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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Al" data-source="post: 327446" data-attributes="member: 2486">Every 'Monster Lore' I've seen has used this as a mechanic, and I've disagreed with it every time.Simply put, some monsters will be more famous than others by virtue of myth, story and legend, whereas some of lower CR may be more obscure.Let me show you and example: The infamous Red Dragon would be far more famous than (say) the fact that a Grick.  However, by this mechanic, the DC for identifying a Grick would be over twenty points lower than identifying a Great Red Wyrm (even though the latter is obvious).  Abilities suffer a similar problem: most peasants may have heard of the aforementioned Red Dragon's fiery breath, but the Ethereal Filcher's Ethereal Jaunt would be a mystery.The other problem is that it is a nonsense with 'scalable' creatures.  For example, to take dragons: why it is harder to identify a Great Red Wyrm than a Red Wyrmling?  Surely it would be at least as easy to identify the former, not roughly twenty DC points harder?The only way to solve it would be to add an Obscurity modifier, but then it gets complicated with each monster having to have an effectively separate DC.  As such, I think improvising the DC is the only way to make this playable.  Had such a skill been there from the start, DCs could have been added to the entries; for now, it seems far too time-consuming for most DMs.</blockquote>