How do you handle knowledge checks in a non-retarded way?

How do you handle knowledge checks in a non-retarded way?

>"do I know X?"
>fails roll
>"oh u don't know anything lol"

"It's right on the tip of my tongue, I swear."

"Sorry guys, I'm drawing a blank here."

"I swear I've read about something like that somewhere, I just can't remember where."

One way I see games handle knowledge checks is to have the player state what their character believes to be true and then rolling to see if it actually is

I have players ask a question and they can keep asking questions till they fail a roll.
>how old this place?
>who build it?
>why was it build?
Its more interactive if you have player think of questions. Same goes for monsters.

For passive skills such as knowledge or perception I note in advance the respective stats and skill of the players.
If there is something to spot or to know I'll tell them without making a roll, it avoid meta gaming as if there is a roll for something like that, they'll try to look into it even more OOC

"gravity keeps you on the planet"
>rolls a 1
[it's actually tiny invisible spirits, which is why the first time a fireball hits you just start floating off into space because the spirits all died]

Since you're using Gandalf as an example, I'll use the topical TOR;

If there's something relevant that a player would know or pick up on, like a door with inscriptions, or a sword with runes on it, or maybe a scroll, I ask the relevant player to do a Lore check. If he fails I explain that he's got a notion of what it might be (because he's skilled in lore as it is), but he cannot decipher the specific script or rather does not know what it's referencing. If he succeeds I tell him that the contents of the scripts do ring a bell, and then explain the lore behind it (this also varies depending on the degree of success). But really; if a character has the relevant skills, traits (like Old-lore in TOR), then I'm inclined to skip knowledge checks and just explain that he's already familiar with, say, the rune-covered dwarf door they're standing in front of because he's playing a dwarf scholar himself (and indeed, no non-dwarf scholar would be able to decipher more than a tiny bit of a Khuzdul).

Colaborative worldbuilding at its finiest.

obviously, the usual rules on not rolling when either success or failure would be impossible are in effect

I should add that even on a failure a knowledgable character would know where to look for the answer, whether it's asking a wise scholar he knows of or visiting a particular library that the other characters probably wouldn't know about. Failures with checks like this shouldn't lead to fuckall, but open up a different, if lengthier and more difficult path for the party to take.

>X? I am sure I have read about that once before. If I could just remember...

Failure.
Rumors and misplaced superstition.

>Just let me reroll until I remember it

I don't like to make characters fail on knowledge checks because it can cause the game to grind to a halt.

Instead, I give them the information they need to progress forward, but it's less detailed, or maybe inaccurate.

However, they still have an idea of what they need to do, and so we're not just stuck spinning our wheels, wasting time in our game session.

Example off the top of my head: Knowledge history

Base information: The old dwarven mine is in the northern mountain

10 or better: The mine was abandoned becuase the lower levels were flooded, and the mine was unusable

15 or better: There are rumors that Sahuagin have made a nest in the lower levels

20 or better: You know the sahuagin rumors are false: the mine is actually filled with sea spawn - the drowned miners have been corrupted by twisted magic

25 or better: Legend has it that the dwarves excavated a giant hunk of lapis lazuli in the depths of the mines - you would need the strength to haul it out of the mine, and a cart to get it back to town for sale.

This ... is actually pretty good. I will use this.

DM shouldn't allow that.
It could make sense to allow re-rolls after a certain period of time, I suppose. A day, say, to represent "sleeping on it".

>rolling a 15 is worse than rolling a 10 because it leads to false information
Fuck you

I gave this some more thought and you can abstract my method to the following:

Basic Info on any roll - just to keep the game going

As you roll better, more info is doled out:
-Information about the environment
-Information about the inhabitants
-Information about the payoff/goal/treasure
-One of these pieces of information can be misleading/inaccurate, just to spice things up.
-a good enough roll may reveal the misleading/inaccurate fact and give them the true fact about their adventure.

What do you think of my scheme, Veeky Forums? Can you offer any improvements?

>Thinking you get to retry infinitely
This is how I know you don't actually play.

It really depends on what sort of a knowledge check they're making.

If it's something along the lines of "What do I know about this", then a low check will get you some general information, while a high check will get you specific knowledge of an interesting or a useful thing.

If it's a "Do I know something" or a "Do I know how to do something", then a low check will get you a "no, but you know [how to do] something else", with "something else" being tangentially related or, at the very least, interesting. A high check will get you a "yes" (within reason, of course).

In his defense, 15 led to a knowledge of danger, though the specific form was not correct. 20 on the other hand gives you knowledge of danger AND the specific kind.

Rules disallow re-rolls on knowledge unless you do research or otherwise actually gain some kind of insight in-game

When they fail a roll, give the galse info based in conjecture.
Roll knowledve in secret so the player doesn't know the roll result.

>failed roll
You only know the bare minimum of what you need to roll.

