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.
Realistic takes a backseat to good gameplay in my book. Succeeding and getting wrong info is bad gameplay in my opinion.
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.
But what about "interesting"?
I'm not sure unreliable is a synonym for interesting.
I don’t think it’s particularly interesting to get wrong information on a successful check either.
Rote certainly isn't.
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.
Isn't uncertainty covered by the die roll? Doesn't passing the check resolve that uncertainty?
