“Errata”, clarifications, and additions: - A commenter here pointed out that I’m misunderstanding how Thaum’s “ignore rarity” stuff works. You only ignore rarity if we’re talking about the Exploit Vulnerability question about Weaknesses/Resistances/Immunities. Any question you make as part of the Diverse Lore check is done against the actual creature’s DC. *However* I’m still okay to just give the Thaum the better math here, because technically they’re getting like 3 questions out of their 1 Action. - Another commenter pointed out a cool thing to add to the “take notes” section of my argument. If you’re ever done a fight and suspect you’re still lacking in info, may as well Recall Knowledge! It may come up later. - If Uncommon/Rare/Unique DCs are really rubbing your players the wrong way, remove them entirely.
The last point has made me very judgemental on some of my NPCs. Sure, he's a unique individual, but is the Ogre Chief that just so happened to be born a Sorcerer, "Unique"? Maybe not, at minimum he probably is uncommon, but I'm not sure his RK DC really ought be that high.
We are a long time Pathfinder group. Night one of our first 2e game we all decided that the DM rolling all the recall knowledge checks was too much to ask of him logistics-wise. This was a huge mistake. Things got hand-wavy quickly and we just started relying on our Thaumaturge exclusively. A few months in we hit a scenario where the Thaumaturge new that dubious knowledge had been triggered and the DM said, "I don't know what to say here, you already know not to trust this answer." And that's when we hit the brakes. We were looking at Recall as a very mechanical combat element that could be automated by the players to save time. Unwittingly we had removed all of the story-telling, skill-challenge, and risk-reward from the action. We switched the next fight and suddenly recall knowledge was its own mini-game. Did it slow combat down? Yes, in the first few rounds. But we had to make more choices, debate trying to learn more, and began discovering gaps in our strategy (ie: we always asked for the Low Save, not the High Save... and so were still swinging against strong saves much of the time). Within two levels I had Automatic Knowledge and everyone but our Magus and Swashbuckler were regularly trying knowledge checks at the start of fights. Fast forward to the climactic end of Gardens of Gallowspire when we secretly failed 8 knowledge checks round 1 (Hypercognition is lovely usually) and were given only misinformation. Recall Knowledge wiped our party. We failed the skill challenge. It was horrifying, but felt like such fair play!
You're not wrong, making it non-secret does remove some depth, and makes an already great action even better. But as shown by the math here, critical failure isn't that common an outcome, and i agree with the opinion that it's often circumventable. You often get a good intuition about when you might've critically failed, either due to the answers not quite seeming right, or just reading the GM's reaction and their "i'm thinking of some false information to tell you" face/voice. Also, you *absolutely* should be banning Dubious Knowledge if you're not doing it with a secret check, in my opinion, and you're not operating under the assumption that the player shouldn't then act based on out-of-character knowledge. That just doesn't work with that decision. It relies on a mechanic you're not using. And it's worth noting that the books do say not bothering with secret checks is valid. They just generally emphasize the importance of acting as if your *character* is still in the dark. GMC pg. 13: You can still have the players roll the checks even if an action has the secret trait. This is usually best done when the results are going to be immediate or when stakes are low, like when the PC is trying to recall something during downtime that they’ll see is false through the course of their research. You can instead have the players handle all their rolls, secret or otherwise. This works best when the group is interested in leaning into the dramatic irony of knowing a PC is wrong and playing up their characters’ mistakes. PC pg. 226: This rule [the GM rolling the secret check] is the default for actions with the secret trait, but the GM can choose not to use secret checks if they would rather some or all rolls be public. PC pg. 405: The GM can choose to make any check secret, even if it’s not usually rolled secretly. Conversely, the GM can let you roll any check yourself, even if that check would usually be secret. Some groups find it simpler to have players roll all secret checks and just try to avoid acting on any out-of-character knowledge, while others enjoy the mystery. The issue i have with this is i do agree with the take presented on "metagaming." I am perfectly happy to let player skill be a factor, and players to be able to bring in their own knowlege and deductions into things. Doing it openly but insisting players not "metagame" is very much not my preferred style. And at that point, yeah, you've gotta cut out skill feats, and even then Recall Knowledge ends up better and you might as well just remove the crit fail outcome from the rules. Which, eh, not the end of the world. But dang is it awesome, then.
We are generally honest with ourselves, which is why it took a while to realize we were missing the point. We were so concerned with the DM having to juggle too much that we didn't think about why the check was very deliberately made secret.
"You know not to trust this dubious knowledge" Well, they'd suspect anyway as soon as you gave two facts. Make use of that. Give them what they ask for and also what they asked for but false. Like "You aren't sure, but you think its lowest save is either Reflex or Will."
One point maybe worth considering is, for longer campaigns, Recalling Knowledge *after* you've already won a combat if you didn't do so during. It has no cost except time at the table, could be a fun way to develop a character that's into Recalling and keeping knowledge, and helps out if your GM ever uses a similar creature against you again!
This is an excellent tip. In addition to being able to pre-RK if you are unobserved or find out about the target beforehand it makes a ton of sense to RK after a fight because often enemies recur if they are an enemy force in a location or a themed enemy for an arc.
I must mention the Alchemist (and its archetype) as a contender for Recall Knowledge: INT Class with good amount of starting skills and access to Cognitive Mutagen, which gives an item bonus from +1 to +4 to all RK checks and INT skills, including lores; and crit failures on RK become failures (paired with Dubious Knowledge, it’s always at least some info right). The downside is worse weapon and unarmed attacks and carrying less bulk. That’s already good, the bonus can stack with circumstance and status bonus, but the cherry on top is that the greater version, at level 11 (and the major at level 17) let you choose a skill to become trained when you create the mutagen. Well, you can actually choose a specific lore (Conspirator Dragon Lore for example) and get a +3/+4 item bonus to RK that dragon with a decreased DC. And switching to striking after using the mutagen isn’t impossible, Regurgitate Mutagen is actually really nice.
The book I'm running has the party go up against a PL+4 unique enemy. I set the RK DCs off of the PL+1 rare creature it's based on. It still took them multiple encounters to learn anything about it.
This is, basically, my view on the main issue with RK. DC by level is set in a great place in general but feels really bad in this exact context of RK. Encounters where you actually really want it (PL0 enemies are fairly well-handled by middle-save fireball-equivalents, and are less often the highly threatening encounters anyway) are the same encounters where you creep below 50% to RK unless you're highly committed to both the skill and stat. And don't even get me STARTED on uncommon/rare/unique tags. Boss fight? DC by level... plus 2 to 4 for the level gap... plus 5 for the unique... You basically have to do the thing you did! Which... fine (and is similar to the RAW behavior for the unique tag on characters based on something, actually, if you dig enough to FIND the RAW behavior of the unique tag), but also grrrrr.
I think a missed argument vs RK is "you don't need it". There's a lot of cases where you know what you are facing or can afford not to, or can't leverage the info it gives you usefully. And yeah, maybe you don't know which is which, but that cuts both ways. So yes, there's times when RK is GREAT, and times when it's not. The trick is knowing which is which...
@@sebwiers1 I don’t really find that to be a convincing argument against Recall Knowledge (or anything, really). There are times you don’t need Fireball! Doesn’t mean Fireball’s a bad spell now, does it? Pathfinder as a whole is designed to reward tactical choices, and tactical choices are meaningless if you don’t have good or bad choices on a round-by-round or encounter-by-encounter basis. Yes, there are rounds of combat, or even entire combats, where Recall Knowledge won’t be useful but that applies to every single Action in the game (other than ones explicitly designed to be used every combat as a class-specific tax like Hunt Prey or a as a class-specific boost like Hunted Shot).
@@Mathfinder-aaa Fair enough. If the argument is "it's bad", certainly it's not. If the argument is "I won't use it in this fight" ... well as you say, nothing is ideal in every fight.
This is a good video as usual but i think you misunderstood how Diverse Lore works. It doesnt let the thaum effectively "ignore" the uncommon tag. It just lets you compaare the exploit vulnerability roll against the RK dc on a success. Since diverse lore imposes a -2 normally, this just lets you ignore that -2 when succeding at exploit vulnerability. It should still be compared to the normal RK dc which for uncommon creatures should still have that +2
@@TheAssaisa1 Huh, I’m rereading the wording on this and I think you’re right? I used to rule Diverse Lore the same way you do, until someone over on the Reddit argued otherwise and convinced me but uh… I can’t remember what they said that convinced me? Lmao. I’ll get back to you.
@@TheAssaisa1 Okay I have figured it out! Basically the Exploit Vulnerability check you make *without* any Diverse Lore or anything attached is allowed to learn Weaknesses based on a Standard DC. I confused myself and thought that meant the pseudo Recall Knowledge that Diverse Lore allows also has the same.
One thing to note about the whole -2 penalty with Diverse Lore is it's basically completely irrelevant when recalling knowledge about creatures. Esoteric Lore already lets you RK about any kind of creature by default. Diverse Lore lets you recall knowledge about anything, like the history of a city, or the menu of a local restaurant, but with a -2 penalty.
I have always found that RK is super powerful, but that doesn't make it feel good. It's more like an action tax that I have to pay before I can start casting spells. Plus, because I'm a charisma caster and I don't have enough skill points to cover all of the skills I need, I'm quite likely to fail.
@@Ryoko41 I don’t find it to be an Action tax at all. Casters do not need to find the lowest Save to perform well, simply avoid the highest Save (and this only needs common sense and game awareness imo). You definitely shouldn’t view it as a “I have to pay this tax before I cast spells” thing. Recall Knowledge is an action that helps you party perform *above* the curve of what you can normally do, and thus it’s okay to “tax” such performance. Additionally, if you’re Charisma based you can’t be expected to cover more than 1-2 RK Skills at most anyways. The burden of doing so should be shared with other players at the table, especially if they have more room for it in their stats. Asking you to be the sole user of Recall Knowledge is like asking the two-weapon user to use Battle Medicine all the time!
@@Mathfinder-aaa Sorry for playing a Swashbuckler or Pistolero/Sniper Slinger. Or already being one of the characters covering the medicine tax. Or being one one of the characters using athletics maneuvers so non-melee characters can benefit from off-guard. RK is an awful system, held together by a bunch of bandaids.
Recall Knowledge has always felt bad to me because of the risk. Not just the risk that you get false information or no information, but also the risk that you get useless information. Just because you know the lowest save doesn't mean the party can or wants to target that save. Just because you know the enemy has an ability doesn't mean you can do anything about it. Often times, there's no weakness or resistance, or it's not something you can do anything about. So I'm just not a fan of it anymore.
