D&D 5E 5e Do How Often Do You Use Skill Checks for ‘Monster Knowledge’

[Starfox]

I used to play a lot of Planescape, but we used a homebrew system, not DnD in any form. Planescape has a LOT of weird critters, and the player often had advisers that were quite knowledgeable. One way to represent this was to hand out the 2E monstrous compenium page. The player knew what the critter was like in 2E, but had no idea of what the conversion was like!

 

[Greg K]

If I run 5e, my plan is to introduce the following: Demon/Devil Lore, Dragon Lore, Fey Lore, Spirit Lore (Ancestral Spirits, Elementals, Familiar spirits, non-corporeal undead, Shamanic Spirits), Undead Lore and Culture Lore. Culture Lore will require a specific culture or humanoid type (e.g., centaur, gnoll, lizardman, ogre, orc, giant) and cover things like social structure, customs, laws, social mores, important NPCs, games). Every character will have a certain DC that they don't have to roll for with regards to their own native culture

 

[Joddy37]

Two reasons why it is important to me to use them:

1. Sometimes the characters should known things the players don't.
2. Sometimes the players know things the character's shouldn't.

Since I like to keep in-character and out-of-character knowledge separate, it's kind of important.

...

Lack of specific correlation between skills and creatures types has kind of bugged me. I don't mind letting it be bit more open, but I do mind how the descriptions mention some creatures and not others. Here's my tentative way of splitting it up in 5e:

Arcana: Aberrations, Constructs, Elementals
History: Humanoids, Giants, Dragons, Monstrosities
Nature: Beasts, plants, fey, oozes
Religion: Undead, Celestials, Fiends

The reasoning is that Arcana covers creatures that are strongly magical in nature. Religion covers creatures that are strongly connected to the Upper or Lower planes, or infused with good/evil positive energy/negative energy. Nature covers natural creatures and the fey (especially with the stronger mystical connection to nature that they are given in 5e). History covers creatures that have a society*, as well as those that are most likely to be known about through legends. (I really liked the Knowledge (folklore) skill from some of the earlier playtests, and put a bit of that into History).
....

This is really good and makes a lot of common sense. I also like to add the moster rarity to the equation. If you are proficient with a certain skill, you have the basic knowledge about common or famous monsters of the related type. You don't really need any check for them. You just have the information. You have arcana? Then you have heard of a creature named beholder and know it has deadly powers on its eyes. But on the other hand you may not know about a steel golem, because it is rare and you haven't heard of it in your initial training although you know what a golem is.

To simulate this I really like to treat passive checks as a mechanic for staged learning.

DC 10: Basic knowledge about common monsters of the related type.
DC 12: Hints about tactics or properties of common monsters.
DC 15: Basic knowledge about uncommon monsters of the type, tactics and properties of common monsters are well known.
DC 20: Basic knowledge about rare monsters of the type, tactics and properties of uncommon monsters are well known.

Of course, I'm not talking about metagame information of monster tactics here. If you "know" tactics of a monster, it means you know how it fights, how does it act in combat. You know a banshee's wail would be deadly, but you don't actually know you will drop to 0 hp if you fail your save. You have to encounter it first and see for yourself what happens.

 

[Starfox]

If I run 5e, my plan is to introduce the following: Demon/Devil Lore, Dragon Lore, Fey Lore, Spirit Lore (Ancestral Spirits, Elementals, Familiar spirits, non-corporeal undead, Shamanic Spirits), Undead Lore and Culture Lore. Culture Lore will require a specific culture or humanoid type (e.g., centaur, gnoll, lizardman, ogre, orc, giant) and cover things like social structure, customs, laws, social mores, important NPCs, games). Every character will have a certain DC that they don't have to roll for with regards to their own native culture

With this many divisions, its not really feasible to put more than one point in them; you gain so little. Then again, this is 5E, so you don't have "points" of skills. Don't know 5E well enough to say how it would work there.

 

[Sword of Spirit]

This is really good and makes a lot of common sense. I also like to add the moster rarity to the equation. If you are proficient with a certain skill, you have the basic knowledge about common or famous monsters of the related type. You don't really need any check for them. You just have the information. You have arcana? Then you have heard of a creature named beholder and know it has deadly powers on its eyes. But on the other hand you may not know about a steel golem, because it is rare and you haven't heard of it in your initial training although you know what a golem is.

