False Hydras. What do you think of them?
I think they are fricking stupid and any DM that thinks about running them needs to have his or her dice smashed.
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It only works if players can be trusted not to metagame.
Actually now that you said, it'd be a great adventure for the first few sessions to filter out shitty metagamer.
There are easier ways to filter metagamers. Just have the party fight a troll.
>You see a horrifying gangly creature that looks like a giant goblin in the middle of the road
>My character, being a level 2 cleric, has heard a lot about these creatures, trolls, as they were the reason the Church of Boob was created. I inform the party that this is most likely a hill troll and it can only be killed with fire.
>:(
Sorry, you need to make a knowledge roll.
>"roll knowledge:nature please, no possibility to take 10"
>don't even bother to look at the roll
>"your character in fact, hasn't heard of these creatures"
>Proceed to beat the DM as a form of percussive maintenance
The Church of Boob exists for one purpose anon.
To stop people like you acting like a tit.
Reminds me of when players tried to use fire on a hydra out of the blue so I just had it continually split and nearly tpk
>here's a monster, fight it!
>nooo not like that!
Honest question, what the frick is wrong with you people? What are you actually trying to get out of playing a fantasy RPG, and why does someone knowing a monster's weakness disrupt it?
Because the world is supposed to be mysterious and threatening, not just a bunch of mechanics with skin stapled to it
>the world is supposed to be mysterious
>uses a troll for the 5th time
>Stop expecting rp in an rpg!
No
Sorry, didn't know that rp actually meant trolls instead of roleplaying, I'm a bit of a newbie like that.
Intentionally going through every option but fire or acid when you first encounter a troll to prove you're not metagaming is also metagaming.
Then stop using trolls, holy frick. Just rename and refluff the stat block so that the players are fighting a Troll equivalent but don't have to actively pretend to be morons for your satisfaction.
If you have to pretend to by mystified then it isn't really mysterious.
>threatening and mysterious
>runs a storygame
I utilize something called "The Witcher Method" for dealing with this situation.
>"You see a horrifying gangly creature that looks like a giant goblin in the middle of the road"
>Player thinks: ohh, that must be a troll
>"Except it has hooves, an elongated right arm covered in fungal growths, and three eyes on the right side of it's lumpy head."
>The player: "Frick is that?"
Popular culture has taught your players that an ork is a mongolid-neanderthal with green skin and tusks, that a goblin is a scrawny midget with pointed features, that a griffin has a beast's body and an American Bald Eagle's head.
So start changing the basic cosmetic features of the monsters of your setting a little bet. Never tell the players what it is.
If they ask around or run knoweldge checks, you give them what the filthy, ill-educated peasant locals call it.
> "Your knowledge check is a 17, good roll. You remember the tavern dwellers talking about a creature on the road which THEY called a Gyrnst. they're not sure how to deal with it, but a local housewife says she remembered a wise woman stating gyrnsts are terrified of light from torches and lanterns and are poisoned by garlic soaked in horse urine. You're certain one of these things is incidentally correct, and you DO have a clay jar of garlic."
You'd accuse me of metagaming when I use fire on that thing because I'm worried about spores from the mushroom arm.
>"oh, so it waaas a Troll after all. All this mystery was for nothing?"
And then the players take turns slapping you in the face
What you actually do, is have them fight a troll immune to acid but vulnerable to cold and watch them seethe.
What about a troll immune to shrooms instead
No, what you do if nobody rolled a success on appropriate knowledge check yet they still metagame, is to say "frick off my table you utter wienermuncher fricker homosexual metagamer shitstain and go die in a ditch, if I ever see you again I will personally kill you with my own bare hands".
Isn't the whole "trolls are weak to fire and acid" standard in D&D and therefore something anyone who isn't new would assume is common knowledge in-universe?
What a lot of people forget is what is supposed to be common knowledge in a fantasy world isn't known at all to somebody who is new to the game and what is supposed to be the GM's responsibility to say what the characters know rarely happens unless its to trick the players.