In this thread you will find examples of people who failed the knowledge (DMing) and the others that succeeded.
Can you figure out which is which? Roll a knowledge check, OP.

Why is OP's example considered wrong?

I just look at how many ranks in a skill someone has then I arbitrarily decide whether they know something or not.

Some people are under the impression that a GM must always lead players by the hand to succeed even when they fail. It's apparently a cardinal sin to tell a player "you fail" without adding on "but you succeed anyway with X as consequence." These people are to be ignored.

It's a roleplaying game. Danger is pretty much guaranteed.

>Answering a question within your field of study.
The game (3.5) states this. So i pretty much just broke checks down from one big knowlege to many small ones. Knowlege should not be I got a 20 so I know everything about a town as much as i got a 20 so I do know this one thing about a town. So just change the rolls from "whats in this town" to "does this town have a baker"

If you do the multiple rolls it makes player as gereal questions first because they are more likley to make the check then ask hard questions after. Also it makes sence that some player know some thinks and others don't even even if they got lower rolls. So the wizard knows all the history of the town but thr fighter knows the best location defence.

I don't think you should ever give false info with knowlege checks. It adds a sort of meta gaming if you do. If the player rolls a 2 and you tell him there is no one in that old fort. Good player or not he is going to meta game that and assume the DM is lying to him.

If the game stops because they failed one check you are a shit dm. Everything should have multiple (not always easy) ways to pass.

Try not to take checks away from your players.

Exalted 3e does this. There's limitations where what you're stating can't directly conflict with established information (how gravity works, etc.). You can do stuff like "This particular breed of monster is attracted by the smell of this particular flower" and then go grab that flower you just made up.

>Some people are under the impression that a GM must always lead players by the hand to succeed even when they fail. It's apparently a cardinal sin to tell a player "you fail" without adding on "but you succeed anyway with X as consequence." These people are to be ignored.
That's not what failing forward is but you will get some replies.

roll knowledge checks in secret, even if the players don't ask for it. How many times have you remembered something that you didn't try to remember on purpose?

Because then the low-Int barbarian will yell LOL LET ME TRY then roll high and get it while the wizard just failed.

Literally last session
>Wizard has like 17 on relevant knowledge
>Barb has like 1, but trained
>Barb rolls nat20
>Wizard rolls a 2
Barb never ever even tried to roleplay like he learns stuff, meanwhile the wizard goes to libraries, buys books, talks to NPCs about his knowledges and spends time RPing

>guy a studies history for ten years
>guy b reads 1 history book
Guy b can still know something guy a does not know.

>implying that's not what most people treat failing forward as
Failing forward is a meme anyway, players should accept that they can fail and have to come up with a completely new strategy.

guy b never read a book, he's a barb, he can't read, he also never RP as he read or tried to learn stuff. He has that Knowledge because a feat asked for two ranks (he has Int -1 that's why the total is 1).

Like when you can't remember the name of that actor in that movie, you know? That one.

Reminds me of that one thing in Fallout: New Vegas where if you play as a character with a really low intelligence, you just randomly guess the password by blurting out "Ice cream!!!" because you're dumb as a rock

Foke lore stoires.

>culture passes intrincate mathemagical ecuations (it was Knowledge Arcana) as folk lore

>people can't know random trivia

are you new to the internet?

there's plenty of ways to transmit knowledge, Many cultures lack writing but have math and astronomy as science in way of temples and constructions.

Some one showed him like a wizard at one point. Its really not that hard to make an explain. Just because some one has a high skill rank does not mean he knows everything a lower character does and more, it only rases the chance he does know something. Its like saying the wizard should never be able to hit in melee if the barbarian misses.

It doesn’t typically work like this. Knowledge checks reveal how much you know about the subject. The higher DC are for things more obscure or specific information. If you don’t meet the DC, you just might not know enough about the subject or you can’t recall at the moment. Since knowledge is a trained skill, the depths of what you can recall at a moments notice is linked to your skill ranks (how much you have studied it).

>pcshidethegetawayvehicle.jpg

The problem there is that bonuses are too small relative to the die.

Make it passive, no rolling.

if its from a setting that needs you to roll, just average roll to always 10 or so.
Then you have it noted what the players scores are, and whenever the check comes up, you just check on your own sheet without ever giving it away if the player has enough knowledge, and for what type of information/how much.

its quite simple really. Rolls for things like this are derpy.

How are you people not seeing that that was an obvious joke

'I once knew every spell in all the tongues of Elves or Men orOrcsthat was ever used for such a purpose. I can still remember ten score of them without searching in my mind."

Gandalf failed his Knowledge roll and the party were stuck at the door; he looked like a bit of a tit. Had he passed, the Fellowship could have passed through without having to solve the riddle (Gandalf would already know the riddle and answer by heart). As it was the players had to do a bit of thinking.

