Beowulf: they hoard wealth and get angry when it's stolen, they breathe fire, a single dragon can kill a great warrior, etc. Anyone who's heard the Odyssey has access to lore about cyclopes. Not even a Sage always remembers everything they've ever heard in passing, but INT represents recall and education, and on a sufficient INT-based success, that lore includes: cyclopes eat sheep and humans, are descended from Poseidon and are under his protection, can throw rocks well enough to sink ships, at least one of them was easy to get falling-down drunk, that one was named Polyphemos.

"So if you use this variant, what monsters does a Guild Artisan know about? What about a Noble or Folk Hero?"
A Guild Artisan herald knows about lions, as those are monsters used in heraldry; a herald knows they are quadrupeds with fangs and claws, and associated with valor. A Noble also knows a bit about heraldry. A Guild Artisan tanner knows what wolves and bears are, if they've ever tanned those hides, or even if they've just been trained to tan those hides. A bowyer knows about monsters whose gut or sinew is used to make bowstrings. And so on. That's not from DMG, which I don't have; it would be my ruling.

"I think it is nigh-infinitely more interesting and fun to make them learn about monsters, at least those outside of the common experience of their race and culture, through experience."

That clause in the middle makes all the difference. In Forgotten Realms, goblins and giants ARE in the common experience of the race and culture of any dwarf. In 1E, *every* adventuring dwarf knew so much about giants, that they got an effective +4 AC, although the mechanic was a penalty to the giant's roll. Does that mean a dwarven PC knows that there are hill, fire, frost and storm giants? It's not in RAW, but I'd allow an INT roll, with a bonus if they spoke Giant (and thus might be aware of dialects of Giant).

Legolas recognized the balrog in Moria as a balrog. I'd bet that Gandalf had an approximate idea of its stats, and that none of the hobbits knew any lore at all about balrogs. Circe told Odysseus enough about the Sirens, that he had his crew plug their ears. Do your players prefer that none of their PCs ever know, on first contact with a monster, as much as Legolas or Odysseus did?

 

[jadrax]

While I'm not certain about this specific case-assuming a vanilla, roughly 16th Century tech world which seems the default D&D standard. A scholar very well may have heard stories of some desert dwelling creature even though he'd personally never ventured there. I think people underestimate the extent to which information, if not always people, moved around in even the ancient world. There was a silk trade during the Roman Empire for instance.

Even in our 21st century world, with all the modern information sharing that it has, we are still discovering new creatures that no one has ever seen (or at least documented) before.

Do you really want to play a game were your never the first people to discover a monster, because there is always an account of it in some library or tavern somewhere?

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Do you really want to play a game were your never the first people to discover a monster, because there is always an account of it in some library or tavern somewhere?

Nobody is suggesting that you should get a check for every monster, because everything is already known and documented somewhere. Mostly, we're just saying that you should usually get a check, because most things are known (to some extent).

To contrast, in Pathfinder (for example), you are explicitly allowed a check for every creature. The DC follows a predictable formula, and any sort of dedicated knowledge-monkey can be fairly guaranteed of getting the name and basic abilities of anything that has a creature type.

 

[Riley37]

... in Pathfinder ... any sort of dedicated knowledge-monkey can be fairly guaranteed of getting the name and basic abilities of anything that has a creature type.

Meanwhile, in 5E:

- a moderately-built skill-monkey might have +5 to Nature and Arcana, and thus roll 6-25, centering on 16.
Good odds of knowing some lore, but only the easiest level is guaranteed-bar-critfail.

- an extreme knowledge-monkey, at 20th level, with 20 INT, Expertise in Nature and Arcana, gets +17 to those checks, for a range of 18-37, centering on 27. This extreme case has very good odds of knowing anything that's reasonably within "lore". Nature covers beasts and Arcana covers planar creatures; neither necessarily covers monstrosities or aberrations.

