D&D 5E How do you handle monster knowledges in your game?

It is weird that everyone wants to hand them correct information. If you are relying on "stories you heard" or "books you read" there is going to be some misinformation. Don't believe me? Read what medieval scholars wrote about lions and giraffes.
I’ve been considering testing out a multiple degrees of success approach. On a full success, you get the information you were looking for, and it’s accurate. On a narrow miss (perhaps failing by less than five?) you get two truths and a lie. On a significant failure (perhaps failing by 5 or more?) you just get the lie.
 

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I’ve been considering testing out a multiple degrees of success approach. On a full success, you get the information you were looking for, and it’s accurate. On a narrow miss (perhaps failing by less than five?) you get two truths and a lie. On a significant failure (perhaps failing by 5 or more?) you just get the lie.
I understand why people want to tie truth to success, but I don't feel like that is realistic or particularly interesting.
 


This is a good point. I have a cheatsheet about my players' PCs listing their passive perception, passive insight, special notes, and the knowledge-type skills in which they are proficient. Then, in play, if a topic comes up, I give the proficient players information about it. It helps me decide if its a Yes/No/Roll situation for any individual PC.
I like to go a step further, and treat knowledge generally (especially for monsters) as a passive skill that I as the DM roll against. Whatever DC I've set for the information (between 10-20 for monsters, generally), I subtract 10 from, and then roll against the PC's score.
 





Rote certainly isn't.

All I am saying is that having some uncertainty in there is fun.
You're actually calling for double randomness here. Presumably it's already possible to fail the roll for information and have to proceed without it, which is already one injection of randomness, potentially followed by another if you succeed, but the information is invalid.
 


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