What skill best covers the availity to do research?

[Altalazar]

What field?

If it's going to have a significant in-game effect, it's probably not going to be "small" in the sense of "trivial" or "easy to find". "Small" in the sense of "obscure", possibly.

Zero, because computational statistics as a field of study did not exist in the dark ages. Your point is?

Have you?

Thank you.

Ah yes, that interesting place where people look for information on elven civilisations in a dark age library.

Because without the requisite level of knowledge, you are not going to have a clue where to start looking. Not until you ask someone for directions, that is, which is basically what I was saying. Of course, most gamers, being guys, will absolutely refuse to ask for directions, this being against the guy code of conduct.

Now then, since you appear to have something against applied research, tell me where to find information on the theory of maximum-likelihood estimators, especially in the context of generalized linear models.

Legal field. Yes, I'm an evil entity known as an Attorney. (Alignment restricted to LE).

I have nothing against applied research, I just think that is not what the knowledge skills are primarily designed to represent and I don't think it is the sort of question this thread was intended to answer.

And as I stated rather verbosely earlier in the thread, I think a general research skill would be one that allows you to have a starting place to look. You don't know elvish history, but you DO know a guy who has a library with a lot of elvish history books in it. You go there and find references to yet OTHER elvish history books that this guy doesn't have, but then this guy tells you of a friend of his that might, and so on. Your research skill represents your knowledge of the locations of libraries and their contents, and perhaps some contacts that can lead to others. In medieval times, there weren't lending libraries - most all were private collections. So to research you need to go from one to another, compiling both a list of books to look for and also a list of locations where particular copies of books can be found. You don't need to know thermodynamics to know that there is a book called 'Everything you wanted to know about thermodynamics but were afraid to ask?' and that Throm Goodfellow has it in his library.

Oh, and my point about the books on your favorite, albeit limited, example of subject matter is that there are far fewer books on complicated topics like what you mention in a D&D world - so if you found a book on statistics, read it in an afternoon, you probably will have the entire sum knowledge of statistics in that world at your fingertips. There aren't thousands of academic papers to study, there aren't hundreds of books on the topic - it isn't that well developed. Probably the only topic that is is magic, and that is a whole different animal.

Oh, and yes, I have studied elven history in my legal research - with relation to various lawsuits by and against TSR in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Fascinating reading, by the way...

 

[hong]

I have nothing against applied research, I just think that is not what the knowledge skills are primarily designed to represent and I don't think it is the sort of question this thread was intended to answer.

The examples posted were actually mostly theoretical, just theory in an "applied" setting.

And as I stated rather verbosely earlier in the thread, I think a general research skill would be one that allows you to have a starting place to look. You don't know elvish history, but you DO know a guy who has a library with a lot of elvish history books in it.

And, most likely, a whole lot of other books in it. Now your task is to find the books you're interested in.

Oh, and my point about the books on your favorite, albeit limited, example of subject matter is that there are far fewer books on complicated topics like what you mention in a D&D world - so if you found a book on statistics, read it in an afternoon, you probably will have the entire sum knowledge of statistics in that world at your fingertips.

First, nothing can be taken for granted in a D&D world. Candlekeep in FR, for instance, is supposed to have huge stacks of books, taking up several floors of storage. Second, if there are far fewer books, then it's also likely that they're not all going to be in one place at one time. The problem then becomes one of finding where these books are, and if you do that by talking to people, that's an application of Gather Information.

There aren't thousands of academic papers to study, there aren't hundreds of books on the topic - it isn't that well developed.

There well might be.

Probably the only topic that is is magic, and that is a whole different animal.

Why?

 

[Altalazar]

And, most likely, a whole lot of other books in it. Now your task is to find the books you're interested in.

In Medieval times, even a huge library did not have that many books. Something like Candle Keep would be a very rare exception.

As I indicated earlier in the thread, there is no card catalog, so how books are organized varies rather wildly.

And what you said just reinforces my view that research should be a separate skill from knowledge skills.

Tell me, how does your knowledge(statistical dynamics) help you locate a book in a disorganized library? Answer: it doesn't.

A research skill, though, incorporating everything I listed above would, however, work quite nicely. Perhaps you'd know that stats books from a certain elf were all created in an area that books are of a certain standard size or from a certain sort of material, so all you have to do is look for blue-spined bat-leather books, greatly reducing your search time. And so on.

Magic is different because there are special rules for magical research, item creation, etc. But a topic like what makes the best power-component for acid protection items, that might be something for regular research.



And if we keep this exchange up, we'll use up all of the ENWorld disc space...
... and the question will be, a year from now, what skill is required to find this thread again...

 

[MerakSpielman]

I allow characters a circumstance bonus to their knowledge rolls when in a library with a section on that subject. Example: The characters visit the Dwarven Library of Archetecure and Building Big Impressive Things. Since this is a large, comprehensive library, I allow them to get a +10 circumstance bonus to all Knowledge (Engineering) checks made in the library.

 

[heirodule]

Gather Infromation, but make it based on the Int modifier instead of Charisma. And give a circumstance bonus for 5 ranks in the approporiate knowledge.