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Random832
2009-10-07, 11:46 AM
Action

Usually none. In most cases, making a Knowledge check doesn’t take an action—you simply know the answer or you don’t.

Try Again

No. The check represents what you know, and thinking about a topic a second time doesn’t let you know something that you never learned in the first place.

So it's a probability of having learned something in the past, rather than something you are actually doing at this moment. It really makes no sense for whether you ever learned something to depend on whether you are threatened or distracted at the moment when it comes up, or on any circumstance penalties. However, it _does_ make sense for whether you can recall it at that moment to depend on it.


So here is my proposal: note - please specify which item you are referring to in feedback
You know everything that you could make by taking ten, in addition to anything that you roll higher for on the one chance you get to make the check.
Your first check defines whether you know something that is a higher DC than you could take ten for.
Actually taking ten to recall something means spending up to a minute to think about it, so can't be done in combat or while otherwise threatened.
When pressed for time (as in combat) you always must make the check. Circumstance penalties can be applied to this check, but are not applied to the first check for a Target>10 fact for the purpose of determining whether you ever learned it. You can make the check for free once, then as a standard action each round until you get it.
You can re-do (including optionally taking ten) the check to actually know any fact, once per level on which you put ranks in the relevant knowledge skill
Fresh in your mind - For any fact which has actually come up (in any context, whether in combat, in in-character discussions, in planning, and whether by having made a successful knowledge check at the time, being told by someone else, or e.g. "learning the hard way" that red dragons aren't vulnerable to fireballs) in the past ten days, you make the check to recall it in combat at a modifier of INT+Your Character Level+3, with an additional bonus of +1 for each day less than 10 that has passed since the last time it came up (i.e. +1 for nine days ago, +2 for eight days ago). (If your skill check for the relevant knowledge skill would be higher for this you may still use it instead)


Thoughts? I considered allowing WIS instead for the 'fresh in your mind' bit.

NOTE: I have a lot to say about the rules for setting knowledge DCs, but that's not what this thread is about, so just take either the RAW or some sensible set of DCs as read for the purpose of this discussion

Curmudgeon
2009-10-07, 11:57 AM
I think you're giving an unwarranted bonus to a set of skills, and thereby stealing the thunder from other areas such as Gather Information and Bardic Knowledge. I wouldn't do this.

Random832
2009-10-07, 12:03 PM
If you're talking about the "fresh in your mind" part, it's a bonus for a circumstance in which RAW doesn't require a check at all. It doesn't let you pull facts out of thin air the way Bardic Knowledge does, and Gather Information is an abstraction for actually roleplaying talking to people anyway - the point is to let you retain the facts you gained from Gathering Information last week, while still having a _chance_ of not remembering in the stress of combat

If you're talking about the rest (can always take 10), it's the only way to make a statement like "The check represents what you know / ...learned in the first place" coherent.

Curmudgeon
2009-10-07, 12:06 PM
No, I'm mostly referring to the chance to re-do a check. Eventually that'll be the equivalent of "taking 20", which is basically +10 compared to the single try system.

Random832
2009-10-07, 12:09 PM
No, I'm mostly referring to the chance to re-do a check. Eventually that'll be the equivalent of "taking 20", which is basically +10 compared to the single try system.

Putting ranks in a knowledge skill represents learning more about that subject. The existing banning of retrying is on the grounds that you can't change what you've "already learned". No DM would ever say you are never allowed to learn something because you failed an untrained check to have already known it at level one.

(or if you mean redoing the combat recall check, remember that's still a check you don't have to make in RAW, and you still do have to do the no-retry-until-you-level check to know it in the first place to have it there to recall. And you lose an action to retry.)

SparkMandriller
2009-10-07, 12:10 PM
If you're talking about the "fresh in your mind" part, it's a bonus for a circumstance in which RAW doesn't require a check at all.

Yeah, I'm pretty certain that if I'd met a dragon two weeks ago and it breathed fire on me I'd remember it. That doesn't seem like the sort of thing you'd forget in a hurry.

Artanis
2009-10-07, 12:11 PM
I figure the roll and modifier itself includes how fresh it is in your mind as part of the abstraction.

One thing I would do is that if you cannot Take 10 (like in combat), then if you fail and roll a Natural 9 or less, you can still try in the future.



Edit: Getting attacked by a dragon doesn't seem like the sort of thing that would require a check in the first place.

Random832
2009-10-07, 12:13 PM
I figure the roll and modifier itself includes how fresh it is in your mind as part of the abstraction.

The no-retry requirement _very specifically_ means it abstracts nothing but whether you have already learned something.

Artanis
2009-10-07, 12:18 PM
And how fresh it is in your mind affects whether that lesson is still with you. If it isn't still with you, then obviously you didn't learn your lesson well enough in the first place. As such, it's part of the roll.

Random832
2009-10-07, 12:20 PM
And how fresh it is in your mind affects whether that lesson is still with you. If it isn't still with you, then obviously you didn't learn your lesson well enough in the first place. As such, it's part of the roll.

Huh?

The point is that if it has happened to you in the last week, you don't _need_ to remember your lecture about the subject from fighter college. You can just remember last week. Even if you don't _have_ any ranks in Knowledge (Arcana). This is a situation where most DMs would probably give you a free success; I'm introducing rules to have a chance of failure (though a low one in this case) from the stress of combat.

Remember, this isn't for the knowledge check, it's for the in-combat "recall check" - which is a situation that is (equivalent to, since there's no check required) a free success (if you already know the fact in question from before combat started) in the standard rules.

Curmudgeon
2009-10-07, 12:38 PM
Putting ranks in a knowledge skill represents learning more about that subject. The existing banning of retrying is on the grounds that you can't change what you've "already learned". No DM would ever say you are never allowed to learn something because you failed an untrained check to have already known it at level one.
But you can already make a new check if you attain more ranks in a skill, because if your skill modifiers change, it's a different check.
Skill Checks

A skill check takes into account a character’s training (skill rank), natural talent (ability modifier), and luck (the die roll).
It's only the die roll part of the check that you can't re-try.

Random832
2009-10-07, 01:40 PM
But you can already make a new check if you attain more ranks in a skill, because if your skill modifiers change, it's a different check.
It's only the die roll part of the check that you can't re-try.

But knowledge is special because the die roll does not represent luck, it represents what percentage of all possible material about this subject that you have learned in your life, and whether this fact falls within that portion. Over the course of a new level in which you learn more stuff (i.e. putting more ranks in the skill), there's a chance of learning any random new fact that you didn't know before.

Anyway, "taking 20" over the course of 20 levels isn't a gamebreaker, and it certainly doesn't "steal the thunder" of gather information or bardic knowledge, whose main strength is the broad base of subjects they apply to (and I'd also apply the 'get to roll again once per [class] level' to bardic anyway. Gather Information lets you reroll much more often than once per level anyway)

Also, despite the abstraction being used for the purpose of timing, there is no real equivalence between taking 20 and rolling 20 times, since there's a 35% chance of not getting a single 20 in 20 rolls, and it's highly situational for the same specific fact to actually come up at both level one and level twenty (let alone at all levels in between) anyway.

Ernir
2009-10-07, 03:17 PM
I think this is a workable houserule. It is likely to give you very knowledgeable PCs, but this isn't going to (as far as I can tell) affect things like Dark Knowledge and Knowledge Devotion, so I doubt it's likely to break things.



My own houserule is that you can't take 10 on knowledges.