In DnD an average farmer doesn't know what a cow is. You can be a homebrewgay all you want, but that's what the rules say. Knowledge checks can't be made untrained and commoners don't get knowledge skills.
>In DnD an average farmer doesn't know what a cow is. You can be a homebrewgay all you want, but that's what the rules say. Knowledge checks can't be made untrained and commoners don't get knowledge skills.
this is a great example of terminal D&D poisoning
>an average farmer doesn't know what a cow is
>Doesn't know what a cow is
"OI GUVNA TROT OUT THE MILKBEAST"
This is what DnD does to your brain. You only see the world through poorly written mechanics.
Its like that 3.5/PF screenshot using tower shields as restraints on spellcasters.
Brainlet D&D-poisoned mind:
>"All (N)PCs need to roll INT or associated INT-based skill to know anything, regardless of the context of their backstory!"
70 IQ moron that barely graduated second grade:
>"Why wouldn't the farmer know what a cow is? Farmers love cows!"
Normal person with a basic understanding of what a DM is:
>"Huh? Make the farmer roll to know what a cow is? That's stupid, we're skipping that so we can get to the good stuff."
Ascended person that has used other editions of D&D if not other systems:
>"NPCs have expertise/skill ranks in all checks related to their profession and are always allowed to take 10 or even 20 unless in very stressful circumstances that might warrant forgetfulness. The DC to identify a cow is an easy 5, so the farmer's passive score easily passes so well that he even lets you know that his cow has been acting strangely after being bitten by a strange creature."
For me it's mostly that people existing in the world with these creatures for usually thousands of years, and not knowing about their weaknesses (especially when they come into regular conflict with humans) while also not being wiped out by them breaks my suspension of disbelief.
You can bet your ass that the first time a caveman threw a torch at a Troll and it ran away, that knowledge would become common in his tribe over night, and preserved for countless generations. Weaknesses of rarer stuff like demons is reasonable to demand a fairly high knowledge DC on though.
How much do you know about the biology of a rhinoceros of the top of your head
Poor eyesight, good sense of smell, can run with speed of uh... 40~50 km/h?
White ones graze grass and put the young in front of them, black ones eat shrubs and put the young behind the mother. They don't form herds.
How to scare something off and/or kill it has little to do with scientific biology. People in areas with Rhinos know the practicalities of Rhinos to avoid dying to them as much as possible, and even to hunt and kill them in some circumstances.
Hell, most animals IRL are afraid of smoke and fire, which we've been leveraging against them since the paleolithic.
Don't annoy it, don't threaten its calves, watch out the fricking horn?
I also know stuff from local mythological creatures despite never seen any.
if you put common-knowledge content in your game and then get upset that players know about it, you're a very, very shit GM
>noooo you can't use fire! my precious campaign depends on you playing along! roll the diiiiice!!!
Everybody knows the party will use fire damage as soon as possible, that's not the point.
The test is to see whether the players bother to justify the knowledge with actions/backstory of their PCs or just blurt out "use fire!" OOC at the rest of the playgroup.
Even something as dismissive as
is ok as long as it makes sense IC and doesn't contradict previously established backstory.
I GM for two groups
all my players are "oh, my character wouldn't know that, so I don't do it" roleplayers
I am so fricking tired of it
I want my group to actually churn through some encounters and get some wins so the campaign can go somewhere
So introduce some helpful npcs who share the information with their characters. If they’re refusing to act on the information after that you are having a very different problem.
>no, you can't use fire damage on the troll until you pass the knowledge check
>anyway, here's Biffy McSpiffy the halfling. "Use fire on the troll!" he yells
great campaign, thanks DM
Congragulations on having zero reading comprehension
Disingenuous homosexuals like you are exhausting. Players refusing to act on out of character knowledge has nothing to do with GMs or knowledge checks.
You don't deserve your players.
>a single knowledge roll is the difference between getting to content and getting stuck
Jesus Christ
that's not what I said now is it, anon?