@@Bagley2014 Useless information is a consequence of not asking the most relevant questions! My advice near the end of the video gets into this. Don’t ask for lowest Save if none of the casters in your party can or wants to target that Save. But maybe they will benefit in other ways, like wanting to bypass Resistances or target Weaknesses. Just ask whatever question is relevant to the casters in the party. If you consistently find yourself feeling like you can’t benefit from Recall Knowledge information at all, chances are that your party’s tactics as a whole need an upgrade. Obviously nothing you can unilaterally fix, but still.
@@Mathfinder-aaa I would say that there is another scenario where Recall Knowledge proves to be inefficient and that's when outside of the most rare of situations, there is nothing that can be improved about the tactics. I have multiple groups in which I played/ran Pathfinder 2E and that would apply to one of them. Really early the party determined the optimal rotation for dealing with dangerous encounters in that specific campaign, and from that point onwards the only changes to it happened either on a level up or when a rare enemy which for some reason couldn't be put under a bunch of action taxing effects and then 2-3 turn deleted by the Magus appeared. Except even those enemies weren't a good target for Recall Knowledge, seeing how the DCs for single enemy Unique boss encounters were largely too high to reasonably attempt.
Ok, I’m only a minute in but I’m REALLY looking forward to this. For context, let me say the following(this mostly applies to my PFS games): 1. I LOVE doing Recall Knowledge. Partially to avoid meta-gaming, but also, as a newer PF2e player, I LITERALLY often don’t know and need to ask 😂 2. I’m trying to learn to build fill/support characters for PFS games, so I’ve started to think of a few different “Recall Knowledge” focused builds. I’m pretty sure this video will give me new ideas.
Part of the difficulty in teaching recall, is that GM hardly ever use it themselves. I, as a GM, can teach players that athletics and intimidation are cool, because NPCs can use them day in and day out. But recall is a tax that is uniquely useful to PCs, or perhaps DMPCs? So it's hard to convince players it's good. Regarding tempo, though. Intimidation and Bon Mot are great ways to "poke" for mindlessness or will save weakness without recalling. While Grapple/Shove and Disarm/Trip can do the same for Fort and Reflex. Esp. since these rolls are public to the player. So the success on these actions are actually 2-fold, and failure doesn't mean null, it means its save DC is at least 1 more than the number you rolled. For Thaum, I don't think it's the success rate that's great about Thaum knowledge, it's how it fits into the Thaum's playstyle. Esoteric Lore + Diverse Lore makes recall knowledge feel effortless in one feat. I'd actually like to say the same about ranged Mastermind Rogue playstyle. Monster Hunter Ranger gives a circumstance bonus to attack (a rare bonus) to party instead. And correct me if I'm wrong but the chart you displayed requires the target to be hunted, an extra feat investment, and a focus point to be spent. But you didn't seem to mention it?
I played a Thaumaturge in the Abomination Vaults. The sheer amount of recall knowledge checks I got for free was fantastic! I wish more classes had access to free action RK checks! Currently playing a monk with low int and my only “recall knowledge” equivalent is taking an assurance trip attack. Not nearly as satisfying!
I love giving people information so I like Recall Knowledge in principle and house rule huge buffs for it in my home campaign. But we have so much meta information flying around anyway (playing on Foundry with open rolls) so they often figure out most of what they would want to know through the normal course of play. I still agree that it is very good to use outside of combat, but taking an action to do it with a significant chance of failure at that can be rough to do in the heat of battle. And as I saw commented below, there are tons of fights where even if you had the full stat block in front of you it wouldn't change your tactics.
I think that Thaumaturge should be treated as extremely good generalist. You use your key ability, requite just one feat and you have auto progression on all recall knowledge checks, some are taken with -2 penalty but it's still just equivalent to one proficiency rank. You can definitely build better characters but they require more investment. What many people don't like is that int based characters don't have way to match it. Lore master archetype dedication benefits are similar but slightly worse and it restricts character build more than a single class feat.
I think including a fortune effect from a focus spell makes the math comparison between thaum and outwit ranger a bit skewed. You could add in any number of spells that the thaumaturge can cast from scroll thaumaturgy to swing things back (pocket library for ex). There's also that the number of focus points you have is limited compared to no limitation on thaumaturge's. I'm not saying outwit is bad at all, but I think the charts present a bit of a skewed perspective - as does the follow up analysis (the rk build for ranger takes far more feat investment than a thaum). Also, I don't think the recall knowledge bonus from tome applies to the esoteric lore check they make for exploit vulnerability (and I think that this still suffers from the increased uncommon RK dc). You bringing up untrained improvisation and the thaumaturge (agreed on esoteric lore not getting a -2 dc reduction btw) reminds me again of how CRIMINALLY underrated the Investigator is both pre-remaster and especially now post-remaster. To start I definitely think keen recollection is intended to apply to lores. For most of the campaign you're going to be doing better than tons of RKers as long as it's something related to your pursued lead. And skill strategem pushes that even further. I think people sleep on it a bit, probably just due to the unfavorable view intelligence as a stat gets in general. And perhaps also that potential damage ceiling is weighted more than reliability.
@@FiniteFragment I don’t agree that I’m being unfair to the Thaumaturge by including Hunter’s Luck. First to address your point that the Thaumaturge can just use some spell to keep up: what spell is going to give you Fortune in *every* Recall Knowledge check? And they actually CAN’T use Pocket Library easily: I address this in the video, Pocket Library explicitly states that it won’t work if you don’t have a free hand *at the time of making the Recall Knowledge check*, whereas in combat a Thaum is usually gonna have Implement in one hand and weapon in another. If you build a Thaum who uses an Unarmed or Free-Hand weapon of some kind then you’ll be able to use Pocket Library but then: - It’s still not gonna catch you up to Fortune from Hunter’s Luck. - The Ranger can use Pocket Library via a single Skill Feat and their Nature investment, and unlike the Thaum they don’t have to downgrade their weapon to make use of it in combat. So if I include Pocket Library it’d unironically make the Ranger better, not worse. As for Hunter’s Luck needing a focus point, the Ranger is actually perfect for this because they don’t need their focus points for anything else. The Ranger can just have two focus points by level 4 that exist *solely* to boost Recall Knowledge, and simply rely on their excellent weapon using Feats and/or an Animal Companion for in-combat damage. And fully agreed on the Investigator being underrated! Going through the math has been making me more and more convinced that Keen Recollection IS meant to work with Lores.
@@Mathfinder-aaa Well, now that gets into a serious number of feats to make this work. You need monster hunter at 1. You also now need initiate Warden, you need advanced Warden. You need master monster hunter at 10. You can make up the difference at 6 and 8 by taking some of those weapon feats / animal companion feats, but it'll be delayed. And this is also the period of levels (half the game) that the charts show outwit is (relatively) underperforming on the main thing you put those early feats into. And sure, let's put pocket library aside (I think it's very reasonable to have a chance to RK before drawing your weapon). A thaum is able to do their in combat RK without any feats. And if taken, Diverse Lore (alongside action compression + essentially making a secret check public in combat) also makes them quite excellent at out of combat recall knowledge, which in my view, is just as important (or perhaps more so in certain campaigns). Of course, let's acknowledge this and then restrict this to just combat, otherwise, it won't really be fair. I think as well, pre-10, it is true that level based DC-wise the math works out as it does in the charts. But there are many many cases where a ranger will be substantially worse off depending on the enemies they face. Thaumaturge doesn't have to worry about this. I think you'll do fine as an outwit RKer, my point isn't that they're bad. But there are many more hurdles this character will have to face in the lead up to 10. And even after 10, you essentially get 2-3 'high value' RKs per combat, after which there is a dramatic fall off. In smaller combats this might be all you need. But I think in the extreme cases the sustainability of knowledge matters a lot. Not to mention how both thaum and investigator have ways to boost the efficiency and potency of acquiring this knowledge (in ways that are both high and low investment). Showing these specific charts, I think, bypasses a lot of nuance to try and point to Outwit as 'better'
@@Mathfinder-aaa I do think you somewhat overstated the argument by focusing so heavily on the "maximum possible" recall knowledge. Imo Recall Knowledge is very much a skill where "good enough is good enough". If you're getting results like the Thaumaturge's, you're doing everything that really needs to be done with recall knowledge. You're succeeding most of the time, almost never crit failing, and when you fail you get dubious knowledge to give you useful information anyway. If, past level 10, being "super far behind" means your action has the intended effect nearly every single time, I'm perfectly fine being "super far behind" in exchange for almost no feat or character option tax.
@@bennettpalmer1741 but that “almost no Feat or character option tax” statement isn’t actually representative of the Thaumaturge at all imo! I alluded to this in the video but let me expand: 1. The Thaumaturge has Charisma as a KAS, and can never max out their Str/Dex as a consequence while the Outwit Ranger can max them out. 2. The Thaumaturge will always have both hands full unless they make very specific build choices to preserve an empty hand somehow (in which case they’ll usually substantially lower weapon damage/trait quality). 3. Even within the context of all Thaumaturges needing to keep their hands full, a Tome Thaumaturge is losing out on more by not having another Implement as their starting choice (and needs to spend an Action to swap anyways) while an Outwit Ranger comparatively loses much less by not being Precision/Flurry. 4. Ranger is basing all their Recall Knowledge off of Wisdom, a stat that passively boosts their defences and Initiative at all times. The Thaumaturge is basing it off of Charisma, a stat that gives them debuff abilities that they will not have the Action economy to even try to use. I think the Outwit Ranger is paying LESS of an opportunity cost than the Thaumaturge, and a lot of the builds I mentioned pay even less of that. All caster base builds, for example, pay almost no opportunity cost because casters need so few of their own Class Feats to be good in the first place.
