How do you deal with failures on knowledge tests?

This. Once, a long way back, I got a stupid complaint from a min-maxer I hadn't booted for some reason. He was essentially bitching that a PC remembered a point of etiquette among formal meals in a particular group of nobility without making a knowledge check, on the basis that they were the toast of the city and had been invited to several, and had observed the people at them.

Knowledge rolls aren't for determining whether a character knows a piece of knowledge, but rather whether any given knowledge is relevant. Its used to search for new information. You could also get away with recalling specific information under stress, but otherwise knowing something should be handled by a passive check if even.

How would they find out in that case?

I don't do knowledge tests

If a players wants to know something and it doesn't seem like they would know it based on their past or simple observations from the character that maybe weren't communicated fully to the player, they should go and investigate the world to find the answer, or try to use critical reasoning skills to make a reasonable hypothesis.

The minmaxer was right in this situation. Knowledge checks should be used to determine if a character knows a piece of knowledge that his player does not, and which the character could reasonably know or not know, just as charisma checks are for situations where an NPC could reasonably go either way.

In situations where the character would obviously know something [due to backstory reasons] he does not have to roll, no matter how obscure the knowledge is.

If I say my knight is an expert on dragons and has read books on dragons, and its established as part of the setting that such books exist, I do not need to roll to establish that.

I can agree with this.

Rolling knowledge tests doesn't make any sense, because you either know something or don't, there's no "trying" to know something like you can trying to jump over a pit or trying to climb a rope. Rolling would make it so that your character knew something one day but didn't know it on another, which is just stupid.

>sees heraldry of some unknown lord
>can I roll to see if I have heard about it before
>dc15 history, since they are obscure even to the locals
>give advantage if they think of something clever like ask a city guard
>auto pass if they are very clever like use city documents that have information on it
>if they fail "you dont recognize them"
>if they fail by a large margin "it is [incorrect family who is more famous]
>if they pass "they are the so and so's, they are a rather small kingdom
>if they pass by a lot "they are so and so's you heard about their [important tidbit]

I prefer to give a lot of DM fiat when dealing with things like what they should or shouldnt know
If its some thing obvious, I won't roll, just tell them it's common knowledge, and only roll if they want to know some thing that only a learned man would know, like the exact number of siblings, or make the roll harder if its an elf askibg about dwarven politics

The way I describe it is that feeling when you remember kind of what something is, and the name is just on the tip of your tongue but you can't remember it.

They are a useful abstraction to determine on the fly what subjects your character has learned about when your players haven't learned a lot about the setting and begin the game as commoners suddenly journeying out of town for adventure, outsiders from an isolated place (would know only about that place's lore) and have a pretty thin backstory.
I treat it like a background generation on the fly. I don't allow future rolls for that reason and I usually come up with a short backstory anecdote about the piece of knowledge (or let the player do it if it's one of the good roleplayers).
Also if players are being stupid, I allow them a repeatable knowledge roll with a cooldown to remember something they've seen in a previous session but aren't taking into account.

I see a knowledge test as less of trying to know something, and more seeing if the character had already learned it or can remember it.

While you can assume characters know general things associated with their backstory, it is possible they have not learned or remembered more obscure or specific information.

They don't know it. They know a lot of things, but not that one.

No they aren't.

Do you remember every detail in every book that you read?

Do you remember everything from every class you participated in?

This. Characters are flawed. Historians might not know a random ancient story that the Barbarian heard had actually heard about in a bar.

My players rarely ask for knowledge rolls these days since I afflicted them with down's syndrome for a critical failure. I make them RP it as well.

typo: not all of them, just one player.

And before anyone gives me heck about it, he failed the Trisomancer's riddle so it was a fitting punishment.

I don't see why you should punish a player for rolling poorly, because how the dice will land isn't something they can affect.

Well they could, but then it would be cheating.

>Trisomancer
Tell me about him.

You ever want to ask your partner/friend/family member/colleague for a fork and you forgot what it's called and you're just like
>hey can you give me that thing... no that one, the one with the teeth, you know, the eating utensil...
>yeah, fork. sorry, i guess. i dunno what i was thinking.

That's a failure on a knowledge test.

I'm sorry if I wasn't clear, Gerry was upset that I didn't require a roll, that the character in question did just know the information in question, because to him if you hadn't put points into the appropriate knowledge skill, your character obviously doesn't know it, no matter how ridiculous that notion is.

a more plausible example in the same vein is when you momentarily forget the name of something important
>hey, whats your name again, i know i got this
since you arent under duress you get to keep trying until you succeed

if the other person is irritable, then you fail after your second try
>how could you forget, we met last week

t. metagaming fag

if its a skill check in non stressful envrionments I just set a lower DC for their skill modifier to meet, no roll whatsoever. Kinda like fallout NV

If a character fails a knowledge check horribly then he gets bad information. If he does reasonably well then but doesn't succeed he knows enough to know that he doesn't know. And then there's like at least three tiers of success where each one provides more detailed and useful information.

so Veeky Forums hates the
>I don't know this object, can I roll knowledge to identify its properties
>yes
>now I know this object
mechanic. Why do you hate it, Veeky Forums?

Despite the hobby being built upon rolling dice, Veeky Forums seems to hate having to roll dice. Many fa/tg/uys just want successes handed to them without repercussion, because they were the kiddies who used to play pretend and would always say, "Nuh uh! It didn't hit me! MOOOM!" It's why these narrative-driven games are on the rise of popularity, because those are geared towards players who hate ever being told "no, you can't do that."