>prepare 3 floor dungeon
>access to 2nd floor through (poorly) hidden trap door
>party narrowly misses it on passive perception
>roll garbage on actively searching the room
it is what it is
The test is to see how players leverage their resources and cordinate when they find something they can't hack and slash. If you want every action to be justified with a baroque little story then D&D isn't a game for you.
>D&D isn't a game for you
Thank god.
Isn't one of the points of the False Hydra that metagaming actually functions? The whole gimmick of the false memories bit is that the players themselves know what the hydra is while the characters do not.
The classic mistake you've made, anon, is thinking this person plays games.
Therefore metagaming happens and the players deal with the problem by killing it because they metagame. Are you stupid?
>It only works if players can be trusted not to metagame
And unfortunately if they can falsely trust the GM to not gaslight them.
It's kind of messed up.
They cannot.
Like many things, it's a cool idea that has been blown out of proportion (and made too well known to use effectively, as it runs on surprise and not understanding it), because "Content Creators" need a constant flow of things to either tear apart or verbally fellate.
This may annoy some people, but its the truth:
Any challenge or situation which undermines or circumvents mechanics as a means of resolution will leave players unsatisfied and annoyed to a degree.
A large part of the fun in rpgs is the choices you make as a means of solving problems, how you engage with the mechanics of your character is a part of that as much as if not more than whether you decided to remember the history of the dragonborn kings of Ulm.
Nonstandard encounters or situations which do not follow the rules of the game 1:1 can work, but putting emphasis on them is dangerous and having them utterly reject established convention is going to be really annoying to your players who will (justifiably) feel like their decisions and agency has been invalidated because the DM wants to do a minigame.
tl;dr "use them if you really want, but have them follow the rules of the game and interact with the mechanics of the game as much as possible"
You're completely right anon.
It's also a big part of why "system doesnt matter" is bullshit. The system shapes the fictional reality it portrays.
I imagine that a false hydra is an animal that pretends to be a hydra but is in reality far less dangerous, like a false widow.
>I imagine that a false hydra is an animal that pretends to be a hydra but is in reality far less dangerous, like a false widow.
I immediately thought of a monster-mimicking plant.
I think they have reddit energy, they're inherently railroading the players by design, and anything that specific leaves no room for me to put my own twist on it.
>Are your expectations subverted?
>This world shattering thing that is purely for story purposes relies on you not meta gaming
>Something that sounds cool on paper is bad in practice
>Something that can easily be abused by a GM
Yeah, its red it.
The "classic" implementation of the false hydra is garbage and does not translate to a game environment. You can't simply gaslight your players and have it work.
It can be implemented if you build it naturally into the game with undividual private narration that includes blind player skill checks. If done gradually and subtly then a lot of small differences can buils up before the player characters take some time to piece together what is going on.
tl;dr
If you have to lie to set up your false hydra then you are doing it wrong.
An amusing thought experiment with little modern utility. They require a degree of metagaming to engage the players, but not too much, which means you usually need an experienced group of players to navigate the whole 'Player is the PC's uneasy subconscious' thing. Experienced players, however, will have heard of this thing by now - and a self-keeping secret is only really fun if its nature is a mystery OOC, too. Otherwise it's just a tedious mother-may-I simulator.
So your ideal group for this thing would probably by a group of old greybeards playing CoC who don't really make much use of the internet.
>What do you think of them?
There's more threads ragging on the concept of False Hydras than there are people actually running them. It's like steampunk and kender where the world has mostly moved on from giving them attention yet there are a handful of fa/tg/uys who harbor a deep-seated rage that manifests as semi-regular threads of the same angry talking points. A very real example of tilting at windmills.
Every shitty one shot about an ooOoooo mysterious village in a local gaming store gas been about a false hydra
I sincerely doubt you've ever come across this even once
No, every time it's a fricking Cthulhu cult or something the general public actually gives a shit about.
I think a "monster" that exists clearly in plain sight but uses its voice to control the message and stop people talking about it's existence, to the point where they will deny crimes and disappearances that occur before them and unperson anyone who tries to stand up for the victims, is actually quite topical and relevant to modern society.
