Knowledge as it Should Be (3.5e Variant Rule)

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Author: Luigifan18 (talk)
Date Created: November 19, 2012
Status: Complete in a barebones sense;
currently being expanded
Editing: Clarity edits only please
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The Problem[edit]

The Knowledge skill (more specifically, its numerous subskills) is the cornerstone of the learned character who knows a lot about the world around him. Unfortunately, it comes with the gaping flaw that if you roll poorly, your character has had an utter brain fart and doesn't know jack-squat about the subject at hand – even if his background and experiences dictate that he absolutely, positively should know it. And you can't retry a Knowledge check. This is a problem with a very, very simple solution.

The Solution[edit]

Knowledge checks are made under the same circumstances as they are by default – when attempting to glean information about some subject at hand. However, your Knowledge check result does not represent what you know, period, but what you can remember in the heat of a moment – being asked a question or confronted with a threat – off the top of your head, especially when your sources (textbooks, confidants, notes, etc.) are unavailable, you're not allowed to resort to them, or you don't have time to look up the information. This means that even if you roll horribly on a Knowledge check, your character does, in fact, know stuff that he ought to know, given his experience and education – he just might not be able to come up with that information on immediate demand, which is a limitation that real people have, too. However, given time, he might be able to recall it – which means that you are allowed to retry Knowledge checks. A minute after your first Knowledge check, if your character's attention wasn't otherwise occupied (such as by combat), he can be assumed to have been thinking about the subject, and he can retry the Knowledge check with a +1 bonus. Multiple retries are allowed as long as there is at least a 1-minute interval between retries and the character is not significantly distracted at any point. Multiple retries have a cumulative bonus, but the bonus for spending extra time to think on a subject is capped at ¼ your ranks in Knowledge, rounded up (having extra time to think can't help you come up with information that you genuinely don't know). If you have the "Lol Media" feat or Time to Think skill trick, the bonus is instead capped at ⅓ your ranks in Knowledge, rounded up. If you have both "Lol Media" and Time to Think, the bonus is capped at ½ your ranks in Knowledge, rounded up. (Basically, if you have "Lol Media", you're good at consulting sources of information on the fly; if you have Time to Think, you know several pneumonic devices and other such tricks to help you remember things more easily.) The usual restrictions and extra benefits of these abilities still apply.

Note that the above paragraph refers mainly to memory – being able to recall something that the character has heard or read about, or experienced first-hand. Therefore, the results of a Knowledge check would be modified by how diligently the character studies their field, stays on top of new developments, et cetera. On a similar note, knowledge that is used more frequently will be more easily recalled. If a character can study something shortly before having to utilize that knowledge, it will be more easily recalled. For every hour spent studying a subject, a cumulative +1 bonus is conferred to Knowledge checks on that subject for the next 24 hours. For every month spent without studying a subject at all, a cumulative −1 penalty is incurred until you start studying that subject again; memory is a bit frail, and begins to fade after a while if not refreshed every so often.

Merely studying something doesn't necessarily mean that you have any idea what you're studying; it has to be done the right way. There may will probably be some things that a character just plain doesn't know, and depending on the character's background, intelligence, and willingness to actively analyze his surroundings, may have difficulty understanding even if they're explained to him; your average peasant would probably learn next to nothing from a college-level biology course, since he would have no clue what the hell the professor was talking about. Learning is an incremental process, and you can't grasp advanced concepts without understanding the basic concepts underlying them. This can be represented by ranks in various Knowledge skills; a character who's an expert on one subject, like history, can still know next to nothing on another, like, say, physics. But the point is, infinite knowledge is an exception, not a rule. What all this means is that having lots of ranks in Knowledge is still important. You need to have a keen mind and the education to properly apply it in order to understand advanced concepts; your Intelligence score represents the former, while ranks in Knowledge represent the latter.


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Luigifan18's Homebrew (383 Articles)
Luigifan18v
AuthorLuigifan18 +
Identifier3.5e Variant Rule +
Rated BySpanambula +
RatingRating Pending +
SummaryA Knowledge skill where low rolls aren't a crippling gap in knowledge, they're a temporary setback. +
TitleKnowledge as it Should Be +