Fixing/Improving Recall Knowledge

[Rhianni32]

CapnZapp made a post about the issues with Recall Knowledge in the GM experience thread and suggested there be a separate discussion.

While he can speak for himself, I agree with his points that the Recall Knowledge action and use is pretty light on the rules where as most other parts of the rule set are pretty specific.

Recall Knowledge. (Core Rulebook page 239)
For 1 action, the GM makes the roll in secret and you get...
Critical Success You recall the knowledge accurately and gain additional information or context.
Success You recall the knowledge accurately or gain a useful clue about your current situation.
Critical Failure You recall incorrect information or gain an erroneous or misleading clue.

Core Rulebook page 505 has more info on using it to identify a monster
Success: Learn a troll has regeneration and its stopped by acid or fire. Or a manticore's tail spikes (lets be honest probably will fire off in the first round and the PC will figure it out anyways).
Critical Success: Demon's Weakness or the trigger for a creature's ability.

Which skill to use is additional complexity.
Page 505 has an example of identifying a Hag. The Hag type creature is an Occult skill, but they are humanoid so Society would work, but at a harder DC. If you use a Lore skill its easy or very easy. Great example but it would be better to just give us the rules!

Is the 1 action cost in encounter mode good or bad?

Lastly there was discussion of the 50% success rate being too low for players to be using an action.
Presuming you are trained in a skill with a 16 in your skill's ability at 1st level you'll have +6. to beat a DC 15. 60% chance of failure so 50% is about right if its more of a boss monster a couple levels higher which you'd consider using an action on vs scrub minion monsters.

 

[5ekyu]

CapnZapp made a post about the issues with Recall Knowledge in the GM experience thread and suggested there be a separate discussion.

While he can speak for himself, I agree with his points that the Recall Knowledge action and use is pretty light on the rules where as most other parts of the rule set are pretty specific.

Recall Knowledge. (Core Rulebook page 239)
For 1 action, the GM makes the roll in secret and you get...
Critical Success You recall the knowledge accurately and gain additional information or context.
Success You recall the knowledge accurately or gain a useful clue about your current situation.
Critical Failure You recall incorrect information or gain an erroneous or misleading clue.

Core Rulebook page 505 has more info on using it to identify a monster
Success: Learn a troll has regeneration and its stopped by acid or fire. Or a manticore's tail spikes (lets be honest probably will fire off in the first round and the PC will figure it out anyways).
Critical Success: Demon's Weakness or the trigger for a creature's ability.

Which skill to use is additional complexity.
Page 505 has an example of identifying a Hag. The Hag type creature is an Occult skill, but they are humanoid so Society would work, but at a harder DC. If you use a Lore skill its easy or very easy. Great example but it would be better to just give us the rules!

Is the 1 action cost in encounter mode good or bad?

Lastly there was discussion of the 50% success rate being too low for players to be using an action.
Presuming you are trained in a skill with a 16 in your skill's ability at 1st level you'll have +6. to beat a DC 15. 60% chance of failure so 50% is about right if its more of a boss monster a couple levels higher which you'd consider using an action on vs scrub minion monsters.

Quick question - what happens on failure? Is failure just "no recall"?

I ask because I find it extremely helpful to use (in other systems) "some progress with setback" on knowledge failures to provide a mix of info - some accurate, some inaccurate incomplete with leads to how to get more (some leads may be false.) Is this kind of "some progress with setback" part of the core "these are the rules for PF2", part of the ideas suggested in sorts of "DM makes up rules" or what?

Also, wouldn't it seem like partial and/or bad info would be on the scale between "no info" and "you know it"? It seems odd to put bad info as the extreme result - worse than failure. I mean, if something is lower DC - more widespread knowledge, are you are more likely by rules to find knowledge and no knowledge but not false knowledge than if it's more obscure, higher DC, etc? It seems outside GM fiat, the more info is available/recallable (lower DC) the less chance you have for misinfo compared to very obscure.

 

[Rhianni32]

Quick question - what happens on failure? Is failure just "no recall"?

I ask because I find it extremely helpful to use (in other systems) "some progress with setback" on knowledge failures to provide a mix of info

Well RAW and keeping with how PF2 seems to work overall its all or nothing. Failure you don't do "it". Success you to do it. Critical is you do it really well. Other systems do have a the higher total you get the better you do and its a bit more granular type mechanic. If we add it here it would be a mix of the two styles. Not that that is bad or even a big deal but it might open the door to, if you do it for here why not there.

