Building tension in your game, part 2

“Aren't you beginning to feel time gaining on you? It's like a predator; it's stalking you…in the end, time is going to hunt you down... and make the kill.” Dr. Soran, Star Trek: Generations

“YOU CAN NOT HAVE A MEANINGFUL CAMPAIGN IF STRICT TIME RECORDS ARE NOT KEPT.” Gary Gygax, Dungeon Master’s Guide p. 37

Okay, I hope you get the message that this post is going to talk about time.  The Gygax quote was indeed in caps in the original DMG, so Gary must have thought it was pretty important.  Excusing the High Gygaxian Commandments style of writing, the salient point is that time is an important element in an RPG.  “A meaningful campaign” is really determined by the characters in the game making meaningful choices, and those choices are made meaningful by adding the stressor of time.  The remainder of this series of articles is going to talk about using time in your game to increase tension in all modes of play.

Time stands still

There seems to be a metagame conceit among my players regarding adventure paths.  This may be true of other groups as well: As the players move through the chapters of the adventure path, there seems to be an assumption that each chapter will roll out exactly as detailed in the published adventure.  The bad guy will be on the verge of completing his evil goal just as the characters reach him at the conclusion of the adventure path.  If you’re a lazy GM like me, this assumption is valid, particularly so if your group has been with you for a long time.  Let’s face it: Game preparation is hard enough as it is without adding “STRICT TIME RECORDS.”  You know it, and your players know it too. If there’s no ticking clock, the characters can charge through the adventure at breakneck speed, or they can take a two-week holiday in the Mwangi Expanse; either way, they’ll reach the bad guy just as his evil plot is about to be fulfilled.  There’s no impetus to drive the characters forward, no consequences for taking their sweet time. The players are able to set their own efficiency threshold, whatever that may be. It could be once all characters are below 50% of their hit points, and they’re out of healing spells. Or maybe it’s once the sorcerer has cast her three black tentacles spells for the day.  Regardless, the players determine when it’s time to rest for the day, or teleport to safety.  And because time is frozen for the bad guy, waiting for the PCs to show up just in time to stop her from achieving her nefarious goal, they can make this choice without the consideration of time.  Because there are no consequences for resting after each combat, the player’s decisions about when to rest becomes meaningless.

The same principle holds true at the level of the adventure.  By this I mean the individual 6 chapters in each Paizo Adventure Path.  Each adventure features a sub-bad guy whose goal is probably connected (either directly or indirectly) to the goals of the main AP bad guy.  Sub-bad guy sits around until the PCs show up and kill him. No uncertainty = no tension.

But what if this assumption wasn’t true?  How would the decisions the players make be changed if there was a ticking clock and the characters didn’t know how long until the alarm bell rang? 

At the beginning of the adventure, the characters don’t know anything but the inciting event that brings them together. From that moment onward, the main villain of the story begins forward progress towards his ultimate goal.  The hands of the clock begin to move. By the second chapter of the adventure path, the characters have probably learned at least some elements of the overall plot, but still won’t know the time frame involved. It is at this point when the players can make decisions about how to proceed.  If they are not at all interested in finding out how much time they have, that is a choice, and that choice can have far-reaching implications as the adventure progresses. But if they decide to gather some information, they have means of doing so. Aside from what information the adventure presents them, there’s this well-known but little-used school of magic called “divination”.  Divination magic lets you learn things you didn’t know before. You can ask questions to a celestial entity and get yes/no answers. You can scry on places to see what’s going on. If time is a consideration in the campaign, and the characters don’t know what time it is, they will be much more willing to learn and prepare divination spells. 

I have a player in my Giantslayer campaign whose character is a Diviner.  Aside from using his Prescience ability during combat, I don’t think I have ever seen him use a divination spell.  He doesn’t need to use them, because he knows the bad guy is just sitting around reading Sports Illustrated and waiting for the PCs to show up.  The PCs don’t care what time it is, because time isn’t a stressor.

What is needed is a mechanic that is useful in all modes of play, that is simple to understand and use, and that effectively makes time a resource that characters waste at their own peril.

The core mechanic

As with any game element, the trick to adding a new system is to make it easy to use, simple in its design, and effective in its intended goal.  Presented herewith is just such a system (I hope), which I have shamelessly and unapologetically stolen from The Angry GM (a really great blog if you can get past the “I’m smart, you’re stupid, so shut up” schtick).  This system is called The Tension Pool.

