Identifying creatures with Knowledge checks.

[Oryan77]

I've found many threads discussing the use of Knowledge skills to identify the qualities of creatures. I still haven't been able to find anything of actual substance. Has anyone seen a homebrewed DC chart that gives a system for determining what a player might learn about a creature other than the lore?

Also, I saw mentions of WotC writing DC Knowledge check results for creature lore in early monster manuals similar to what they did in the last couple of 3.5 Monster Manuals. I believe it was in some "Know Your Enemy" columns, but any links I find to the WotC website are dead. Anyone have these they could share with me?

I did find this guy that wrote his own lore checks for creatures:
http://community.wizards.com/forum/previous-editions-general/threads/1074581
I just wish I was able to save all of that info as a pdf or something in case the URL ever went dead.

If there is no existing chart, I was thinking that knowledge checks could give information based on how much higher than the DC the check was. The first couple of points would give basic info (name, creature type) and the better the check was, the more beneficial info you gained. It would cover all of the basic qualities without actually giving specific numbers (i.e., "known to have DR which is bypassed by good aligned weapons). I wouldn't know what is considered "most beneficial info", but the areas that seem worth covering would be:

- Creature Name and type
- Alignment
- DR
- Resist
- SR
- Immunity
- Melee Attack
- Ranged Attack
- Armor types
- Good/Poor Saves
- Reach
- Special Attacks (maybe the more ranks you have determines how many attacks you know of)
- Special Qualities (maybe the more ranks you have determines how many qualities you know of)
- Abilities/spells (maybe the more ranks you have determines how many abilities you know of)
- Skills
- Feats
- Environment
- CR
- Treasure
- Modes of Movement (speed)

[Aegis013]

I've used a homebrew suggestion before for discovering meta-statistics of monsters which worked pretty well for my group, though occasionally it took awhile on the player's side.

It was something like DC of 10+CR*2 nets you name and creature type, maybe a bit of lore or something. And for that and every 5 you beat it by, you get to ask one question. These could be things like "What's the creature's AC?" "Does it have any special attacks?" "Does it have any special defenses?" "How many Hit Dice does it have?"

But, use with some caution. My group is excellent at separating meta-knowledge/player-knowledge from character knowledge. So I tend to not need to worry about allowing my players to know meta-information.

[Extra Anchovies]

From the 3.5 PHB's description of the Knowledge Skill:

Check: Answering a question within your field of study has a DC
of 10 (for really easy questions), 15 (for basic questions), or 20 to 30 (for really tough questions).
In many cases, you can use this skill to identify monsters and their special powers or vulnerabilities. In general, the DC of such a check equals 10 + the monster’s HD. A successful check allows you to remember a bit of useful information about that monster. For every 5 points by which your check result exceeds the DC, you recall another piece of useful information.

I suppose a quick and simple way to determine exactly what bits of information are revealed would be for the player to ask for particular bits before making the check, e.g. "[character name] tries to recall if he knows what weapons it's vulnerable to" could give clues about bypassing damage reduction, "does [character name] know how it's affected by energy damage" would give vulnerabilities and resistances (but only rough estimates of the amount; for example, "[monster] is highly resistant to [energy]" could mean either energy resistance 15+ or immunity to that energy, and time-and-a-half damage (from fire/cold subtypes) would not be easily distinguished from taking double damage from an energy type, and so on. Checks could also reveal movement modes (and estimates of speeds), spell resistance (with an estimate of its strength), spellcasting/spell-like abilities, or other things of that nature and breadth.

ETA suggestions for estimating numerical strengths of abilities:
Energy resistances: described above
HD: the PC will be able to determine a 5-HD range based on check result and number of facts revealed (e.g. two bits on a check result of 27 means it has between 8 and 12 HD)
Creature Type: Some are really easy to identify without knowledge checks (undead, constructs, elementals, many outsiders, humanoids, dragons); tougher-to-place creatures can still be partially identified based on what Knowledge check is used (each creature type has an associated Knowledge for learning about creatures of that type, in the Knowledge skill description)
Alignment: The times when alignment is worth knowing, it's usually fairly apparent anyways (good and evil outsiders are pretty easy to pick apart, and if it's unintelligent then it's almost always neutral). Maybe bundle it in with something else.
SR: 11-15 "can shrug off spells from inexperienced mages", 16-20 "are often not affected by trained magic-users", 21-25 "present quite a challenge for even well-experienced casters", 26+ "will usually ignore spells from all but the most powerful spellcasters" or similar descriptions. Remember, a creature with SR has a 50% or higher chance of ignoring spells cast at a CL equal to the creature's SR-10.
Armor types: the appendices in the Monster Manual (specifically the creating monsters section) lists types of natural armor (e.g. tough hide, scales, chitin, etc.) and suggested AC ranges for them, and that could be a good starting point.
Good/Poor saves could be described in general terms, e.g. "it is a hard target, able to dodge and dive for cover with ease" for a good Reflex save
Reach should be fairly apparent from the creature's appearance; when a creature has longer-than-normal reach but is not described as appearing to have long reach, it's because the reach is supposed to be a surprise for the PCs
Special attacks: probably narrow them down to one type. Spells and spell-like abilities (maybe a CL estimate and/or one or two notable SLAs) could be one bit of info, breath weapons/poison/webs/other such naturally generated things could be another, and other weird stuff (gaze attacks, engulf, etc.) could be put into one roll.
DR: information given being type of weapon needed to bypass and an estimate of numerical strength; a fighter with 18 strength and a greatsword will deal about 12-14 damage per attack, so DR 15/cold iron could be described as "virtually invulnerable to blades not of cold-forged iron" and DR 5/piercing could be "resistant, but not immune to, blows that fail to puncture its hide".
Skills: one roll can learn racial skill bonuses (but not skills acquired via skill points, as those can vary), and general estimates of their numerical advantage.
Feats should be hard if not impossible to identify. The ones that matter will manifest themselves in combat anyways, and knowing one of a monster's feats doesn't tell you much about it.
Environment, I think, should be an automatic piece of knowledge that goes along with any successful check, and does not count towards the bits of info gained (almost always, the first thing someone learns about a creature is where it lives, and knowing environment doesn't do much to help the PCs fight a monster, only to locate more of them)
CR: There's a feat some (Complete Adventurer I think) that lets you roll Sense Motive to get a general sense of an opponent's CR relative to yours, might only work on humanoids though. Maybe a similar skill that applies to monsters?
Treasure varies enough that finding that out via knowledge shouldn't really be doable, and if the PCs are fighting a monster they'll either know its treasure soon enough, or be too scared (or dead) to care.
Now that I'm done (for now) with the rapid series of edits, one last thing to add: Maybe for special attacks, magic use, and similar things that vary hugely between monsters but are still worth knowing, the amount of attacks learned could be determined by the amount by which your check exceeded the check DC (monster HD +10). DR and SR could be included in here, but would in this case only tell you if the creature has it (requiring an additional bit of info to determine its general strength) For example, matching the DC gives one spell-like ability, special attack, or the like; beating the DC by one grants knowledge of two attacks or qualities, beating it by two gives three attacks or qualities, and so on to a maximum of five attacks or qualities when beating the DC by four (after which you gain another bit of knowledge, which could then also be used to learn more attacks/qualities or to learn something else).