One could do a scale with monster knowledge. DC = know the monster, DC+5 on your total skill check gives attacks, DC+10 is attacks and vulnerabilities etc.

 

[Celebrim]

One of the things you have to keep in mind is that if you put a library or even just a bookshelf in the dungeon, then the books in that library contain vastly more information than the dungeon itself. Indeed, they probably contain more information than your entire campaign. So there is a huge disparity between the granularity which you can treat the dungeon, and the granularity you can apply to a book or a bookshelf. If preparing the dungeon to a particular granularity requires 32 pages, the bookshelf may require 6000+ pages. It's just not practical to prepare the books. And for the library, even a two line summary of the book titles and contents might require 6000 pages. So you have to make compromises.

The lesson is that in a game simulating a world, things that are information dense are hard.

The same basic problem applies to something like "Recall Knowledge". You are dealing with something that is information dense. If you tried to have some sort of highly granular rules for "Recall Knowledge" you'd quickly run into the problem that those rules would be larger than all the rest of your rules combined. Since any limited set of rules would be insufficient to cover even a default campaign setting set in a specific location in that world, much of any "Recall Knowledge" resolution process has to be left to fiat both in its DC and the information that results.

This can depending on the GM result in a situation where divination and "Recall Knowledge" vary in utility from useless to the most powerful abilities that a character can have, depending on the GM's comfort level with giving information to players through character resources, the GM's generosity, and how quickly the GM can think on his feet. I don't think there is much a system can do about that, and the best a rules set can hope for is to have examples of play that encourage the sort of structure the designer expects - something that I think is best seen in various attempts at Call of Cthulhu rule sets whether classic BRP based or GUMSHOE based.

The difficulty you are encountering in other words is rooted in inherent math. You can't avoid it.

In my own game I try to assign a difficult to a bit of information based on how well know I think it would be. That DC can vary from like 5 to 40 depending on whether it's something I think every peasant farmer would know like that the weaknesses of vampires (known to every school kid even in a world they don't exist) to lost, hidden, or specific information not likely to be in a book and which only the gods might know. Then for every point that the PC beats the DC, I try to give them one fact that they recall (using the best result by any party member). For large parties and low DC's, it's probably not even worth it to roll. Just give enough exposition to cover the situation. I like for the players to have character lore that they can draw on. I also don't at all mind if they have player knowledge to draw on. I'm decidedly not the sort of DM that minds if fire is used against trolls, as I don't feel any sort of need to play "Gotcha". Players are going to be lost enough as it is without trying to hide information from them or trying to force them to play stupidly for the sake of imagined "realism".

 

[Rhianni32]

to answer my own OP....

1: I don't think 1 action is all that bad. Its the smallest cost of an action that isn't free and what is more useless, rolling that 3rd strike at -10 or doing a recall knowledge? Your front line meleers need every action for shield use and maneuvering for flank but surely there is a caster who cast their 2 action spell and aren't in danger or the ranged physical attacker that is positioned and already made 2 strikes.

2: I'm also good with the chance of success. The 50%-60% success rate is someone who is trained with their general use skill (Arcana, Nature etc) that will be used for a lot of things. When we add in expert and mastered the chance goes up. Additionally we have lores that drop the difficulty to easy or very easy. Now we are talking about +4 to +9 point swing in the PCs favor.

To me, these two things help with RPing. Most other games a recall knowledge type skill is just a free action and everyone rolls because there is no reason not to. The skill bonus range is smaller vs the d20s range. There is a decent chance your character whose family was killed by undead and you swore revenge will roll bad and that city rogue just happens to roll high and they reveal the monster info to the party.

But in PF2 with an action point cost and a 50% success for the rogue vs 80%+ for the character whose backstory is built against this monster, they get to appropriately be the one to share knowledge with the group.

 

[Rhianni32]

That DC can vary from like 5 to 40 depending on whether it's something I think every peasant farmer would know like that the weaknesses of vampires (known to every school kid even in a world they don't exist)

Ok I am really curious on this one. You have every peasant farmer child know enough about vampire lore that they know their strengths and weaknesses? Wouldn't that reduce the vampire to more of an annoyance that farmers have to shoo out of their vegetable patches?

