D&D 5E Too many knowledge skills.

[Steely_Dan]

Well it looks like skills are going to seriously change, not tied to specific ability scores, and maybe narrower.

 

[Greg K]

Do we really need Forbidden, Geographical, Heraldic, Historical, Local, Magical, Natural, Planar, Religious, Societal, Underdark, and Undead Lore as separate skills?

As far I am concerned, yes. I also want Demon/Devil Lore, Dragon Lore, Fey Lore,Spirit Lore. I would, however, rename Societal Lore to Cultures and Heraldric Lore to Noble Lore (or something similar).
YMMV

 

[Mishihari Lord]

Do we really need Forbidden, Geographical, Heraldic, Historical, Local, Magical, Natural, Planar, Religious, Societal, Underdark, and Undead Lore as separate skills?

Yes, and that list is too short. I definitely prefer specific knowledge skills.

Knowledge skills are tough to do right. How do you make one of equal value to actually being able to do something? Personally, I think they should be siloed, with each character getting X skill points for class, Y for intelligence, and Z per level.

Another challenge is making the skills of equivalent value. In an undead heavy campaign, the value of undead lore is going to be much greater than the value of heraldry no matter what you do. I'd prefer a finer system where you get a certain number of points, and then for example 1 skill in undead lore costs 4 points, while heraldry costs 1. This also gives DMs fine control over how available different types of lore are in their campaign.

One nice thing about siloing knowledge skills is that it makes room for a loremaster class. Or possibly a subclass of bard. You could have bard subclasses of loremaster, diplomat, and performer.

 

[pemerton]

Do we really need Forbidden, Geographical, Heraldic, Historical, Local, Magical, Natural, Planar, Religious, Societal, Underdark, and Undead Lore as separate skills

No.

Here's my take on list reduction:

* Historical and Heraldic Lore merge into something like 4e's History skill;

* Societal and Local Lore are absorbed by Diplomacy, Streetwise and the above-mentioned History skill;

* Geographical and Natural Lore are absorbed by Survival (and perhaps Healing for herbalism);

* Magical and Planar Lore are merged;

* Religious and Undead Lore are merged either into the general Magic Lore, and/or into Forbidden Lore;

* Underdark Lore merged into Survival and/or Forbidden Lore.​

I love knowledge checks for plotline advancement, exploration, etc. but it really got old when players were calling for knowledge rolls at the beginning of every combat. I'm all for just tying them to class and background and just letting the DM pick, without rolling or combat implications, when a character should know something or not.

I'm not a big fan of this - it gives the GM complete control over the dispensing of information, whereas I like the idea that players can play sage-y types, and can engage situations in part by gaining information about those situations. (Exactly what the mechanics are for this is a further question.)

Knowledge skills are a mechanic for getting "clues" that may useful for the story, with some investment cost required*. There is no way in the world to make these skills work in a strongly regimented way. Better to recognize that their nature is to be vaguely defined, open-ended, and DM-controlled.

I don't really agree with this. I prefer skills, including Knowledge skills, to provide players with a tool to leverage the situation (in "3 pillars" terms, they facilitate players engaging the exploration pillar).

That's not to say that the GM can't also use them as a clue-dropping tool ("Who's got the highest Forbidden Lore bonus? OK, when you wake up in the morning you remember the most eerie of dreams . . . ") but I don't think that should be their sole or even their primary purpose.

Skills in general, rather than empowering players to do or know certain stuff, more often serve as a boundary for what they can't do and that's terrible.

The same thing is true of weapon proficiencies, though. For various reasons, we think it matters that a player engages ingame situations via a sword-wielding PC rather than an axe-wielding PC. The corresponding question, in relation to knowledge skills, is what (if any) distinctions do we think are worth drawing?

I think it's at least worth trying to capture the difference between a PC who engages situations via social skills/knowledge (Diplomacy, Streetwise etc - whether we run these together, or make them distinct, might depend on how important we think the difference is between a paladin's sociality and a rogue's sociality), via wilderness skills and survival, via traditional "book learning" (History skill or something similar) and via esoteric knowledge (Magic Lore, Arcana or something similar).

The distinction between ordinary Magic Lore and Forbidden Lore strikes me as less intrinsic to D&D play, but quite flavoursome and one feature of D&Dnext that I quite like and would be keen to see developed. (4e captures this difference in its gods - Ioun and Corellon vs Vecna and Tharizdun - but not in its skill system, making it hard to explain why every expert in Arcana or Religion doesn't know everything there is to know about Tharizdun and the Far Realm.)

I think distinctions more fine-grained than those I've drawn don't really capture anything of value to D&D as a genre (much like the excessive detail in AD&D polearms are unnecessary). And I could even see a case for eliminating my distinction between Historical Lore and Magical Lore and just merging them into a single Lore skill - so there would then be Social ability (Diplomacy and/or Streetwise), Survival (4e's Nature), Lore (4e's Arcana + History + Religion) and Forbidden Lore (the D&Dnext innovation that I want to preserve).

There's still the question of how the mechanics for these skills would work, of course.

 

[Li Shenron]

I don't really agree with this. I prefer skills, including Knowledge skills, to provide players with a tool to leverage the situation (in "3 pillars" terms, they facilitate players engaging the exploration pillar).

That's not to say that the GM can't also use them as a clue-dropping tool ("Who's got the highest Forbidden Lore bonus? OK, when you wake up in the morning you remember the most eerie of dreams . . . ") but I don't think that should be their sole or even their primary purpose.