@@Mathfinder-aaa 1. I agree, of course. Charisma KAS is definitely a flaw for the Thaumaturge. 2. Thaumaturges are uniquely privileged in their hand economy. Sure they have both hands full all the time, but the vast majority of things a Thaumaturge might want to do with a free hand can be cheated on. Sure there's special cases like Pocket Library, but scroll thaumaturgy lets them cast their scrolls with their implement hand. Ammunition Thaumaturgy lets them load ranged weapons with their implement hand. If you want to be Tripping or other skill checks, you can get a weapon with the right property. So yeah, their hand economy is restricted, but it doesn't really hurt them too much most of the time. 3. Obviously this is subjective, but I disagree completely! Tome implement gives a bunch of free, changeable, skill proficiencies. I think this is better than circumstance bonuses to specific, preset skill checks. Outwit might give you a +2 to stealth, and the AC Circumstance bonus is great, but Tome could give you like +10 to stealth, or any other skill you'd otherwise be untrained in. And the skill trainings from Tome stack with outside Circumstance bonuses, while the Outwit bonuses don't. And in terms of what other options are available, the simple logic I have is that you get 1 hunters edge, and only 1, unless you spend an 18th level feat on it. Every Thaumaturge gets 3 implements across their career, and the additional choices come way earlier than level 18. The extra damage from Precision/Flurry is basically permanently lost by choosing outwit, whereas the Thaumaturge can just get whatever cool thing they wanted at level 5 instead of level 1. 4.Wisdom is a better combat stat, but the Thaumaturge can be the party face with their high Charisma, which isn't nothing. This is definitely a point in favor of the Ranger, but it's not a huge one. You're also just not mentioning the fact that you have to spend a 1st level feat to get Monster Hunter, a 1st level feat to get the focus spell, and a 10th level feat to get Master Monster Hunter. There are a whole bunch of cool and useful options for feats that you aren't taking, because you need to be as good as possible at Recall Knowledge. The Thaumaturge, meanwhile, is taking a single 1st level feat, and gets to use all the rest of their feats to pick from all the cool stuff their class has available, or whatever archetypes they feel like. The caster builds might have less character creation opportunity cost, but they have to actually spend an action recalling knowledge, whereas the Thaumaturge and Ranger are getting their recall knowledge checks for "free" rolled into an action they'd be doing anyway, whether that's Exploit Vulnerability or Hunt Prey.
Thaumaturge can poach pocket library outside of combat, which is an excellent time to Recall Knowledge. I think this takes a big chunk out of the difference for the Thaum, particularly since the only variable that ISN'T poachable in this video is Esoteric Lore. It still feels like Thaum has the best potential overall, even if Esoteric Lore + Diverse Lore doesn't stand alone as some present it. In addition, Thaumaturges also get native Familiar support. Many have questioned WHY Thaumaturges have familiars... and I suppose we can point to this video now.
Specialising is always vital for everyone who wants to RK, because you need to minimise failure. It gets overlooked because it's not in the player-facing rules, but the original 2e Core Rulebook GMing chapter and GM Core both make it clear that GMs should not allow any further information to be gained from RK on a subject after a failure.
Just some more notes. It's a bit tricky when saying a mindless low will save creature's save is actually reflex. Illusions may still work on mindless while hitting Will. I would just say lowest is will but they are mindless in this case. The other "gotcha" I commonly find is Fort saves and ghosts. As incorporeal creatures are immune to grapple, and undead will be immune to a lot of fort effects. Where I would say lowest is Fort but incorporeal/undead.
Yeah. Outwit Ranger might well be one of the best Recall Knowledge classes, but the cost of that is that it's an *Outwit Ranger.* The most you get outside of the Recall is your +1 to AC. Thaumaturge, meanwhile, gets to Recall Knowledge about literally anything with a single level 1 feat investment and is effortlessly one of the highest damaging classes
My pet Recall Knowledge build is an alchemist constantly hopped up on Cognitive Mutagen with Dubious Knowledge. The universal item bonus and immunity to crit fails seems to work well.
I was looking forward to this video, but I still have a few questions, if you dont mind: Context is, Ive been trying to buildcraft a psychopomp summoner who's a lorekeeper about spirits and the problem is that I dont know how much I should invest in lore to be effective. Are summoners capable of being good at RK? Between my eidolon aiding my checks and pocket library, Is aditional lore mandatory or can I get by with religion alone? How many points should I invest in wisdom? Is timely tutor good for a summoner? I dont wanna be overwhealming, but I hope you can help a bit!
@@muriomoira Disclaimer: I have never played a Summoner, so my advice here is largely based on reading + third hand experience. I think Religion alone isn’t good enough if you’re the party’s primary Recall Knowledge user. At *least* Religion + Nature would be needed, imo. I also dunno how much room you have for Intelligence. Summoners are Charisma based, and then you need defensive stats pretty badly, so idk. Timely Tutor is amazing on Summoners though. 1-Action Act Together -> Timely Tutor -> Eidolon makes a Recall Knowledge check still leaves you two Actions to either cast a spell or command your Eidolon to do a 2-Action activity, whichever is better in the situation. That’s amazing, tbh.
Realistically your Wisdom score is probably going to be +1/+2 at level 1, and you probably really want the latter. I think that sort of within acceptable range for doing either of the Wisdom RK skills (Nature/Religion). I would take Dubious Knowledge to make your low rolls better, especially if your GM is bad at making up false info cough. Int is usually a dump stat for Summoners, so I personally wouldn't bother with doing Lore or the Int RK skills. Out of battle it's kinda fun to have both characters do the RK checks instead - odds are one of you will roll something useful out of it.
Recall Knowledge feels like a reason spellcasters are, by your terminology, "cheerleaders" as seen with your mid int/wis charts where it's incredibly easy for martials to have a high failure chance if they don't specialize when they also have other skills like athletics, acrobatics, thievery, and so on along with if they want to get diplomacy/intimidation or crafting when a caster is more than likely gonna at least take skill increases relevant to their tradition, which is more than likely gonna be used to identify enemies outside of lore.
Yeah, especially since creatures like golems have the same recall knowledge DC for arcana and crafting so it would just plainly make more sense for the wizard to spend their third action on support than the champion or fighter taking crafting for their shield.
@@GMP1isReal Sorry I’m having trouble following your argument here. How are going from “it makes sense for Intelligene based characters to use Recall Knowledge” to “casters should be cheerleaders”? That’s a big leap, and that ignores that a good majority of martials have ways to be good at Recall Knowledge and/or Demoralize with minimal investment.
@Mathfinder-aaa well I'm referring back to your previous videos in how you define casters being cheerleaders in how they feel they have to support the martials with third actions like recall knowledge and debuffing the enemy and so on instead of direct damage, when by that definition, casters would be numerically better at giving support to their party with actions like Recall Knowledge as seen with your graphs. Like a wizard is gonna be more likely to have Arcana as their highest proficiency and a Sorcerer is going to have a better Charisma stat to demoralize than if a Magus or Champion did.
@@GMP1isReal Casters are designed to be the most reliable and most potent at absolutely anything they do, that’s by design. That may be Recall Knowledge, that may buffs, that may be debuffs, that may be healing. However, that *also* means they are the most reliable/potent at dealing damage, and controlling the battlefield, as I showed in that cheerleaders video, so it’s a moot point. If we extend your logic of “casters are the most reliable/potent at supportive Actions so they should be cheerleaders” to its logical extreme, it becomes “casters are the most reliable/potent at *every* Action so we should never play martials”. Doesn’t work that way though, the best parties still have a good mix of casters and martials. Casters have the advantage in potency, reliability, and versatility. Martials have the advantage in Action-efficiency and resource-sustainability. The best parties use a mix of both of their advantages to win, which sometimes involves martials cheerleading casters and other times involves casters cheerleading martials.
@Mathfinder-aaa but that wasn't what I said at all because you went to the extreme of "casters should be good at every action." My analysis of your video is much closer to the extreme of "if casters are going to be best at charisma, wisdom, and/or intelligence, then they should be the ones to handle every action tied to those skills." That would include recall knowledge (because duh) and most other support actions like bon mot/demoralize and so on while strength and dexterity have no where near as many while they invest in constitution which has none. Don't get me wrong, I think martials going into support skills is fun as hell, like a champion using demoralize and that synergizing with Aura of Despair, but if you want to talk optimal, casters have the best chances of making the most of those considering how limited feats like Intimidating Prowess giving a bonus to Demoralize based on Strength are. You can and should make the argument that martials doing support is great, particularly from an action economy point, but those roles getting given to casters by default checks out in the math considering how much better the specialists graphs were with high int/wis compared to any chart for mid int/wis, and that is only reinforced by how key attributes work to encourage different classes leaning towards different sets of skills.
Good video, but you forgot Gnome's "Eclectic Obsession", the best feat in the game, I've taken adopted ancestry just to get it on my Minotaur Barbarians and Automatic Knowledge is pretty good too
As a brand new player (should be starting a pf2e campaign when my group’s 5e.14 game comes to a close) I am very glad that I found your channel. I really appreciate the way you present your opinions and evidence. It gives a lot of insight into the game, and I feel like it is helping me learn to think about the game for myself. I have a quick question about a character I’m thinking about playing. I want to make an animist that takes a bunch of additional lores, dubious knowledge, and that feat that turns crit failures into failures for lore checks. Can I get away with doing this with Int as my 4th stat (behind Wis, Str, and Con: I want to be able to make use of the melee focused apparition) and still have recall knowledge be a useful action to take? Thanks!
@@caleb4836 I’m glad you’ve been liking my videos!! Regarding your specific Animist build, it sounds very similar to the build ThrabenU used for our Mythic Madness collab. Here’s a link to his build video: ruclips.net/video/Q2Lpcskl2Ds/видео.htmlsi=3B8PuGyZC4qw7_-2 I think he did Con as his 4th stat, which is pretty alright to be honest! You can start at level 1 with +4 Wis, +3 Dex, +1 Int, +1 Con (or swap it so it’s +2 Dex, +2 Int) and you can increase all four of those every opportunity you get, and your usage of Additional Lore will be great! I recommend checking out Thraben’s video for other fun combos he used.
Awesome thanks for the feedback! +1 Con feels dubious coming from a 5e background, but I guess you can get away with lower Con in pf2e due to heritage hps at level 1 and the ability to scale multiple ability scores at once?
@ Yup, because ability boosts are so much more plentiful, you’ll be fine. At low levels a single point of Con doesn’t matter a ton, that 1 extra HP isn’t gonna make or break your game nor will a +1 against Fortitude Saves do so. By the time you’re at higher levels where a point of Con is 10-20 extra HP, and Fort Saves are less “you get poisoned” and more “you might just die”, you’ll have more ability boosts to get your Con up. If you look at Thraben’s character in the video I linked, he has +3 Con at level 10, despite having +1 at level 1. My rule of thumb for character building is that Dex, Wis, and Con, should all be at a +4 *by the time you reach level 20*. Any of them can be anywhere between a +0 and a +2 at level 1 and you’ll probably still be fine.
IMHO the issue with RK is that the required info is not in the monster entries. Each monster stat bloc should contain all the DCs, skills and info that you can learn.
