Rune
Once A Fool
I also want to point out that this is a problem only with skills that benefit the party as a whole + have no penalty for failure + have no better effects if more PC do the same. Knowledge skills are the main case, but also Thieves' Tools and Investigation are others, and some charisma skills might also be (but it depends how you adjudicate a simultaneous success by someone and failure by someone else).
Their are two things you can do to allieviate this problem--both provided for within 5e's rules, in fact.
1: Follow this formula: Player describes attempted action (including attempts to recall or figure out something), DM determines what ability check is appropriate, Player asks if any skill or tool proficiencies would help, DM says yes or no. The important things to note with this procedure are that i) the players don't determine if or when or what they will roll and ii) multiple sources of proficiency might apply.
2: Don't have them roll for checks that have no cost for failure. (Note that all checks that take any kind of action have an associated cost of failure in the heat of combat--a waisted action.) When failure has no cost, simply assume everyone who can conceivably hit a certain DC does.
This is especially useful for knowledge "checks," because it ensures that clues important to the progression of the adventure never get overlooked due to bad rolls (although piecing them together is another matter).
Note, also, that this still allows for the possibility of being misled or misdirected through incomplete or faulty knowledge. You can totally ace a knowledge check and walk away with a new bit of information--but that doesn't guarantee that the information was accurate to begin with. For this reason, at higher DCs, I tend to include the probable sources of the information with the information itself. This lets the player(s) determine the likelihood of accuracy on their own.
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