Hacking the Rules: Monster lore, part 3

Complexity isn’t always great

I’ve always been a fan of complexity.  When I sit down to design a house rule, my brain automatically gets set to the highest difficulty rating that I can comprehend, and I begin my work in that brainspace.  I don’t know why, exactly, but it probably has something to do with deep-seated insecurity and a need to feel superior.  Or to show you how smart I am so you don’t realize how dumb I am.  Whatever, we all have our issues.

For me, complexity is pleasing and enjoyable.  What I recently realized, however, is that complexity in a game system isn’t a good thing necessarily.  Especially when I am pushing that complexity onto the players in my game.  Players have already invested a lot of their time learning the rules of the game as they are published.  Replace those rules with something more complicated, and the best I can hope for is grudging acquiescence.  The worst is open revolt.

As I’m mulling over solutions for the monster lore problem I’ve described in the past two posts, the guiding principle that I have forced into my brain is KISS.  This is something new for me.  My design goal with this new system is to try to keep it as simple as possible; simple for everyone would be ideal, but simple for the players is a minimum requirement.  As a GM, I can handle complexity.  I even prefer it.  Wow, a growth and learning opportunity at age fifty-something.  Who wouldda thunk? 

The good news is that the solution I will outline remains exactly the same for the players:  See a monster, decide what knowledge check you will make, roll a d20 and add your Knowledge bonus.  See?  I can totally do easy.  The bad news (but not so bad for me, since I don’t mind complexity) is that a large amount of work gets placed on the GM.  And that work specifically entails reintroducing the Frequency rating into the corpus of the Pathfinder Bestiaries and figuring out how Frequency affects the target DC for Knowledge checks.  Not a small task.

Fixing Knowledge (Local)

Let’s get this ball rolling by getting Knowledge (local) out of the way.  In my opinion, this is the most egregious of offenders in the monster lore category and can be fixed pretty easily.  Why don’t we try and redefine Knowledge (local) as follows?

Knowledge (Local): Legends, personalities, inhabitants, laws, customs, traditions, establishments, history.  You must select a particular location (such as a city, a small group of nearby villages, or a small region of wilderness) that your knowledge applies to.  For example, Knowledge (local: Korvosa) would be appropriate, but Knowledge (local: Varisia) would not.

Notice that humanoids have been removed from this definition.  We’ll get back to that in a moment, don’t fret.  With this revised definition, Knowledge (local) now deals only with things that are…local!  With humanoids removed from the definition, Knowledge (local) is no longer used to gain monster lore with Knowledge checks (but see below).  I’ve also added history to the definition.  It makes sense that if you take ranks in Knowledge (local: Korvosa), you would also know something about the city’s history.  You wouldn’t be able to use your local knowledge of Korvosa to make a history check about the Whispering Tyrant, for example, but you could use it to remember who the founder of the Korvosa was or recall certain details about the wars against the Shoanti.

But wait!  There’s more!  It seems logical to me that ranks in Knowledge (local) should also allow a character to identify monsters that are…wait for it…LOCAL.  Let’s say your character is from Korvosa.  You have some ranks in Knowledge (local: Korvosa).  You encounter an imp eating a rat in some back alley.  Now, your character knows that imps are very common in Korvosa, because students at the Acadamae must learn to summon them very early in their education.  These summoned imps are simply released into the city, where they do whatever imps do.  Under the old rules, unless your character had ranks in Knowledge (the Planes), you would have no idea what an imp was, despite having lived in Korvosa your whole life.  Ranks in Knowledge (local: Korvosa) should allow you to easily identify an imp, and probably also know a few things about them as well.

This is where the work begins for the GM.  In order to use Knowledge (local) to learn monster lore, the GM must know what monsters are local to the area in question.  Is there any reference a GM can use to figure this out?  Why yes, there is.  And it’s pretty damn easy.

Random becomes local

I run adventure paths.  I am not creative enough to write my own adventures, nor do I have the time to commit to such an undertaking.  Adventure paths have their own kind of drawbacks, but you can’t beat them for convenience and most of them are written by folks that are far more talented and creative than me.  As a bonus to getting a pre-written adventure, each volume of an adventure path contains a collection of supplemental material called back matter.  And the back matter always has a section called the Bestiary.  Each bestiary begins with random encounter tables that you can use for that particular adventure.  Do you know what else you can use those random encounter tables for?  Figuring out what monsters are local. As I glance over the random encounter tables for Curse of the Crimson Throne, I find a list called Korvosa Street Encounters.  In that list are dream spiders, dire rats, accuser devils, ettercaps, otyughs, imps, and a whole bunch of other critters.  Since they all can possibly be encountered on the streets of Korvosa, they can be considered local.  And, therefore, can be identified with the Knowledge (local) skill.  So now, your character doesn’t need to have ranks in Knowledge (the Planes) to figure out what that creature is that’s flying around your kitchen, trying to eat your cat.  And here’s another thing that should be allowed: Knowledge (local) checks to determine monster lore can be made untrained.  Your character has watched imps and pseudodragons and otyughs their whole life.  They should have a chance to know at least a little about them without having to spend a rank in a Knowledge skill.

