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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Maxperson" data-source="post: 9196235" data-attributes="member: 23751">Sure, but it definitely helps a bunch.This seems really weird to me.  Maybe it's my players, or maybe I just recognize uses for the skill when the players do things, but it comes up a lot when I DM.Every time there's a symbol on a wall, person or place and they want to know what it is, it's a knowledge check of some sort(religion, arcana, history, etc.).  When they want to know what something is that isn't common knowledge, it's a knowledge check.  What is that creature? Knowledge check. What do we know about it? Knowledge check. Outside of perception, knowledge checks are the most common kind in games that I play in and run.   And I've never even heard of someone using those skills in social situations. The only way I could see that working is by hiding the information needed to navigate a social check, but that doesn't sound like it would be very effective.  Knowledge checks rarely solve the problem, but they do provide valuable clues that help solve problems.Why is it used so little in those games?In social situations knowledge checks provide information that can be used to leverage the conversation your way. Or give you greater understanding of things being referenced.  Or...  This come up fairly often, but not as much as the social skills themselves.Insight can provide you with the tells of a new person.  Is the person fidgeting or looking away from you while telling you certain parts of the story and so on.  Or sometimes I will use an insight roll to allow the party to realize that the hostile green drake is sticking to a specific area as if guarding something(she was guarding her eggs).  Insight is incredibly useful if used for the things in game that it would logically apply to.Survival is VERY useful if traveling through the wilderness.  Not as much the rest of the time.  In an urban adventure it will be nearly useless.  In a campaign set in unexplored areas, it's probably the  most important.  In a standard game where you travel through the wilds a lot and are in cities a lot, it's just really useful, but not the most useful.It's a situational skill, but one where you typically encounter the situations fairly often.Strength and con.  Just because your DMs don't make appropriate use of the int skills, doesn't make them unimportant in general.Maybe I just have a different kind of player than you do, but yes, if they were going into a temple of a god none of them followed to talk to the high priest, they would ask what they know about the religion in order to avoid giving offense and to try and get a bit of an advantage in dealing with him.</blockquote>

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