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Message: <blockquote data-quote="hawkeyefan" data-source="post: 7538875" data-attributes="member: 6785785">Why? How is it immersive to imagine that every single 1st level character has the exact same level of knowledge? None of them have heard about zombies or trolls? None have seen some in action (even if they were unable to do anything about it)? So Falstaff and Redgar are the same in every way and this helps you with immersion? "My Uncle Milo told me you have to burn trolls! Get the torches ready!!!!" Simple. The character not knowing something is perfectly fine at times. But at others, it's just silly. Because the issue is that no matter what you do, the player is acting on the knowledge that trolls die by fire. In one game, player knowledge is simply accepted and so if the encounter has nothing more to it than "guess the monster's weakness" then it can mercifully end early. The knowledge can be justified through any means such as the uncle example given above. In the other game, the players actively engage with their meta-knowledge, but in a reverse way. They try to imagine how quickly their characters would draw the conclusion that trolls die by fire. So every round, they clumsily plod through an encounter that they know the trick of, but which they pretend not to. Metagaming is so much more involved in this scenario. At what point is it "okay" for the characters to somehow discover the secret? One is peeling a band-aid off quickly, and the other is slooooowly peeling it away so that you feel.....every.....single......bit. It can't take a hike. I'm not necessarily saying that it's a good thing. More that it's simply unavoidable, so it's better to harness it and put it to use in ways that you can, just like anything else that's in the DM's toolbox.Based on that description, she can certainly narrow it down. A wight is intelligent and typically armed. It wouldn't be shuffling and moaning. And the DM may also allow some kind of knowledge check (usually a Religion check) to try and determine what the creature is. However, I don't think that this should be a major obstacle for even a novice cleric. "A shambling, animated corpse" is pretty much the exact description of a zombie. The player likely knows what it is based solely on the description. Why make that different for their character? Isn't it preferable for immersion's sake to have the player and the character "thinking" along the same lines? So you ban actions based on things that happen outside the game? That's the very definition of metagaming, isn't it? As for another player giving advice....meh. Can't the PC in question think "I wonder what Falstaff would do in this situaiton..."? And there you go. Again, this is where a little metagame action can fill in for character knowledge and intuition.</blockquote>

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