The mechanics are simple:  Grab 6d6 and keep them at the ready.  Place a glass, metal or ceramic container on the game table.  This is the tension pool. For each defined period of time (which we’ll talk about in later installments), you add a d6 to the pool.  When the pool is filled with 6d6, you empty the pool and roll the 6d6. If a 1 is rolled on any of the dice, a complication occurs.

There are a couple of things that either add a die to the pool, or make you roll the pool before it’s full.  We’ll delve into this more deeply when we talk about how to apply the tension pool to each mode of game play, but we can generalize as follows:

Add a die to the pool whenever the group does something that takes a long time to accomplish, like search a large room or cavern, divert from the most direct route during travel, or try to find a seller of an expensive magic item.

Roll the pool immediately if the characters do anything reckless or noisy.  If the pool is empty, roll 1d6 and then add it to the pool. Reckless actions would be stuff like breaking down a door or a chest, taking a shortcut through the wilderness, setting shit on fire or using Intimidate to bully townsfolk.  Again, we’ll examine this further as we explore Combat, Exploration, Social Interaction and Downtime.

Complications result when the pool is rolled and a 1 appears.  Complications will vary based on what mode of play you’re engaged in, but will mostly involve random encounters, environmental hazards, unexpected reactions, etc.  The important thing about complications is that they are always bad, never good. The tension pool doesn’t do its job if something good can come of it. Your players will come to dread the tension pool.  Dropping a die into the pool is a great way of engaging the senses of the players; that clinking sound as the die hits the pool will be one the players come to loathe.

They will hate it because each die added to the pool brings them one step closer to a complication. If complications are universally bad, the players will do whatever they can to avoid them.  And since most of the tension pool mechanics are based on the passage of time, the players will need to make frequent risk/reward decisions based on the knowledge that time is a limited resource.

I’ll spend the balance of these articles looking at each mode of play (dungeon exploration, wilderness exploration, downtime and social interaction) and see how the Tension Pool can be applied.  We’ll also look at various types of complications that can be used and define standard time frames for the Tension Pool in each mode of play. Next up: Location-based exploration.

Building tension in your game, part 1

I hope that this is the last time I try to start this series.

You see, many weeks ago I started out writing a post about wandering monsters and why they were important.  But then I realized that because there were different modes of play, random encounters would be shaped and timed around the mode of play that was engaged.  So, I started writing about dungeons and wilderness and social encounters and down-time.  And then in so doing, realized that what I really wanted to write about was risk and reward and making player decisions meaningful.

But even that isn’t what I really wanted to write about.  At least not completely.  It finally occurred to me this past week that what I want to write about today (and probably for the next few weeks) is about tension in Pathfinder.  How to use it to make your game better, and why it makes your game better.  

What’s so great about tension anyway?  Well, Pathfinder is a game, and like most games, there is a conflict that forms the core premise of the game.  The mechanics of the game determine win and loss conditions.  The possibility of losing creates tension.  If there’s no tension, things tend to get boring rather quickly.  Sure, you could play a game where everyone gets along, success is always the outcome and it never was in doubt.  Wake me up when that game is over.

Pathfinder has tons of opportunities to create tension.  Combat, skill checks, social encounters and character interactions all are great examples.  A lot of the time, tension does indeed result from some or all of these elements.  But in my campaigns, it doesn’t always happen.  Particularly at higher levels, the tension level seems to drop to nearly catatonic levels.  I’ve ended years-long campaigns because of the lack of tension in the game.

I’ve recently been examining the elements of my campaigns to determine what are the causes of decreased tension.  One of my recent posts, Why My Campaigns Suck, talks about optimized gear and settlement rules and such, but there are other points where I have unknowingly made my game more boring by making them less tense.  Most of these instances involve hand-waving rules that make character decisions meaningless.  Let’s dig deeper.

Player decisions

One of the worst ways to damage a player’s engagement with a role-playing game is to make their decisions meaningless.  “Railroading” is what the kids call it these days.  The characters are trying to prevent an orc raid on their village, so they search for, locate and infiltrate the orc lair, killing many of them before returning to town.  The raid happens anyway.  The main bad guy of an adventure is defeated by the characters earlier than expected, so the GM has the villain escape through some deus ex machina because the adventure says the bad guy has to live until the end of the adventure.  This is the kind of disempowerment that most people refer to when discussing railroading.  But there is also a more subtle variety, one that doesn’t necessarily make player decisions meaningless, but rather turns decisions into non-decisions.