 

[Farealmer3]

Ok I am really curious on this one. You have every peasant farmer child know enough about vampire lore that they know their strengths and weaknesses? Wouldn't that reduce the vampire to more of an annoyance that farmers have to shoo out of their vegetable patches?

Knowing vampire weaknesses and being able to do anything about them if attacked or even knowing the person at your door is a vampire are very different things. Unless you're a dedicated hunter you probably won't assume every person you meet at night is a vampire.

 

[Celebrim]

Ok I am really curious on this one. You have every peasant farmer child know enough about vampire lore that they know their strengths and weaknesses? Wouldn't that reduce the vampire to more of an annoyance that farmers have to shoo out of their vegetable patches?

So you are assuming that a commoner with an average stat block array, simply armed with the knowledge of a vampires weaknesses is advantaged in a conflict with a supernaturally strong, supernaturally agile, supernaturally fast, magical, regenerating creature that is largely immune to weapons and can kill the average person with a single bite or blow?

That would not seem to follow. The player's are well aware that vampires are discomforted by garlic, fear holy symbols, don't cast a reflection, must rest in a coffin in the day, must be staked and beheaded, can't enter a private home without permission, can't cross running water, and so forth, and yet I've never noticed that PCs - who have vastly more capabilities than peasant farmers - are so unchallenged by vampires that they can simply shoo them out of their vegetable patches.

Vegetable patches that obviously contain lots of garlic, because well, vampires.

 

[CapnZapp]

(Just a quick note: while I appreciate any light you can shed on the rules and how they're supposed to work, I am not yet ready to houserule Pathfinder 2 personally. Why? Basically, I try to master the rules before ignoring them, and in this case I am sure there's plenty rules I haven't even read yet! )

 

[CapnZapp]

Various points:

As I understand it, the intention is to create a "mini game" where you can spend actions in combat to gain bonuses in the form of "puzzle pieces" - Pathfinder 2 combat is often described as being a "puzzle" where the solution is to find out what tactics (individual attacks and actions, as well as sequences of them) work best and what tactics to avoid.

Do you find that fun? Do you use it?

If you allow characters to find out pieces of the puzzle (i.e. monster info) out of combat (such as by visiting a library in the dungeon) there is no real cost (since the cost is measured chiefly only in actions, and it is only in combat you have limited actions).

Next issue is value/worth. Since the Recall Knowledge isn't automatic and only provides a single puzzle piece ("one of its best-known attributes") you could potentially waste several rounds before finally learning that piece of the puzzle you wanted.

How does this interact with abilities that let you make additional (OOC) Recalls? The Bard feat True Hypercognition lets you make five Recalls with a single action. How am I ever going to come up with five useful puzzle pieces, let alone often enough to justify taking the feat? A feat like Dubious Knowledge basically tells me "go and prepare a list of wrong facts so you can dish them out at a moments notice". Don't you find that... completely unplayable? Automatic Knowledge gives you one free Recall a day. Again, giving off the notion the GM has this large stack of index cards prepared ready to give out snippets...

Then there's the details. Things like "For example, Arcana might tell you about the magical defenses of a golem, whereas Crafting could tell you about its sturdy resistance to physical attacks" (page 239) or
"Paralyzed Condition: You have the flat-footed condition and can’t act except to Recall Knowledge [...]" suggest (at least to me) a highly balanced finely calibrated subsystem of handing out puzzle pieces in a measured manner.

Except the GM gets zero help with this. Are you supposed to prepare each monster beforehand or come up with things like "well, while Recall Knowledge for a Golem is generally Arcana, its physical resistance is Crafting" on the fly? For each monster? And how many puzzle pieces are there? And what are the puzzle pieces for a given monster anyway?

To answer the question upthread: failure means nothing in particular, but critical failure means you learn something wrong. Does this mean I need lists containing stuff like "A Troll is vulnerable against cold"?

Then there's the elephant in the room: the... artificiality... of it. What do you think of the notion that you can basically only find out monster facts while fighting them? (Again, if you can just read this in a book, that's much MUCH cheaper action-wise) Doesn't this mean the whole system falls apart for you?

When can you attempt a Recall Knowledge action, exactly? Sure, if you see the monster fighting your friends. But what about when you spot it from a distance? Or after the fight, when you poke it to make sure it's really dead, or when you loot its belongings?

Questions questions... (And we haven't even begun discussing houserules!)