D&D 5E Too many knowledge skills.

[B.T.]

Do we really need Forbidden, Geographical, Heraldic, Historical, Local, Magical, Natural, Planar, Religious, Societal, Underdark, and Undead Lore as separate skills?

 

[CasvalRemDeikun]

I have advocated combining them into five or six skills. Just have Magical or Arcane, Religion, Nature, Dungeon, and Local. They really should just bring back the knowledge skills like they were in 4E. Truthfully, they should bring back the 4E skill list altogether and just fill in the 3E skills that aren't covered by those (Perform and Craft and whatnot).

 

[Frostmarrow]

Knowledge must find it's way into the game. Without knowledge the game becomes more about combat and less about story.
Through tagging knowledge twelve different ways less information will reach the character's ears. -That's a pity.
Also, by hoarding knowledge skills you might make sure you will know all pertinent facts but your character becomes harder to define.
I suggest knowledge skills rest on class and background. I know it's kind of cheesy to use the argument; I used to be a blacksmith so what do I know about ore, but still I can live with that as all knowledge checks becomes rooted in character and any piece of information might be known by any character. (I've mentioned this before but watch any modern crime TV show and witness how the writers retrofit character background all the time in order to make room for exposition).

 

[the Jester]

Do we really need Forbidden, Geographical, Heraldic, Historical, Local, Magical, Natural, Planar, Religious, Societal, Underdark, and Undead Lore as separate skills?

This is exactly why I prefer staying away from a specific skill list.

If I want to know a lot about the history and conduct of war, I want "Knowlege: War" to be a valid choice.

 

[Manbearcat]

Knowledge Skills are a dangerous one for me. They're mundane "soft divinations" so if they are unbounded mechanically (or open-ended mechanically such that they are "unbounded by proxy of lack of hard-coding"), they can have vast affect on scope of campaign arcs and challenges. With that being said, like everything else in this game, they need to be more than color. They need to have a mechanical underpinning that actually (i) does something mechanically relevant (it should interface with some conflict-resolution system) while representing the player's acumen and (ii) have
embedded, consistent genre applicability (which typically implies that it should be broad rather than narrow).

If it doesn't meet those two standards, then it shouldn't be a knowledge skill.

We don't need Knowledge (Hairystyles of Society's Upper Crust) nor Knowledge (Taverns That Serve Stouts). Do we need Streetwise to help us navigate urban society and contemporary popular culture/fads/comings and goings/power players and investigate all of the relevant social challenges therein? Yes.

 

[Blackbrrd]

I think Frostmarrow made a good point. Your character background and class should give you the knowledge you need. We have ended up playing it like that a few times. For instance when the Minotaur Fighter who hadn't used one of his 3 skill points a level on profession (sailor) went on a ship, he knew his way around there anyway.

Knowledge skills easily becomes to wide or too narrow. For instance Knowledge Local is a good example. What does it cover? The current area? Then it becomes a complete waste when the adventure takes you permanently to another location. If it covers all "Local" areas, it becomes to wide and it really stops making sense.

For me it sounds like a better idea to set some skill DC's for typical information and let the player describe why he should have the information according to background/class and stuff that has happened while playing.

 

[Kinak]

My only concern with basing knowledge directly on background ("I'm a blacksmith, I know about ore") is backgrounds like sage, that really live and breathe knowledge. It would look terrible for the sage at the very least.

Although, hey, maybe that's all right too. Honestly, I wouldn't mind backgrounds just giving a +3 to appropriate skill checks with some examples. I'm sure that would be too fast-and-loose for some people, though.

Cheers!
Kinak

 

[Remathilis]

Dear WotC: if we MUSt have 17 knowledge skills, do they ALL have to be "X Lore" skills? Can't we just call some them by their proper names?

Forbidden Lore: Ok, that one's cool
Geographical Lore: Geography
Heraldic Lore: Heraldry
Historical Lore: History
Local Lore: Streetwise or Local History
Magical Lore: Arcana
Natural Lore: Nature, Survival, or fine as is.
Planar Lore: Planology
Religious Lore: Religion
Societal Lore: Etiquette or Intrigue
Underdark Lore: Underdark Survival
Undead Lore: Necrology?

Please, we don't need Alchemical Lore when Alchemy works just fine...

 

[Badapple]

One thing as a DM that I used to hate, both in 3e and in 4e, was whenever there was a fight, it always got interrupted by at least one player wanting to make a knowledge check about the monsters.

That lead to everyone in the party making a knowledge check, because it's a free action, hey why not?

So then if there was two different types in the fight, say a fey and an undead... different people are making different knowledge checks, all to try to find out resistances, vulnerabilities, creature type, hit dice, what type of creature it is, etc etc...

When all is said and done, these knowledge checks took up game time, led to metagame thinking "hrm I rolled this much and missed the DC so this creature must have at least X hit dice..." or "hrm I rolled a 32 on my knowledge Arcana check and I have nfi what this guy is, he's probably not an outsider... hey joe roll a knowledge religion check because maybe he's undead..."

I love knowledge checks for plotline advancement, exploration, etc. but it really got old when players were calling for knowledge rolls at the beginning of every combat. I'm all for just tying them to class and background and just letting the DM pick, without rolling or combat implications, when a character should know something or not.

 

[Grydan]

One thing as a DM that I used to hate, both in 3e and in 4e, was whenever there was a fight, it always got interrupted by at least one player wanting to make a knowledge check about the monsters.

That lead to everyone in the party making a knowledge check, because it's a free action, hey why not?

So then if there was two different types in the fight, say a fey and an undead... different people are making different knowledge checks, all to try to find out resistances, vulnerabilities, creature type, hit dice, what type of creature it is, etc etc...

When all is said and done, these knowledge checks took up game time, led to metagame thinking "hrm I rolled this much and missed the DC so this creature must have at least X hit dice..." or "hrm I rolled a 32 on my knowledge Arcana check and I have nfi what this guy is, he's probably not an outsider... hey joe roll a knowledge religion check because maybe he's undead..."

One thing I ended up doing (and there may even be a suggestion about it in the DMG somewhere) is recording "passive" scores for all of the PC's relevant skills, as the system already does for Perception and Insight.

There usually ends up being at least one PC whose passive knowledge is enough to get the basic ID on the monster, and the party generally doesn't bother going for the deeper info unless they run into something particularly interesting or something that surprises them in some way.