Let’s say your adventuring group just killed some ogres in a cave, and wants to loot the bodies and search their lair for treasure.  The GM calls for a Perception check, which is followed by every single character’s result, at least one of which is bound to meet or exceed the DC (I lovingly refer to this as a Skill Gangbang).  The GM reveals the hidden treasure, the group distributes it, and they move on to the next encounter.  Sounds familiar?  It does in my games.  

After completing a dungeon, your group is ready to travel to the next destination and continue the adventure path.  The GM briefly narrates the journey, describing some of the terrain and identifying how long the journey takes.  Rolling for random encounters is skipped, because both the GM and the players agree that they are a waste of time and add nothing to the story.  The characters arrive at their next destination, clean, refreshed and ready to take on their next challenge.  Sounds familiar?  It does in my games.

Before they set out on their next adventure, the group gathers up all the unwanted loot they accumulated, sell it and buy the gear that best optimizes their character.  The unwanted gear is always purchased and the desired gear is always available.  Sounds familiar?  You get the point.

In these examples, the GM asks the players for a decision, and they respond with their intended actions.  Acceptable results are normally obtained, and the game moves on as expected.  Where’s the problem in these examples?

Meaningful decisions

Above, I talked about how making player actions meaningless is bad, and how you end up with disengaged players and uninteresting stories as a result.  But in none of the examples provided do the players lose any agency.  They are free to skip the search for treasure if they want.  They are free to travel anywhere they like. They sell the loot they want, and buy the gear they want. They have decisions, and their decisions matter.  Right?

Well, no, not really.  For a player’s decisions to really matter, the decision must balance risk and reward.  If either of these elements is missing from a decision point, it isn’t really a meaningful decision.  Any decision made by the characters should involve a weighing of the potential gains against the potential losses.  If there’s no risk, it’s not a decision that matters.  Nor is it if there is no reward. 

We make decisions constantly through the course of our day as adults.  Each decision we make in real life involves comparing the potential benefits of a choice with the potential drawbacks of that decision.  Should I pay the electric bill today or buy that new entertainment system?  Should I get all my work done for the day, or write a blog about role-playing games?  Our decisions matter, because what we choose involves potential loss.  The lights get shut off.  Our boss puts us on probation.  Et cetera.  Keeping this in mind, let’s go back to our examples so I can explore this idea in the context of RPG’s.

Our adventuring group has killed the ogres, and now make the decision to loot the bodies and search the room for hidden treasure.  There is obviously a reward involved; if they are successful, they will find treasure and improve their character in the form of currency or items.  But is there risk?  Well, you could argue that the risk is by not searching the room, or by missing your Perception roll, you don’t get the treasure.  The risk is missing out on the gold and magic, which means your character doesn’t improve.  Now, go back and read two paragraphs above this.  A risk must involve a potential loss to be meaningful.  Missing out on treasure isn’t really a risk.  The net result of not getting the treasure is that your character remains the same.  They don’t lose anything if they don’t find the treasure, they just miss out on the opportunity to improve.  This isn’t a real risk, and therefore the decision to search the room isn’t truly important.

How about travel?  Are there any decisions that matter in the second example?  Let’s get the obvious one out of the way so we can talk more about the opaquer one.  I’ve said this a lot, but I play adventure paths.  In my Giantslayer campaign, the group must travel south from the frost giant village of Skirgaard, through the Mindspin Mountains to get to the fire giant lair and the next chapter in the AP.  Obviously, even though the characters could potentially decide to go somewhere else, the players know that they must go south if they want to continue the campaign.  Going anywhere else means that the campaign is over, and we start playing some other campaign.  The decision of which direction to travel is just an illusion.  The players willingly choose to travel to the next location in order to continue the campaign.

Okay, having dispensed with that, there is another problem in this example that I want to call out which is more germane to our discussion today.  It involves the unwritten contract between myself and my players which mutually agrees that random encounters during travel are boring and a waste of time.  Out of curiosity, I looked at both the Dungeons & Dragons Player’s Handbook, 5^th edition and the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Core Rulebook, 2^nd edition to see what they had to say about travel and exploration:

D&D PHB: THE THREE PILLARS OF ADVENTURE - Exploration includes both the adventurers' movement through the world and their interaction with objects and situations that require their attention. Exploration is the give-and-take of the players describing what they want their characters to do, and the Dungeon Master telling the players what happens as a result. On a large scale, that might involve the characters spending a day crossing a rolling plain or an hour making their way through caverns underground. On the smallest scale, it could mean one character pulling a lever in a dungeon room to see what happens.