Using the variant rule from DMG... could a PC be a Monster Hunter, who has a Proficiency with any raw INT rolls (not boosted by Nature or Arcana Skill) to recall hearing info about monstrosities, aberrations, and similar non-natural monsters?

My interpretation: lore doesn't include stats. Circe told Odysseus some insider information about Sirens, Scylla, Charybdis, etc., but she didn't tell him their stat blocks. Herotodus, the West's pioneer of lore about strange beasts in far lands, did not write out stat blocks. The description for the "Legend Lore" spell gives an example with lots of important info, none of which is game stats.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

I would allow for a check, but make it easy, medium, hard or even ahrder, depending on who makes it.

A rogue with religion skill expertise would make a possibly harder check to know something about the cleric´s faith than the cleric himself. Maybe the ceric does not even make a check at all, if he for example is asked, how a someone becomes a cleric, which rituals are needed etc, while a rogue has to make a hard check, because this is inside knowledge.

Same for a druid who has never been to the desert. He needs to make a moderately hard nature check for different beasts, while someone who grew up there does not have to make a check at all (everyone knows a camel).
On the other hand, everyone of us knows how a camel looks like, even though we might have never seen one in person, even before there was the internet. So I would not make it impossible, maybe medium or hard...

 

[Warskull]

Impossible ability checks should exist. If your team's barbarian proposes that he wants to lift a whole castle and throw it into ocean that would fall into the impossible category.

The knowledge check you describe does not, it was just a poor DM call. Sure, the Elf has never been to the desert. However, maybe he could have read about it in a book, perhaps he can figure it out by comparing it to creatures he does know. "Hey that's a spider, watch out many spiders are poisonous." Perhaps he heard stories from the locals during the downtime. There are plenty of ways to handle it.

An impossible knowledge check would be a creature that is one of a kind and completely unique. No one has ever seen anything like it. Those should be pretty rare. Even then, I would think absurdly difficult would be a better choice.

Telling your players "you can't do that" just isn't fun. Unless what they are attempting is utterly ridiculous you should let them roll. Heck, even it if it impossible, let them roll. When that rogue says he is going to jump a 50ft wall in a single leap with only his natural ability, let him roll. Give him an "are you sure", then after he rolls that natural 20 describe to him how he performs a world championship level leap, gracefully flying through the air, and face-planting into the wall at the 15 ft mark.

 

[the Jester]

The knowledge check you describe does not, it was just a poor DM call.

Nope. A call you didn't agree with, not the way you prefer, not how you'd do it- sure. NOT a poor call. It's a fine call. It's just a matter of playstyle.

Your playstyle is no more the One True Way to D&D than mine is. Please respect other playstyles enough to stop calling them badwrongfun.

An impossible knowledge check would be a creature that is one of a kind and completely unique. No one has ever seen anything like it. Those should be pretty rare. Even then, I would think absurdly difficult would be a better choice.

So a pc facing a unique monster, fresh-born from a monstrous creation engine, should somehow have a chance, however small, to know about it?

That's a fine choice- for certain playstyles. For others, it's complete B.S.

Telling your players "you can't do that" just isn't fun.

...for certain playstyles.

For others, your natural 20 faceplant example just isn't fun.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with giving a straight "No, you can't" answer when the answer is... no, you can't.

For certain playstyles, anyway.

YMMV- and clearly does- and that's fine. Because we have different playstyles. But that doesn't make either one of us wrong. Neither of us is having badwrongfun as long as our groups are having fun.

 

[The Myopic Sniper]

"Impossible ability checks should exist. If your team's barbarian proposes that he wants to lift a whole castle and throw it into ocean that would fall into the impossible category."

When I DM, I still allow rolls for impossible ability checks, but a 1 results in a setback and a 20 results not in a success, but something that might be helpful (or enlightening) for their situation. It still makes the rolls meaningful even if there is no way they can succeed at what they are trying to do. (You only get one roll at an impossible check to prevent shenanigans, but I am sure it could be modified to taste.)