Marching From Golarion; Recall Knowlege

The most accessible conduit for delivering world information to player characters.

Recall Knowledge

 

CONCENTRATE

 

You attempt a skill check to try to remember a bit of knowledge regarding a topic related to that skill. The GM determines the DCs for such checks and which skills apply.

Critical Success You recall the knowledge accurately and gain additional information or context.

Success You recall the knowledge accurately or gain a useful clue about your current situation.

Critical Failure You recall incorrect information or gain an erroneous or misleading clue.

The following skills can be used to Recall Knowledge, getting information about the listed topics. Sometimes, you can get the GM's permission to use a different but related skill, usually against a higher DC than normal. Some topics might appear on multiple lists, but the skills could give different information. For example, Arcana might tell you about the magical defenses of a golem, whereas Crafting could tell you about its sturdy resistance to physical attacks.

• Arcana: Arcane theories, magical traditions, creatures of arcane significance, and arcane planes.
• Crafting: Alchemical reactions and creatures, item value, engineering, unusual materials, and constructs.
• Lore: The subject of the Lore skill's subcategory.
• Medicine: Diseases, poisons, wounds, and forensics.
• Nature: The environment, flora, geography, weather, creatures of natural origin, and natural planes.
• Occultism: Ancient mysteries, obscure philosophy, creatures of occult significance, and esoteric planes.
• Religion: Divine agents, divine planes, theology, obscure myths, and creatures of religious significance.
• Society: Local history, key personalities, legal institutions, societal structure, and humanoid culture.

The GM might allow checks to Recall Knowledge using other skills. For example, you might assess the skill of an acrobat using Acrobatics. If you're using a physical skill (like in this example), the GM will most likely have you use a mental ability score-typically Intelligence- instead of the skill's normal physical ability score.

Recall Knowledge Tasks

These examples use Society or Religion.

• Untrained name of a ruler, key noble, or major deity
• Trained line of succession for a major noble family, core doctrines of a major deity
• Expert genealogy of a minor noble, teachings of an ancient priest
• Master hierarchy of a genie noble court, major extraplanar temples of a deity
• Legendary existence of a long-lost noble heir, secret doctrines of a religion

On most topics, you can use simple DCs for checks to Recall Knowledge. For a check about a specific creature, trap, or other subject with a level, use a level-based DC (adjusting for rarity as needed). You might adjust the difficulty down, maybe even drastically, if the subject is especially notorious or famed. Knowing simple tales about an infamous dragon’s exploits, for example, might be incredibly easy for the dragon’s level or even just a simple trained DC.

Alternative Skills

As noted in the action’s description, a character might attempt to Recall Knowledge using a different skill than the ones listed as the default options. If the skill is highly applicable, like using Medicine to identify a medicinal tonic, you probably don’t need to adjust the DC. If its relevance is a stretch, adjust the DC upward as described in Adjusting Difficulty.

Additional Knowledge

Sometimes a character might want to follow up on a check to Recall Knowledge, rolling another check to discover more information. After a success, further uses of Recall Knowledge can yield more information, but you should adjust the difficulty to be higher for each attempt. Once a character has attempted an incredibly hard check or failed a check, further attempts are fruitless—the character has recalled everything they know about the subject.

Creature Identification

A character who successfully identifies a creature learns one of its best-known attributes—such as a troll’s regeneration (and the fact that it can be stopped by acid or fire) or a manticore’s tail spikes. On a critical success, the character also learns something subtler, like a demon’s weakness or the trigger for one of the creature’s reactions.

The skill used to identify a creature usually depends on that creature’s trait, as shown on Table 10–7, but you have leeway on which skills apply. For instance, hags are humanoids but have a strong connection to occult spells and live outside society, so you might allow a character to use Occultism to identify them without any DC adjustment while Society is harder. Lore skills can also be used to identify their specific creature. Using the applicable Lore usually has an easy or very easy DC (before adjusting for rarity).