Maybe I sounded too narrow about "clues to the story". They are in fact useful to get information about anything, e.g. magic item features, monsters strength and weaknesses, how to get to places and what to expect to find there, NPC's capabilities and motivations etc... but I was trying to be short.

And I didn't want to imply that only the DM can call for a Knowledge check, the players can actively ask for it too.

The main point of my post was however the second part where "DM-controlled" refers to defining which Knowledge subskills exist in the game, how to use them, what DCs are appropriate... And most importantly, "DM-controlled" is intended as "DM-and-players-controlled" vs "game-designers-dictated". I mean that they should be more in the hands of each gaming group.

At least this is what I believe would be the best when we're talking about core rules, but campaign settings sourcebooks can define Knowledge skills more strictly and more detailed. The reason here is that how knowledge/lore is accessible (how much, by how many people, how quickly, how detailed, how reliable...) is IMHO strongly setting-dependent.

 

[vagabundo]

It might be cool to have a point spend system similar to the Gumshoe system. Have a split similar to GUMSHOE's General/Investigation split. So we would different rules for exploration skills and knowledge skills. Maybe knowledge skills could have a point spend to get information.

I'd prefer an open ended knowledge skill system, but with the core "exploration" skills defined.

 

[Primitive Screwhead]

I prefer the WEG approach of having untrained based on an attribute, then training in a general skill, then gaining advanced skills.

If your Dc tables scale based on KMs types of knowledge, then it works great. WoTc only needs to publish the general skills with some ideas to what advanced skills could be under them.

Your general lore skill would cover everyday knowledge and could be broken down however the dm and player saw fit.

You could still use arcana for planar lore, as the fields are linked, but it would be a different expression of where the knowledge comes from.

Also bardic lore could be a chance to know anything based on poems, Edda, etc.. downside of this would be the dm role the check as the player shouldn't know how much truth is in those stories.

Sent from my Kindle Fire using Tapatalk 2

 

[edhel]

It might be cool to have a point spend system similar to the Gumshoe system. Have a split similar to GUMSHOE's General/Investigation split. So we would different rules for exploration skills and knowledge skills. Maybe knowledge skills could have a point spend to get information.

Lemme elaborate my thoughts on this. You don't need knowledge skills for the stuff your character is supposed to know based on his background. The herald knows the hairstyles and flags of his area, and personally I'd just let the player narrate/world-build as he sees fit when it comes to that stuff.

With more esoteric lore which requires specialized knowledge, I'd turn the knowledge skill bonus (no ability modifier, see below) into a resource. The player can use those to ask questions OR tell how things are based on what his character has read. If it's a good idea, I'd take it and run with it. You wouldn't have to spend points on trivial things like knowing what beers dwarfs likes.

Having even one point in Knowledge would thus mean you are somewhat learned in the subject (as it is in Gumshoe) and would make even low Knowledge skills/pools very useful (and fun! IMHO).

Refreshing the Knowledge pools could work however you like: a long rest, a day spent in the library, a week spent living in the city for Streetwise, a chat with a bard in the tavern, one point per day, whatever.

Optional rules:

You can spend points to identify objects, spells, and effects.

Ability modifier could work as general knowledge which you can spend instead of specific knowledge point. This is a bit fiddly but would reward having high Intelligence.

Reading a book e.g. on dragons would give a couple of points in Knowledge (Dragons) which would be single-use only.



What do you think?

 

[green slime]

The distinction between ordinary Magic Lore and Forbidden Lore strikes me as less intrinsic to D&D play, but quite flavoursome and one feature of D&Dnext that I quite like and would be keen to see developed. (4e captures this difference in its gods - Ioun and Corellon vs Vecna and Tharizdun - but not in its skill system, making it hard to explain why every expert in Arcana or Religion doesn't know everything there is to know about Tharizdun and the Far Realm.)

In 3e, that is actually not that difficult to explain.

1) the knowledge is so specific and unusual, that it requires its own set (i.e. you have to have invested skillpoints in Knowledge (Far Realms).
2) alternatively, you have to have such a high skill level in a generic Knowledge (such as Religion) to be bordering on Epic level.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Do we really need Forbidden, Geographical, Heraldic, Historical, Local, Magical, Natural, Planar, Religious, Societal, Underdark, and Undead Lore as separate skills?

No. There seems to be a mix of fields and specialities that makes no sense there.

There is nothing heraldic lore should give you that is not part of either historical or societal lore.

Forbidden Lore is not a thing. "I know about the forbidden and only the forbidden". Nope.

Geographic lore is not really a PC skill - either it's a form of Local knowledge, or ties in with history, society, or nature. All three of those lore skills have a significant geographic element.

Underdark? Right. The underdark is a place. What does Underdark tell you about the workings of the Underdark? Politics of Mezzobaranan? Layout of major cities? Flora and fauna?

Planar lore? See Underdark. These are just places - there is no fundamental difference. (In fact the Underdark makes more sense as a plane itself).

Underdark and Planar lore should both be handled by normal lore with a penalty for unfamiliarity.

Undead Lore? Why not Elven Lore? Or Human Lore? Those two races do far, far more and have a bigger diversity.

The valuable ones are Local Knowledge (which should be thrown in as a background), Natural Lore, Societal Lore, Magical Lore (which should basically cover "Fantasy Engineering"), Religious Lore (which should cover cosmology and "natural" undead), and History. You might even split up societal lore into subsets of history and diplomacy or streetwise.