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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Elder-Basilisk" data-source="post: 2079470" data-attributes="member: 3146">And this is the kind of thing that seems silly to me. IRL, I doubt that very many of us have put a lot of effort into learning about vampires--and since there aren't really any such things, stories can diverge more widely than stories about things that really exist can--but I think it's pretty common knowledge that a stake through the heart will kill a vampire, that sunlight kills them, and that they are supposed to recoil from garlic and crosses. That doesn't cover the full gamut of things that can be done to a vampire in D&D (immersed under running water, head cut off and mouth filled with holy wafers, etc), but it's a fair amount of knowledge. And that from people who aren't particularly studied about vampires in a world where they don't really exist.In a world where vampires did exist, I would expect that knowledge to be at least as widely disseminated as it is in the real world not available only to the select few with knowledge: religion ranks.The same is true of werewolves, etc. IRL, it's pretty common knowledge that you hunt werewolves with silver bullets and that they wolf out under the light of a full moon. Since there aren't any real werewolves, I would expect that it would be even more common knowledge in a D&D world. Similarly, most people know that looking at Medusa would turn you to stone even though that's a greek myth from thousands of years ago that even many of the greeks didn't believe in.In fact, I would expect a lot of basic knowledge about monsters to be common:Fey: Fear cold iron. Tend to use a lot of enchantment effects. Chaotic and untrustworthy.Evil outsiders: Stories conflict--sometimes they're vulnerable to silver, sometimes to cold iron. However, Holy weapons almost always do the trick and they almost always shrug off spells like water. They walk through fire without being harmed (well, duh, they come from hell where it's always hot and flamey). Holy water hurts them too. [Confusion stems from the fact that it's somewhat difficult for a layman to tell a demon from a devil].Undead: They fear the power of the gods and have no particularly vulnerable parts. They are untouched by many things that harm the living--poison, etc. Characters with the ability to heal probably know that their positive energy hurts the undead just like it heals the living too. And holy water burns them. Incorporeal undead would also be known to be able to walk through walls and floors, etc.Dragons: I imagine in a D&D world, it would be common knowledge that there are lots of different kinds and that different colored ones breathe different things. Which ones breathe what would probably not be especially common knowledge (DC 10 maybe) unless there was a dragon in the neighborhood. In that case, people would know about that kind of dragon so, in Greyhawk, the inhabitants of the southern theocracy of the Pale and of northern Nyrond would know that green dragons breathe acid because they've heard stories of the Green Death who lives in the Gamboge.Of course, if you're running some kind of non-standard D&D where there have been no unnatural monsters seen for thousands of years, some of this might not be common knowledge. Even then, however, some of it probably would be. After all, a fair amount of it is common knowledge in the real world where we don't believe in supernatural monsters either and they have never had the kind of real existence that would act as a control on the imaginations of authors.</blockquote>

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