Pathfinder RPG CRB: Exploration - Most of the time, your character will explore the world, interact with characters, travel from place to place, and overcome challenges. This is called exploration. Game play is relatively free-form during exploration, with players responding to the narrative whenever they have an idea of what to do next. Leaving town via horseback, following the trail of a marauding orc tribe, avoiding the tribe’s scouts, and convincing a local hunter to help in an upcoming fight are all examples of things that might occur during exploration.

Throughout this mode of play, the GM asks the players what their characters are doing as they explore. This is important in case a conflict arises. If combat breaks out, the tasks the PCs undertook while exploring might give them an edge or otherwise inform how the combat begins.

Well slap my ass and call me Judy!  The #1 and #2 roleplaying games in the hobby agree that exploration is one of the principal ways that players engage with the game.  Huh!  If that is true, then why does exploration get hand-waved so often?  Does it have anything to do with player agency and meaningful decisions?

How about social interactions with NPCs?  Reducing a social encounter to a single skill check is unrewarding, and usually only includes the character with the best applicable social skill.  Whether you use the verbal duels system from Ultimate Intrigue or Everyman Gaming’s excellent Skill Challenge Handbook, you’re broadening the roleplaying experience of a social encounter, giving depth to NPCs, and (in the case of the Skill Challenge Handbook) opening up opportunities for multiple characters to engage in a social conflict.

Lastly, there’s downtime.  You may be thinking “What?  Downtime is when the characters get to rest and relax, and take a break from all of the tension of combat and exploration and talking and stuff!”  Yes, I do agree with that reaction but only up to a certain point.  If we remove any element of uncertainty from downtime activities, it becomes dull, unimportant and meaningless to the characters.  For example, the group of characters returns from the dungeon bearing treasure and magical items.  The liquid assets are divided among the characters, the non-magical solid assets are sold for their value and the unwanted magical loot is sold, with the proceeds of the sale being used to buy more desirable magic gear.  If this transaction is satisfactory to your group, that’s fine.  But I do believe that you are missing out on some great worldbuilding and roleplaying potential, as well as the chance to inject tension into this mode of play.

Firstly, the group needs to find someone to buy their unwanted magic gear.  Since the price tag on these items is pretty large, the pool of potential buyers is quite small.  If we use the modern concept of The Two Percent, we could say that only 2% of the population of the city would have the funds necessary to buy the item.  How do the PCs find their potential buyer? 

 

The same premise holds true when the PCs want to buy a magic item.  Using the magic treasure generation rules from Ultimate Equipment, the GM determines that a rod of withering is available for purchase in the city, the PCs learn of its availability and want to buy it.  They can’t just wander into the local WizMart; they need to determine who has it, if they want to sell it, and if so, how much do they want for it.

Introducing these elements of uncertainty accomplishes three main goals: First, it gives the players an opportunity to engage in a process, rather than just accepting a foregone conclusion.  Why is this good?  Because it creates an opportunity for the character to use their skills and/or abilities to improve their chances of success.  A character with skill ranks invested in Diplomacy gets the opportunity to Gather Information to locate a potential buyer or seller.  A character with ranks in Appraise may get a chance to determine if the price offered by a buyer or seller is fair.  A character with a social skill such as Bluff, Diplomacy or Intimidate may use those skills to influence the outcome of a financial transaction.  

Second, it creates roleplaying opportunities.  Looking for a seller may lead the PCs to meet an important local noble, or a crime lord, or a wealthy merchant.  Any roleplaying encounter gives the GM a chance to introduce an interesting NPC and maybe a potential plot hook.  Perhaps the NPC will never be seen again.  But maybe they come back again at a later time in the campaign and becomes important to the characters.  The NPC may be nefarious and want to rob the characters of their new shiny bauble at the earliest opportunity.  Or they may be in need of a favor, creating an adventure hook for future sessions.

