People don't have to assume any resistances or vulnerabilities. If you want to assume they have none, go for it.
Really, because for the last three posts you have fought tooth and nail about how I must be metagaming, if I was in a game where orcs were rare. Now it is "assume what you want".
They are wolves. Wolves come in varieties.
No. Wolves come in one form. Wolves.
If you want different monsters, you use different statblocks, like Dire Wolves (which aren't just called wolves) or Winter Wolves, or Flame Wolves, or whatever else. When I said wolf, I meant wolf. Not anything else. Remember, we are talking about a game here, terms are defined.
I do!
What I notice is that Balors are not the same as Barlguras, which are not the same as Glabrezu, which are not the same as Chasme, and so on.
Because there are differences, your PC would be using that power on every single type of demon to see if maybe this one was also immune to fire or resistant to nonmagic weapons.
Balgura are the same as Chasme. Glabrezu are the same as Balors, except that the one is immune to fire. The one immune to fire by the way, is the one holding a flaming whip and with an aura of fire around it. I wonder how I could possibly tell that it might be more than resistant to flame, with it being constantly on fire. I must be forced to use magic!
Also, you are ignoring CR. You wouldn't typically fight a Balor before you fight a Chasme.
Basically = not. I don't even care about the shadow demon, because the others have differences which would be found out by the ability.
Yes, other than learning that you need magic weapons to do full damage, it's useless information. Except that's not at all useless information.
And how is the magic weapon information useful if you don't have magical weapons?
This is one of the things that makes this worse than the theorycraft. Because finding out the enemy is resistant to non-magical weapons, like I said and you ignored, is useless information unless you specifically have magical weapons that are worse than your non-magical weapons. Otherwise, you will be using the same weapons regardless of the information.
If information cannot lead to a tactical change in the current fight, it is useless information in the current fight.
Any creature with psionic magic, which can include giants, dragons or whatever, don't use components for their spells. Then there's subtle spell for giant sorcerers. Good luck seeing a tiny bit of fur and a glass rod that's the size of a giant's pinky enclosed in its fist.
"can include"
So, now, to avoid metagaming, I have to consider that this STORM giant, isn't actually intrinsically tied to storms, but might instead be a psionic sorcerer using subtle spell to just APPEAR like he is intrinsically tied to storms... So, how does my character know about psionics or subtle spell? Those aren't metagaming according to you, but thinking that a
STORM giant might be elementally tied to
STORMS is. So, do all characters just come pre-loaded with all knowledge of all casting styles, that they must consider as viable alternatives to any possible elemental resistance?
So now DMs can't make unique monsters without it being a gotcha? We have to use book monsters so that you can have read about them in advance?
Make unique monsters? Sure, that's fine.
Make unique monsters explicitly to evoke an elemental immunity, but actually have the creature immune to a completely different element, with the sole purpose of trying to catch players who assume that the monster's appearance is giving valid clues? Yeah, that's like, definitionally a gotcha. There is no other reason for that.
It absolutely is a vulnerability, but it's not a Vulnerability. It's like the fact that the DM is a player, but he's not a Player(he's the DM).
Uh huh, so an ability that allows you to know Vulnerabilities would not tell it to you, because it is not a Vulnerability. Remember, this was copying the Hunter's Lore ability, which has the capitalization. They are not the same thing, which you literally just admitted.
Yes they do.
I never said it was. It's not something that a PC can find out, so PC abilities should not give that information. PCs can only find out in-fiction things, which AC and hit point numbers are not.
The player is not in world. The PLAYER knows that plat mail is AC 18 and chain mail is 16, the PC doesn't know those numbers at all. Because in the world all the PC knows is that plate protects better than chain.
AC is entirely metagame. Armor is not.
Right, it protects better, and they probably have a rough idea of how hard it would be to hit the individual wearing it.
It is absolutely something the character's can figure out. Just because we can put it to hard numbers instead of vague feelings doesn't change that and suddenly make it impossible for the PCs to understand how armor works. And if we can have abilities that tell us ability scores of enemies, we can have abilities that tell us AC. It isn't even a stretch,
Plus, you know, MAGIC. It doesn't have to strictly follow even psuedo-realism.