>Muh Metagaming
Pic related.
>just make up a bunch of original monsters so metagaming homosexuals can't metagame
No anon, the correct answer is to cull the metagaming homosexuals
>t. Shithead that'll seethe about players using fire on Trolls but who also refuses to not use trolls.
There's no seething. There's only removing shitty roleplayers from the table.
why is using fire on a troll shitty roleplaying?
Because the characters don't know the troll is vulnerable to fire, unless an appropriate knowledge roll is passed.
every living thing is vulnerable to fire you fricking nincompoop
>every living thing is vulnerable to fire you fricking nincompoop
Use more fire as even fiery things have a limit on how hot they can get before they start melting
But is it metagaming to not try and use fire attacks against a creature that is visible on fire, or do the characters need to make a knowledge check to know that the guy that just jumped out of a pool of lava to attack them might be fireproof?
>do the characters need to make a knowledge check to know that the guy that just jumped out of a pool of lava to attack them might be fireproof?
Insight check, the skill is a "gut feeling" skill. And as to why, just because players OOC can count 1+1 doesn't mean their characters can.
This is a good way snub OOC knowledge abuse, make backfire in the worst possible way you can imagine. Players reach for alchemist's fire the second they spot a troll? The troll actually gets set on fire, but it continuosly heals from it and has extra fire damage with it's attacks.
>Insight check, the skill is a "gut feeling" skill
Nah, frick that. I'm not spending an action and rolling a dice to see if I can deduce the obvious
>just because players OOC can count 1+1 doesn't mean their characters can.
I can't think of a single scenario where a character wouldn't know that. At least not a character I wouldn't have vetoed for being a meme.
Similarly "fire hot" is not something I would consider OOC knowledge. I think you're just reaching for extreme examples of something that should be pretty intuitive.
Are trolls either common, or are there common stories about them in setting? Are the characters career dungeon divers or people with specialized knowledge about monsters?
Characters know they have a weakness for fire
Are trolls rare or unique? Are the characters naive former farmers or otherwise not exposed to trolls or tails about trolls?
Then they don't know about their fire weakness.
Simples as. Gut feeling if you will.
Yeah, this. I'll add that you can't expect players not to fail the troll test aka "metagame" the moment they first see a troll if you play a high fantasy setting and use standard dnd monsters. If you really want your players to engage the monster as if they knew nothing either create your own setting and use standard DnD trolls to throw the players off or use whatever setting you want but alter the appearence, name and characteristics of a dnd monster (maybe even the troll in question) to mix and match the tactical choices at hand and the consequences. Or even better, custom setting and custom monster(s).
>and when the players will encounter the same creature with different characters?
My take is: either justify metaknowledge in game or be smart and flexible and avoid the encounter until you can justify said metaknowledge. Examples: previous group of adventurers wrote notes for the new group; new group acquires knowledge in between levling up as part of spcialized dungeoneer training; new region or even town new group starts in has (relatively common) knowledge of the creatures so they know how to interact with them like old group did.
>Players reach for alchemist's fire the second they spot a troll? The troll actually gets set on fire, but it continuosly heals from it and has extra fire damage with it's attacks.
Just use something that isn't a troll, holy frick
It was an example, dumbass. I'm sure you can extrapolate on other cases of blatant OOC knowledge abuse.
Uh, obviously they have to roll. They don't KNOW it's immune to fire just because it's visibly is unaffected by heat and fire. Only some kind and of savant specialist would possess that kind of classified information.
DC 20 knowledge nature to know bears live in caves.
>DC 20 knowledge nature to know bears live in caves.
Nah, I'd say DC 5 for such a common knowledge. But naturally if you don't don't have knowledge:nature trained you can't roll nor take 10.
That was literally the DC to know that information in 4th edition.
I stand corrected, I haven't played 4th. I'll use that if it ever comes up in my games.
It's pretty much just because Knowledge Check DCs scale with the target's level and 4e operates on much bigger numbers across the board. But also monster Knowledge Checks in 4e are two-tier, having a Moderate and Hard DCs.
