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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Bill Zebub" data-source="post: 8743220" data-attributes="member: 7031982">The thing about "dog piling" on checks is that you are only supposed to call for a dice roll if there's a meaningful consequence to failure.  "No, you don't know" isn't a meaningful consequence.*  Now, I'll admit that I do struggle with how to implement goal-and-approach-with-meaningful-consequence for knowledge checks.  What that tells me is that knowledge checks should be treated differently, or should only be applicable in narrowly defined circumstances, or maybe shouldn't even be part of the game, or something.Up-thread (or was that a different thread) somebody gave an example of knowing a demon's true name and it why should everybody have a 1-in-20 chance to somehow know it.  Somebody else responded (vulgarly) asking what value it adds to have secret lore in the game, and I think they have a point.  It seems to me knowledge checks fall into the same two categories as secret doors:1) The ones you discover by luck, without any real player engagement (unless they happen to search in the right spot either through luck or because they search everywhere) and if you miss them you never knew they were there, meaning they weren't really necesary.2) The ones that are part of the plot, that players figure out must be there and take proactive measures to figure out where, and/or how to open them.So, in the case up-thread of the demon's name, where I come out is:1) If the players have done no work and just want to know if they know the demon's name, the answer is no. (Or, in other analogous cases maybe yes.)2) If, before getting into the fight, they knew they would need the name, and went about searching for it, then you can use ability checks in the pursuit of that knowledge.In other words, if the information is important to the story, then it should have been incorporated into the story in some way other than just making a dice roll at the critical moment.I think it would be interesting to discuss scenarios that seem to exist on the boundary between these two categories.  Anybody have any good ones?One caveat: I recognize the argument that you've "invested" in a knowledge skill, so you should get to "use" that skill by having a chance to just know things.  But I think that's getting things a little backward: it's part of the game, therefore it should be used.  The question I'm asking is whether it should even be part of the game.  *If anybody wants to respond, "The meaningful consequence is that you don't know, and now you can't try again" we're just going to have to disagree that that's a meaningful consequence. In my opinion, for a consequence to be meaningful it has to offer some disincentive to even try.</blockquote>

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