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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Charlaquin" data-source="post: 8058548" data-attributes="member: 6779196">The character can’t know whatever the player wants them to, because the player can’t know anything about the game world for certain until they have experienced it directly. You might think you know that trolls regenerate and taking damage from fire or acid stops that from happening, but maybe they don’t in this world, or maybe most of them do, but this particular troll doesn’t. You might think you know that Valindra Shadowmantle is an infamous lich, but the DM might have just thought the name sounded cool and used it for a completely different character. You can choose to act on what you think you know, but doing so runs the risk that you are mistaken. You might attack a troll with fire only to realize that in this world, trolls are healed by fire. You might kill Valindra Shadowmantle only to learn that she was a perfectly normal, innocent elf woman. Or, you could instead declare an action that draws on your character’s memory to see if you know any weaknesses trolls have or if you recognize the name Valindra Shadowmantle. And the DM might say you know these things, or they might say you don’t know them, or they might decide that it’s uncertain. The point of Intelligence checks is to give the DM a way to resolve uncertainty in the lattermost case.</blockquote>