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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Altalazar" data-source="post: 1233719" data-attributes="member: 939">Ok, now that's just silly.  The whole point of libraries is for the gathering of knowledge that ISN'T just in someone's head.  The whole point of a knowledge skill is the ability to come up with an appropriate answer to a related question WITHOUT having to go to the library - the library, as it were, is in your head.Saying that you can't go to the library and look up something specific you need an answer about because you don't have the skill point borders on the ridiculous, IMO.  Of course, once we go too far with this, we reach the meta-gaming barrier - for instance, say you play a long running campaign where though the course of it, you find clues, pieces of history books, diaries, and so forth in adventures that piece together a history of the land you are in and of a particular person in it, who is an NPC you are seeking.  In the abstract, you could say that everyone in the group now has the equivalent of knowledge(history) about that specific thing - but the thing is, the players know it all in their head, over the course of gathering it themselves.  Do they have to spend skill points to be able to use that information and put it all together in-game?  I'd think the obvious answer is no.  It is important to separate what the players know from what the characters know, but if it is something the players learned in-game through playing that character, there is no need for such a separation.  The knowledge skills are for checks for NEW knowledge, never before encountered in-game, but on a related topic.  They are not and cannot be meant to simulate everything a character already knows - especially that which was learned while playing.  I see going to a library and doing research as in-game learning of knowledge that should not have anything to do with points spent on a knowledge skill, except perhaps as a bonus to the research speed / success.</blockquote>

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