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Message: <blockquote data-quote="N'raac" data-source="post: 6157693" data-attributes="member: 6681948">I would classify "the venom dripped on his skin and burned" as a D&D hit with a successful save - he skillfully avoided the main damage, got burned  by the venom and used up a bit of that skill/luck of avoiding the snake.  Or is it your contention that the PC's only hope of surviving that snake battle, over several rounds of combat, is to always be missed?  It seems unlikely for a serious threat of a monster to be that incapable of striking a heavily armored PC, much less a lughty armored (or loincloth clad) barbarian.If there is a medusa around the area, how have the people in the area survived this long?  They're pretty dangerous to a town full of commoners, I believe.I see the Knowledge Skill rules for creature identification, and the fact that the average peasant is not typically assumed to have 6 - 12 years of education not focused on their role in society.Ask a 17th century American Indian about giraffes and jellyfish.  I saw giraffes in the zoo - do you think there are zoos full of medusae and basilisks in the D&D world?  Long before the internet, we had public libraries and encyclopediae, which were made possible by the advent of the printing press.  I don't envision the typical D&D world being that educated, or that modern.  It's easy to forget that literacy could not simply be assumed, even going back a hundred years in North America.  It's so beyond us that Barbarians in D&D need to know how to read to satisfy our modern sensibilities.Which leaves the question of how common volcanos and extraplanar portals are.  If magmin (and salamanders, fire elementals, etc.) are just wandering around, I speculate any human(oid) settlement would be long since wiped out.Indeed.  Perhaps the better answer would have been a general guideline on monster rarity, and MM specifics as to the DC to identify a creature, and what facts are gained at each success level.  But that's a lot more work, so we take a shorthand assumption.  Much like we don't sever luck, skill, that 'sixth sense' and sheer physical toughness, nor do we separate dodging from shields and armor.  We make simplifying assumptions.This highlights another problem with the Knowledge conceit - if only it were a younger dragon, the DC would be lower and he would be easier to identify!  That said, from that distance, they see a large winged shape, and likely cannot differentiate colour.  Do they wait to see whether it might be a Gold or Red Dragon?  That dragons are color-coded for our convenience is every bit as much a conceit as the Knowledge DC's.Well, clearly if some half-drunk vagrant at the inn said it, it MUST be true!  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />It is quite similar to that player asking to use his Knowledge: Arcana to determine a potion's effects by taste.  Identifying magic items has a specific rule.  So does identifying creatures.  "What is that thing?" is an attempt to identify a creature, not "a question in your field".  If "that thing" is a 6 HD medusa, a roll of 16 is required, which makes the question a bit more than a basic question (of DC 15).  The only issue I take with that is that the medusa should not be more difficult to identify solely because it has taken two Fighter levels and gained 2 HD.There is nothing in the rules that says you cannot identify a potion by taste either.  However, I believe most of us assume the presence of a rule for identifying a potion should be taken to indicate that this is how identification of potions works in game.  Cite a rule that suggests your position is correct and I am happy to look at it.  The absence of a rule that says you cannot use a dozen other ways to identify a monster does not indicate that those approaches are part of the rules, rather than your own house rules.I think I would deliberately have animated statues carved to look like people terrified and running away or fighting, so they can surprise you from behind while you look for the petrification monster...This posits a world simply teeming with monsters.  How do all those low level commoners survive in such an environment?But he remains just as likely to save as he was at 100 hp, when clearly any hit was a mere scratch, deftly evaded.  While I don't want a death spiral, its desirability, or lack of same, is a matter of preference, and not an objective determination.  The likelihood of the physical trauma killing him has changed due to lower hp, but the likelihood of a solid bite injecting a lethal toxin has not changed at all - espite the fact that our Hero is no longer so spry and able to evade those lethal fangs.</blockquote>

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