Monster Knowledge Check House rule

[Shin Okada]

One of my friend who will run Revenge of the Giants campaign has an opinion that the current rule remove the mystery from the D&D as most of the time someone in the party ascertain at least the powers of every monsters they meet.

Also, while we are tempted to use passive checks for monster knowledge to speed up the games, it will encourage players to make many of their skill modifiers into multiple of 5. Because, say, having +11 to +14 is equal to having +10 when making a monster knowledge check.

So, I am trying to solve those 2 problems by somewhat tweaking DCs of monster knowledge checks.

Basically, the formula is,

To know one's name ... DC 13 + (it's level/2)
To know one's powers ... DC 18 + (it's level/2)
resist/vulnerability ... DC 23 + (it's level/2)

Fractions are rounded down, then subtract/add the following modifiers

Minion ... -2
Standard ... +0
Elite ... +2
Solo ... +5

Basically, standard monsters of the middle of each tier (4-5, 14-15, 24-15) has the same DC as per the PHB rule.
It will become much easier to know the information of weaker monsters. And it will become harder to ascertain what a higher level elite or solo can do.

The result should be as like this,

http://asobinin.org/pages/4ehouserules/MonsterKnowledgeE.pdf

I am assuming that to use the following rule.

# Basically, Monster Knowledge Checks are done as passive checks (take 10)
# Each PC can spend a minor action to actively make a Monster Knowledge Check, once per 1 type of monster. He cannot make a retry until his check modifier increases.

How do you guys and ladies think about this house rule?

 

[Aloïsius]

I don't like any HD/level based monster knowledge check.

Why ? Because it means this :

Player 1 : "OMG ! What is this colossal red thing ? It looks like a giant reptile with wings and it breath fire !"
Player 2 : "I don't know, the DC to identify this as a red dragon is astronomical ! If only it was smaller..."

Or this.

"huh ? What is this tiny strange beast with tentacles and fairy wings ?"
"oh, that... easy ! It's a very rare breed of far realm critters, who feed on bubble-soap. They have a lot of other strange abilities, but I won't waste my time explaining them because they are level 1 minions anyway".