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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ahnehnois" data-source="post: 6159064" data-attributes="member: 17106">To a great extent, yes. We've all heard stories of fantasy and monsters, and toddlers are commonly told such stories at bedtime, and have been throughout history. And those stories are about stuff we made up. If there were real monsters, they would be even more ingrained in culture than our fantastical ones are.Most children in most parts of the world have some notion of what a dragon is, what a fairy is, what a ghost is. I find it not much of a stretch to think that a D&D child (let alone an adventurer) knows more.I have a model?If anything, my model for knowledge checks is "DM sets DC based on context". That suggests that people know a great deal about creatures that live in their area, that travelers and cosmopolitans know something about a lot of creatures, and that only academics know about creatures that are actually rare or do not live nearby.Taking 10 on a Knowledge check, while not explicitly forbidden by the rules, seems pretty dubious to me. And you definitely can't do it in combat, which is usually when you're identifying monsters.Research is yet another topic that the existing 3.5 Knowledge rules don't explicitly handle. CoC d20 has a separate skill for it.There sure are a lot of really basic flaws in this system.The whole "untrained characters can't make checks of higher than DC 10" is another one.No. It means than in a d20 game, when people roll poorly, bad things can happen. You could just as easily be killed by a bunch of orcs rolling 20's.First off, one weak fort NPC that they weren't really allied with died IIRC (and was raised), and the PCs were forming a wall preventing the undead from attacking a bunch on noncombatant NPCs. Second, I would never use a bodak or anything else out of the book straight up; this one was against a 6th (I think) level party, was advanced and had a template. It was chucking DC 20 saves at them and had an AC of 31, and and had 10 lesser undead creatures assisting it. Third, I don't remember giving any advice to bodaks, but yes it did target weaker characters and otherwise do sensible things.And you know what, without them bothering to even avert their eyes, they still handled it fine. If someone had rolled low and died, the rest of them would have backed off and been more careful, and even though I restrict resurrection, it was an option for them. At the end of the day, this advanced bodak with a template, extra HD, better ability scores, magic items, allies, and the element of surprise was a moderately challenging and moderately exciting battle for a party of three level 6 PCs. It's not gamebreaking, or even eyebrow raising. It's just a monster from the first MM, a classic no less.</blockquote>

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