I'm lucky that my Players love recall knowledge. Fighting demons, they love learning little things like "This demon takes extra damage from failing to command animals."
TBH, it seems really weird that people would say that avoiding Fortitude stuff against a Giant or something would be metagaming. If we are trying to sedate a wounded X for treatment, would they prepare the same dose if X was a bunny, a child, a huge offensive lineman, or a bear? Probably not, right? There are so many common cases when we just expect the big thing to need larger or stronger doses to get the desired effect. It kind of seems like the hard things are getting the details correct (especially in a medical or veterinary context where you care about a creature coming out okay as opposed the standard adventuring one where you want it dead) and knowing when the obvious conventional wisdom thing is actually wrong.
I take issue w/ advise that is seems dictatorial to players like the party can pick your subclass like if you're a rogue then you have to be a Scoundrel(Subclass isn't that important) or if you're a ranger then you should build around monster hunter. The most useful advise is how to incorporate recall knowledge into any character w/ the least amount of effort, like pick a couple skills not being covered well by the rest of your party, then bump that stat if its a off stat, then bump those skills as much as possible, its not hard for any player to help out w/ the recall knowledge heavy lifting. A rogue, a barbarian or a wizard actually have lots of other needs for their skills. A party totally optimized around recall knowledge will be the party that knows exactly what killed them.
@@admizr5416 I’m not suggesting you should individually dictate to others in the party what they should play! I’m simply pushing back against a degree of dictatorial conversations that *already* are happening. People already feel very comfortable telling casters that they “should” cast Heal or “should” cast Haste because that’s their role. I’m simply pushing back and pointing out that the opportunity cost tends to be significantly higher for casters to be cheerleading others, whereas it’s really not that high for martials. If you think martials shouldn’t be changing their build choices to suit casters, then casters *certainly* cannot afford it to be doing it for their martials either. As for that last bit, any party that’s completely optimized around one aspect of the game will eventually struggle or TPK against their weakness. That’s not an argument against still being competent with Recall Knowledge. The “min-maxed” DPR party will die as soon as they face an enemy that wins Initiative and CCs the damage dealers, that doesn’t mean damage is useless does it?
@@Mathfinder-aaa TL:DR Recall Knowledge is a pillar of the game and players have to assume they must be able to contribute to it, but how can they do so with the fewest opportunity costs, is kinda the brass tax. Sorry, if that comment was negative, I really liked your video. An hour long video on the technical nuances of recall knowledge is panacea to me. I don't think recall knowledge is a wizard or spellcaster's job, but if you're playing one you want your spells to land and recall knowledge is clutch, just like it's rogue's job to always land sneak attack and it's every martials job to suck at anything other than melee🙄. You mentioned in an earlier video about PC's being self-reliant rogue shouldn't assume the party is building around them getting sneak attack, then don't assume any party is going to have a designated healer, buffer/debuffer, library, etc, unless you are the one who has committed to it. I guess my point is recall knowledge is such a pillar of the game that if a player have nothing to contribute to it, it better be for good reason. I think what I want to know is how can a player contribute the most to recall knowledge with the fewest opportunity costs. Yeah a wizard who has nothing better to do than cast haste on the fighter is a problem most of all for the fighter
Yeah, sorry. 😅 Tempo-Negative just sounds a lot like Type O Negative and it kept nudging me through the video. There's nothing at all wrong with the video, I was just failing a bit at some light humor.
A darn shame you dont mention the upcoming Commander's auto scaling Warfare Lore and kinds of RK checks it may be best for. Im currently playing an Athletics/RK Commander and it feels a bit down in the dumps.
@@Mathfinder-aaa RUclips is deleting my comments and I dont know why. Very annoying. If this one doesnt go through I guess I'll have to track down a discrod or something. long story short bad party comp + my character is the only off-guard applier, the only battle medicine source, and the best/only viable RK user, leaving me with often no damage dealt on a turn. lv 6 analysis paralysis for what dedication after Medic.
8:36 on Regeneration - in the last session of one of my games the PCs couldn't figure out how to stop an enemy from constantly getting back up from 0hp via regeneration. Tried basically everything _except_ Recall Knowledge, lol. They literally ended up running away from that fight, mostly for other reasons but not being able to finish her off was a factor. So yeah, RK can be pretty important in combat!
I like the fact, that 40% of your video is obsolet if you take the Bestiary Scholar feat from the Scrollmaster Archetyp. It is just the goat of all Recall Knowledge feats. Pathfinder Agent into Scrollmaster is imo the best way to make a master of Recall Knowledge, especially with the rule, that you can take Scrollmaster without taking three feats.
@@bisliburtarock9513 This is cool but I don’t see how Bestiary Scholar on its own makes any of the builds I talked about obsolete? All it does is give you a universal Skill to Recall Knowledge with, at maximum Proficiency which: - Thaumaturge and Ranger can directly access via Esoteric Lore and Master Monster Hunter respectively. - Rogue and Investigator can indirectly keep up with via the doubled Skill Proficiency scaling. - Anyone with Loremaster Archetype can get a lesser version of at level 2, and then pick up Loremaster’s Etude to pull ahead of Bestiary Scholar 6 whole levels before Bestiary Scholar is even available. Like it’s a good option, and I’m happy you made me aware of it! But I don’t think it’s making anything obsolete. And sure a Pathfinder Agent with Thorough Reports *and* Bestiary Scholar might be pretty damn amazing at Recall Knowledge, but at this point we took 4 Archetype Feats to get here and are still not convincingly ahead of the stuff I mentioned above (likely still behind the Ranger and the Loremaster due to their Fortune effects).
@@Mathfinder-aaa Don`t get me wrong. Bestiary Scholar doesn't make your builds obsolete but the decision what skill you'll invest in and if you should be a specialist. Just take Nature with your Hunter, max it and you're fine. It comes online very late, that's true. But at lvl 10 it's the best feat you can take for recall knowledge builds. You get effectively 5 legendary skills on lvl 15 and you save a lot of Skill Boosts for other Skills you like. Esoteric Lore is nice, I really like it, but the disadvantage is, that you are capped at trained/expert. Btw you don't have to do one or the other. I'am working on a wizard build with FA and I'm done with Loremaster/Pathfinder Agend/Scrollmaster by lvl 12 with all the key feats. And I like the fact that Loremaster's Etude triggers Bespell Strikes.
Great video! I love Recall Knowledge (Investigator and Wizard are some of my favorite classes, so go figure) and I wish players recognized its value. Classes like Thaum do grind my gears and I enjoyed your breakdown of it. Looking forward to more videos.
Pre-combat Recall Knowledge is in a weird spot in my opinion. Since RK is both from previous knowledge and in-combat assessment, I believe using RK without seeing the creature/fighting it needs some limitation. If the PCs heard that a Horned dragon was wrecking havoc somewhere and pre-RK'd it before going to kill it, I personally would not allow them to ask questions about lesser known things such as the weakest save or the Twisting Tail reaction. I still would allow questions on more obvious abilities like the Poison Breath, the fly speed and the Impaling charge.
@@coco5593 I think I disagree with your interpretation here. Recall Knowledge is explicitly coded as being a recall of things the character *already knows* rather than a study of what’s happening in front of the character (those things get encoded into specific Feats like the Rogue’s Battle Assessment or the Fighter’s Exacting Strike). You are, of course, free to rule that some specific and unique aspects of a statblock are hard to recall but I’d make that to be the exception, not the rule. I’d also then telegraph to my players that incomplete information can be gained via gathering information in some other way, be it via asking around or researching the foe indirectly.
@@Mathfinder-aaa I agree about RK being things your character has already learned somewhere, but my interpretation of my out-of-sight limit is that it is harder to jug your memory to find the information without seeing the actual monster. Kind of like Witcher 3 where you often don't know exactly what you are facing (vague information from witnesses, more when you stalk, full identification on sight). Now that I've typed this though, I'm wondering how often this situation comes up in play. That said, I could definitely go the other way and lower the in-combat DC instead to get a similar effect but that is beneficial for the players. I do agree that if you get a really clear identification and have access to an information source, you should be able to find out all about the creature with the appropriate checks.
Regarding untrained improvisation and lore - personally I would never allow this interaction. The DC benefit of lore skills is meant to be a bonus for a specific investment that a player has made into an area. Allowing lore skills with UI turns the game into a weird system of mother-may-I where you're constantly trying to justify using lore skills for everything because if you have high enough intelligence the DC bonus of a specific lore makes it as though you're better than being an expert in a skill. This could easily start to step on other player's skill investments. Need to secure a knot? Normally a chance for someone with good thievery to shine until the UI player says "I tie the knot with knot lore!" Now admittedly where I will allow this - and something I think you missed in the video - is with higher level cognitive mutagens, which allow you to become trained in an intelligence based skill. You could definitely choose a lore skill appropriate to the situation. By the time these become trivially accessible, the characters extremely good at their specialized skills will still be better than someone just trained in a lore skill. But at high levels Cognitive mutagens make alchemists one of the best RK users, especially outside of combat. Drink a cognitive mutagen, become trained in the most appropriate lore skill, absolutely crush the RK check. One last note - Investigator's Keen Recollection definitely IS intended to be used with lore skills imo. The existence of this feature is actually one of the reasons I think UI shouldn't allow it. Just feels wrong that a general feat should allow anyone to step on the toes of one of Investigator's key class features around RK.
I have been running a Stolen Fate game with the Starfinder Playtest Akashic Mystic as one of the PCs, and I don't see how anyone could run for that class and doubt RK's power.
The only time where Recall Knowledge feels bad is if your party members are asleep at the wheel and are basically not paying attention to useful new information. Which happens more than you'd like at most tables.
OR when the enemy does not have a useful weakness (or dangerous resistance), OR if you roll a nat 1 (which you can't know) and your information is now way more harmful than any other skill action, OR if the enemy has any rarity adjustment (even for generic things for it's creature type because RK is not well thought through), once again you won't know this until the bad info you got backfires, OR if you are fighting an enemy 2 or more levels ahead of you (bonus points if it overlaps with the previous point), or when the enemy you are fighting is not one you can use a skill you have against. I am pretty sure I am forgetting some aspects.
