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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Olaf the Stout" data-source="post: 6845085" data-attributes="member: 13703">Some of the rolls in my story aren’t Nat 20’s but they were 18’s and 19’s on very high skill checks, so I think they still fit the theme of this thread.3.5E Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil campaign.We’re near the end of the campaign with our PCs around level 13 or 14.I was playing a Wizard/Loremaster whose shtick was being a little obsessed with knowledge.  I had ranks in all the Knowledge skills but, in particular, my Knowledge: Arcana and Knowledge: The Planes skills were out the wazoo.  I think I had a base check of +28 for Knowledge: Arcana and +26 for Knowledge: The Planes due to a combination of max ranks, high Int, feats, class abilities and magic items.  On top of that, I had a skill trick (Collector of Stories) which gave me +5 to Knowledge checks to help identify whatever we’re up against.We have a fight vs 2 Iron Golems and some cultists, with 1 cultist clearly the leader.  The cultists aren’t much of a threat, but as soon as I see the Iron Golems I know (from a meta-game perspective) that we could be in trouble because they are basically immune to magic and no one in the party has adamantine weapons, so our ability to hurt them is pretty limited.I rolled to see what I know about Iron Golems and got an 18, making for a total of 51!Amongst a heap of other mechanical things such as rough AC, hit points, abilities, etc., the DM tells that the Iron Golems can be controlled and these two appear to be controlled by the cultist leader, but that I think it is because of his robes, more than anything else.A few rounds later the cultist leader and all the cultists are dead, but the Iron Golems are hitting us with almost every attack they make, even when rolling single digits, and are doing a fair amount of damage with every hit.  I spend 2 rounds grabbing the robes off the cultist leader, putting them on myself and then commanding the Iron Golems to stop attacking (I think I said something like, “By the Eye of Tharizdun, I command you to stop attacking!”).DM asks me to roll a Knowledge: Arcana check to see if I can figure out the “right” way to command them.  I roll a 19, making for a check of 47 (didn’t get the +5 for Collector of Stories this time) and the Iron Golems stop in their tracks.  I then command them to return to their places, which they do.  They then stand there, utterly defenceless while the Barbarian spends a few minutes turning them into scrap metal! <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" />Final fight of the campaign versus Prince Imix.  I make a Knowledge: The Planes check to find out exactly what we’re up against.  Nat 20!  So I had a check of 51 to know about Prince Imix, what his strengths and weaknesses were, etc.  Given it was the last fight of the campaign, the DM offered me the book with his stat block and said, “Here, look at whatever you want!”It was still a very tough fight, but at least we didn’t waste actions doing things that would have had no effect on him.Who knew that simple Knowledge skill could be of such assistance.</blockquote>

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