A good Knowledge check house rule?

[radmod]

Quite frankly, I hate the current 3.5 system of Knowledge checks for monster knowledge. The rules are too ambiguous for my taste. You know, the whole if you exceed it by five you get another bit of information. It could be that our DM simply doesn't give what I consider enough. For example a 30 check, IMO, should tell me what Ogres eat for breakfast on a daily basis!

As a DM, I ad-lib it based on the roll (I make the roll). Get high enough and you get to know Special Qualities, Attacks, etc. On a poor roll, you get crappy info ("yes, this undead is immune to fire").

I was thinking of redoing it along the lines of how I used to do Identify. With Identify I give you a certain number of yes/no question you can ask based on your level. For example, "Is the sword +3 or better?" For one, that always encouraged role-playing of a sort.

Does anybody know of a good system to do knowledge checks? One that is more objective?

 

[Yalım]

I like that...

That's actually a cool idea.

Make them roll a knowledge (whatever's relevant) check. You have to on-the-spot houserule penalties for rare monsters and bonuses for common ones. The result/5 (round down) is how many yes-or-no questions the player can ask about the monster.

Of course, that leads to the problem where a party of players each rolls a knowledge check and gets about 10, for a total of 8 yes-or-no questions. Which is ridiculous. Add to that a clause stating that the highest knowledge check is the one that brings about results, and that each player who rolls over 10 can add +2 to the knowledge check of the player with the highest roll (so it's like a normal assist)

 

[radmod]

To take that a step further, presuming a single roll, each person whose Knowledge exceeds the DC gets one of the questions or some of the questions.
So in your result/5 idea:
John gets an 18. Ralph a 20. George a 25.
John and Ralph get a question. George gets three more.

 

[Celebrim]

As a DM, I ad-lib it based on the roll (I make the roll). Get high enough and you get to know Special Qualities, Attacks, etc. On a poor roll, you get crappy info ("yes, this undead is immune to fire").

I do something a little similar to what you are thinking of.

I assign a DC to the monster based on how difficult I think it would be to have information about it. This is usually based more on how unusualy I believe the monster to be, and how likely it is that lore is collected on it rather than HD. If the monster has high HD, but is common (mastadon) or famous (dragon), it tends to have low DC to know about its abilities and habits. If the monster is rare and not the sort of thing scholars would write books about, then it will have a much higher DC. Base DC is assumed to be 15. A typical rare monster will have a DC of a around 24 or so.

If you beat this DC, I tell you one commonly known fact about the monster. For each 1 you beat this DC by, I think up one additional fact about the monster that you know. If you beat the DC by a lot (say 10 or more), I assume you know 'lots' of facts and I'll answer pretty much any question from the player about the monster that I would consider 'common' lore. Presumably if you beat the DC by a very large amount (say 20 or more) I'd be willing to tell the players pretty much anything I know about the monster because the player's character probably knows more about the collected lore of the monster than I as the DM have actually prepared or could even invent.

 

[radmod]

So, if you don't mind me picking your brain, what would you consider as a single fact?
Part of the problem I am seeing right now is that in a world I'm playing, what I want to know is not what the DM tells me. For example, I want to know about special defenses or attacks but I don't often get that unless I specifically ask it. Hence, my idea of allowing questions beyond the common knowledge.

Like you, I don't use the DC 10+HD skill check but base it on the commonality of the creature. This is especially important in the world I'm resetting up since nearly all creature knowledge is gained from books/myths. Orcs are extremely common, wraiths far less so. Likewise, nearly all my creatures are different from standard D&D or have mutated/evolved from previously known information. For example, I use the book/TV-classic vampire. Minions drain blood, not levels. Higher level vamps can do both. Orcs come in nine different types, each with special characteristics (favored classes).
So I give a DC 10 for knowledge common to the people (even incorrect info):
"Vampires suck blood." (Yes)
"Vampires are more vulnerable to silver weapons." (No)
If the check doesn't actually break DC, I will give erroneous info.
"A vampire can be killed by a blessed crossbow bolt."
For a higher check I give more info or correct erroneous info:
"It's believed that vampires can be killed with silver, but that's not actually true."