If the campaign hinges on a single Knowledge roll, the GM has fucked up; as in this example, it's important to have alternative ways of solving the problem.

>Whoah who's this god they're talking about?
>Nothing common, roll to see if you remember reading about it
>Fail roll target
>No, you never heard of glognark the defenstrator.

Here's a few steps to how I handle characters knowing stuff:

1) Never - ever - not even a little bit, will knowledge that is absolutely necessary for the players to progress through the adventure be handled as a skill check. That just makes it possible that one die roll shuts the whole adventure off, and that's fucking idiotic. The characters will either already have the relevant information, or they will learn it through the course of the adventure with no chance of failure.

2) When a player asks me "Do I know X?" I will respond with "Why would you?" If their answer to my question explains their character knowing, then they fucking know it, no roll. Similarly, if they are just BSing and there is no chance that their character would have learned this detail, they don't know it, no roll.

Only in the case of the player having a decent reason that their character would know something, but it being uncertain (i.e. maybe their wizard took a non-essential class back in college and picked it up, but maybe they weren't paying attention because the class was non-essential to their particular goal of learning wizardry) do I call for a check to be made.

In effect, characters that are supposed to be knowledgeable about stuff just are at my table - we quit doing that thing where the roll is called for, the wizard fails by rolling low, and then the should-be-oblivious character goes "Ooh, I know this one!" and passes the roll years ago.

You can't get less than 10 in a knowledge check you're trained in

How are you not seeing that people would make that greentext argument without joking?

rather than pass or fail have a gradient, more information being revealed at higher rolls

>Players learn something interesting but useless.
>Player knows something, but it only raises further questions and does not resolve the issue.
>Player does not know anything on the subject, but is aware of a trustworthy source of such knowledge
>Player does not know, but can venture a guess based on experience.
>Player knows something that may normally be correct, but there are obvious situational factors that mean that cannot be the case.
>Player learns something prosaic, and potentially meaningless.
>Player recalls an inverse instance (you dont know what something is weak against, but you know they cannot be harmed by xyz)

If you cant do this sort of thing reflexively, you're not a very good GM.

>false info with knowledge checks
So the DM might want to emphasize that it's a rumor. Rather than just mentioning it offhand, something like
>Word around town is that Sahuagin nest in the lower levels. Only boastful drunkards claim to have actually seen them, but you've overheard many people say they've heard splashing from within.
so the players know that there's definitely aquatic enemies, and that they might be Sahuagin, but to say so definitely means trusting some guy who once ALMOST caught a fish that was THIS BIG, really!

>How do you handle knowledge checks in a non-retarded way? Or give the players a little hint through GM fiat if they SHOULD know better.

Don't have them.

Give them a small amount of info or make them remember it wrong.

Option A:
>Recalling getting drunk near a table of mages, you're pretty sure you heard them talk about "activating the arcana-whatsit with spell-elections" when confronted with something like this. [Barb tells party his guess.] Wizard, you realize he's mangling the words "arcanium" and "spatial evocations." Do you guys want to try that suggestion?
Option B:
>Don't let him roll. The barbarian has no reason to know that.
Option C:
>Barbarian, you can tell the group you're certain what you need to do is to activate the hidden arcanium by using space-altering spells near the door. You guys want to try that?
>"well yeah"
>After casting [spell], a mechanism emits an audible 'ping' and opens the way.
>"how the fuck did the dumbass barbarian know that"
>He didn't know that he didn't know it. Essentially, he accidentally bluffed himself into believing his guess was right, and got really lucky.

Oh hey, Getting Over It with Bennet Foddy. That's a pretty neat game.

That's metagaming.

Hey I got back from work ... let me clarify: the information gain you get is cumulative. Rolling high also gets you all the information that was provided at lower thresholds. For example:

If your knowledge result is 8, you know the mine is in the northern mountain.

If your result is 13, you know that the mine is in the northern mountain, and the lower levels are flooded

If your result is 16, you know the mine is in the northern mountains, the lower levels are flooded, and also that there are rumors of a sahuagin nest in the mines...

A result of 22 would give you all the above information, but would correct the detail that the threat is not from the sahuagin, but from sea spawn instead.

Does this make more sense? I suppose that this seems like i might be "lying" to the players with false information ... but I explicitly stated that they were rumors. Additionally, my players enjoy a "twist" in their sessions once in awhile ... it leads to them having to do something clever in order to adapt to or overcome an unexpected scenario in their adventure. Your mileage may vary, though.

This guy gets it.

>Minor fail
Some information is right, but misinformation or bad information is present. Its never a black and white situation so you may remember there were 12 kings of the land but forgot 6 of their names.
>Moderate fail
Asspulling abound. A bit of information is right, but there are huge blanks. Not helpful at all.
>Major fail
Foolish confidence in completely false information or a shrug