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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Norfleet" data-source="post: 1129139" data-attributes="member: 11581">I did, in fact, mention this effect: This is why it's the MIDLEVEL monsters which people have difficulty remembering. The monsters at the extreme ends of the spectrum are memorable precisely because they ARE at the extreme ends of the monster spectrum.That runs smack into the face of the fact that Knowledge is not a retry-able skill. If the character COULD have passed the check had he taken 10, and therefore, KNOWS the information, and yet failed at the moment, indicating that under the pressure, he couldn't quite recall anything useful, does this mean that the experience has now caused him to forget everything he knew about the monster, since the check cannot be retried?There's also the fact that these DCs, are, quite plainly, WAY TOO HIGH. Consider the actual cost of the knowledge skill: Actually buying points of this knowledge skill would have to represent a deliberate, focussed, and even obsessive study of the subject. For a character to have spent 4 points on a knowledge skill, for instance, represents such extensive study on the matter, that one of his other, perhaps more basic, skills, has been completely and utterly neglected. What, exactly, does it mean for a character to have traded his Spot skill, for a Knowledge skill? That suggests a level of study so obsessive that he ruined his eyesight reading about it. That is a LOT of studying, considering that there are plenty of subjects that I know a lot about, yet I'm not nearly blind. Evaluated in terms of opportunity cost, some skills really don't make very much sense: How, exactly, does improving one's knowledge on a subject reduce one's ability to concentrate? Wouldn't it tend to work synergistically, since if one cannot concentrate, and therefore has a very short attention span, one could never possibly have mustered forth the ability to study something so obsessively? This would seem to suggest that many ranks in one or more knowledge skills would imply a synergy bonus to concentration.</blockquote>

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