So what fact(s) would you automatically impart if I make the minimum roll? What would you add if I'm 3 above? 5 above? What if I'm under the check? Maybe with an Ankheg or Barghest in mind.

 

[Celebrim]

So what fact(s) would you automatically impart if I make the minimum roll?

Like you, I use alot of custom monsters and change alot of the color of monsters that I do use.

Personally, I think you are over thinking this. A table of 'known facts' would be useful but given that I'm mainly wanting to move story along and that I invent monsters for almost every session this seems to me a poor time investment.

For me, minimum success identifies the monster and its general class of creature. After that I try to give information that is actually useful and not completely obvious.

Maybe with an Ankheg or Barghest in mind.

1) This is an Ankheg, a form of dangerous predatory magical beast.
2) Ankhegs can rapidly burrow through the ground.
3) They are capable of spitting highly corrosive acid.
4) They have extremely sharp senses and can detect prey with vibrations.
5) They can see in complete darkness.
6) Ankhegs are good climbers.
7) Ankheg perfer warm habitats with soft soils.
8) Ankhegs are usually solitary but 2-4 members of the same clutch may remain in the same area together into adulthood if sufficient food exists to prevent conflict for resources.
9) The range of an ankheg's spit attack is 30'.
10) Ankheg's can only spit once every six hours. At this level and beyond, assume that the player knows everything about Ankheg's you'd expect an biology student to know about the lifestyle of a particular animal and just give them whatever common knowledge that they ask for. That almost certainly means anything in the SRD, with the exception that I don't generally like giving out actual meta information like bonuses to hit or AC.
11+ This level and above represents knowledge of scholarly lore about Ankheg's that only highly educated specialists would probably have. It would be things like, 'Derivatives of Anhkeg Spit is used in the ink necessary to scribe stinking cloud scrolls." or "Ankheg's enter their least active phase shortly after sunrise, and will generally not pursue prey very far between 6am and 9am except when extremely hungry."

 

[Water Bob]

Quite frankly, I hate the current 3.5 system of Knowledge checks for monster knowledge. The rules are too ambiguous for my taste. You know, the whole if you exceed it by five you get another bit of information. It could be that our DM simply doesn't give what I consider enough. For example a 30 check, IMO, should tell me what Ogres eat for breakfast on a daily basis!

I dunno. I think I tend to be like the DM you cite that gives too little info. Part of the appeal of the game is the mystery. I remember, in the 1st and 2nd edition days, that the only way a player (and therefore, his character) would know anything about a monster was by trial and error. He'd have to fight it. The Monster Manual was considered a DM only book--players crucified if caught thumbing through its pages. That was akin to reading an adventure module before we played it.

It was a huge part of the "fun" to use the old noggin and try to figure out what was happening with a particular monster. Was the flame that you shoved in the face of the undead really hurting it? Is it catching fire? Turning brown from the heat? Slowing down any?

I would BEWARE any skill or game mechanic that removed this kind of stuff from the game. You're asking for a less interesting, more boring game to learn what the Ogre has for breakfast on a dice throw.

 

[Celebrim]

I would BEWARE any skill or game mechanic that removed this kind of stuff from the game. You're asking for a less interesting, more boring game to learn what the Ogre has for breakfast on a dice throw.

I understand your concern, but I don't find it particularly compelling.

First of all, in practice, anything in the MM was quickly memorized by players. You can't consider anything that is published as secret.

Secondly, this was never an obstacle to a DM making monsters mysterious in 1e or any later edition. A DM need only reskin a monster (so that PC doesn't recognize it from its description), modifiy, or invent a monster to thwart PC memorization. In practice, this is what actually happened, as even published modules are filled with unique, custom, and novel monsters.