Last, it improves the player’s immersion in the campaign setting.  Instead of a faceless, impersonal transaction, the characters meet someone in the setting.  Maybe it’s Marcus Thalassinus Endrin, leader of House Endrin or Toff Ornelos, Headmaster of the Acadamae.  Regardless of who, the important thing is that they have a name, they have a role in the setting, and the players may just remember their contact, and seek them out for future transactions.  This creates persistence in your world, and persistent NPCs make your setting more vibrant and believable.

In my next post, I will offer a system that adds tension to each of these modes of play. 

Happy holidays to everyone!

Hacking the Rules: Monster lore, part 7

Another late post; my apologies again.  Work luncheon on Friday gave me a half-day off, but also gave me a day's work to be done in half a day.  So, you get this post today, but I'll be back on schedule with a new series of posts on Friday.  So, without further ado...

Now that we’ve properly identified all of the elements in our new monster lore system, it’s time to write it up into official rules language.

KNOWLEDGE (Int ; Trained Only [see below])

You are educated in a field of study and can answer both simple and complex questions. Like the Craft, Perform, and Profession skills, Knowledge actually encompasses a number of different specialties. Below are listed typical fields of study.

• Arcana (ancient mysteries, magic traditions, arcane symbols, monster lore)

• Dungeoneering (caverns, spelunking, monster lore)

• Engineering (buildings, aqueducts, bridges, fortifications)

• Geography (lands, terrain, climate, people, nations)

• History (wars, colonies, migrations, founding of cities)

• Humanoids (Alignment, culture, organization, rivalries, society, monster lore)

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

• Nature (seasons and cycles, weather, monster lore)

• Nobility (lineages, heraldry, personalities, royalty)

• Planes (the Inner Planes, the Outer Planes, the Astral Plane, the Ethereal Plane, planar magic, monster lore)

• Religion (gods and goddesses, mythic history, ecclesiastic tradition, holy symbols, monster lore)

Check: Answering a question within your field of study has a DC of 10 (for really easy questions), 15 (for basic questions), or 20 to 30 (for really tough questions).

You can use this skill to identify monsters and their special powers or vulnerabilities. In general, the DC is determined by the GM, based on a variety of factors. A successful check allows you to successfully identify that monster. For every 5 points by which your check result exceeds the DC, you recall a piece of useful information, such as its offensive, defensive or special abilities.

Action: Usually none. When trying to identify a creature with a Knowledge check, the check is a free action.  The player must choose which Knowledge skill they will use to make the check, and only one check per round can be made.

Try Again: No. The check represents what you know, and thinking about a topic a second time doesn’t let you know something that you never learned in the first place.

Untrained: You cannot make an untrained Knowledge check. The only exception to this rule is using Knowledge (Local) to identify a creature and gain monster lore.  A character is presumed to have a limited knowledge of creatures indigenous to their native area.

Setting Knowledge DC’s

The DC for a Knowledge checks to learn monster lore is based on the creature’s Frequency.  To determine Frequency, identify the monster source book for the creature, and then consult the chart below:

Source book	Frequency	Knowledge DC
Bestiary 1	Common or uncommon	5 (Common), 10 (Uncommon)
Bestiary 2, Bestiary 3	Rare	20
All other sources	Very rare	30

Next, consult the adventure path, regional source book or use your own hand-picked list, and identify those creatures that are local to the campaign area.  If your campaign encompasses multiple regions or areas, make a separate list for each.  These are the creatures that can be identified with a Knowledge (Local) check.  The DC for the Knowledge (Local) check is determined using the same criteria listed above, i.e. DC 5 for common creatures, DC 10 for uncommon, DC 20 for rare and DC 30 for very rare.

In all cases, apply the following modifiers to the DC as applicable:

Modifier	DC
Creature is in native environment	-5
Template – Bestiary 1	+2
Template – Bestiary 2 or Bestiary 3	+4
Variant or unique creature	+5
Creature type is Outsider	+5
Template – All other publications	+6

Once the DC has been determined, the player may make a Knowledge skill check to identify the creature, and possibly learn a bit of useful lore about it.  The applicable Knowledge skill is based on the creature’s type, as listed below:

Creature type	Knowledge skill type
Aberrations	Dungeoneering
Animals	Nature
Constructs	Arcana
Dragons	Arcana
Fey	Nature
Humanoids	Humanoids
Local creatures	Local
Magical beasts	Arcana
Monstrous humanoids	Humanoids
Oozes	Dungeoneering
Outsiders	The Planes
Plants	Nature
Undead	Religion
Vermin	Nature

