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Message: <blockquote data-quote="CapnZapp" data-source="post: 8094032" data-attributes="member: 12731">Oh, you're entirely right.Once I realized my best move was to tell my players I'm ditching the Recall Knowledge minigame, the problem was solved. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />(For me, that is. The problem still remains with the rules, since the core rulebook hasn't changed.)I provide a very rough "danger assessment" for free (except in special cases; the monster might hide in the form of a sweet little girl etc):green = the monster is your level or loweryellow = the monster is 1-2 levels higher than youred = the monster is 3 or more levels higher than youSince exact level differences is critical to everything from Incapacitation to the Counteract rules, hiding this info felt just like more frustration and less fun. Plus, getting SOME meta clue to whether it's time to flee, to go all out (nova), fight normally using some resources, or to hold back entirely and just subdue clearly inferior monsters means less frustration and more fun.And yes, the players now avoid the RK feats. There are literally thousands of feats to choose from, after all, so this wasn't a biggie.Then heroes then each get one free monster knowledge roll at the start of each encounter (if they remember to ask for them, at any rate). That is, a Religion check for undead, Society for humanoids, and so on. Usually this means at least one hero succeeds, but it used to happen quite a lot that noone did. (Three of five characters have since <a href="https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=861" target="_blank">taken</a> <a href="https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=74" target="_blank">feats</a> <a href="http://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=1017" target="_blank">that</a> give them baseline proficiency to all skills)Success here means I tell them the basics of the monster as written by the Bestiary, including most of the important traits (such as resistances and weaknesses). But success can also mean avoiding a fight, if a hero recalls things like "the monster is more afraid of you than you are of it" or "give it cookies and it becomes your friend" or similar.If nobody succeeds, or they realize they need more details, they can still spend actions on more Recall Knowledge checks.But this happens rarely if at all. Remember, even when I didn't hand out any information at all for free, players STILL seldom or never spent actions on Recall Knowledge. Surviving is more important, and usually you can learn what you need to know by simply fighting the monster. Even if you encounter resistances or miss out on weaknesses, those actions usually do SOME damage, and are therefore better.Spending an action on getting a 40% shot at a single useful info snippet (the RAW) is only efficient if said knowledge is a true gamechanger. Just about the only real gamechanger is "this monster is not only four or more levels higher than you, it has very strong resistances or immunities, and you will die fighting it without that information". But for 95% to 99% of the monsters that just isn't true.So if everybody fails, that just means they trudge through a fight.After all, exceedingly few encounters in official APs are unwinnable. Even fewer of them rely on Recall Knowledge to get it right. In the rare case a monster is clearly too powerful, the adventure text will bend over backwards to telegraph this to the players.Yes, the fact that monsters are not put in front of you until you have a decent chance of defeating them is meta. But it's been that way for decades, so it's not exactly a secret any longer....</blockquote>

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