Knowledge local

[Elf Witch]

I have a question. The skill knowledge local how does it work? My DM and I feel that it should be for an area you choose and it can be taken many times in different areas.

One of the other players says the rule is that if you have ranks in knowledge local then it covers any area you just happen to be in even if you just got there.

The players handbook is not clear about this at all neither is the SRD.

Does anyone know the official ruling?

 

[Jacob Marley]

IIRC, in Living Greyhawk you were required to pick a region for which Knowledge (local) worked. Such as Knowledge (local - Sheldomar). Though, I am unable to confirm this with my Living Greyhawk Gazetteer.

It is my opinion that 3rd Edition was written with the assumption that characters would have a "home base" and thus that Knowledge (local) would apply to the surrounding areas. But this is not official; just my impression from reading the Dungeon Master's Guide.

In practice, Knowledge (local) can be used anywhere for the purpose of monster identification. For other uses of the skill, we just wing it based on how long a character has lived or adventured in a particular area.

But, as far as I know, there is no official ruling on Knowledge (local). Though, I would be happy if someone found one.

 

[Dandu]

In the games I have played in, it has applied to the local location the PC is in, under the reasoning that to not do so would shoot it in the knees when compared to other knowledge skills.

 

[irdeggman]

The 3.5 PHB does not specify it that it applies to a specific region - per RAW it applies everywhere.

Having said that, it is not an uncommon house-rule to make it apply to a specific region and that is how we play it. Some "settings" also changed it to be regional only.

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

Knowledge local covers ALL city/town laws and information and humanoid knowledge. It should be renamed knowledge municipalities or civics or something else, because people see local, assume it MUST be region-limited and feel the need to super nerf it to only apply to specific areas. Which makes it a freaking terrible, narrow skill.

 

[Celebrim]

I have a question. The skill knowledge local how does it work? My DM and I feel that it should be for an area you choose and it can be taken many times in different areas.

One of the other players says the rule is that if you have ranks in knowledge local then it covers any area you just happen to be in even if you just got there.

The players handbook is not clear about this at all neither is the SRD.

Does anyone know the official ruling?

No, not really. But I noticed the same problems you have. The more I thought about it, the more difficult the problem became. The basic problem with it is that if it applies everywhere, then it is an uber-skill that seems to cover everything but the most esoteric lore. But, if it applies only to a local area, it is a weak skill that isn't worth taking as a PC's unless the campaign is gauranteed to remain in a single area and therefore basically exists only as an advantage for NPC's. Plus if it only applies to a particular region, then not only do you need to predefine the regions but deal with differences in scope in the event regional knowledge doesn't seem to apply - Knowledge (Campansalus) covers a much smaller area than Knowledge (Sea of Storms).

Adding to the problems is that from a logical perspective, Knowledge (Local) ought to cover regions of different sizes. If a commoner has lived in one village his entire life, he ought to know pretty much everything about it, but maybe little or nothing about the capital even if its only 40 miles away. On the other hand, a teamster or sailor that regularly travels between cities ought to have picked up something about all of them over the course of 15 years of journeying. But these realisms hardly make for good gaming.

Personally, I did away with it. I reorganized the knowledges into categories I found clearer and more discrete. Knowledge of customs, personalities, and the like was made part of the same category as knowledge of heraldry, personality, and the like. Knowledge of legends was made part of history - for I've never encountered the fantasy world yet where the two weren't the same thing.

 

[RUMBLETiGER]

I've often played it as Knowledge (civilizations), granting insight into customs and behaviors of a people group of a particular area. Someone with ranks in Knowledge (Local) could walk into an Elven city, or a Dwarven Underdark Mine, take a look around and be aware of how to not look like a doofus tourist.
It'd affect NPC attitudes in-masse on a minor scale, not so much in individual conversations but when walking down the street, affects if the parents hold their children closer, or if the men eyeball you warily, of if window shutters get closed.
It'd make it easier for that player to figure "A tavern among these people is most likely to be in this area of a city, lets look this way" or "I bet if we talked to the local guards, they'd know where to find the king, I bet a guard outpost would be over here" and otherwise navigate through civilized areas.

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

It doesn't apply everywhere. Just to towns and cities (or possibly other forms of communities) on the material plane*. Anywhere else is nature, the planes, or something else. If you're dungeon delving and plane hopping, it's not a god skill. If you're doing an urban game in a big city...it'd be the same use whether you nerfed it to being regional or not.


*If you hail from a different plane, I think local should/would apply to cities on your own plane, and "the planes" would cover cities on the prime material plane. At least, that should be how it works, IMO.

 

[Ranger19k]

I've seen this skill interpreted both ways, so I don't believe that there is an approved official ruling for it, but to me, it never made much sense to restricting Knowledge (local) to one particular locality.

Sure, on the surface it seems a little overly broad to have some local knowledge of the legends, personalities, laws, and traditions of every region, but is this really much broader than knowledge (planes) giving you knowledge of the inner workings of every single plane of existence? When you stop and think about it, there are a lot of planes, and Knowledge (planes) should give you geography, history, local, nobility, and arcane equivalent knowledge for each and every one of them. Similarly, Knowledge (history) gives your character familiarity with not only the equivalent of North American history (or wherever your local region might be), but also whatever the equivalent in your campaign world is for European History, Chinese Dynasties, the Russian Tzars, Zulu conquests, Aztec traditions, Pacific Island empires, Antarctic pyramid construction, ect. Since each of these could basically be its own college major (well, maybe not the antarctic one...), I personally think that Knowledge (history) is about as broad a topic as Knowledge (local) which would be the equivalent of some regional IR classes.

Finally, since Knowledge (local) is the skill used to identify humanoids, it never made much sense to me to be able to identify an orc in your home region, but have zero chance whatsoever of identifying the exact same orc in the neighboring county. (And I'm not talking a different flavor of mountain orc, but rather the exact same breed/race/clan of orc.) This is because knowledge is a trained class skill, so if "local" is limited to one area, then you can not ID any humanoids in any area that is not your home area. This strikes me as silly, but it would be the mechanical result of an interpretation that limits Knowledge (local) to your home region.

That's my logic as to why I use Knowledge (local) in its broad form, but I realize that the rules leave it up for debate and that the skill is frequently ruled to function either way.

 

[irdeggman]

The PHB lists all of the knowledge skills available without DM intervention (see pg 78 "with your DM's approval you can invent new areas of knowledge"

There is only Knowledge (local) on the PHB list not Knowledge (local region).

To add to this reading of the rules check the Players Guide to Faeurun pg 8

"Regions also serve one additional function in a FORGOTTEN REALMS campaign - they define how far the knowledge a character gains with the Knowledge (local) skill actually extends. . . . .When you take ranks in Knowledge (local), you must designate the region to which your local knowledge pertains."

So WotC appears to actually have defined that KNowledge (local) {per the PHB} extends everywhere which specific settings have defined in more regionally.