To simulate this I really like to treat passive checks as a mechanic for staged learning.

DC 10: Basic knowledge about common monsters of the related type.
DC 12: Hints about tactics or properties of common monsters.
DC 15: Basic knowledge about uncommon monsters of the type, tactics and properties of common monsters are well known.
DC 20: Basic knowledge about rare monsters of the type, tactics and properties of uncommon monsters are well known.

Of course, I'm not talking about metagame information of monster tactics here. If you "know" tactics of a monster, it means you know how it fights, how does it act in combat. You know a banshee's wail would be deadly, but you don't actually know you will drop to 0 hp if you fail your save. You have to encounter it first and see for yourself what happens.

Yep, I don't know if I mentioned it, but I do that sort of thing too. When the party visited Thundertree and heard about a green dragon from the druid, the players asked me what they knew about green dragons. (Which is the kind of role-playing I really appreciate, since at least half of the players were well versed in green dragons.) I had everyone who was proficient in History or spoke Draconic make an Intelligence check with proficiency bonus, as well as anyone else who wanted to without proficiency bonus. As I recall nobody scored terribly high, so I gave those with proficiency in the skill or the language the basics that green dragons breath poison, and are generally evil, vain, and manipulative. Regardless of rolls, I would have given the proficient characters the tidbit about being evil and breathing poison.

 

[Sir Brennen]

Yeah, I'm also a fan of Monster Knowledge skill checks, but don't always necessarily give actual mechanical info for successes.

Recently, my player's PCs encountered signs of minotaurs, and were wondering about their social habits (especially were they likely to encounter a group) rather than special abilities or tactics. A successful History check (using the History = Humanoid, along the lines of reason mentioned upthread), I gave them some of the 5E fluff about yeah, usually they're solitary, but sometimes groups of minotaur cultists may be found, dedicated to the demon lord Baphomet.

Now, note the "usually" and "sometimes" giving the DM some wiggle room. The minotaurs - from a published adventure - didn't have much motivation to be in the dungeon other than treasure looting, but after reading the cultist stuff, I was already making notes to possibly retcon for adventure hooks down the road.

So, when players ask a general "what do I know about monster X?" - check the fluff first for cool stuff! Even when I do give answers about mechanics, I try to dress it up as in-game descriptions (forex, I'd never mention the zombie's only being reduced to 1 hp that way, but rather they're almost impossible to completely put down without some sort of divine damage.)

Note if you have the Monsternomicon from Privateer Press (a 3.0 D&D monster book), they had a separate skill for Monster Knowledge, and every monster entry had a short list of what a check about the monster would give a player, well written as in-world, character knowledge instead of player knowledge. The list had info gained from various levels of success... DC 15, 20 and 25, typically.

Adding monster rarity to the equation can be a little tricky, I think. Some monsters can be rarely seen but legends about their abilities can be commonly told tales at the local tavern. It may not be a common creature, but many people might have sought it out because it's so unusual/challenging/tasty, thus creating a fair body of information regarding it. Of course, a lot of mis-information about popular, little-seen but much feared monsters can abound, too. A Knowledge check might give a good deal of info, but a higher success might be needed to separate fact from fiction.

Conversely, a rare beastie might be the subject of some esoteric treatise in a remote monastery, but the mention of its name will just draw blank stares from common folk.

All stuff to consider when the players ask for that check.

P.S.: Count me in as also really like the idea of having a language tie into knowledge checks. Yoinked for my game.

 

[Olaf the Stout]

In our 3.5E campaigns I made extensive use of them as a DM and as a player. I found it was a good way to reward players who invested in Knowledge skills and a way to get some campaign fluff, background history and plot info into the game (which can sometimes be a challenge).

I didn’t really follow the hard guidelines for the skill checks, but used them as a rough guide. Generally, the higher the skill check result, the more information you got. Lower CR creatures were easier to find out information from than high CR creatures (i.e. a result of 20 on a skill check roll would get you more information about a Lizardman than it would about a Beholder).

Typical information would be combat stats, special abilities, resistances, higher or low AC or hit points, which saves are better or worse, is it normal for such a creature to be found in such an environment or location, are they solitary or pack creatures. The information wouldn’t generally be specific. So I’d say something like, “it can take a lot of hits, but should be easy to hit” rather than, “it has 143 hit points, but is only AC 17”.

I haven’t read through 5E yet to know how they handle something like this, but I hope there is some mechanism for it.