D&D 5E Impossible Ability Test

[The Crimson Binome]

Not every setting is like that, of course, but I think it's fair to say that the template for a typical, average D&D setting is Medieval Europe. And that's more or less what I'm describing.

I get what you're saying, but I disagree that it's an average D&D setting.

Most D&D settings are a bit more fantastic, and less grounded in reality. In a world where wizards form guilds, and there is some semblance of real public education, it's entirely likely that a scholar probably would recognize a camel. Not immediately upon sight, or out of context, but probably if she saw one being used as a beast of burden.

The version of the game that you're remembering is one that existed before (non-theif) characters had skills, so there was no real in-game measurement of the likelihood of someone knowing something on a given topic. In spite of early claims that skills would be optional in 5E, they ended up being an expected part of core, so it makes sense to make use of them where applicable.

 

[Unwise]

I have got no problem at all with my skills auto-failing by DM fiat. Heck, not everything should succeed on a critical success, some things just don't make sense to succeed at. Have some faith in your DM, there are some things in the setting that your characters do not know, just go with it, the game will be better. Trust your DM as an arbiter of what needs to remain a mystery for either plot reasons or realism reasons.

If I attempt a nature roll on a beast that is unique and not documented in any way that I could conceivably have come across, I fail.

If I make a streetwise roll to know about somebody, but I have been given the wrong name and a red herring, I fail.

If I attempt to lift a mountain with an athletics roll, I fail.

In our game the bard killed an enemy's family in front of him, then attempted diplomacy with the guy. He auto-failed, why wouldn't he?

 

[pkt77242]

Or ones who are careful about the challenges they choose to take on.

Honestly, you make it sound like D&D has always had the pcs be entitled to know about monsters. That's actually a fairly recent aberration in the rules, coming in with 3e (at least in the main).





Think of a world without mass printing of National Geographics, without TV shows that show you what a camel is. A world where most people live and die without traveling further than 20 miles from where they were born. A world where a huge personal library is a couple of dozen books, and a huge one in a public space- a Great Library- contains a few hundred or a thousand, and you don't get to go in there and play with those (INCREDIBLY VALUABLE) books at will just because you live in that city.

Not every setting is like that, of course, but I think it's fair to say that the template for a typical, average D&D setting is Medieval Europe. And that's more or less what I'm describing.

Of course not all settings fall into that template. Some have printing presses, most end up with unbelievably big collections of books in every ruined tower, and of course pcs are generally the exception to the "hardly traveled" rule of thumb. But still, I think you're both vastly overestimating how much information a typical person in a typical D&D setting has access to.

Worse yet, as often as not, much of the information they have should be dead wrong! Have you ever checked out the monsters and people described in ancient sources? They were usually written by the scholars of their time, and you still end up with people whose faces are in their chest and so on.

So, while every DM's style is different on this, I'm pretty firmly set where I am and am happy with the results. Heck, it reminds me of old 1e and 2e and Basic style gaming!

But there's nothing wrong with a group using monster knowledge like crazy. Nothing at all. I don't care for it, but if it works for you, great! However, what we have in this thread is a case of a DM making a judgment call, his players disagreeing, and there being no right and wrong answers. Despite the "there are no DM rulings, only RAW and house rules" that the OP asserts, D&D simply doesn't work that way- especially 5e, since it's re-empowering the DM so strongly.

In this case, did the DM err? Not at all- not by the RAW.

Are the pcs in error to object? Again, no- but they are in error if they assert that he broke some rule or made a house rule. He made a ruling. And an entirely reasonable one, at that.

What you state is true for a "common" person but we are talking about a scholar/sage (and a PC which means he probably travels significantly more then any common person) not a common person. What is the point of the background if they have to encounter everything to know about it? What did they study then?

Lets back this up a little. If you had a character with a scholar/sage background, what would you allow them to make a proficiency check to know?

Edit: To be clear my argument is that he should know it, but that there should be a chance for him to know it. So a skill check based off of the rarity of the monster.

