Monster Knowledge

[ValarX]

How many times have you wanted to study monsters or perhaps have had a PC ask you for a related skill? Here's an alternative to give players allowing them to know things about particular monsters that they otherwise shouldn't know.

Knowledge (Int; Trained Only)
Charaters must select a group of enemies that they are knowledgable about. Use the favored enemies table (PHB pg. 45) as the list of enemy types. The character has then studied and obtained a level of knowledge on those particular creatures. This knowledge can include specific weaknesses of the creature, such as using fire or acid versus a troll.

Check: For simple resolution, any creature of a CR of equal or lesser value to the character's knowledge skill is known by the character. For randomization this check can be (10 + CR of creature) and the character performs a normal skill roll.
Retry: Yes, but only after the character has increased the ranks in this skill.

(Note: although this gives the character information about the creature, it does not give them the skill and attack bonuses that a ranger gets.)

 

[Staffan]

I definitely recall seeing somewhere that 3.5e would be spreading monster knowledge around the already existing knowledge skills - for example, Knowledge (Nature) would deal with animals, vermin and plants, Knowledge (planes) with outsiders, Knowledge (dungeoneering) with aberrations and some other stuff, and so on.

 

[Geron Raveneye]

Hmmm...

...in that context, I still like the Creature Lore rules from the Monsternomicon

 

[der_kluge]

I have a house rule that says that you can take knowledge <humanoids> or knowledge <dragons> and then you know stuff about that specifici categories, with DCs increasing based on how obscure the knowledge is.

 

[Arc]

The game I'm in uses Knowledge(Monsters) as the relevant skill. It's got really high dcs, and if it works, the response is usually something like 'You remember ancient kobold lore speaking of a creature that....' Dunno if it's altogether plausable, but it definitely saves time.