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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Rodrigo Istalindir" data-source="post: 3220902" data-attributes="member: 2810">Knowledge skills can be a tricky thing, kinda like 'search', that is easy to abuse and annoy the DM.  Usually it's not the meta-gaming that I find annoying; it's the attempt to use Knowledge skills as an excuse to not have to figure anything out on their own.It can be hard to draw the line.  Often, players will only ask to make certain checks when 'meta-game' aspects indicate that something is up.  OTOH, having them make a constant series of meaningless rolls just to disguise the one time it matters gets kinda tiresome too, from a DM's standpoint as well as the players.  For example, I once had the players in a grand banquet.  As they were circulating among the guests, they sensed that one NPC in particular was more important than the rest (by virtue of the fact that I had more info at the ready for that one guy than the others).  One of the players asked to make a K:Nobility check to see if he knew anything about the person's history.  He rolled really well, I revealed that the guy was an imposter, etc.  Now there had been nothing in the party's interactions up to that point that would have made them look at him more closely; it was clearly a case of metagaming by 'reading' the DM, but OTOH, having them make 50 rolls for every person in the room wouldn't be much fun, either.IME, it's not the metagaming that I find bothersome (although I'll smack someone down if its too egregious).  Its the attempt to use that to influence others' actions that gets my goat, because invariably the player that does it (the metagaming) is consciously or not trying to seize the spotlight and be the center of attention disproportionally.</blockquote>

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