Tony Vargas
Legend
Sorry if I mostly riff off your post for humor purposes....
Ultimately, isn't the whole knowledge check/INT roll/trying-to-recall-lore-using-INT-with-a-trained-skill-possibly-applying-because-5e-is-rules-lite thing just gating exposition?
If, as a DM, I want to provide some exposition, I can have a (suspiciously Gandalfy) NPC do it, or I can look at a player and say "your character knows /whah…/" and that's that. I don't really need to call for a check, and if I do, failure, though it might have severe consequences for the party, is awfully blah.
Even if a player actually wants to play a Gandalf/Prof.Zarchov type who's main purpose is to provide exposition, and take high INT and tons of useless skills to model it mechanically, it's still pretty meh for that player to make his checks, and have /you/ tell the whole table what he knows - and completely inefficient and annoying and no more satisfying to have you tell him privately so he can parrot it.
The way I've seen some systems (none of them D&D) both make such a character fun to play, and give meaning the sorts of mechanics in question, is if the player making the successful knowledge check /gets to make stuff up/ to his party's advantage. "It's a Klick-Klick, if we all shout 'November!' it'll drop dead...*" on a failure, the consequence is the DM makes stuff up, or maybe that the made-up stuff is wrong... (depends on exactly how the mechanics are handled - FREX, the Expositionator could make a declaration like the above, make a plan around it, and it's only when the plan is executed that he makes the check to see if he was right about it.) But I couldn't see any ed of D&D playing nice with something like that, (OK, except, as always, 4e, which already has some Schrodinger's Mechanics like that). It'd certainly turn the whole 5e describe-declare-resolve-describe DM-PC-DM-DM cycle on it's ear...
One DM I know is really sensitive to these kinds of player shenanigans, she's always cutting to "What are you /really/ trying to do?"
I think some of the current we may be swimming against, here, flows from the classic game, when it was a tad bit more adversarial, and developing 'player skill' was an objective of play. In the absence of concrete systems, and within the dogma of DM omnipotence, players would learn to couch questions carefully and declare actions piecemeal, in a way that would box the DM into letting some harebrained scheme actually (maybe) work.
"I build a modern ship out of steel!"
"It sinks"
"What, but I'm a naval architect IRL, that design is sound!"
"Sorry, on the Flat Earth of Nevereilli, the Element of Metal always sinks in the Element of Water - every 7-year-old Alchemist's Apprentice knows that..."
* I did not make that up, it's a joke from an old Dragon mag.
Any stat or skill could conceivably be rendered moot by the DM's style or choice of setting & challenges, I suppose.If they just tell you they know something, then that is what they know. The only check upon that is that they might be wrong out of the game because you as the DM changed something. In which case, why do we even bother to have an Intelligence stat and the skills for recalling various types of lore. It seems meaningless under this style.
I don't see why not knowing anything isn't a meaningful consequence. I mean, recalling something useful certainly is. Is the idea that you start off not knowing anything, so you might as well try?Except what counts as a "meaningful consequence"? Not knowing something obviously isn't meaningful enough
Ultimately, isn't the whole knowledge check/INT roll/trying-to-recall-lore-using-INT-with-a-trained-skill-possibly-applying-because-5e-is-rules-lite thing just gating exposition?
If, as a DM, I want to provide some exposition, I can have a (suspiciously Gandalfy) NPC do it, or I can look at a player and say "your character knows /whah…/" and that's that. I don't really need to call for a check, and if I do, failure, though it might have severe consequences for the party, is awfully blah.
Even if a player actually wants to play a Gandalf/Prof.Zarchov type who's main purpose is to provide exposition, and take high INT and tons of useless skills to model it mechanically, it's still pretty meh for that player to make his checks, and have /you/ tell the whole table what he knows - and completely inefficient and annoying and no more satisfying to have you tell him privately so he can parrot it.
The way I've seen some systems (none of them D&D) both make such a character fun to play, and give meaning the sorts of mechanics in question, is if the player making the successful knowledge check /gets to make stuff up/ to his party's advantage. "It's a Klick-Klick, if we all shout 'November!' it'll drop dead...*" on a failure, the consequence is the DM makes stuff up, or maybe that the made-up stuff is wrong... (depends on exactly how the mechanics are handled - FREX, the Expositionator could make a declaration like the above, make a plan around it, and it's only when the plan is executed that he makes the check to see if he was right about it.) But I couldn't see any ed of D&D playing nice with something like that, (OK, except, as always, 4e, which already has some Schrodinger's Mechanics like that). It'd certainly turn the whole 5e describe-declare-resolve-describe DM-PC-DM-DM cycle on it's ear...
"Fail Forward" doesn't sound so bad, now.taking a lot of time is probably not meaningful enough especially if players don't take these checks while under a time pressure or in dangerous territory. You have to actively work to make things worse for the players in response to them attempting things, just to allow them to make checks, or they auto-succeed on trying anything.
Sure, "the players just succeed" sounds really easy on paper, but it opens things to abuse that I don't want to deal with, and makes failing a roll dangerous enough that my players might not end up attempting interesting things. After all, who would try and woo a princess if failing the charisma check ends up with her ordering your execution. After all, her just not being interested isn't "meaningful" enough, you have to end up making things worse for you and your party.
Of course, that's true. In general, it seems, in pondering issues like this, drawing an analogy from knowledge/social check to a concrete ability/skill makes it obvious. But acceptance of such analogies is surprising hard to win.You are right, they didn't explicitly say "I try to remember what the vulnerabilities of earth elementals are." Instead, they just declared "I know that Earth Elementals are weak to Thunder damage."
So... if they player just tells you they succeed and get the end result, they don't need to make a check? That is ludicrous. You would never allow a player to simply state "I walk off with the Queen's Crown" and just let them do so, why then do we allow them to state "I perfectly recalled the weaknesses of this monster"?
Hmm... I guess this is another example of how establishing a goal & method can be like peeling an onion. The goal isn't really "buy magic scrolls" it's "defeat some earth elementals..."As we established before, I would likely ask them why a character who cannot use magic scrolls is going to go and buy magic scrolls. This would likely get their intent, which brings us back to the beginning of this discussion.
One DM I know is really sensitive to these kinds of player shenanigans, she's always cutting to "What are you /really/ trying to do?"
I think some of the current we may be swimming against, here, flows from the classic game, when it was a tad bit more adversarial, and developing 'player skill' was an objective of play. In the absence of concrete systems, and within the dogma of DM omnipotence, players would learn to couch questions carefully and declare actions piecemeal, in a way that would box the DM into letting some harebrained scheme actually (maybe) work.
Something about that sounds familiar.Did 3.5 have a rule that explicitly said "Players are not expected to have all the information on a monster from the monsters statblock, if they wish to use this information, they should make a knowledge check"
One of the fun things about a setting that's /not/ scientific, at all:So players can bring modern designs, knowledge of chemistry, gunpowder, ect to the game.
"I build a modern ship out of steel!"
"It sinks"
"What, but I'm a naval architect IRL, that design is sound!"
"Sorry, on the Flat Earth of Nevereilli, the Element of Metal always sinks in the Element of Water - every 7-year-old Alchemist's Apprentice knows that..."
* I did not make that up, it's a joke from an old Dragon mag.
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