A Bear in 4e is a level 5 Natural Beast, so you roll Nature. Beating DC15 will let you identify it's a Bear and some trivia like temperament/keywords. Beating DC 22 will actually let you know its resistances/vulnerabilities and combat abilities.
Tho of course it's nonsense to require a check if shit's common knowledge where the PC lives, so only the Hard DC will be relevant and all the Moderate will do is confirm that you are actually fighting regular-ass animal and not some magic or zombie bear.
Black person, my character is a sorcerer, fire is his first, second and every subsequent solution to anything.
I really dont get what is the problem with metagaming
Well I ran a lewd campaign once and had a player with NTR fetish. Put a pervy false hydra variant in, taking over his hometown so when the party went to visit the beast defiled his sweetheart right in front of him and he had to justify it to himself as the song rewrote his brain. Everyone knew the false hydra but the new context had them metagaming more how to have fun with the situation than instantly defeat it. No one else got cucked but two other PCs did spend some time in its clutches, a buff Amazon barbarian and an aasimar celestial patron warlock girl.
It’s stupid because the only reason it works is because it breaks the rules of how DnD monsters are designed.
Generally in DnD if you pass a save for a magic-like ability, you gain immunity to it for a decent length of time. The False Hydra’s “you forget about it if you hear its song” doesn’t do this and that’s the only reason it’s notable. It’s not genius or anything, and you could easily homebrew an equally deadly monster just by also breaking monster design rules.
It’s also in the wrong game. Shit should be a Call of Cthulhu monster.
This thread again?
Click bait doesn't farm itself now.
Oh yeah? You didn't like it when your ass got dropped by the false hydra, did you Mark? Maybe don't be such a fricking butthole every game night! Maybe quit calling at the last second and cancelling like a bastard when you promised every you were coming ten minutes ago! You know what frick YOU Mark! Don't even come next Sunday. I'll use fricking Chatgpt in your place, maybe it will be more endearing than your stale cardboard moron ass! How about that, Mark???
Running a false hydra ain't bad when you don't got a whiney moron screaming about how awful they supposedly are.
I get that a lot with rape also.
I think a really, really skilled GM can pull it off. But 99% of the time its run its just railroady bullshit that sounds better on paper than in practice. Like most reddit viral concepts, its for people who have never run or played in a game to imagine how cool it would be. And most people who do run games can see immediately that it would be very awkward to try and actually run. There are more interesting ways to run similar creatures, like changelings/dopplegangers and invisible creatures that don't rely on weird metagaming or players pretending they don't remember X or Y existing.
Sure, maybe someone out there has done it well, but I think they are far outnumbered by the people who have tried it and just had it fall flat. And they are further vastly outnumbered by the nogames who think its cool and have no idea why it doesn't usually work in practice.
Why do false hydras generate so much more conversation than other deceptive monsters like mimics and doppelgangers?
One answer is that they're an interesting thought exercise that can lead to discussion whereas mimics and dopplegangers have been around for some time and are mostly "solved." The other is a few posters like OP sperg out about them and insist you know how angry they are on a bi-weekly basis.
Because those monsters are more simple in how they operate
A mimic is just a trap chest, except instead of a bomb or whatever it eats you
A false hydra requires a lot more willing participation on the part of the players, and trusting players to engage with it in a way that lets it be a fun time is a crapshoot
Whereas a mimic can just be dropped in wherever and whenever and work just fine without the group deciding to play along
Because 99% of people here have never actually read the source and don't realize that metagaming when dealing with one is encouraged by design.
Sure, by a nogames who either never played at all or only ran it for passive 'nu' players who won't push advantages in game.
Off the top of my head:
The classic wax in ears from the odyssey
Having a bard in the party, they all get countersong
Having a CHA warlord in the party to grant save bonuses
Having an elf in the party with their enchantment resistance.