@@ev3867 my mic setup has always been a bit uh.. problematic. Moving to my new place hasn’t helped. If you have any recommendations on how to fix it, I’d really appreciate it! In case you need my settings: - I am currently using a Blue Yeti. - I set its dials to cardioid + 0 gain - On OBS I have (a) RNNoise suppression, (b) 4:1 Compressor, -12 dB Threshold, 6 ms Attack, 60 ms Release, 10 dB Output Gain, (c) Limiter set to -2 dB
Amazing analysis as ever. Didn't change my mind though. :) Gator (and alchemist) have been my favorite classes since day one I started playing: it's so satisfying to RK a creature and immediately capitalize on it with other abilities, as well as the team.
i really don't understand where people get the idea that thaum is the best RKer in the game when a level 20 investigator is the only class in the game who can achieve 50 RKs in a single turn
oh yeah especially since with keen recollection the investigator can just always use a creature's specific lore for the dc, which is only outperformed once they get to master proficiency in a skill at level 7
Great video as always. Quick side note before I get to what I really want to talk about: The word 'étude' is pronounced 'A-tood', and is the French word for 'study'. In music terminology an étude is a work that is intended to help master musical skills. On to my point: I have learned that with Free Archetype *any* class can be very good at Recall Knowledge, and in the process bypassing most of the objections to RK (if your debunking weren't enough). I really like the concept of the classic 'monster hunter' that uses knowledge to defeat enemies, so when my group started Extinction Curse I played a Thaumaturge. Unfortunately the mechanics never really 'clicked' for me. So when HotW came out I retired her for a Kineticist. In part because they relied on my thaum, the rest of the party hadn't invested much into RK, so I worked out how to make my kineticist - a class not particularly well suited to the role - do as much as possible *without diminishing my effectiveness as a kineticist*. I took Pathfinder Agent, Scrollmaster, and most recently recently worked in Ranger. Other than my Free Archetype feats I have only invested one skill increase, a few skill feats, and two ancestry feats - Adopted Ancestry (Human) and Multitalented. Neither is truly necessary, but getting Ranger Dedication from an Ancestry feat is nice. * Pathfinder Agent Dedication's pseudo-Untrained Improvisation and Thorough Reports covered for the limited skill investment and low attributes until I got Bestiary Scholar and put attribute increases into Wis. * Recognize Threat and Diverse Recognition let me RK without 'taxing' my action economy. * Ranger got me Master in Perception so I can more frequently get the RK off before my impatient party charges in or casts high rank spells.... Later I will pick up Hunter's Luck and maybe Monster Hunter. We found that Thorough Reports was slowing down the game, so we use a homebrewed variant - the GM rolls a flat check with the DC based on the creature's rarity to determine if I get the bonus. I forget the exact DCs, something like 10/14/18 for common through rare, and I never get the bonus on unique creatures.
Happy New Year! Commenting before watching, but I have definitely seen this sentiment reflected in my actual play groups. In situations where a lack of knowledge is killing us, my party members often reflect the sentiment that RK is (as your chapter says) "tempo negative." Why RK when I can just use that action to get into position and cast an 'effective' spell (One of the go-tos, fear, slow, etc.) In situations like that, I found it quite incredibly to be playing a scoundrel rogue with the dandy dedication. Even though I don't have intelligence that high (I have invested a little bit), being able to have a dubious knowledge RK for any subject has been super useful for filling those knowledge gaps. Even if it might be hard to reliably succeed, Dubious knowledge just means I have to reliably fail to get SOMETHING. Anyways, looking forward to watching. Will comment again if I have any thoughts
The tendency to underrate Recall Knowledge and the tendency to overrate "go-to" spells like Fear, Slow, etc often go hand-in-hand in my experience! *Great* spell use requires having a variety of spells, targeting a variety of defences, addressing a variety of situations, and Recall Knowledge is a valuable part of that toolkit. If you don't have all the tools for that great variety, you'll always aim for "good enough" spells that are generically good. Basically you need savvy players and good tactics to make Hypnotize feel *better* than Slow or to make damage mitigation feel *better* than Heal. If you don't have that, you'll always go for Slow or Heal.
@@xeltanni8999 Could you timestamp a specific part for me? I thought I pretty much always used black text on a beige background. Or are we talking about my red “errata” text?
The bigger issue I've always had with Recall Knowledge is more often how it yields nothing of value. If you demoralize an enemy, use Bon Mot or the like it's got some solid penalties slapped on it now. If you Recall Knowledge, odds are, you arn't going to learn anything that will help you win the fight. Most enemies don't have glaring weaknesses that can be exploited, and where they do, they're usually pretty obvious ie. A fire elemental is weak to cold. Or a golem has resistance to physical damage which became apparent the moment the fighter hit it with their sword
Solid vid, as usual. I love to point to your discussions on PF2 as good ways to explain and introduce folks. Forgive the non-sequitur but who's the little figurine with the scythe?
That is Goku Black, from Dragon Ball Super! Gonna keep it relatively spoiler free: he's an antagonist in DBS who shows up in Future Trunks's timeline (Trunks assumes he's a clone of Goku) and starts killing everyone on Earth. That's why I placed him and Trunks in the face-off!
This is one of those things I feel was held back by the years of portions of the community actively insisting Recall Knowledge was vague and fighting actively against the rulings other players would provide by citing rules text and filtering it through logic and the structure of the base rules. I mean, it did need to be more tightly worded but legit I spent years with a copy pasta explaining the way to read the text and why I ruled that, which fixed everything, and is near exact the remaster version and FOR YEARS I would run into people that would do anything to die on the hill of "NO RECALL KNOWLEDGE BAD! YOU USE CREATURE IDENTIFICATION FOR ALL RK ON CREATURES EVEN THOUGH IT DOESN'T FUNCTION AND THE LANGUAGE DOESN'T REALLY FOLLOW THAT LOGIC!" This community honestly has a recurring problem with a goon squad running around deciding things and then fighting against people learning because they oddly want to be right that something's bad rather than be proven wrong and have the thing be good.
@@cheezeofages “you use creature identification on all RK” Wait I don’t understand what this means. Were people arguing you have to spend a whole Action to say “yes, that is an omen dragon”, and then any actual factual questions you have have to be your *second* RK check at a higher DC?
@@Mathfinder-aaa Nah, RK naysayers for years would argue you used the rules and the degrees of success chart for creature identification for literally every RK check on creatures. as in "identify = learn the properties of" like in games where Scrolls of Identify tell you what magic items do. Even though using that DoS chart for checks beyond figuring out what the creature is makes absolutely no sense and would be a logistical absurdity on a scale of madness that could only be described as Lovecraftian.
I don't understand why some people hate on recall knowledge. My group uses it if we have a third action and don't know what to do with it, and we happen to have the appropriate skill. Or if the creature's doing something weird and we need to figure it out. I don't get the idea of hating on it.
“Errata”, clarifications, and additions:
- A commenter here pointed out that I’m misunderstanding how Thaum’s “ignore rarity” stuff works. You only ignore rarity if we’re talking about the Exploit Vulnerability question about Weaknesses/Resistances/Immunities. Any question you make as part of the Diverse Lore check is done against the actual creature’s DC. *However* I’m still okay to just give the Thaum the better math here, because technically they’re getting like 3 questions out of their 1 Action.
- Another commenter pointed out a cool thing to add to the “take notes” section of my argument. If you’re ever done a fight and suspect you’re still lacking in info, may as well Recall Knowledge! It may come up later.
- If Uncommon/Rare/Unique DCs are really rubbing your players the wrong way, remove them entirely.
The last point has made me very judgemental on some of my NPCs. Sure, he's a unique individual, but is the Ogre Chief that just so happened to be born a Sorcerer, "Unique"? Maybe not, at minimum he probably is uncommon, but I'm not sure his RK DC really ought be that high.
We are a long time Pathfinder group. Night one of our first 2e game we all decided that the DM rolling all the recall knowledge checks was too much to ask of him logistics-wise. This was a huge mistake. Things got hand-wavy quickly and we just started relying on our Thaumaturge exclusively. A few months in we hit a scenario where the Thaumaturge new that dubious knowledge had been triggered and the DM said, "I don't know what to say here, you already know not to trust this answer." And that's when we hit the brakes. We were looking at Recall as a very mechanical combat element that could be automated by the players to save time. Unwittingly we had removed all of the story-telling, skill-challenge, and risk-reward from the action. We switched the next fight and suddenly recall knowledge was its own mini-game. Did it slow combat down? Yes, in the first few rounds. But we had to make more choices, debate trying to learn more, and began discovering gaps in our strategy (ie: we always asked for the Low Save, not the High Save... and so were still swinging against strong saves much of the time). Within two levels I had Automatic Knowledge and everyone but our Magus and Swashbuckler were regularly trying knowledge checks at the start of fights. Fast forward to the climactic end of Gardens of Gallowspire when we secretly failed 8 knowledge checks round 1 (Hypercognition is lovely usually) and were given only misinformation. Recall Knowledge wiped our party. We failed the skill challenge. It was horrifying, but felt like such fair play!
You're not wrong, making it non-secret does remove some depth, and makes an already great action even better. But as shown by the math here, critical failure isn't that common an outcome, and i agree with the opinion that it's often circumventable. You often get a good intuition about when you might've critically failed, either due to the answers not quite seeming right, or just reading the GM's reaction and their "i'm thinking of some false information to tell you" face/voice.
Also, you *absolutely* should be banning Dubious Knowledge if you're not doing it with a secret check, in my opinion, and you're not operating under the assumption that the player shouldn't then act based on out-of-character knowledge. That just doesn't work with that decision. It relies on a mechanic you're not using. And it's worth noting that the books do say not bothering with secret checks is valid. They just generally emphasize the importance of acting as if your *character* is still in the dark.
GMC pg. 13: You can still have the players roll the checks even if an action has the secret trait. This is usually best done when the results are going to be immediate or when stakes are low, like when the PC is trying to recall something during downtime that they’ll see is false through the course of their research. You can instead have the players handle all their rolls, secret or otherwise. This works best when the group is interested in leaning into the dramatic irony of knowing a PC is wrong and playing up their characters’ mistakes.
PC pg. 226: This rule [the GM rolling the secret check] is the default for actions with the secret trait, but the GM can choose not to use secret checks if they would rather some or all rolls be public.
PC pg. 405: The GM can choose to make any check secret, even if it’s not usually rolled secretly. Conversely, the GM can let you roll any check yourself, even if that check would usually be secret. Some groups find it simpler to have players roll all secret checks and just try to avoid acting on any out-of-character knowledge, while others enjoy the mystery.