Lastly, make a notation in each monster’s bestiary entry to add the DC’s for various knowledge checks.  For example, the characters encounter a giant solifugid (Bestiary 2).  Next to the creature’s stat block, the GM should note “Knowledge: Nature 15, Local (Wati) 15”

When the characters encounter a creature, the GM should read the short description of the creature found at the top of its Bestiary entry, and show the players a picture of the creature.  This can be the picture found in the Bestiary, or any picture the GM deems appropriate and representative.  When a player chooses to make a Knowledge check, they may attempt to guess what the creature is before making their Knowledge check.  If the player guesses successfully, grant a +5 insight bonus to the character’s Knowledge check. 

 

And that’s our system.  All we need to do now is test it and see how broken it is.

Now, I promised you in an earlier article that I would rigorously crunch these numbers and see how they change the old baseline for monster lore.  I’m going to do that below.  WARNING: MATH AHEAD!

MATHFINDER!

The selection I chose to test our system was the Mummy’s Mask adventure path.  It’s the next AP I will run with my group, and seems representative of an average adventure path in terms of creature variety.  I first went through the entire AP and noted any creature from an encounter, be it hostile or friendly.  I also noted the creature’s source book, its Challenge Rating, and its Environment.  If the creature had a template applied to it, I noted the template, and the source book the template was published in. I then did the same thing with any creature that was listed on a random encounter table in the city of Wati, or that was listed as an ‘urban’ encounter in Osirion: Legacy of the Pharaohs. I added a column for these creatures called “local.”

After removing any duplicate entries, I finished with a list of 217 different creatures that could or would be encountered by the characters in the campaign. 

The next step was to list the creature type for each creature, i.e. monstrous humanoid, undead, dragon, etc.  The last step of data entry on my spreadsheet was to add columns for old DC, new DC and net change.  The old DC was the DC based on the creature’s Challenge Rating, the new DC was the DC established by the rules listed above. 

Once the data was gathered, I started grouping creatures by type and determining the change in average DC for Knowledge checks.  The results are listed below:

Creature Type		DC change	Sample size
Overall		+2.0	217
Aberrations		-5.4	5
Animals		-2.6	8
Constructs		+3.4	19
Dragons		-4.9	8
Fey		+5	2
Humanoids		-2.2	9
Magical beasts		-0.9	25
Monstrous humanoids		-2.3	10
Oozes		-1.8	6
Outsiders		+5.4	47
Undead		+4	55
Vermin		+2.5	23

NO DATA WITHOUT ACTION

Reviewing the results above, the average DC for all sampled creatures increased by 2.0.  7 out of 12 creature types saw a net decrease, while the remaining 5 creature types increased.  Undead and Outsiders were the most commonly occurring types, representing 47% of the total encounters.  Both categories saw a net increase in DC’s, which skewed the average DC upward.

Blah blah blah whatever.  What does all this shit mean?

It means that Knowledge checks for monster lore just got harder.  On average, the DC increases by 2, meaning that an old DC 15 check just became a DC 17 check.  From a player’s perspective, ranks in Knowledge skills don’t buy as much as they used to.  Statistically, they are worth 10% less than they used to be. 

I’m not satisfied with that result.  Which leaves me with two options.  Either decrease the standard DC’s by 2, or compensate the characters with two additional skill points per level.  As it stands, the DC’s for our new system are neatly organized in multiples of 5, which appeals to my sense of order and structure.  So, how can we award additional skill points to characters without rewriting the entire Core Rulebook?  Easy.

 

Pathfinder Unchained.  Background skills.  2 additional skill ranks per level to be spent on Appraise, Craft, Handle Animal, Linguistics, and certain Knowledge skills.  You’re welcome.

Alright, fine.  It’s not as simple as all that.  The optional Background Skills system found in Pathfinder Unchained does grant 2 additional skill points per level, but they can only be spent on what are defined as non-adventuring skills.  These are skills that are not usually employed in a dungeon or wilderness environment.  You can spend the extra two skill points on Knowledge skills such as engineering, nobility, history and geography, but none of these skills can be used to learn monster lore.  Even though players get two extra skill points per level, it doesn’t directly balance the increased DC’s that result from our new system.

