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Message: <blockquote data-quote="N'raac" data-source="post: 6159126" data-attributes="member: 6681948">Would they?  I see very few bedtime stories about slave ownership, sweatshop labour, serial killers and crooked politicians.  The real world is largely off limits when dealing with children.  And the fact is that those bedtime stories often dealt with creatures that the teller believed to be real.  If we got it that wrong when we don't have a host of real monsters in our world, why would the "real monsters" world have greater accuracy?So write a background that males you a well-travelled cosmopolitan academic - that way, you get the best skills.  To a large extent, I find the 3rd Ed skill system was an attempt to codify use of character resources (skill points, feats) to be knowledgeable, persuasive, etc. and not leave this to who can best leverage their background and their personal abilities as a player, rather than the abilities of their character.I thought we saw the monster, teleported away then did all our homework and spell load changing.  Now that I'm safe at home, let's consider what that creature was.CoC has always been a very research-focused game, so it needed a separate skill.  It's been there since its Chaosium days.Much like hit points, we allow playability to override realism or even verisimilitude.  That's hardly new.You want knowledge beyond that, pay for the skill.  Again, character resources dictate character abilities.  I have no desire to see the Wizard with no ranks be more knowledgeable of religion than the Cleric, or beat out the Ranger re Nature.  Not even at 1st level!Precisely.  Just as your example means that, when people get lucky, SoD becomes less challenging.Not sure how the raising of an NPC of negligible consequence fits with resurrection being restricted (doesn't Raise Dead fail on death effects?).  If I had a death gaze and were inclined to engage in combat, I'd be targeting the fellows most effectively cutting down my lesser undead minions to prevent them getting to me - and getting out of Dodge if it looked like they were getting through.  But then, Bodaks have INT 6 - so they should be no more tactically savvy than, say a 7 INT dump fighter.And I suppose if you have L6 characters powered up to the point where DC 20 saves and hitting AC 31 is simply routine, and the resources to raise (resurrect?) an NPC are easy enough to come by that we'll use them on an NPC we have no real alliance with, then this creature isn't that big a deal.  Let's add in a monster with SoD at a DC that is actually as challenging as a 15 would be for a typical L8 character and let it fight for a few rounds.I also find it odd your initial arguments was that it's all about learning about the enemy, but now the enemy isn't really a threat anyway.SoD seems to me a relation of the old "pull a random level on an artifact and see if your character gets powered up or disintegrated" style of play suggested by many old 1e artifacts.  "Roll a die - oh, a 1, make a new character" doesn't strike me as a great game mechanic.</blockquote>

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