Stealth
Silence spells
Blindness/deafness spells
Anything that buffs saving throws
Some of that is edition dependent and no doubt you can wheedle and make excuses why method X totes doesn't work, honest (In which case congratulations, you reduced your game to a session of mother may I and/or children with an everythingproof shield).
The point is more... do you see the amount of holes in this thing? Like, that's an absurd number of ways the whole thing could come crashing down.
Gimmick monsters often come down to how well the gimmick can be neutralised, this particular one is just too full of holes. So you either allow them all and it dies instantly or arbitrarily make some of them not work and expect your players to just wildly guess until you get bored.
It's bullshit squared, don't ever use it in game.
The odd thing about this line of thought about trolls is that while they are a player testing monster, their gotcha isn't that they're weak to fire. The troll tests whether the party has multiple ways to deal with monsters instead of just hacking it to bits mindlessly. If they can keep the wizard alive to hit it with fire spells, lure it into a trap, or hell just bonk it with a torch they passed the test, and if they don't they generally get pummeled to death at worst or at best manage to wound it enough to frick off for a bit and regroup.
Fundamentally the 'Troll test' is one that belongs to the OSR era of D&D.
Back when it wasn't 'Player knowledge vs Metagame' but 'Player skill is character skill', because your characters were presumed to not be complete paste-eaters that don't know shit which you as someone who hasn't grown up as part of their world do know.
Trolls existed to be a manifestation of 'Have you, as the player, prepared well enough to deal with this task by equipping your character with the gear that can solve this problem' not 'Does my character know enough dank bear lore to not mistake the troll for one?'
Ignoring that this is a moronic troll thread, you're all using metagaming incorrectly. The metagame is the game about the game, typically the psychological contest between players. Knowing a troll is weak to fire is just game knowlege. Knowing the gm always runs a troll first session and only bringing fire spells is metagaming because your strategy is no longer optimized to the games rules, but to the enemy player's behavior
You're making up a new definition of the term.
Metagaming has been understood as using OOC knowledge to inform IC decisions for decades. The argument about metagaming always lands on what should be IC knowledge. Things like trolls being weak to fire, in some settings, should be IC knowledge. In others it should be some level of a skill check to know. In still others no character should know that.
What you're talking about is something entirely different that no one is arguing about.
Known wrongly, by idiots. Group consensus does not make the world flat and destroying specific terms through general misuse does nothing for ease of communication or the health of the language
Its only misuse because you have autism and refuse to understand that the term metagame has been used like this for decades. Rage against it however you want, you can't change group consensus of language.
>Known wrongly, by idiots.
>you're all using "murder" incorrectly. Murder is when you attack someone but they don't die instantly. Shooting someone in the head with a .308 isn't murder. Shooting someone in the liver and they die of blood loss and internal injuries is murder. Group consensus does not make the world flat and destroying specific terms through general misuse does nothing for ease of communication.
my hat goes off to DM's that set up puzzle encounters in their sessions, to give some variety to all the combat the systems leans into. you cannot imagine how refreshing something like a false hydra encounter is. you literally can't fathom.
My players always use fire as a first resort against monsters unless it's literally made of fire. Do your players not use fire against monsters?
This. If it's not made from or breathing fire, chances are it won't like being set on fire very much.
It's just a mindfrick monster. It's not really anything worse than a bunch of doppelgangers if you think about it.
>unless its literally made of fire
Never understood this. Even if your body is made of fire, a fire beam should still hurt you
I've never seen anyone actually run one and I'm convinced that no one ever has outside of fish story campaigns.
I ran a oneshot about a false hydra. Come smash my dice dweeb
I barely know anything about them, but the little scraps I know sound neat. They're not very well suited to any edition of DnD though, so playing them in a different system might be better.
Neat idea for stories, frickin terrible for games unless you have a very particular kind of group
I ran a false hydra once because my players love detective games. It was a good couple sessions. Everyone had a good time. But I don't think I'd ever do it again as it's a lot of work and a pretty gimmicky monster.
They're a pretty fun creature to run, especially for a session 0/1 to start things out, tie the group together, and give them basic resources.