The issue i have with this is i do agree with the take presented on "metagaming." I am perfectly happy to let player skill be a factor, and players to be able to bring in their own knowlege and deductions into things. Doing it openly but insisting players not "metagame" is very much not my preferred style. And at that point, yeah, you've gotta cut out skill feats, and even then Recall Knowledge ends up better and you might as well just remove the crit fail outcome from the rules. Which, eh, not the end of the world. But dang is it awesome, then.
We are generally honest with ourselves, which is why it took a while to realize we were missing the point. We were so concerned with the DM having to juggle too much that we didn't think about why the check was very deliberately made secret.
"You know not to trust this dubious knowledge"
Well, they'd suspect anyway as soon as you gave two facts. Make use of that. Give them what they ask for and also what they asked for but false. Like "You aren't sure, but you think its lowest save is either Reflex or Will."
Recall Knowledge has always been interesting because people tend to run it via vibes and don't tend to check how the rules on it actually work.
One point maybe worth considering is, for longer campaigns, Recalling Knowledge *after* you've already won a combat if you didn't do so during.
It has no cost except time at the table, could be a fun way to develop a character that's into Recalling and keeping knowledge, and helps out if your GM ever uses a similar creature against you again!
@@insert_a_good_name_here4585 Very, very good point!
This is an excellent tip. In addition to being able to pre-RK if you are unobserved or find out about the target beforehand it makes a ton of sense to RK after a fight because often enemies recur if they are an enemy force in a location or a themed enemy for an arc.
I must mention the Alchemist (and its archetype) as a contender for Recall Knowledge: INT Class with good amount of starting skills and access to Cognitive Mutagen, which gives an item bonus from +1 to +4 to all RK checks and INT skills, including lores; and crit failures on RK become failures (paired with Dubious Knowledge, it’s always at least some info right). The downside is worse weapon and unarmed attacks and carrying less bulk.
That’s already good, the bonus can stack with circumstance and status bonus, but the cherry on top is that the greater version, at level 11 (and the major at level 17) let you choose a skill to become trained when you create the mutagen. Well, you can actually choose a specific lore (Conspirator Dragon Lore for example) and get a +3/+4 item bonus to RK that dragon with a decreased DC.
And switching to striking after using the mutagen isn’t impossible, Regurgitate Mutagen is actually really nice.
The book I'm running has the party go up against a PL+4 unique enemy. I set the RK DCs off of the PL+1 rare creature it's based on. It still took them multiple encounters to learn anything about it.
This is, basically, my view on the main issue with RK. DC by level is set in a great place in general but feels really bad in this exact context of RK. Encounters where you actually really want it (PL0 enemies are fairly well-handled by middle-save fireball-equivalents, and are less often the highly threatening encounters anyway) are the same encounters where you creep below 50% to RK unless you're highly committed to both the skill and stat.
And don't even get me STARTED on uncommon/rare/unique tags. Boss fight? DC by level... plus 2 to 4 for the level gap... plus 5 for the unique...
You basically have to do the thing you did! Which... fine (and is similar to the RAW behavior for the unique tag on characters based on something, actually, if you dig enough to FIND the RAW behavior of the unique tag), but also grrrrr.
I think a missed argument vs RK is "you don't need it". There's a lot of cases where you know what you are facing or can afford not to, or can't leverage the info it gives you usefully. And yeah, maybe you don't know which is which, but that cuts both ways.
So yes, there's times when RK is GREAT, and times when it's not. The trick is knowing which is which...
@@sebwiers1 I don’t really find that to be a convincing argument against Recall Knowledge (or anything, really).
There are times you don’t need Fireball! Doesn’t mean Fireball’s a bad spell now, does it? Pathfinder as a whole is designed to reward tactical choices, and tactical choices are meaningless if you don’t have good or bad choices on a round-by-round or encounter-by-encounter basis. Yes, there are rounds of combat, or even entire combats, where Recall Knowledge won’t be useful but that applies to every single Action in the game (other than ones explicitly designed to be used every combat as a class-specific tax like Hunt Prey or a as a class-specific boost like Hunted Shot).
@@Mathfinder-aaa Fair enough. If the argument is "it's bad", certainly it's not. If the argument is "I won't use it in this fight" ... well as you say, nothing is ideal in every fight.
Thanks for the video, I'm playing an investigator in my next game and this was really helpful!
This is a good video as usual but i think you misunderstood how Diverse Lore works. It doesnt let the thaum effectively "ignore" the uncommon tag. It just lets you compaare the exploit vulnerability roll against the RK dc on a success. Since diverse lore imposes a -2 normally, this just lets you ignore that -2 when succeding at exploit vulnerability. It should still be compared to the normal RK dc which for uncommon creatures should still have that +2
@@TheAssaisa1 Huh, I’m rereading the wording on this and I think you’re right?
I used to rule Diverse Lore the same way you do, until someone over on the Reddit argued otherwise and convinced me but uh… I can’t remember what they said that convinced me? Lmao. I’ll get back to you.
@@TheAssaisa1 Okay I have figured it out!
Basically the Exploit Vulnerability check you make *without* any Diverse Lore or anything attached is allowed to learn Weaknesses based on a Standard DC. I confused myself and thought that meant the pseudo Recall Knowledge that Diverse Lore allows also has the same.
One thing to note about the whole -2 penalty with Diverse Lore is it's basically completely irrelevant when recalling knowledge about creatures. Esoteric Lore already lets you RK about any kind of creature by default.
Diverse Lore lets you recall knowledge about anything, like the history of a city, or the menu of a local restaurant, but with a -2 penalty.
I have always found that RK is super powerful, but that doesn't make it feel good. It's more like an action tax that I have to pay before I can start casting spells. Plus, because I'm a charisma caster and I don't have enough skill points to cover all of the skills I need, I'm quite likely to fail.
@@Ryoko41 I don’t find it to be an Action tax at all. Casters do not need to find the lowest Save to perform well, simply avoid the highest Save (and this only needs common sense and game awareness imo). You definitely shouldn’t view it as a “I have to pay this tax before I cast spells” thing.
Recall Knowledge is an action that helps you party perform *above* the curve of what you can normally do, and thus it’s okay to “tax” such performance. Additionally, if you’re Charisma based you can’t be expected to cover more than 1-2 RK Skills at most anyways. The burden of doing so should be shared with other players at the table, especially if they have more room for it in their stats. Asking you to be the sole user of Recall Knowledge is like asking the two-weapon user to use Battle Medicine all the time!
@@Mathfinder-aaaI tend to don't like as a bard to be asked to do bon mot, when i need to do a composition, make a spell and or make a move.
@@Mathfinder-aaa Sorry for playing a Swashbuckler or Pistolero/Sniper Slinger. Or already being one of the characters covering the medicine tax. Or being one one of the characters using athletics maneuvers so non-melee characters can benefit from off-guard.
RK is an awful system, held together by a bunch of bandaids.
Recall Knowledge has always felt bad to me because of the risk. Not just the risk that you get false information or no information, but also the risk that you get useless information. Just because you know the lowest save doesn't mean the party can or wants to target that save. Just because you know the enemy has an ability doesn't mean you can do anything about it. Often times, there's no weakness or resistance, or it's not something you can do anything about. So I'm just not a fan of it anymore.
@@Bagley2014 Useless information is a consequence of not asking the most relevant questions! My advice near the end of the video gets into this.
Don’t ask for lowest Save if none of the casters in your party can or wants to target that Save. But maybe they will benefit in other ways, like wanting to bypass Resistances or target Weaknesses. Just ask whatever question is relevant to the casters in the party.
If you consistently find yourself feeling like you can’t benefit from Recall Knowledge information at all, chances are that your party’s tactics as a whole need an upgrade. Obviously nothing you can unilaterally fix, but still.
@@Mathfinder-aaa I would say that there is another scenario where Recall Knowledge proves to be inefficient and that's when outside of the most rare of situations, there is nothing that can be improved about the tactics.
I have multiple groups in which I played/ran Pathfinder 2E and that would apply to one of them. Really early the party determined the optimal rotation for dealing with dangerous encounters in that specific campaign, and from that point onwards the only changes to it happened either on a level up or when a rare enemy which for some reason couldn't be put under a bunch of action taxing effects and then 2-3 turn deleted by the Magus appeared. Except even those enemies weren't a good target for Recall Knowledge, seeing how the DCs for single enemy Unique boss encounters were largely too high to reasonably attempt.
Ok, I’m only a minute in but I’m REALLY looking forward to this. For context, let me say the following(this mostly applies to my PFS games):
1. I LOVE doing Recall Knowledge. Partially to avoid meta-gaming, but also, as a newer PF2e player, I LITERALLY often don’t know and need to ask 😂
2. I’m trying to learn to build fill/support characters for PFS games, so I’ve started to think of a few different “Recall Knowledge” focused builds. I’m pretty sure this video will give me new ideas.
Part of the difficulty in teaching recall, is that GM hardly ever use it themselves. I, as a GM, can teach players that athletics and intimidation are cool, because NPCs can use them day in and day out. But recall is a tax that is uniquely useful to PCs, or perhaps DMPCs? So it's hard to convince players it's good.
Regarding tempo, though. Intimidation and Bon Mot are great ways to "poke" for mindlessness or will save weakness without recalling. While Grapple/Shove and Disarm/Trip can do the same for Fort and Reflex. Esp. since these rolls are public to the player. So the success on these actions are actually 2-fold, and failure doesn't mean null, it means its save DC is at least 1 more than the number you rolled.
For Thaum, I don't think it's the success rate that's great about Thaum knowledge, it's how it fits into the Thaum's playstyle. Esoteric Lore + Diverse Lore makes recall knowledge feel effortless in one feat. I'd actually like to say the same about ranged Mastermind Rogue playstyle. Monster Hunter Ranger gives a circumstance bonus to attack (a rare bonus) to party instead. And correct me if I'm wrong but the chart you displayed requires the target to be hunted, an extra feat investment, and a focus point to be spent. But you didn't seem to mention it?
I played a Thaumaturge in the Abomination Vaults. The sheer amount of recall knowledge checks I got for free was fantastic! I wish more classes had access to free action RK checks!
Currently playing a monk with low int and my only “recall knowledge” equivalent is taking an assurance trip attack. Not nearly as satisfying!
I love all Mathfinder videos!
I love giving people information so I like Recall Knowledge in principle and house rule huge buffs for it in my home campaign. But we have so much meta information flying around anyway (playing on Foundry with open rolls) so they often figure out most of what they would want to know through the normal course of play.
I still agree that it is very good to use outside of combat, but taking an action to do it with a significant chance of failure at that can be rough to do in the heat of battle. And as I saw commented below, there are tons of fights where even if you had the full stat block in front of you it wouldn't change your tactics.
