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

[cbwjm]

My own feeling is that both are, effectively, "information spontaneously appearing in your head" if you did not already know the character knew this information previously for some reason, so it strikes me as this just being different people being irritable about different, but still flawed, processes.

Yeah, but you have to differentiate information appearing in your head and information appearing in you character's head. The character sheet can't model everything the character can know and I rather think that either way, the info isn't spontaneously appearing in your character's head, it's being remembered through a trigger, such as seeing some ancient script on a wall, or seeing a triple headed hydra and recalling something about fire.

I should note that I have often said to my players, because you're (character) is from this region, you know XYZ. It works well.

 

[soviet]

players just being able to decide if their character knows a thing is IMO more closer to 'information spontaneously appearing in your head' than a neutral dice check influenced by your skill bonuses to decide if you know it.

'I would know about that because of my time at the academy studying evocations' and 'I wouldn't know anything about elf-magic'

vs.

'Oh I guess I don't know as much about my masters subject as I thought, wtf' and '"Hurr, I guess I must have overheard some wizards talking about evocations at the bar last night, durr'

 

[CreamCloud0]

'I would know about that because of my time at the academy studying evocations' and 'I wouldn't know anything about elf-magic'
vs.
'Oh I guess I don't know as much about my masters subject as I thought, wtf' and '"Hurr, I guess I must have overheard some wizards talking about evocations at the bar last night, durr'

you realize the second half of my post that you conspicuously didn't quote was acknowledging that the skill system isn't perfect but suggesting methods to try increase the chances the wizard is going to be the one to know the magicy thing rather than the barbarian.

however just in general i'm against the principle of players getting to fiat declare their characters know anything about the setting and world because players tend to not know half as much about the setting as they like to think they do, or think just because they the player know then their character should too, they can make their case the GM who can make that call but just being able to say 'yeah so i think my guy would know that' is a no go in my books