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ShortQuests -- individual adventure modules! An all-new collection of digest-sized D&D adventures designed to plug in to your game.

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Elder-Basilisk" data-source="post: 1164991" data-attributes="member: 3146">Gather info is supposed to be used for things that could be commonly known. So, if the villains want to find out where the PCs were staying, they might use gather information. If they want to find out where the PCs buy their food that's gather info.Now, if gather info is being used against the thieves' guild, their being secretive will increase the DC. After all, commonly known info is easy, stuff that most people don't know is rare. But that's probably not enough for the guild. They know that, given enough time, people will find out about them. So they employ measures:1. Intimidation. People know that ratting on the thieves' guild is a good way to wind up face down in the harbor. Gather info may find you who knows the information but it doesn't guarantee that he'll be willing to share (at least the way I'd run it). Convincing someone to tell you of the guild would require a diplomacy/bluff check to convince them that either you aren't planning on harming the guild so there won't be retribution or that helping you is the right thing to do or that you can and will protect him. (Protecting him would probably require spending resources too).2. Intimidation. Gather info is a pretty public skill. You need to talk to lots of people to find who you're looking for. And if you're asking questions you shouldn't be asking, it wouldn't be unreasonable for the goon squad to show up and tell you to quit asking so many questions. If you want to avoid tipping off the goon squad, you can disguise yourself (so they won't know that the same guy was asking questions yesterday) or attempt to ask the questions subtly so that people who overhear don't know what you're talking about (the innuendo version of bluff) or you can be very careful about who you ask and when/where you ask them. (Probably entails a penalty to the gather info roll and a sense motive roll to figure out which informants might be trustworthy).3. Proceedure. So the investigator finds how to meet the thieves' guild. Is it in guild HQ? Of course not. You contact them by asking for a shaken witches brew with a manticore tailspike at the Green Goblin pub and then walking out to cutthroat alley behind Butcher's row where the guild will contact you. (And a dozen guildmen with crossbows will be watching from the rooftops). Gather info generally gets you that meeting not the location of guild HQ.4. A secret known to more than two people isn't a secret and a secret known to only two people is more secure if one of them is dead or mute. A lot of the guild's activities are known only to insiders. They keep slaves to do cleanup but they cut their tongues out so that they can't tell anyone anything they hear. Maybe they somehow deafen them too and communicate with them by sign language. Or maybe they use undead (skeletons--zombies are too messy and smelly) to do their serving. Gather info won't find you that kind of information (although it might give you clues as to who does know it and where they might spend their gold so that you can track them down and interrogate them).</blockquote>

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