I've also made a couple PC's with the legendary backstory of "they once killed a false Hydra, all by themselves!", one of which got a laugh, and the other a grumble.
They're overhyped, much in the same way that obscure horrors like Backrooms or SCP stuff are overhyped and overdone until the curiosity is kinda gone. But to be overhyped, it needs to be somewhat cool in the first place.
Cool idea, probably shit to both run and play in dnd, better for if you're writing a story or maybe even CoC but not D+D.
Takes a lot of agency from the players, the idea that they've forgotten about it seems awesome but it implies your players just saw it, freaked out, all looked away in unison or broke the line of sight without marking anything down or chasing it or etcetc. Just seems like a lot of liberties. One of my players charges headlong into almost every fight so to say suddenly "Actually, although you've behaved like X in every encounter so far. In this one you did Y because I said so" Is taking away player agency.
Also once you get passed the "Big reveal" moment it just seems like a complete ball ache to both run and play against. Teehee you all forgot everything that just happened! So what dm, you want everyone to go and do that whole clue-finding shit again? Frick that.
No one really talks about the stat block but it's apparently CR 12 although it has its own death spiral mechanic inbuilt (On only itself mind you) that will drastically knock it down several CR's in combat.
CR12 so lets say 4 level 11s or there about (Looking at KFC)
>Vulnerable to slashing damage
Heaven fricking forbid this thing plays against a fighter (The most common class in the game) Because he'll be unloading enough damage every round to take 3 heads in 1 turn. Or Rogue (The second most popular class) God forbid a Paladin (The third most popular class)
Then if you look, it has this weird thing as a bonus action implying it regenerates as a bonus action via some health pool mechanic, meaning it can regrow a max of 1 head per turn which is nothing when it will be losing heads faster than the dm will be losing hair.
Just seems like someone watched that one episode of Dr Who with those ayylmaos in suits and ran from there.
Anyway sorry for the blogpost but picrel is literally me and if I never hear about this meme creature again it will be too soon.
>D+D
I was hoping you had gone forever
>Why is using out of game knowledge bad?
Because we are playing a Role Playing Game not a Tactical Skirmish Wargame. Part of playing a Role Playing Game is taking the things you might know as a Player, and asking if its reasonable that your Character would know those things. You Character probably doesn't know high school chemistry or about bacteria either, but no one has a problem with that. Its only when OOC knowledge gives a tactical advantage that suddenly everyone tries to justify it. OSR players would almost universally be much happier just playing a skirmish wargame with personality-less figures than playing a roleplaying game, where some of the challenge is separation of IC and OOC knowledge.
And again, it entirely depends on the setting and specific character what is reasonable for your character to know. If the characters are career dungeon delvers they should absolutely know common monster weaknesses and strengths.
>they should absolutely know common monster weaknesses and strengths
Which is modeled by knowledge skills.
Correct.
And Taking 10 and low DC knowledge checks don't even need to be rolled. Knowledge is for things that aren't common knowledge. The DM should be telling the Players what he considers common knowledge as those things come up. And getting them to roll when he considers their actions are predicated on something that would require a Knowledge roll
Can't take 10 untrained. DC 5 is something I'd call common knowledge (example: a cow can be milked), but unless you have the skill you can't roll nor take 10.
>DC 5 is something I'd call common knowledge (example: a cow can be milked)
A cow can be milked is DC 0. Common knowledge. Something that literally everyone knows, barring extreme cultural isolation. Characters without knowledge skills are still not tabula rasa complete idiots with no prior knowledge of the world. Neither are peasants who have no skills and +0 in everything. You don't have to roll to know fire is hot or milk comes from cows or things fall down. If you think you should have to roll for any of these I am really glad I don't have to play with you or anyone like you. The dnd brainrot is far too deep
I mean sure you can just ignore the rules I guess. I just don't understand why pretend to play anything but pretend at that point.
>The dnd brainrot is far too deep
It's more dicebrained morons, the kind of shitheads who make you roll to climb a wall when you have a fricking climb speed because they once saw there was a skill checks section in the DMG. (But forcing a door is strength not athletics because god forbid you use your proficiency to succeed at things that should be easy for you).