I think that Thaumaturge should be treated as extremely good generalist. You use your key ability, requite just one feat and you have auto progression on all recall knowledge checks, some are taken with -2 penalty but it's still just equivalent to one proficiency rank. You can definitely build better characters but they require more investment. What many people don't like is that int based characters don't have way to match it. Lore master archetype dedication benefits are similar but slightly worse and it restricts character build more than a single class feat.
I think including a fortune effect from a focus spell makes the math comparison between thaum and outwit ranger a bit skewed. You could add in any number of spells that the thaumaturge can cast from scroll thaumaturgy to swing things back (pocket library for ex). There's also that the number of focus points you have is limited compared to no limitation on thaumaturge's. I'm not saying outwit is bad at all, but I think the charts present a bit of a skewed perspective - as does the follow up analysis (the rk build for ranger takes far more feat investment than a thaum). Also, I don't think the recall knowledge bonus from tome applies to the esoteric lore check they make for exploit vulnerability (and I think that this still suffers from the increased uncommon RK dc).
You bringing up untrained improvisation and the thaumaturge (agreed on esoteric lore not getting a -2 dc reduction btw) reminds me again of how CRIMINALLY underrated the Investigator is both pre-remaster and especially now post-remaster. To start I definitely think keen recollection is intended to apply to lores. For most of the campaign you're going to be doing better than tons of RKers as long as it's something related to your pursued lead. And skill strategem pushes that even further. I think people sleep on it a bit, probably just due to the unfavorable view intelligence as a stat gets in general. And perhaps also that potential damage ceiling is weighted more than reliability.
@@FiniteFragment I don’t agree that I’m being unfair to the Thaumaturge by including Hunter’s Luck.
First to address your point that the Thaumaturge can just use some spell to keep up: what spell is going to give you Fortune in *every* Recall Knowledge check? And they actually CAN’T use Pocket Library easily: I address this in the video, Pocket Library explicitly states that it won’t work if you don’t have a free hand *at the time of making the Recall Knowledge check*, whereas in combat a Thaum is usually gonna have Implement in one hand and weapon in another. If you build a Thaum who uses an Unarmed or Free-Hand weapon of some kind then you’ll be able to use Pocket Library but then:
- It’s still not gonna catch you up to Fortune from Hunter’s Luck.
- The Ranger can use Pocket Library via a single Skill Feat and their Nature investment, and unlike the Thaum they don’t have to downgrade their weapon to make use of it in combat. So if I include Pocket Library it’d unironically make the Ranger better, not worse.
As for Hunter’s Luck needing a focus point, the Ranger is actually perfect for this because they don’t need their focus points for anything else. The Ranger can just have two focus points by level 4 that exist *solely* to boost Recall Knowledge, and simply rely on their excellent weapon using Feats and/or an Animal Companion for in-combat damage.
And fully agreed on the Investigator being underrated! Going through the math has been making me more and more convinced that Keen Recollection IS meant to work with Lores.
@@Mathfinder-aaa Well, now that gets into a serious number of feats to make this work. You need monster hunter at 1. You also now need initiate Warden, you need advanced Warden. You need master monster hunter at 10. You can make up the difference at 6 and 8 by taking some of those weapon feats / animal companion feats, but it'll be delayed. And this is also the period of levels (half the game) that the charts show outwit is (relatively) underperforming on the main thing you put those early feats into.
And sure, let's put pocket library aside (I think it's very reasonable to have a chance to RK before drawing your weapon). A thaum is able to do their in combat RK without any feats. And if taken, Diverse Lore (alongside action compression + essentially making a secret check public in combat) also makes them quite excellent at out of combat recall knowledge, which in my view, is just as important (or perhaps more so in certain campaigns). Of course, let's acknowledge this and then restrict this to just combat, otherwise, it won't really be fair.
I think as well, pre-10, it is true that level based DC-wise the math works out as it does in the charts. But there are many many cases where a ranger will be substantially worse off depending on the enemies they face. Thaumaturge doesn't have to worry about this.
I think you'll do fine as an outwit RKer, my point isn't that they're bad. But there are many more hurdles this character will have to face in the lead up to 10. And even after 10, you essentially get 2-3 'high value' RKs per combat, after which there is a dramatic fall off. In smaller combats this might be all you need. But I think in the extreme cases the sustainability of knowledge matters a lot. Not to mention how both thaum and investigator have ways to boost the efficiency and potency of acquiring this knowledge (in ways that are both high and low investment).
Showing these specific charts, I think, bypasses a lot of nuance to try and point to Outwit as 'better'
@@Mathfinder-aaa I do think you somewhat overstated the argument by focusing so heavily on the "maximum possible" recall knowledge. Imo Recall Knowledge is very much a skill where "good enough is good enough". If you're getting results like the Thaumaturge's, you're doing everything that really needs to be done with recall knowledge. You're succeeding most of the time, almost never crit failing, and when you fail you get dubious knowledge to give you useful information anyway.
If, past level 10, being "super far behind" means your action has the intended effect nearly every single time, I'm perfectly fine being "super far behind" in exchange for almost no feat or character option tax.
@@bennettpalmer1741 but that “almost no Feat or character option tax” statement isn’t actually representative of the Thaumaturge at all imo! I alluded to this in the video but let me expand:
1. The Thaumaturge has Charisma as a KAS, and can never max out their Str/Dex as a consequence while the Outwit Ranger can max them out.
2. The Thaumaturge will always have both hands full unless they make very specific build choices to preserve an empty hand somehow (in which case they’ll usually substantially lower weapon damage/trait quality).
3. Even within the context of all Thaumaturges needing to keep their hands full, a Tome Thaumaturge is losing out on more by not having another Implement as their starting choice (and needs to spend an Action to swap anyways) while an Outwit Ranger comparatively loses much less by not being Precision/Flurry.
4. Ranger is basing all their Recall Knowledge off of Wisdom, a stat that passively boosts their defences and Initiative at all times. The Thaumaturge is basing it off of Charisma, a stat that gives them debuff abilities that they will not have the Action economy to even try to use.
I think the Outwit Ranger is paying LESS of an opportunity cost than the Thaumaturge, and a lot of the builds I mentioned pay even less of that. All caster base builds, for example, pay almost no opportunity cost because casters need so few of their own Class Feats to be good in the first place.
@@Mathfinder-aaa
1. I agree, of course. Charisma KAS is definitely a flaw for the Thaumaturge.
2. Thaumaturges are uniquely privileged in their hand economy. Sure they have both hands full all the time, but the vast majority of things a Thaumaturge might want to do with a free hand can be cheated on. Sure there's special cases like Pocket Library, but scroll thaumaturgy lets them cast their scrolls with their implement hand. Ammunition Thaumaturgy lets them load ranged weapons with their implement hand. If you want to be Tripping or other skill checks, you can get a weapon with the right property. So yeah, their hand economy is restricted, but it doesn't really hurt them too much most of the time.
3. Obviously this is subjective, but I disagree completely! Tome implement gives a bunch of free, changeable, skill proficiencies. I think this is better than circumstance bonuses to specific, preset skill checks. Outwit might give you a +2 to stealth, and the AC Circumstance bonus is great, but Tome could give you like +10 to stealth, or any other skill you'd otherwise be untrained in. And the skill trainings from Tome stack with outside Circumstance bonuses, while the Outwit bonuses don't. And in terms of what other options are available, the simple logic I have is that you get 1 hunters edge, and only 1, unless you spend an 18th level feat on it. Every Thaumaturge gets 3 implements across their career, and the additional choices come way earlier than level 18. The extra damage from Precision/Flurry is basically permanently lost by choosing outwit, whereas the Thaumaturge can just get whatever cool thing they wanted at level 5 instead of level 1.
4.Wisdom is a better combat stat, but the Thaumaturge can be the party face with their high Charisma, which isn't nothing. This is definitely a point in favor of the Ranger, but it's not a huge one.
You're also just not mentioning the fact that you have to spend a 1st level feat to get Monster Hunter, a 1st level feat to get the focus spell, and a 10th level feat to get Master Monster Hunter. There are a whole bunch of cool and useful options for feats that you aren't taking, because you need to be as good as possible at Recall Knowledge. The Thaumaturge, meanwhile, is taking a single 1st level feat, and gets to use all the rest of their feats to pick from all the cool stuff their class has available, or whatever archetypes they feel like.
The caster builds might have less character creation opportunity cost, but they have to actually spend an action recalling knowledge, whereas the Thaumaturge and Ranger are getting their recall knowledge checks for "free" rolled into an action they'd be doing anyway, whether that's Exploit Vulnerability or Hunt Prey.
Thaumaturge can poach pocket library outside of combat, which is an excellent time to Recall Knowledge.
I think this takes a big chunk out of the difference for the Thaum, particularly since the only variable that ISN'T poachable in this video is Esoteric Lore. It still feels like Thaum has the best potential overall, even if Esoteric Lore + Diverse Lore doesn't stand alone as some present it.
In addition, Thaumaturges also get native Familiar support. Many have questioned WHY Thaumaturges have familiars... and I suppose we can point to this video now.
My group loves the crit failures, I think at least a couple of characters end up with dubious knowledge because they enjoy it _too_ much.
The mastermind rogue gets enemies off-guard via recall knowledge action.
Specialising is always vital for everyone who wants to RK, because you need to minimise failure. It gets overlooked because it's not in the player-facing rules, but the original 2e Core Rulebook GMing chapter and GM Core both make it clear that GMs should not allow any further information to be gained from RK on a subject after a failure.
Just some more notes. It's a bit tricky when saying a mindless low will save creature's save is actually reflex. Illusions may still work on mindless while hitting Will. I would just say lowest is will but they are mindless in this case.
The other "gotcha" I commonly find is Fort saves and ghosts. As incorporeal creatures are immune to grapple, and undead will be immune to a lot of fort effects. Where I would say lowest is Fort but incorporeal/undead.
The reason the Thaum is "the best" is that they do it well without even trying. Everyone else has to invest, and people don't want to invest.
Yeah. Outwit Ranger might well be one of the best Recall Knowledge classes, but the cost of that is that it's an *Outwit Ranger.* The most you get outside of the Recall is your +1 to AC. Thaumaturge, meanwhile, gets to Recall Knowledge about literally anything with a single level 1 feat investment and is effortlessly one of the highest damaging classes
My pet Recall Knowledge build is an alchemist constantly hopped up on Cognitive Mutagen with Dubious Knowledge. The universal item bonus and immunity to crit fails seems to work well.
