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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Benjamin Olson" data-source="post: 8738847" data-attributes="member: 6988941">Indeed. Impossible knowledge check successes are a great way for the DM and player to devise some new color to the character's backstory to explain why they happen to have that particular oddball piece of knowledge.I think almost anyone with a real life specialty in any type of knowledge (be it from education, career, or hobby) has both a sense of knowledge that there is actually no chance a non-specialist would possess and the experience of encountering a non-specialist who (at least sort of) knew some specific facts within their specialty that they never expected a non-specialist to possess. It is useful for DMs to reflect on those experiences in deciding when to let non-proficient characters roll on knowledge checks specifically. I think if a fact is interesting enough to be relevant to an adventure, a five percent chance of a non-specialist happening to have picked up at least a clue or hazy hint of that fact somewhere in their decades (or for some characters, centuries) of varied life experience is not nearly as unrealistic as it seems at first blush.</blockquote>