Knowledge Checks, How much information per roll?

[killem2]

I and another swap GM roles every 6 months or so with our group for different sessions. One thing that always seems to stump us is trying to determine what to tell people about enemies when they roll a knowledge check.

Like if they roll a 30 Arcana Check against a Flesh golem, how much will they know? Or mana a 24 Religion Check against a minotaur zombie?

Any house rules you use? Any suggestions?

[Extra Anchovies]

There are already rules for this. (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/skills/knowledge)


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 CR. For common monsters, such as goblins, the DC of this check equals 5 + the monster’s CR. For particularly rare monsters, such as the tarrasque, the DC of this check equals 15 + the monster’s CR or more. 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.

All you have to do is determine what a "piece of useful information" is. That can prove tricky, but there's no definitive guideline so it's good to come up with a list of things for each monster before your players encounter it. Resistances and weaknesses are generally good, as are special attack modes (e.g. breath weapons). For a troll the facts could be that it has regeneration, and then that its regeneration is overcome by acid and fire. For a flesh golem you could list its damage reduction, then its immunity to most magic, then its reaction to magical cold, fire, and electricity.

[SkipSandwich]

My rule of thumb is that the base DC is always 10+CR and go from there. For this example, we will use a Succubus as the creature to be identified.


Basic Success (DC 17): This is Outsider, a being from another plane, this one is clearly evil and shows the taint of chaos as well

Good Success (DC 17+5=22): This is a Demon, a type of evil outsider aligned with Chaos. Demons are immune to electricity and poison, and resist most other forms of energy damage, you should attack with blessed (good) weapons or weapons made of cold iron.

Great Success: (DC 17+10=27): This is a Succubus, a type of Demon, they are known for their ability to change shape and magical powers of suduction, beware her soul-draining embrace!

Critical Success: (DC 17+15=32): Lashanti is a Succubus known to inhabit the city of Freeport, trained as an assassin, she uses her natural ability of disguise to get close to her targets. The whores of the city call her the "Night's Avenger" for she is known to ruthlessly avenge herself on any would would dare harm them.

[Crake]

My rule of thumb is that the base DC is always 10+CR and go from there. For this example, we will use a Succubus as the creature to be identified.


Basic Success (DC 17): This is Outsider, a being from another plane, this one is clearly evil and shows the taint of chaos as well

Good Success (DC 17+5=22): This is a Demon, a type of evil outsider aligned with Chaos. Demons are immune to electricity and poison, and resist most other forms of energy damage, you should attack with blessed (good) weapons or weapons made of cold iron.

Great Success: (DC 17+10=27): This is a Succubus, a type of Demon, they are known for their ability to change shape and magical powers of suduction, beware her soul-draining embrace!

Critical Success: (DC 17+15=32): Lashanti is a Succubus known to inhabit the city of Freeport, trained as an assassin, she uses her natural ability of disguise to get close to her targets. The whores of the city call her the "Night's Avenger" for she is known to ruthlessly avenge herself on any would would dare harm them.

The DC17 in this should be the DC to identify that this creature is a succubus, not just a chaotic evil outsider. The later monster manuals begin to give information to tell players at set DCs, and the first DC(which is 10+CR) gives you the creature and it's type (and thus all traits involving type).

I would also never allow a knowledge check to identify a person that someone's never seen before either. So unless this trained assassin has pictures of herself in books on planar lore (and even then, succubi have change shape at will), you wouldn't be able to know who she was, no matter how high you rolled.

[Red Fel]

I would also never allow a knowledge check to identify a person that someone's never seen before either. So unless this trained assassin has pictures of herself in books on planar lore (and even then, succubi have change shape at will), you wouldn't be able to know who she was, no matter how high you rolled.

Well, a Knowledge (local) or (history) or similar non-creature check might be permissible to learn information about a particular creature, assuming the creature was famous. For example, Knowledge (religion) could identify that this creature is an undead, specifically a lich. But Knowledge (history) might reveal legends about a particular lich in this area from centuries ago; Knowledge (local) might reveal stories of some sort of skeletal sorcerer in the area that goes by the name Enscellor or somesuch; Knowledge (nobility) might allow the PC to recognize the lich's robes as those belonging to an ancient line of wizard-kings. And so forth.