 

[Saeviomagy]

To me, knowledge of a currently living monster that is hostile to travelers would not seem to be the sort of knowledge that is particularly rare, unless it has a 100% final fatality rate (ie - not only does it kill everyone it meets, it also prevents them from being raised somehow). Neither does knowledge of a civilization that fell a mere 3000 years ago (after all, that's only ~5 elven lifespans). Add in divinations (even low level, like comprehend languages) and I think it takes an enormous amount of effort or seperation for something to be unknowable in the realms of D&D.

 

[Henrix]

I dare say it wasn't a camel the character couldn't identify, but a rarer beast.

 

[Riley37]

vastly overestimating how much information a typical person in a typical D&D setting has access to.

Whoah, hold on!
I established that a literate person CAN know about things they haven't personally seen. I didn't say anything about specific probabilities.
Sure, the percentage of people reading this thread who could recognize a camel might exceed 95%, because, as you say, we're literate members of a civilization with mass media. The probability of the elven scholar having seen a picture of a camel might be much lower, maybe as low as 5%. But it isn't *flatly impossible*, under appropriate circumstances, to recognize something one haven't personally seen. I am, at the moment, discussing the difference between "zero, no roll possible" and "nonzero, there is SOME chance", rather than the differences between 5%, 50% and 95%.

Also, "literate" already means we're NOT talking about a typical person in a typical D&D setting, assuming that 90% of humanity in a low-tech setting are illiterate farmers. Mid-level fighters, monks and rogues have abilities which would amaze the real world's elite soldiers, martial artists and athletes. Are you sure that a D&D elven scholar has read fewer books (in the last few centuries) than the senior archivist at the Library of Alexandria? In some ways, the typical D&D setting has resources WAY beyond what Imperial Rome or Renaissance London had, and also way beyond what we have today, such as invisibility, teleportation, resurrection, and the Legend Lore spell.

Yes, I'm familiar with Herotodus's descriptions of the lands south of Greece, with no distinction between one tale's credibility versus another's. A few centuries later, and a few hundred miles away, a Roman shopkeeper might have personally seen lions, tigers and bears in the arena, as well as ostriches, auks and aurochs, not to mention camels. Meanwhile, there's zero chance that anyone in Imperial Rome was familiar with turkeys or kangaroos, neither directly nor by written reference. If Doctor Who takes a Roman scholar to the Americas or the Outback, there's no roll to see whether the scholar recognizes those animals. D&D settings vary; the DM knows which setting this campaign is using, and which part of the setting.

If you, personally, today, could cast Legend Lore, once, in the real world, what would you research?

 

[SkidAce]

If you, personally, today, could cast Legend Lore, once, in the real world, what would you research?

Interesting thought.

 

[the Jester]

In spite of early claims that skills would be optional in 5E, they ended up being an expected part of core, so it makes sense to make use of them where applicable.

I'll ask again: Where, in the 5e books, does it give a "Monster Knowledge" skill or other rules for knowing stuff about monsters?

Skills only enter the equation if there's actually a skill for the action in question.

 

[the Jester]

If you had a character with a scholar/sage background, what would you allow them to make a proficiency check to know?

It depends. What is his field of study? If it's deserts, or monsters, or something else that could let him know what a given thing is, I'll either let him make a check or just handwave it and give him the answer.

But why should a scholar who is intensively focused on the history of the royal line of Thule know anything about camels, if Thule is a plains-and-forest kingdom?

 

[Dausuul]

Edit: There are no DM rules in our table. There are either house rules, or the official rules. We all run the game eventually, so we agreed on only applying a house rule after we discussed and agreed upon it. So there's no backstabbing here. The DM apply the rules and decide the minor issues, but this became a big issue in the specific context.

The official rule here is that the DM decides.

This is a common theme in 5E. If it's a problem for your group, I would suggest resolving that before anything else, because you're going to encounter it a lot. The DM will frequently be called upon to adjudicate how rules apply in particular scenarios, and if you have to come to a consensus every time this happens, it's going to bog down your game something awful.

I personally would let the elf roll. Having lived in the desert would probably be worth advantage on the roll, or a lower DC. But that's just my own ruling as a DM, and carries no "official" weight.