A person gets to reroll certain knowledge checks based on their int modifer. Simple stuff.

Failure means they forget and can't remember until a roll is made for them to recall it under certain conditions or something

>character is a scholar / wizard type
>can't roll knowledge skills to know things about history, geography and zoology,ect...

>It's why these narrative-driven games
Nuhnuhnuh. Don't try that shit. This apparent hatred for rolling dice is most apparent among D&D players when it stands in the way of them using one of the few real life skills they have to their advantage (i.e. being the only one in the group who's a capable speaker, or having memorized the MM).

Narrativist and simulationist gamers are way more fine with there being some form of mechanic for determining what their characters do and don't know while gamists are unable to detach themselves from their characters and use them as extensions of themselves for the purpose of power fantasies.

Personally I believe knowledge rolls should be used as a lore type puzzle hint, when a character can potentially connect the dots on culture or lore that his character should know.

Knowing the right question to ask, rather than having to dig through all the Lore on the subject matter and berating the DM with all sorts of questions on the history of the subject at hand.

If it's a failed roll, they don't see the pattern and they get no hint and must experiment or come back later.

You are missing the point of them. Your character DOES know what they know, but you do not know all facets of your characters education and experience. It would be dumb to write all that out in detail.

The GM should tell you information when your character would know it for sure, like the name of the lord in the town you were raised in, or a popular legend related to said town.

If it is radically impossible that your character knows the information, such as ancient dwarven golemancy techniques when your character is a lvl 1 human fighter fresh out of his village, then no knowledge roll will allow him to know that. It doesn't fit with the archetype the player chose.

If the knowledge is up in the air, such as said golemancy techniques when your character is an educated human wizard with collegiate training and dwarven as his language, then a knowledge roll is called for.

Knowledge rolls are to fill in the gaps of what your character might possibly know.

I don't like using RNG for perceptive or lore skills unless the group thinks it's actually a tossup as to whether the character would know or not, as opposed to someone wanting to just hear dice roll before giving exposition.

I'd prefer something like knowledge levels which don't rely on RNG. Some scale like (unaware/novice/rookie/skilled/expert/master), where each level defines the obscurity of knowledge a player can call on from a given field. If someone had a diverse education or breadth of experience, I'd let them roll like 10% if they're just one level under the cutoff. But I'd rather have success be largely defined by players and GMs agreement on how much it makes sense for a PC's backstory, and not just with dice and a chargen minigame.

You just take ten with the skill and use the DC chart to determine the level of knowledge the pc would know.

I can tell you most scenes that I remember reading from my favorite books and I can tell you the important shit that I learned from class that I actually bother using in my day to day life.

So tell me why I have to make a knowledge roll to remember that trolls are weak to fire?

Because it's assumed your character doesn't know that by default.

Two questions.
1) Why wouldn't an adventurer know that?
2) How does that make the encounter more interesting?
At best, you're forcing one dude to waste his turn to use a knowledge check and at worse, you're forcing the player to make poor decisions that may or may not result in PC death simply because he wasn't able to pass an arbitrary check to utilize information that they already know.

At this point, it'd be rare to find someone who doesn't know that trolls are weak to fire.

If its something well known in the setting (IE that wizards are feared and hated by peasants) then I just tell them.

If its a very obscure piece of trivia (IE the heraldry on this banner is lord so-and-so who is known for his hatred of elves) then I make them roll for it.

Yes, but the question is what happens if they fail that roll, that as you say they should clearly know?

>1) Why wouldn't an adventurer know that?
Do you think that there are adventurer schools that hands out diplomas or something?

>you're forcing one dude to waste his turn to use a knowledge check
I would not have it be used as a combat action. As soon as a monster the character hasn't encountered before is spotted you get a free knowledge roll to determine if you know what it is and if you know anything else about it depending on how well you roll.

>you're forcing the player to make poor decisions
So? I'm not here to "win" at RPGs.

This

I don't see why you should punish a player for rolling poorly, because how the to-save dice will land isn't something they can affect.

this is how retarded you sound

If they should clearly know the information, then there is no roll. Reread the post you replied to.
>tg in charge of reading comprehension

the roll doesent decide if you remember, it decides if you ever learned it.

Knowledge rolls are only dumb if you wrote the character with explicit knowledge in the field.

I lock away future rerolls, the roll at my table dictates whether they knew at all. Not whether they can remember. I shouldnt assume the characters have eidetic memory, but I do for the sake of not frustrating players. If their guy knows something, he can recall it.

So not retarded at all?

This is why I try to homebrew knowledge as binary and low-investment. You either have Knowledge (Nobility) or you don't.
If you do, then yes, you know that court formality.

Now the flipside of this is that I stratify knowledge more specifically. In my feudal-political intrigue campaign every different kingdom probably has it's own court knowledge skill. (But in my dungeon-crawl campaign, who gives a damn.) But either way there's not even the option to dump ranks into a niche section of what your character remembers. Just more niche sections of memory to have in your quiver.

>Do you think that there are adventurer schools that hands out diplomas or something?
Do you think that people wouldn't talk about some greasy monster that regrew an arm until you set it on fire?
>As soon as a monster the character hasn't encountered before is spotted you get a free knowledge roll
Okay that's fair.
>So? I'm not here to "win" at RPGs.
Irrelevant. Even if winning isn't your goal for whatever reason, the characters would still want to go into an area with as much information as possible simply because they don't want to die.

So based on that, why should they players continue to make ineffectual moves just because nobody passed a knowledge check to know that trolls are weak to fire?