But I think it does indirectly balance the change, at least partly.  If I’m playing a class that has an animal companion (druid, ranger, hunter or whatever third-party creation is my current flavor-of-the-month), I’m going to want to invest skill points in Handle Animal.  In the old system, I would have to do so at the expense of a rank in a different skill, including any Knowledge skill.  Now that Handle Animal is classified as a non-adventuring skill, it frees up a skill point for me to spend on any adventuring skill, including any Knowledge skill that can be used to determine monster lore.  So that gets us a little down the road towards balance.

If my character wants to be some kind of scholar, I will probably invest skill points in the History or Geography category.  Now that those skills are considered non-adventuring, it also frees up skill points.  We get a little closer.

Craft, Artistry and Profession get ignored a lot.  As a player, I often feel obliged to take a rank in Profession, just to demonstrate that my character had a life before they became a murder hobo.  As a GM, I frequently hand-wave such skills because A. They don’t contribute significantly to the plot of the adventure, B. They don’t offer useful solutions to challenges encountered during an adventure, or C. The crafting rules in Pathfinder are boring and needlessly complex. Shoving these skills into the non-adventuring category is just another way of hiding them in a dusty corner to gather dust, as they rightly should. 

Don’t get me started on Appraise.  That’s a whole other article.

I guess what I’m saying is that Background Skills get us closer to a balance with our higher DC’s for monster lore, but not all the way.  Maybe half.  If accurate, that means that an average check for monster lore has a net DC increase of about one.  As a GM, I’m satisfied with that outcome, and as a player I would be willing to accept a slightly higher difficulty if the system provides greater immersion and logical consistency.  Your mileage may vary.

One last point of examination, and then we can put a bow on this bitch.  I added a skill in our new system, Knoweldge (Humanoids).  We need to identify which classes receive our new Knowledge skill as a class skill.  Since we took Knowledge (Local) and split it into two different skills, it seems logical to make Knowledge (Humanoids) a class skill for any class that gets Knowledge (Local) as a class skill.  From the Core Rulebook classes, that’s the bard, rogue and wizard.  Of the classes introduced in the Advanced Player’s Guide, only the summoner gets Knowledge (Local) as a class skill (WTF?), but I think it makes sense to give the inquisitor Knowledge (Humanoids) as a class skill, since monster lore is kinda their thing.

With that out of the way, I guess I need to look at how adding a skill to the game affects the expenditure of skill points, and what impact that effect has.  To do that, I’m going to have to make some assumptions about the way players spend skill points on their characters.  My assumption is based on how I create characters and allocate skill points.  Which is probably similar to the way the majority of players handle it, but maybe not.  Caveat emptor.  I’ll put this in a footnote so that you don’t have to be bored reading my bullshit excuses for foisting this on you rational and well-thought-out justification. ¹

Using the Core Rulebook classes as our sample, an average character receives 3.8 skill points per level.  Let’s round that up to 4 to keep it simple.  Under the original skill rules, each class receives an average of 4.24 class skills per level.  Adding the new skill Knowledge (Humanoids), each class only receives an average of 4.19 class skills per level.  For the sake of simplicity, let’s assume that the average character will get 1 skill point in each of their class skills per level (see footnote).  Over the course of a 15-level campaign, the character receives 57 skill ranks (not adding their Intelligence modifier or ranks gained from Favored Class bonus).  They have 64 opportunities under the old system (15 x 4.24) to spend those ranks.  Under the new system, they still get an average of 57 skill ranks, but now can spend them on 63 opportunities (15 x 4.19). 

So, the addition of a single skill costs the characters 1 skill rank over the course of a 15-level campaign.  I’m thinking that’s not a terrible burden to bear, but if you want to mount an armed rebellion, I can’t stop you.  The final net result of our new monster lore system is an approximate increase in DC of one, and a cost to the players of one skill rank over the course of a campaign.  Is that cost worth a revised system for monster lore that actually makes sense?  Comments welcome!

 ¹ If you’re like me, you probably spend most of your skill points on class skills.  It just makes sense numerically; you get a +4 bonus for investing a rank in a class skill but only get a +1 bonus for a non-class skill.  Better bang for the buck.  Sure, you probably want to max out Perception even if it’s not a class skill for you (because it’s the most useful skill in the game), but most of your other non-class skills either get ignored entirely or get lip service with a pity rank.  The point is that the large majority of your skill points are probably going to be spent on class skills, which is what the analysis that follows is based upon.