If you want mystery, you can't rely on using monsters straight out of a book. You have to rely on unique and invented monsters. A unique monster thwarts not only the player's meta knowledge, but also typically thwarts the character's in world lore (with the possible exception of Bards). And making a unique monster in either 1e or 3e is quite easy, and in 3e you also have the added benifit of lots of templates and classes to fire the imagination when thinking up unique monsters.

In practice, using the technique I've described gives useful information, but the effective DC of getting extensive information about the monsters abilities is quite high.

 

[Water Bob]

First of all, in practice, anything in the MM was quickly memorized by players. You can't consider anything that is published as secret.

I guess it depends on your players. We all come from the Monster-Manual-Is-a-DM-Reference-Only book. And, since I usually DM for our group, it's not a problem. If you had the DM chores revolving among different players, you couldn't do this.

Another way around it is to play in a different universe. If you have different DMs, they all agree not to read monsters from the other's universe. I DM the Conan game and use only the monsters in that game (which are all unique from standard D&D fair). You DM the Black Companies game, which, again, is different. And so on.

You'll have trouble, of course, if you've got DMs both using standard D&D worlds with cross-over monsters, like Dragonlance and Greyhawk--different, but enough similarity there to count.



But...even if the players have access to the MM, there are A LOT of monsters out there in various books. If you are creating the adventure yourself, then you can strive to pick monsters you KNOW the players are not familiar with. With published adventures, you might want to substitute some other type.

And, all players can't know every monster--so, even if they know something about the monster they're up against, then why help them out and give them all the details becuase of a dice throw?

Nay, I say. Don't do it. Keep the mystery of the monster in the game.

Justin Alexander wrote an essay about magic that also applies to this topic. He said:

D&D -- and roleplaying games in general -- have always struggled with magic.

Elrond knew all about runes of every kind. That day he looked at the swords they had brought from the trolls' lair, and he said, "These are not troll-make. They are old swords, very old swords of the High Elves of the west, my kin. They were made in Gondolin for the Goblin-wars. They must have come from a dragon horde or goblin plunder, for dragons and goblins destroyed that city many ages ago. This, Thorin, the runes name Orcrist, the Goblin-cleaver in the ancient tongues of Gondolin; it was a famous blade. This, Gandalf, was Glamdring, Foe-hammer that the king of Gondolin once wore. Keep them well!" -- The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien


Nifty.

Player: We search the trolls' lair.

DM: You find a +1 goblin-bane longsword and a +3 longsword.


Less nifty.

Some would conclude from this that D&D just doesn't do magic very well. After all, what's magical about a +2 bonus to attack rolls or a +5 bonus to Hide checks?

But let's consider this problem from another angle.

He saw a tall, strongly made youth standing beside him. This person was as much out of place in that den as a gray wolf among mangy rats of the gutters. His cheap tunic could not conceal the hard, rangy lines of his powerful frame, the broad heavy shoulders, the massive chest, lean waist, and heavy arms. His skin was brown from outland suns, his eyes blue and smoldering; a shock of tousled black hair crowned his broad forehead. From his girdle hung a sword in a worn leather scabbard. -- "The Tower of the Elephant" by Robert E. Howard


Also nifty.

DM: Someone taps you on the shoulder.

Player: I turn to look. Who is it?

DM: A 3rd-level barbarian with a sword.


Similarly less nifty.

What are we supposed to conclude from this? That roleplaying games are just abject failures? That they suck all the life and mystery and grandeur from the world?

Well, they certainly can do that. If you let the numbers become the game world, then that seems to be the inevitable result. But I think we're only looking at half the story here. In my opinion, the numbers inherent to a roleplaying system are only a means to an end. They shouldn't be confused with the game world -- they are merely the means by which we interface wtih the game world.

So, yes, the blade we found in the troll lair was, in fact, a +1 goblin-bane longsword. That doesn't change the fact that it is also Orcrist, the Goblin-cleaver of Gondolin -- a legendary blade lost to the elves when that proud city fell to dragons and orcish hordes.

