Should certain spot checks require a knowledge check?

[holywhippet]

I'm in vacation in Madagascar at the moment, it's a very lovely country with a lot a interesting wildlife. Anyway I've been on a few hikes with some local guides and they seem to have super human vision. Everyone in my tour group is generally trudging along watching their footing and the guide is spotting and pointing out various wild life like lizards and insects. Keep in mind of a lot of these creatures are naturally designed to blend into the background like chameleons and stick insects. Even when the guide is pointing them out it sometimes takes 5-10 seconds for the people in my group to spot them.

I consider myself to have decent vision so the more obvious reason for the guides spotting these things is experience. They are familiar with these creatures and thus are better able to notice them.

So I was wondering if this kind of logic should be applied to D&D where there are a number of monsters that try to blend into the scenery. Maybe just having a high spot check won't help if you don't actually know about what is there and you need to make some kind of knowledge check as well.

[Dire Moose]

This would probably fall under synergy bonuses. In your case, it would be expressed as "Having 5 ranks in Knowledge (nature) gives you a +2 bonus on Spot checks related to nature-based phenomena."

[heavyfuel]

Seconding synergy bonuses. K. Nature for insects and lizards, but also any knowledge used to identify creatures except knowledge local

[nyjastul69]

I don't see any disconnect. The spot check identifies the fact that a stick bug is not actually a stick. The knowledge check will determine what that revelation means in game terms.

[The Insanity]

Actually, you can find a lot of things very easily if you know where to look.

[nyjastul69]

Actually, you can find a lot of things very easily if you know where to look.
Knowing where to look is what the spot skill is all about. Knowing what you spot is what the knowledge skill is all about.

[Ettina]

I don't think Spot and Listen are about how acute your senses are, or at least not mostly. They're about being able to figure out the significance of what you're sensing.

Your eyes see the knobbly sticklike thing either way, but if you fail your Spot check, your brain identifies it as 'a bit of stick' and tunes it out as irrelevant, while succeeding the Spot check means realizing it's actually a stick insect.

Would explain why those skills go off of Wisdom. Wisdom is all about practical, everyday intuitive understanding.

[Judge_Worm]

This leads to oddities in its own right.

Let's say there's a bear at 100 yards (60 squares), the ranger who is from this area rolls a 1 and only sees a mound of dirt. The the cleric who just left his temple for the first time in 80 years spots a bear and recognizes it as such (solely from his high Wis).

[The Insanity]

Knowing where to look is what the spot skill is all about.
No, that's knowing how to look (plus just having your senses sharply honed by long practice).

[Spore]

Of course your tour guide finds them. He is a ranger!


No, that's knowing how to look (plus just having your senses sharply honed by long practice).

I wouldn't trust a elderly biology PhD to find and identify a mouse hole in a meadow. Synergy bonusses are a nice idea but I prefer simple game mechanics to having a 100% simulation.

Also your tour guide is a ranger. This is his favored terrain(PF).

[Elkad]

There isn't any knowledge to it, it's just a matter of having spent hours trying to spot that one thing, until you become subconsciously aware of it.

Different RL example. Anybody can look up at the power poles lining a road, spot the ones with transformers, and then spot the lines going to houses. Nobody does, but it's right there. I worked a summer changing electric meters, which meant going to the end of every one of those wires. Including ones in weird places with no building in sight anywhere. But if you hopped out of the truck and followed the wire into the woods, there would be a pump for a well or something, and a meter that I needed to swap. That was a decade ago, but I can't turn it off. If I drive down a country road, part of my brain is cataloging where the electricity goes.

My wife ALWAYS sees the deer along side the road before me. Even when she isn't paying attention. But motorcycles are invisible to her until they are 50 feet from the car.

Everyone knows that kid that just walks across a lawn, pauses and picks a 4-leaf clover. At some point, he spent time learning to spot that one thing, but that doesn't make him any better at spotting stick bugs or electric meters or deer.

A favored terrain bonus makes the most sense. And then you point it out to the people you are with, who get to re-roll at a bonus until they spot it. Which took a couple rounds.