So, while the creature-check (e.g. arcana, religion, etc.) shouldn't tell you about this specific creature, I wouldn't be opposed to a related check to determine its identity if it happened to be noteworthy. (Of course, no Knowledge check will tell you anything of interest about Generic Orc #3, because he's only famous to his mother.)

[SkipSandwich]

Like i said thats just how we play it at my table. But to me it makes sense to progress from
Id creature type and genaral traits
Id species and general traits
Id subspecies and traits
Knowlede of noteworthy named examples of that type

[gartius]

Like i said thats just how we play it at my table. But to me it makes sense to progress from
Id creature type and genaral traits
Id species and general traits
Id subspecies and traits
Knowlede of noteworthy named examples of that type

It all depends - round our table we get pieces of information which we get to ask the gm, the reason being that each character would have their own interest in the knowledge (so a evoker wizard would want to know what resistances/vulnerabilities, whereas an archer would want to know the DR needed to overcome)
so as a free bit of info you know what it is as thats you know the main point of the knowledge check. in the same way creature type would be included or inferred as part of this based on the knowledge check rolled.

[noob]

If you are 130 above the required knowledge check what should be said?

[Ninjaxenomorph]

Here's what we use in my area: when you hit the DC, you get one questions. It can be things like Special Defenses (DR vs what, SR, Resistances, etc), Special Attacks (breath weapon, blood drain, grab, etc), Spell-Like Abilities (each number of times per day is its own question), hit dice, special qualities, weaknesses, and others.

[noob]

If I do an architecture roll and obtain 150 should I know the name of each worker and architect in the project?
Why are everyone speaking of checks for monsters while everyone knows all the monsters of all the manuals?

[Pex]

What my group does is if you succeed on the check you can ask the DM a question about the monster and an additional question for every 5 you beat the DC. The player/character gets to know what he wants to know instead of the DM having to be concerned about what information to give. Common questions are to ask for special attacks other than a simple roll to hit for damage and special defenses looking for DR, resistances, and immunities.

[Keltest]

Personally, I would rule that any successful knowledge check allows you to identify the creature as well as a few basic facts about it that you would easily be able to come across (for example, any source of knowledge about succubi would mention that theyre seductresses). Increasingly high rolls reveal increasingly useful tactical knowledge. For example, Good might reveal they are demons and the vulnerabilities associated with that. Great would reveal some specific strengths and (possibly) weaknesses of the creature, and Critical would reveal everything that you could pick up in a textbook, bardic tale, folk story, or bathroom stall wall carving.

[noob]

Still why is everyone speaking of information that the players have?
The results of an architecture or history check for knowing more about civilization or the campaign is a lot more useful and it is sure you can know more or less about history and that if you have 150 it will not have the same result as 35.

[killem2]

I think our problem is determining really what to give away at what knowledge check level. We knew about the RAW for it, it just the rest that always seemed to never bee streamlined.

Thanks for the responses so far!

[Darth Ultron]

The later Monster Manuals like VI and V did have lore tables.


Otherwise you can do it two basic ways:

1. The characters are absolute monster experts that know everything about every single monster in the whole universe, if they remember it.

2.The characters know basic secondhand lore, tall tales, stories and other such socially learned things that may or may not be 100% true or accurate.


Now, the first type is the default for the game and more so the casual pop and chips type game. It allows a character to ''remember everything'' and kill monsters quickly..so they can loot and repeat.

2.The second type is for other types of games. Where the characters don't know everything. Where they characters have to role play(not roll) to get information. And more so where a character just has to encounter a monster at least once to learn about it. And for the very different games, what a character ''knows'' might be wrong...

[StreamOfTheSky]

How I handle it is:

If you make the base DC, you get the name, type/subtype, maybe some other info depending on how much info there is to give (an outsider with a dozen spell-like abilities, several immunities, some resistances, and a few Su attacks is going to have way more stuff to talk about than an ogre).
For each 5 points the character beats the DC by, they get one or more pieces of info.
If they beat the base DC by 20, they know everything. Like, in some cases i just give them the stat block.

