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Message: <blockquote data-quote="MarkB" data-source="post: 6551068" data-attributes="member: 40176">You seem to be compouding two different skill functions here - Knowledge and Perception.As used in D&D, Knowledge skills like Arcana and Religion are purely passive in nature - they're a way of checking what you know.Perception, on the other hand, is an active skill, and players can and frequently do add roleplaying descriptions of how cleverly and meticulously they are examining or observing a subject, in the hopes of ekeing out extra bonuses.In the case of the example, the skills were really applied backwards. First, the players should have made Perception checks (possibly including some of the playing-out that you seem to be seeking) in order to determine exactly what information is at their disposal. Then they could roll Knowledge checks to see what their characters could deduce from that information.The thing is, they're Knowledge checks. They can't be re-rolled or boosted - you either know some relevant fact or you don't. The player may know that they rolled very poorly and had the potential to get a different result if they hadn't - but there's nothing they can actually do with that knowledge.Generally speaking, I wouldn't let my players go through a cascade of different Knowledge checks in the hopes of hitting on something useful - I'd just tell them which skill(s) are applicable and let them roll those. However, the example you quoted is one situation where I might take a different approach - the characters are presented with what appears to be an undead or supernatural threat (a skeleton hovering in mid-air), but is actually of a more mudane nature (a very hard-to-see transparent ooze). If I tell them that they need to roll Dungeoneering instead of Religion or Arcana, I'm revealing something of the nature of the threat, whether they succeed or fail.</blockquote>

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