Nice strawman bro
I've had both of those things happen though
I play by the the rules, they didn't. We are not the same. You only get to roll if you have knowledge skills trained, without them you simply don't know.
Do you auto-fail acrobatics checks without proficiency?
>why does someone knowing a monster's weakness disrupt it?
It doesn't, and monster weaknesses are so rare that the players should be rewarded for remembering them.
Wrong knowledge skills above dc 10, dc 10 is easy questions. Play by the rules.
>Characters without knowledge skills are still not tabula rasa complete idiots with no prior knowledge of the world.
If you didn't take any knowledge skills at all, they very much are. Not having any knowledge skills at all represents a person who didn't bother to pay attention nor to understand anything whatsoever around them.
Okay. Its clear you're either baiting or a moron. Good day
I really don't see your problem here. Someone who hasn't athletics skill is an utterly unathletic person, why knowledge skills are any different?
That makes no fricking sense, cause you know strength. You can have 18 in str but no athletics skill. That doesn't mean you're unathletic it means you don't know how to properly use your strength, you might over or under perform.
Now let's talk about knowledge. Let's say the player got 18 in int cause idk the game everyone rolled stats and this player got hella lucky. So all knowledge is just recalling of memory, some things you don't remember and some things you do. I don't remember every story told to me, let alone if I'm drinking or something but I can recall some of them. A spark of genius or reasoning could always happen with someone, this is even supported by the flavor text both in 5e and in 3.pf cause you keep saying knowledge checks.
In pathfinder intelligence determines how well your character learns and reasons.
In 5e intelligence measures mental acuity, accuracy of recall, and the ability to reason. An Intelligence check comes into play when you need to draw on logic, education, memory, or deductive reasoning.
Both of these are saying "Memory is great and why not play out on how smart you are" like a wizard who knows trolls are vulnerable to fire due to a few potions calling for components that are harvested from trolls and there are tips.
A barbarian who's tribe had a run in with a troll and spread the teaching on how to combat a being. A fighter who's father told him a bedtime story on how a hero of the past killed a hydra and mentioned off handly that is also how trolls are also killed falsely believing that hydra's and trolls must be related somehow and now the fighter believes it too.
You're just very uncreative and wrong cause a dc 10 in 3.5 are easy questions and you can make checks up to dc 10 untrained anything higher you can't. Play games before coming here please.
thanks for proving D&D skills RAW are moronic, it didn't really need reinforcing but thanks anyways
Again, feel free to ignore the rules but I don't see the point in pretending to play nothing but pretend at that point.
I had a DM toss a false hydra encounter into the middle of a campaign once because he heard about it on youtube and thought it was the coolest thing ever, it ended up being the lamest shit ever and we never talked about it again.
>False Hydras
Sort of okay idea in theory.
Not really that great an idea for an actual game.
It's the pretty typical useless nonsense//ungamable nogame shit spewed out by that homosexual Goblin Punch.
They need a new name. I don't even know what a false hydra is.
I once ran a game basically using all the false hydra tells, one of the players blocked their ears and nothing happened
It was ayylmaos abducting people and then mind wiping them, so all the players went and clubbed Greys to death
Why is it ALWAYS a troll and not say, a flesh golem, zombie or vampire in these discussions? What's interesting about a monster regenerating 10 HP? Why reuse the same tier 1 monsters? There are more in the manual. Higher CR trolls can ONLY be killed by fire and acid. There is no other way to end the encounter.
I've never seen anyone complain about players using a club on a skeleton.
They're stupid, simple as
Had a DM attempt to use one once, but thanks to its stupid rules our group had no idea anyone was disappearing and therefore no reason to stick around in the town under attack by it. To say he was pissed that we all just walked around his stupid plot point would be an understatement.
>you definitely don't know that anything atypical is happening here
>wait why are you leaving?
Heh, this must be the future that anti-metagamers want. But why didn't he put it in a place you cared about?