The idea is to evenly distribute the information between the different gradients of success. Also, all information is not created equal. Some is incredibly useful to know, like damage reduction that's beat by some type of material or that it has spell resistance or that it has a save or die (if you use those...I don't really...). Some is less useful to know and is almost more ecological info than it is combat-relevant. The make up of the party will also affect what info is "important" (a party with no casters or the caster sticks to buffing and healing wouldn't care about SR; a party with a wizard, sorc, and blaster druid would care a LOT about it) But you should have a good idea pretty quickly what sort of info they'd care about the most. The really critical to know stuff (like a death attack) I'd reveal at the lower check result end, other useful info I try to split up. If possible, each +5 step up should yield at least one useful piece of info, if there is enough useful pieces of info for that in the first place.

[Eldaran]

Still why is everyone speaking of information that the players have?
The results of an architecture or history check for knowing more about civilization or the campaign is a lot more useful and it is sure you can know more or less about history and that if you have 150 it will not have the same result as 35.

Your questions are honestly, quite odd, but assuming your name is sincere:

There's a massive difference between in character and out of character knowledge. Most players probably know the gist of what a Pit Fiend can do, but the average character, or even the very powerful characters, will not commonly know the stats of a general of hell. This is why monster knowledge checks exist, to show what the character knows, and therefore what actions you can reasonable take in game towards such a monster. If you encounter a Pit Fiend without making any sort of knowledge check, and then decided to cast Protection From Fire, that's considered metagaming, meaning your character is acting with knowledge they do not know in game.

I addition to the above, it's not really possible for every player to know every conceivable monster, there's quite a large amount, and knowledge checks help with knowing how to proceed in an encounter. It's also certainly possible for DMs to make changes to existing monsters, or whole new monsters for you to encounter that the player could not know about.

As for how to handle exceedingly high checks on mundane stuff: Although high checks should be rewarded by the DM, many checks on mundane things, like a check on the history of a castle, have a cap on what you could conceivably know. If the check to learn the history of a castle is DC 20, and you have a total of 150, there's not much more you could know. Also the usefulness of checks about the game world tends to vary by campaign, but there are very few campaigns that do not involve fights with monsters.

[Der_DWSage]

Lemme copy-paste from my own houserules. It's pretty similar to one that was said before, just a little more concrete with the exact rules. Anything that seems like it would give solid numbers (Such as how many HD it has) instead give an answer relative to their level, going from ridiculously weak (1/2 their level or worse) weak, (1/2 to 4/5 of their level) Similar, Strong, and Ridiculously Strong. The only solid numbers given are DR, because...well, it tends to go in grades of 5 anyway, and there's only so many ways you can refluff 'A normal man's sword might dent it.'

The last option on my list, Common Diplomacy Tactics, can always be acquired from a Knowledge(History) roll as well, due to houserules allowing some overlap between what knowledges are required to identify monsters.

A successful knowledge check allows you to ask one question if you beat the CR+10 knowledge check, and one additional question per 5 over that. You will automatically be granted iconic information (Along the lines of ‘Use fire or acid to kill Trolls, a Hydra regrows its heads, Red Dragons breathe fire’) and their creature type. (Which also grants knowledge of which saves are typically good and which are poor.) If you need no specific information, then random tidbits are given. Specific questions may be drawn from…
Whether it is weak, strong, or neutral to a single element / A single weakness, if any / How to overcome its DR / How much DR it has / Immunities to status effects that don’t come from its type / How many HD it has / 3 (Relevant) Spell-like abilities it knows / How much SR it has / Two (Relevant) special abilities or Special Qualities it has / Common diplomacy tactics against this creature (This includes what languages it speaks and what it eats)

Additionally, the following knowledge is automatic on a DC 10 Knowledge or Perception check. (Barring willful misinformation by the creature, such as via a Disguise check.)
Creature type / How many limbs it can make attacks with / Obvious or well-known special qualities / Whether or not it’s capable of casting spells or using spell-like abilities

[killem2]

Some great stuff here. Lot of it addresses what we were having problems with. What to give to people, sometimes it always seems that some info should be common and some be special.