Where do we put all these humanoids? 

Let’s circle back to humanoids now.  We’ve removed humanoids from Knowledge (local), so we need to find a way to gain monster lore for humanoids and monstrous humanoids.  But humanoids just don’t fit well into any other Knowledge category.  Which is probably why the designers of the game decided that they had to lump it into the Local category.  ‘Cause, there ain’t no other place to put it.  I see no other way to insert it back into the game than to create a new Knowledge category: Knowledge (humanoids).  Let’s try this out as a preliminary definition:

Knowledge (Humanoids): Society, organization, culture, rivalries, alignment, monster lore. 

Knowledge (humanoids) is general, while Knowledge (local) is specific.  A Knowledge (humanoids) check will inform you about goblins in general, whereas Knowledge (local) would tell you about goblins living in the Tanglewood.  You can also use Knowledge (humanoids) to learn monster lore about humanoid and monstrous humanoid creatures.  So, to learn about Varisian culture and beliefs in general, you use Knowledge (humanoids), but to learn about the Varisians living in Korvosa, you use Knowledge (local).  It makes sense to me; hopefully it does to you too.

Grab your pitchfork

“Nooooooo!!!” I hear you cry out in protest.  “You can’t add another skill to the game!  Now my skill ranks buy less at every level!  You have to increase the number of skill points my character gets to compensate!  Shenanigans!  I declare shenanigans!”  Yes, I hear you.  Your point is valid.  I recognize that.  My two options are to adjust skill points granted per level, or tell you “tough shit, deal with it.”  Truthfully, I don’t know which way I’m leaning, but I promise you that I will thoroughly examine the mechanical impact of adding a skill into the game and provide you with statistical data that backs up my decision.  I promise, I don’t want to hose players.  I want to make the game better, for both you and me.  Have faith.

In my next post, well dive deep into the topic of Frequency, how to introduce it back into the game, and how to mechanically express it in the form of DC’s.

Hacking the rules: Monster lore, part 2

What ever happened to Frequency?

Way back in days of yore, the first edition of the Monster Manual for Advanced Dungeons and Dragons had an entry in each monster listing called Frequency.  The definition as per the MM: “FREQUENCY refers to the likelihood of a particular creature being encountered in a region or area where it might be an inhabitant. Very rare indicates a 4% chance of occurrence, rare indicates an 11 % chance, uncommon indicates a 20% chance, and common indicates a 65% chance. These probabilities are considered in the encounter matrices found in ADVANCED DUNGEONS & DRAGONS, DUNGEON MASTER'S GUIDE.”

So, four different types of frequency: Common, uncommon, rare and very rare, each with its own percentage chance of encountering the respective creature.  Frequency told us how ubiquitous each creature was in the game world and allowed a GM to create random encounter tables based on the listed frequency.

Along came second edition a few years later, and the Monstrous Compendium added a new entry: Climate and Terrain.

 Now, the GM can tailor his encounter tables to specific terrains to consider the climate and the terrain, as well as the frequency of the monster.  The GM can create encounter lists for deserts, cold mountains, temperate swamps, or any terrain and climate that the PCs happened to adventure in.  No more yetis and flood trolls in the desert!

But a curious thing happened with the publication of the third edition of Dungeons and Dragons.  The Frequency entry for monsters disappeared. 

Now as far as I can tell, this was a purposeful design decision.  I guess the thinking was “This is the GM’s world, let’s allow the GM to decide how frequently a griffon is encountered.  Let’s unchain the GM from the shackles of Gygaxian dictatorship!”  Which is fine, I guess.  But this design choice also eliminated any kind of reference point a GM had to inform them of potential frequency.  Red dragons could now be just as common as goblins, if you wanted them to be.  A possibly unintended side-effect of the removal of Frequency was that it also left a void for the Knowledge skill checks for monster lore.  A GM no longer had Frequency to determine how common a monster was, and consequentially how much a PC might know about said monster.  Along comes Challenge Rating to the rescue!  With this design choice, the relative strength of a monster now determines how much is known about it.  The designers of third edition may have been aware of the potential problems with this solution but found that the simplicity of the monster lore system outweighed the problems it created with logical consistency.  And so, Frequency became a relic of the past, a quaint reminder of a time when game books told you how you should be playing the game.

 Where do we go from here?
 

Moving on to Pathfinder, what do I do if I reject the use of Challenge Rating as a reference for monster lore? What other reference points are provided that can inform me of the frequency of each monster?  Sadly, there doesn’t seem to be any.  I guess that I’ll just need to crack open all my bestiaries and assign a frequency to each and every monster based on, well, my whims, I guess.

