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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Noumenon" data-source="post: 5066318" data-attributes="member: 70102">The benefit of this question is that your players can say "Remember that time we fought the dretches" without breaking character.  It's better to tell them the name than have them talking about "those oozy demon things" or "the booger monsters" all adventure.  I tell players the name and creature type if they hit a Knowledge DC of 15 + the CR. (Hit dice do increase too fast.)There's nothing intrinsically wrong with knowledge checks.  Look at games like Final Fantasy X, where you can scan a monster and learn every last thing about its vulnerabilities and immunities.  That adds to the game by letting you intelligently plan a strategy.  For one thing, you can tell whether your spells that target specific creature types like "animal" will work.Consider the alternatives:1) Make the players hit the monster with their fire weapons, their silver weapons, their holy weapons, their cold iron weapons, until they find one that works.  Then the same on the next monster.  Then their character dies and their next character has to go through the same discovery process, only it's even less fun because not only do they get to be ineffective for rounds and rounds, they're just pretending to discover things they already know.2) Have the characters always asking you, "Does my character know that werewolves hate silver?" and then having to pretend that he doesn't.Just be prepared for the knowledge checks ahead of time so you can rattle off the information.  It's too bad the 3.5 MM didn't have Knowledge DCs included like the 4E MM.  Here's what I reveal:Note how the stuff that really makes a monster mysterious and challenging is a very hard DC, while the stuff PCs need to know to fight effectively is lower (still high enough to reward asking NPCs for help, though).That's okay, as long as you tell them "You think you've heard of this monster before, but this one seems taller, more resilient than a normal member of its kind."  Then the fiendish spell resistance won't come as such a surprise.</blockquote>

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