Norfleet
First Post
The interesting thing is that, in cases of a known monster, I.E., something equivalent to something documented in a monster manual, a PLAYER can very quickly learn a great deal about a monster....and surely you're not saying that players of games are high-level people with many ranks in knowledge skills of monsters for many different game systems.
Similarly, should a character encounter any sort of documentation on monsters of a known type, wouldn't that character, with only a few hours of cursory study, likely have committed much of the thing to memory, without having expended skillpoints on it? The idea that a simple knowledge skill of the like consumes such a HUGE opportunity cost, namely, 1 SP/lvl, an entire skill, seems rather steep. After all, if you, a player, can easily commit to memory the statistics of several dozen common, and uncommon, monsters, without any loss of personal ability, doesn't it stand to follow that a character of reasonable intelligence can do the same?
Of course, if it's a totally unknown and unheard of monster, never before encountered by any known sentient being(read: The DM made it up on the spot), then no amount of knowledge skill can help, obviously, since there's simply nowhere a character(or player) could possibly have acquired such information.
Really, to represent the opportunity cost involved in taking even trace amounts of knowledge skill, even a few points would make someone into effectively a walking encyclopedia on the matter. Think about it: If I took a knowledge skill in something, I'd effectively have traded an entire ability for it: Spot makes a good example. That knowledge skill would mean I've studied the matter so hard and in such extensive detail that I've got the information permanently burned into my eyes like on an old monitor. That's a pretty massive opportunity cost, considering that normal people, without having sacrificed anything, can easily have learned a great deal of obscure, even specialist knowledge, more so than can be explained away with "untrained", particularly as knowledge is "Trained only".
And the idea that the DC of knowledge associated with monsters INCREASES with HD is silly. The more powerful a monster is, the more infamous it becomes, yes? Even a novice player can quickly regurgitate the strengths and weaknesses of something as infamous as a red dragon. That same player would be hard-pressed to regurgitate the same statistics of something of much lower HD, but whose name I cannot recall, which simply goes to underscore my point.
This backwards phenomenon is not an uncommon occurrence with monster-knowledge skills across multiple game systems: The idea that more powerful monsters are somehow harder to have knowledge of, which is simply absurd: The more powerful something is, the greater its infamy level, and the easier it is to know about it. You'd have to score the monsters in order of obscurity: Ironically, the most obscure monsters are those of mid-level power: I'm sure everyone and their dog can cough up specs on a dragon or an orc, but pick some mid-level monster, and most people probably won't remember much about it.
Similarly, should a character encounter any sort of documentation on monsters of a known type, wouldn't that character, with only a few hours of cursory study, likely have committed much of the thing to memory, without having expended skillpoints on it? The idea that a simple knowledge skill of the like consumes such a HUGE opportunity cost, namely, 1 SP/lvl, an entire skill, seems rather steep. After all, if you, a player, can easily commit to memory the statistics of several dozen common, and uncommon, monsters, without any loss of personal ability, doesn't it stand to follow that a character of reasonable intelligence can do the same?
Of course, if it's a totally unknown and unheard of monster, never before encountered by any known sentient being(read: The DM made it up on the spot), then no amount of knowledge skill can help, obviously, since there's simply nowhere a character(or player) could possibly have acquired such information.
Really, to represent the opportunity cost involved in taking even trace amounts of knowledge skill, even a few points would make someone into effectively a walking encyclopedia on the matter. Think about it: If I took a knowledge skill in something, I'd effectively have traded an entire ability for it: Spot makes a good example. That knowledge skill would mean I've studied the matter so hard and in such extensive detail that I've got the information permanently burned into my eyes like on an old monitor. That's a pretty massive opportunity cost, considering that normal people, without having sacrificed anything, can easily have learned a great deal of obscure, even specialist knowledge, more so than can be explained away with "untrained", particularly as knowledge is "Trained only".
And the idea that the DC of knowledge associated with monsters INCREASES with HD is silly. The more powerful a monster is, the more infamous it becomes, yes? Even a novice player can quickly regurgitate the strengths and weaknesses of something as infamous as a red dragon. That same player would be hard-pressed to regurgitate the same statistics of something of much lower HD, but whose name I cannot recall, which simply goes to underscore my point.
This backwards phenomenon is not an uncommon occurrence with monster-knowledge skills across multiple game systems: The idea that more powerful monsters are somehow harder to have knowledge of, which is simply absurd: The more powerful something is, the greater its infamy level, and the easier it is to know about it. You'd have to score the monsters in order of obscurity: Ironically, the most obscure monsters are those of mid-level power: I'm sure everyone and their dog can cough up specs on a dragon or an orc, but pick some mid-level monster, and most people probably won't remember much about it.
)? It may be a world-famous monster, but probably the gossip about it are based on legends only.
