Knowledge Checks (monster info)

[TimmyW]

If you decide that Bullettes and Owlbears are a recent invention of a mad wizard, then there is no amount of knowledge skill that will apply. Even if the monsters were in the books, they are a recent addition to the game world.

If you decide that a certain creature only exists at a specific oasis in a remote desert, then the DC for having any information for the creature will be higher than normal.

This is not nerfing the PC skill. It is helping to make your world a little more consistent. Just don't use these tactics every time.

While I thought you post was insightful and I agree wholeheartly with almost all of it, I have to take exception to the "no amount of knowledge skill" comment.

This is one of my pet peeves. Saying that a skill is compeletely useless for what it is designed to do is bad.

This is a perfect example of when to set the DC very high. There are a few characters out there that have huge bonuses to some skills, that can make seemly impossible checks.

In the above example you are looking at perhaps a DC 35 or 39 (in the Heroic to Nearly Impossible category, base 30+HD for a really tough question). Why would a character be able to even have a chance to make such a roll you ask. Well, perhaps he has heard some rumors about this mad wizard and his experiments or he used his extensive general knowledge about Magical Beasts to deduce some specific information about possible abilities of the beast in front of him. Heck even if they fail to ID the beast, the fact that the DC is so high also tells the character that this is no normal magical beast and must have been created recently and in secret. Give them something for all those ranks.

Remember to even have a chance at the generous DC35 knowledge check to ID an Owlbear you are looking at rolling a 20, having a 20 INT, and 10 ranks in Knowledge(Arcana). So lets say something like a scholarly 7th level Wizard has a 5% chance of knowing something. To be able to 'take 10' and know it would require a dedicated Wizard in the mid-to-high teens in level.

I'm not saying give the players something for nothing but don't give them nothing if they invested skill points and attributes to boost these skills, they have earned the knowledge.

 

[BSF]

While I thought you post was insightful and I agree wholeheartly with almost all of it, I have to take exception to the "no amount of knowledge skill" comment.

This is one of my pet peeves. Saying that a skill is compeletely useless for what it is designed to do is bad.
/snip/

While I understand the point you are making, I still disagree. Perhaps that is more a matter of when I would use such a tactic though.

In this case, I am talking about a situation where the entire adventure hook is geared around the mad wizard scenario and the PC's are probably the first people, aside from said wizard, to have even seen the creatures.

Given what my players know about my GM style, the fact that they know nothing about the creature and have never even heard of something vaguely like this creature will probably twig their paranoia meters pretty high. It will also tell them that this is something very unique. Realistically, this is the type of scenario I might run once in a decade, at most. (Well, unless the players enjoyed it immensely and requested more scenarios like that. I could be suckered in like that. )

I am a huge fan of knowledge skills and have been applying the "monster knowledge" type check since 3.0. So, I do not casually restrict knowledge skills. For me, a knowledge skill check is an excuse to help breathe life into the gameworld.