Identifying monsters

[starwed]

It strikes me as a bit weird that, to use a knowledge skill to identify a monster, it gets harder the more HD it has:

In many cases, you can use this skill to identify monsters and their special powers or vulnerabilities. In general, the DC of such a check equals 10 + the monster’s HD. A successful check allows you to remember a bit of useful information about that monster. For every 5 points by which your check result exceeds the DC, you recall another piece of useful information.

This is especially silly with templates: it's harder to know the vulnerabilities of a 40HD zombie than a 2HD zombie, even though they're the same.

There's also no guidance on what DC it would be to simply recognize the type of creature. And you'll always need an unrealistically high check to know more than a few pieces of info on a creature.

I was wondering whether anyone had already come up with a simple but more believable system for this?

 

[Mark Chance]

I use DC 10 + CR, based on the general idea that the higher the CR, the less common the creature is. Higher CRs of a base type are not subject to this rule. Thus, it doesn't require a DC 20 to recognize a 10th-level fighter orc as an orc, nor does it require a higher DC to recognize a dinosaur zombie as a zombie.

 

[Li Shenron]

I was wondering whether anyone had already come up with a simple but more believable system for this?

Totally made up DCs.

Consider that you don't tell the DCs to the players, and that even in that case you can back it up with simple but effective in-game improvised reasons such as "these are really rare in this world" or "there are lots of contraddictive legends about those, but few known facts" or "wizard Xygag wrote a very famous book about it", and with so many factors, being totally random is more believable.

 

[olshanski]

I use 10+CR of the creature.
I also play that you only need to identify the easiest version of a creature. Templates or advanced creatures are as dificult as the base, but the character knows the creature is advanced... and often by what means.

Thus, dragons are always as easy to identify as their smallest, youngest version.
Zombies and skeletons are likewise DC10, since the easiest version of those creatures less than CR1.