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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Elder-Basilisk" data-source="post: 1425247" data-attributes="member: 3146">I can see your point there but that's not a problem unique to my approach. On the other hand, since the creatures attack en masse that seems to imply there's a lot of them so maybe it's reasonable that anyone who knows about the negative energy plane knows about them.Really the difficulty is that tracking the DC of the knowledge check with monster HD doesn't always work. If elves vanished over 1000 years ago in your campaign, they're still DC 11. If beholders rule the cities of your campaign, they're still a fairly high DC. (And they're still Knowledge Dungeoneering instead of Knowledge (Local)). Assigning an ad-hoc knowledge DC modifier or a circumstance bonus to the roll for each race might be a way of bringing the results more in line with what you'd expect. (And that seems to be essentially what you're doing) But that circumvents the system rather than using it.Regardless of the IC/OoC knowledge question, I think this is reasonable. Every world and every culture has sets of stories similar to the Alladin story. OTOH, DC 25 for the gaseous clouds seems unreasonably high for their just being DM created (what this has to do with DC is beyond me) invisible (again, it doesn't seem reasonable to increase the invisible stalker or pixie DC because they're invisible) and on the negative energy plane (why is that more difficult than any other plane). Maybe they're never before encountered creatures but that would make them just as difficult to analyze if they were humanoid yak folk from the mountains yonder on the prime material plane.Seems reasonable.What about this? Do you let players ask for specific bits of information? For instance, the party finds itself face to face with a group of Ossyluths and a Hamatula. The wizard looks at them and asks, "Do I know how strong these guys' spell resistance is? Knowledge Planes DC 25." Personally, I think that's a perfectly reasonable way of using the knowledge skills. If he made the DC, I'd be willing to tell him whether "you know that less experienced wizards have difficulty effecting them with spells but you think that your skill will overcome them three times out of four" or "These are the kind of creatures your master warned you about when he advised you to steady how to penetrate spell resistance; since you ignored him, you think you'd be lucky to effect the spiky one with one spell out of three."</blockquote>

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