Except I’m not going to do that.  Who in their right mind would?  Or would have the time for such a herculean undertaking?  Not me.  I have kids, and I must pay attention to them sometimes.  Is there a way to cull the enormous herd of possibilities to make it more manageable?  And if so, how can I re-introduce Frequency as a statistic that makes knowledge of monsters more logical and realistic?  And more importantly, how would adding logic and realism improve the experience for the players?  I will present a solution for you in the next article, because I’m playing Pathfinder tonight and the house is a mess.  Because, kids.

Hacking the rules: Monster lore, part 1

Hacking the Rules

Monster Lore Part 1

I’d like to engage you in an experiment for a moment. 

Have a look at the image below and try to identify the creature pictured:

Tarrasque by JasonEngle on DeviantArt

Got a good idea of what that bad boy is? Good! Now, try to identify the creature in the next picture.

Yokai Monsters: Ningyo by Loneanimator on DeviantArt

Easy, right? 1^st one is the Tarrasque, the other one is, well, you’re probably not sure, but wish you hadn’t seen it. It’s a Ningyo, by the way. If you’re like me, the Tarrasque was immediately identifiable, but you probably had no idea what the Ningyo was. Everyone has heard of the Tarrasque, nobody has heard (or wants to hear) about the Ningyo. The former is one of the most infamous monsters in all the Pathfinder RPG, the other is an obscure monster tucked away in the back matter of an adventure path. From a realistic perspective, the Tarrasque would be immediately identifiable and the Ningyo would only be recognized by some out-of-work dork living in his mother’s basement, who has made it his sole mission in life to study and recognize every single Pathfinder monster in existence.

It might interest you to know that the Ningyo can be identified with a DC 11 Knowledge (religion) check, while the Tarrasque can only be identified with a DC 35 Knowledge (arcana) check.

My point, exaggerated though it is, is that the Pathfinder rules don’t do a good job of reflecting the infamy of monsters; Knowledge checks to learn monster lore don’t consider such factors as cultural knowledge, environment, rarity and notoriety of the monster being observed. It uses the creature’s Challenge Rating as the basis for identification. Think about it: the way the rules are written, the more dangerous a monster is, the harder it is to identify. This is ass-backwards and has always been a part of Pathfinder that has bugged me. Since my work only requires about 3-4 hours of work a day, I’ve had some think about this problem, and try to come up with a better way.

Why the monster lore rules don't work

Imagine your character encounters two different CR 1 monsters. One is a ghoul, the other is our friend the ningyo. Rules as written, both can be identified with a DC 11 Knowledge (religion) check. But we all know that ghouls are iconic D&D monsters; they are featured in most adventure paths in at least one encounter. The poor ningyo, on the other hand, makes nary an appearance in any adventure that I could find. Why is it that they are equally recognizable by the rules?

Now, imagine your character is from a desert environment. Happily wandering through the desert, you encounter a yeti. Never mind how the yeti got there, just follow me for a second. A quick glance at the bestiary shows that the yeti’s environment is cold mountains. But here he is, in the desert with you, ready to tear you limb from limb. You make a handy DC 14 Knowledge (local) check and Bang! You know everything there is to know about the yeti. Except for two important things: Having spent your whole life living in a desert environment, how the hell do you know anything about yetis, and what the fuck is a yeti doing in the desert?

After you kill the yeti with extreme prejudice, you later encounter a creature that is clearly some kind of fiend from the depths of hell. Now, your character has never actually been to hell. Maybe he’s read some books about it, or maybe he heard a bard sing a ribald tune about a horny vrock, but your character’s experience with the metaverse is very, very limited. We’re talking about other planes of freaking existence, for God’s sake! So, here’s your character, gleefully killing ningyos and yetis in the desert, when out pops a HALA DEMON! What’s a hala demon, you ask? No need to worry, your character simply makes a DC 14 Knowledge (the Planes) check, and mentally notes that the hala demon is a creature that resides in the plane of the Abyss, can alter winds at will, and has the flyby attack feat. And then he kills it.

Your character’s last encounter of the day, as he wanders through the desert, lustily killing everything he meets, is with a flood troll. Now, you don’t know it’s a flood troll until you make your DC 12 Knowledge (local) check. And then you know it’s a flood troll. Hurray, you! But a small, scared voice in the back of your head says “Umm, wait a second. I live in the desert city of al-Butfuq and flood trolls only live in temperate swamps or rivers. I don’t want to rock the boat or anything, but why does a rank in Knowledge (local) only let me know where the good brothels are in al-Butfuq, but it can allow me to identify every single humanoid creature in the entirety of creation?”

The examples above demonstrate that the knowledge rules for monster lore really don’t provide a realistic representation of a character’s ability to identify monsters. The more powerful the monster, the less you know about them. Environmental context isn’t considered. Rarity is ignored. Identifying humanoid creatures with Knowledge (local) has nothing to do with the monster being local. It’s messed up. And I’m trying to do something about it. And I’ll tell you about it in another message, cause I’m tired and it’s 1:43 a.m. and I want to go to bed.

Thanks for your patronage.