PCs knowing about monsters in the MM, MMII, MMIII and FF

[Testament]

For example, in Rokugan, I don't think the average peasant is going to know squat about Shadowlands creatures, except that they are bad and scary.

Unless they're a Crab. Then again, there's two kinds of Crab out there, the ones on the wall, and the ones who are getting ready to go on the wall .

In seriousness though, in the average D&D setting, a peasant will probably recognise the basic monstrous humanoids, they're common enough that stories get around.

Dragons are legendary enough that people will recognise one, and possibly know what it breathes when it wants stuff dead.

Other than that, and a handful of other monsters (Beholders, Gargoyles, Elementals) that have large enough reputations, everything else is a "monster" or a "demon" to Joe Dirt. That's where knowledge skills come into play.

 

[wedgeski]

We've started using the appropriate Knowledge checks more extensively in recent sessions and it's enriched the game quite nicely. The only dificulty is in knowing which piece of information they get for their trouble.

As for in-game vs. player knowledge, as a DM you can't really enforce it. The players have to want to roleplay to that level. The solution is not to throw the same old monsters at them...

 

[Steverooo]

The solution is not to throw the same old monsters at them...

Good advice! Here's more: Make up some uniques, use occasional templates (an Abyssal Troll is immune to fire, for example), and occasionally do something different... such as running PCs into "Stone Trolls" which are as big and strong as the usual ones, but grey, hard as stone, immune to fire, take half damage from acid, and are turned to stone by sunlight... Imagine players' PCs hurling Alchemists' Fire at the Stone Trolls, and then the GM telling them "The troll laughs, as it wipes off the Alchemists' Fire as though it were mere sweat, then it rushes you..."

 

[Gez]

I was wondering, what percentage of the monsters in those books would a starting adventurer realistically be familiar with?

Given that I have something like a dozen bestiaries at my command (MM1, MOF, MM2, FF, TOH, TOH2, CC1, CC2, CC3, Strange Lands, Oriental Adventures, Psionics Handbook...), the only answer I can give is: very low. For a start, they have no reasons to know of any monster that does not exist IMC, so at most they'll know, what 30% of the books?

Besides, it depends on where they grew up. As the heroes IMC are travelling southward on a quest, they arrived in a forest where they can hear the cries of various sorts of monkeys. Just mundane monkeys and apes, animals relegated to the appendix of the MM and denied pictures or different stats for each species, contrarily to say, elves.

These creatures were totally unknown to them.

 

[Brother MacLaren]

You can also mix and match the abilities and appearances. Maybe the regenerating beast looks like an ogre (but has troll stats), and the thing that looks like a troll has some kind of DR and ogre stats. The six-legged panther with tentacles could have a lesser spell turning ability instead of displacement, and rust monsters could look like giant anteaters (i.e. the disenchanter). It's really not too much work.

Our DM (MarauderX) threw at us what looked like a marilith (at level 5!) but had a different set of abilities. Cast several spells per round with the various sets of hands, but didn't seem to have the AC, DR, or SLA of a demon. Still, scared the heck out of us players who knew what a marilith was. Pretty good idea, really.

 

[JoeGKushner]

For me, it depends on a few things.

Campaign Setting. It may sound off the wall, but Forgotten Realms and Greyhawk commoners probably know more about monsters than most people. Adventurers are common in both settings. If I was running a campaign against trolls using a lot of 3rd party material, I'd say that the players would know about most of the troll types. Not their specific strengths or weaknesses, but enough to tell a stone troll from a forest troll for example.

Knowledge Base: tied into campaign setting. Are you playing D&D or are you using the D&D engine to run some emulation of the middle ages? D&D assumes everyone reads and writes and that communication is much greater between areas than it actually was. Middle ages people rarely leave their farms and are ignorant and thus should know only about what they have directly encountered with everything else being rumors.

Character's Skills: To encourage characters to take knowledge skills, I have no problem giving them higher DC checks for things that may be a bit vauge. "Give me a Noblity Check, DC 20. Yeah, you remember hearing about half-giants being conned out of their mercenary payment from one of the nobles here and that despite their non-giant size, they managed to wield weapons large enough to take down a standard giant."

 

[Cheiromancer]

In fact, that is one of the very reasons that the Knowledge skills were further codified in 3.5e

"In many cases, you can use this skill to identify monsters and their special powers or vulnerabilities. In general, the DC of such a check equals 10 + the monster’s HD. A successful check allows you to remember a bit of useful information about that monster. For every 5 points by which your check result exceeds the DC, you recall another piece of useful information." - SRD

Cheers!

This rule seems to ignore the fact that the biggest, baddest monsters will also be the most famous (like dragons); people are more likely to have heard at least a little bit about them. Smaller, rarer creatures are more likely to be unknown, even if the HD is smaller.

Low CR and HD monsters are also more likely to be generic, vanilla monsters with no special powers or vulnerabilities. How many useful pieces of information can you get about an orc?

I don't like this rule, but unfortunately I have nothing better to replace it with.

 

[Arnwyn]

Just don't fall into the trap of thinking that "it's a type of animal" qualifies as useful information unless you've got someone who has the spells to take advantage of it.

Meh. The knowledge gained is irrelevant to the abilities that the characters have chosen, IMO.

 

[Gez]

This rule seems to ignore the fact that the biggest, baddest monsters will also be the most famous (like dragons); people are more likely to have heard at least a little bit about them. Smaller, rarer creatures are more likely to be unknown, even if the HD is smaller.

I fully agree, that's what bother me with the rules as written as well.

If the creature statblock wasn't already so cluttered, I would have said it needs two more entries: Frequency (unique, rare, common, etc.) and fame (legendary, famous, obscure, unknown, etc.).

Plus the old 2e "diet" entry to know what the creature need to live.

 

[johnnype]

This is a bit of a tangent but there is one easy solution to the party that knows all of the creatures on the various MM's by heart and that is Green Ronin's recently released Advanced Bestiary. Rather than another list of monsters the book presents dozens of templates that a DM can overlay any existing monster. Many (most?) of the templates change the monsters dramatically. Enought to completely confound any jaded gamer. The book is among my favorite hardbacks in existance and I own most of those worth owning. Worth every penny. Best of all it's 3.5 compatible.