D&D General When Was it Decided Fighters Should Suck at Everything but Combat?

[Micah Sweet]

I think 'roll to see if you know something' is itself poor design.

'Everyone has at least a 5% chance to know anything' is also bad design. Every player rolling just in hope of getting a 20 (but probably nothing happens) is bad design. Players not knowing what their characters have knowledge of is bad design. The barbarian randomly knowing a point about the history of magic that neither the wizard or the bard knew is bad design.

Stuff like that should IMO be proficiency-gated.

 

[Bill Zebub]

Stuff like that should IMO be proficiency-gated.

This is a major thread digression (or will be if y'all take the bait) but I don't believe in gating knowledge/information behind any kind of skill check. I don't think that ever makes the game better in any way.

Most of the time I just give them information if they ask, usually picking the character most likely to know. ("Can I tell what the runes say?")

And sometimes they have to work for it, in the same sorts of ways they'd have to work to recover a treasure, with more valuable information/treasure requiring more work (and danger).