The numbers are only empty and meaningless if you leave them that way.

What I'm trying to say is that: If you let a dice roll tell you a lot about a monster in the game, it becomes, in Justin's words, "less nifty."

I'd much rather bang away at a silver-haired minortaur, wondering why I can't seem to hurt him than make a simple dice roll and know that, for this particular monster, only those blades dipped in the water of Tymora's shrine can do more than 1 hit point of damage to the creature.

I'd much rather learn that during the course of the adventure than get lucky on a dice throw and lose what could be one of the most memorable moments of the game.

 

[Celebrim]

Water Bob: The problem with linking to essays to express yourself is not everyone else will find the essay as compelling as you do. In this case though I can completely side step the topic by pointing out that in fact, the essay you link to has nothing at all to do with the topic under discussion.

Justin is talking about the importance of conveying in game information in the frame of the in game character rather than through the metagame communication layer where we talk about the game and adjudicate the outcome of actions in the in game world. While I feel he could have made his point better, I don't in fact disagree with him in this and hinted at the same things he's talking about earlier in the thread when I talked about how the outcome of a roll like this should never be a list of numbers and game attributes.

It's a completely different topic.

This topic is how to communicate to the player information from the game layer in an in game way. I might as well come out and say it, if you don't communicate to the player the things that his character is expected to know, chances are you are a very bad DM. The vast majority of cases of DM abuse I've heard of are from DM's that spring surprises on their players when no character actually within the game world would have been so surprised.

For example, I've heard of DMs that do things like:

DM: "You see some orcs."
Player: "Ok, let's go attack them."
DM: "Your paladin now loses all abilities, and you lose a level. Your alignment changes to CE."
Player: "What???"
DM: "Well you see, in my game world orcs are a noble species of highly intelligent and benign philosophers."

Or, for example:

DM: "You see a party of elves approaching."
Player: "I politely hail them in elvish and ask them if they have in news."
DM: "They all draw arrows and begin pelting you with arrows."
Player: "What???"
DM: "Well you see, in my game world all elves are demon worshipping cannibals."

Both cases are somewhat extreme, but are actually drawn from life. This is the 'Nitro Miller' school of DMing, where the players can never know anything about the game world that their players live in, because it would 'ruin the mystery'. The basic problem here is that the DM is just playing a dumb game of 'gotcha'. In the game universe were all elves are evil or all orcs or good, almost no one in the game universe - no character - would not know of the races reputation. The DM is not allowing the player to know what the character would know when observing the thing. And it's the DM here, not the player, who is actually relying on meta-game perceptions to pull off his trick. If he really wanted to introduce an unknown race of ugly but benevolent individuals, or a race of beautiful but evil individuals he'd name them something other than elves or orcs, or he would fairly introduce this wrinkle as part of the setting background information.

We are talking about here is a means of fairly arbritating this exchange of information between the character who presumably as an inhabitant of the game world knows all sorts of things about it that the player doesn't and who doesn't know all sorts of things that the player knows.

Obviously, that information - coming as it does from within the game world - should be communicated whenever possible in the terms of the game world rather than in the terms we use like 'armor class' and 'hit dice' that we use to talk about the game. I think my example makes that perfectly clear.

The argument Jonathan makes is really a straw man argument. He doesn't give his audience sufficient credit as to their intelligence. He's insulting. He doesn't assume that he's talking to intelligent people who are in need of intelligent advice. He assumes he's talking to morons or about morons.

There is a point to saying that some answers can't be learned by a dice roll. There are literally things about my game universe that the gods of that game universe don't know. No lucky roll is going to unearth a campaign level secret. But on the other hand, I'm not going to take the antogonistic stance that I have to be stingy with common lore about the game world because otherwise my game won't have any mystery. That's just a way to cover up for your world not having alot of depth.