I was looking forward to this video, but I still have a few questions, if you dont mind:
Context is, Ive been trying to buildcraft a psychopomp summoner who's a lorekeeper about spirits and the problem is that I dont know how much I should invest in lore to be effective. Are summoners capable of being good at RK? Between my eidolon aiding my checks and pocket library, Is aditional lore mandatory or can I get by with religion alone? How many points should I invest in wisdom? Is timely tutor good for a summoner?
I dont wanna be overwhealming, but I hope you can help a bit!
@@muriomoira Disclaimer: I have never played a Summoner, so my advice here is largely based on reading + third hand experience.
I think Religion alone isn’t good enough if you’re the party’s primary Recall Knowledge user. At *least* Religion + Nature would be needed, imo.
I also dunno how much room you have for Intelligence. Summoners are Charisma based, and then you need defensive stats pretty badly, so idk.
Timely Tutor is amazing on Summoners though. 1-Action Act Together -> Timely Tutor -> Eidolon makes a Recall Knowledge check still leaves you two Actions to either cast a spell or command your Eidolon to do a 2-Action activity, whichever is better in the situation. That’s amazing, tbh.
Realistically your Wisdom score is probably going to be +1/+2 at level 1, and you probably really want the latter. I think that sort of within acceptable range for doing either of the Wisdom RK skills (Nature/Religion). I would take Dubious Knowledge to make your low rolls better, especially if your GM is bad at making up false info cough. Int is usually a dump stat for Summoners, so I personally wouldn't bother with doing Lore or the Int RK skills.
Out of battle it's kinda fun to have both characters do the RK checks instead - odds are one of you will roll something useful out of it.
Recall Knowledge feels like a reason spellcasters are, by your terminology, "cheerleaders" as seen with your mid int/wis charts where it's incredibly easy for martials to have a high failure chance if they don't specialize when they also have other skills like athletics, acrobatics, thievery, and so on along with if they want to get diplomacy/intimidation or crafting when a caster is more than likely gonna at least take skill increases relevant to their tradition, which is more than likely gonna be used to identify enemies outside of lore.
Yeah, especially since creatures like golems have the same recall knowledge DC for arcana and crafting so it would just plainly make more sense for the wizard to spend their third action on support than the champion or fighter taking crafting for their shield.
@@GMP1isReal Sorry I’m having trouble following your argument here. How are going from “it makes sense for Intelligene based characters to use Recall Knowledge” to “casters should be cheerleaders”? That’s a big leap, and that ignores that a good majority of martials have ways to be good at Recall Knowledge and/or Demoralize with minimal investment.
@Mathfinder-aaa
well I'm referring back to your previous videos in how you define casters being cheerleaders in how they feel they have to support the martials with third actions like recall knowledge and debuffing the enemy and so on instead of direct damage, when by that definition, casters would be numerically better at giving support to their party with actions like Recall Knowledge as seen with your graphs. Like a wizard is gonna be more likely to have Arcana as their highest proficiency and a Sorcerer is going to have a better Charisma stat to demoralize than if a Magus or Champion did.
@@GMP1isReal Casters are designed to be the most reliable and most potent at absolutely anything they do, that’s by design.
That may be Recall Knowledge, that may buffs, that may be debuffs, that may be healing. However, that *also* means they are the most reliable/potent at dealing damage, and controlling the battlefield, as I showed in that cheerleaders video, so it’s a moot point.
If we extend your logic of “casters are the most reliable/potent at supportive Actions so they should be cheerleaders” to its logical extreme, it becomes “casters are the most reliable/potent at *every* Action so we should never play martials”. Doesn’t work that way though, the best parties still have a good mix of casters and martials.
Casters have the advantage in potency, reliability, and versatility. Martials have the advantage in Action-efficiency and resource-sustainability. The best parties use a mix of both of their advantages to win, which sometimes involves martials cheerleading casters and other times involves casters cheerleading martials.
@Mathfinder-aaa but that wasn't what I said at all because you went to the extreme of "casters should be good at every action." My analysis of your video is much closer to the extreme of "if casters are going to be best at charisma, wisdom, and/or intelligence, then they should be the ones to handle every action tied to those skills." That would include recall knowledge (because duh) and most other support actions like bon mot/demoralize and so on while strength and dexterity have no where near as many while they invest in constitution which has none.
Don't get me wrong, I think martials going into support skills is fun as hell, like a champion using demoralize and that synergizing with Aura of Despair, but if you want to talk optimal, casters have the best chances of making the most of those considering how limited feats like Intimidating Prowess giving a bonus to Demoralize based on Strength are.
You can and should make the argument that martials doing support is great, particularly from an action economy point, but those roles getting given to casters by default checks out in the math considering how much better the specialists graphs were with high int/wis compared to any chart for mid int/wis, and that is only reinforced by how key attributes work to encourage different classes leaning towards different sets of skills.
Good video, but you forgot Gnome's "Eclectic Obsession", the best feat in the game, I've taken adopted ancestry just to get it on my Minotaur Barbarians and Automatic Knowledge is pretty good too
As a brand new player (should be starting a pf2e campaign when my group’s 5e.14 game comes to a close) I am very glad that I found your channel. I really appreciate the way you present your opinions and evidence. It gives a lot of insight into the game, and I feel like it is helping me learn to think about the game for myself.
I have a quick question about a character I’m thinking about playing. I want to make an animist that takes a bunch of additional lores, dubious knowledge, and that feat that turns crit failures into failures for lore checks. Can I get away with doing this with Int as my 4th stat (behind Wis, Str, and Con: I want to be able to make use of the melee focused apparition) and still have recall knowledge be a useful action to take?
Thanks!
@@caleb4836 I’m glad you’ve been liking my videos!!
Regarding your specific Animist build, it sounds very similar to the build ThrabenU used for our Mythic Madness collab. Here’s a link to his build video: ruclips.net/video/Q2Lpcskl2Ds/видео.htmlsi=3B8PuGyZC4qw7_-2
I think he did Con as his 4th stat, which is pretty alright to be honest! You can start at level 1 with +4 Wis, +3 Dex, +1 Int, +1 Con (or swap it so it’s +2 Dex, +2 Int) and you can increase all four of those every opportunity you get, and your usage of Additional Lore will be great! I recommend checking out Thraben’s video for other fun combos he used.
Awesome thanks for the feedback! +1 Con feels dubious coming from a 5e background, but I guess you can get away with lower Con in pf2e due to heritage hps at level 1 and the ability to scale multiple ability scores at once?
@ Yup, because ability boosts are so much more plentiful, you’ll be fine. At low levels a single point of Con doesn’t matter a ton, that 1 extra HP isn’t gonna make or break your game nor will a +1 against Fortitude Saves do so. By the time you’re at higher levels where a point of Con is 10-20 extra HP, and Fort Saves are less “you get poisoned” and more “you might just die”, you’ll have more ability boosts to get your Con up. If you look at Thraben’s character in the video I linked, he has +3 Con at level 10, despite having +1 at level 1.
My rule of thumb for character building is that Dex, Wis, and Con, should all be at a +4 *by the time you reach level 20*. Any of them can be anywhere between a +0 and a +2 at level 1 and you’ll probably still be fine.
IMHO the issue with RK is that the required info is not in the monster entries. Each monster stat bloc should contain all the DCs, skills and info that you can learn.
I'm lucky that my Players love recall knowledge. Fighting demons, they love learning little things like "This demon takes extra damage from failing to command animals."
TBH, it seems really weird that people would say that avoiding Fortitude stuff against a Giant or something would be metagaming. If we are trying to sedate a wounded X for treatment, would they prepare the same dose if X was a bunny, a child, a huge offensive lineman, or a bear? Probably not, right? There are so many common cases when we just expect the big thing to need larger or stronger doses to get the desired effect. It kind of seems like the hard things are getting the details correct (especially in a medical or veterinary context where you care about a creature coming out okay as opposed the standard adventuring one where you want it dead) and knowing when the obvious conventional wisdom thing is actually wrong.
I take issue w/ advise that is seems dictatorial to players like the party can pick your subclass like if you're a rogue then you have to be a Scoundrel(Subclass isn't that important) or if you're a ranger then you should build around monster hunter. The most useful advise is how to incorporate recall knowledge into any character w/ the least amount of effort, like pick a couple skills not being covered well by the rest of your party, then bump that stat if its a off stat, then bump those skills as much as possible, its not hard for any player to help out w/ the recall knowledge heavy lifting. A rogue, a barbarian or a wizard actually have lots of other needs for their skills. A party totally optimized around recall knowledge will be the party that knows exactly what killed them.
@@admizr5416 I’m not suggesting you should individually dictate to others in the party what they should play! I’m simply pushing back against a degree of dictatorial conversations that *already* are happening. People already feel very comfortable telling casters that they “should” cast Heal or “should” cast Haste because that’s their role. I’m simply pushing back and pointing out that the opportunity cost tends to be significantly higher for casters to be cheerleading others, whereas it’s really not that high for martials. If you think martials shouldn’t be changing their build choices to suit casters, then casters *certainly* cannot afford it to be doing it for their martials either.
As for that last bit, any party that’s completely optimized around one aspect of the game will eventually struggle or TPK against their weakness. That’s not an argument against still being competent with Recall Knowledge. The “min-maxed” DPR party will die as soon as they face an enemy that wins Initiative and CCs the damage dealers, that doesn’t mean damage is useless does it?
@@Mathfinder-aaa
TL:DR Recall Knowledge is a pillar of the game and players have to assume they must be able to contribute to it, but how can they do so with the fewest opportunity costs, is kinda the brass tax.
Sorry, if that comment was negative, I really liked your video. An hour long video on the technical nuances of recall knowledge is panacea to me. I don't think recall knowledge is a wizard or spellcaster's job, but if you're playing one you want your spells to land and recall knowledge is clutch, just like it's rogue's job to always land sneak attack and it's every martials job to suck at anything other than melee🙄. You mentioned in an earlier video about PC's being self-reliant rogue shouldn't assume the party is building around them getting sneak attack, then don't assume any party is going to have a designated healer, buffer/debuffer, library, etc, unless you are the one who has committed to it. I guess my point is recall knowledge is such a pillar of the game that if a player have nothing to contribute to it, it better be for good reason. I think what I want to know is how can a player contribute the most to recall knowledge with the fewest opportunity costs.
Yeah a wizard who has nothing better to do than cast haste on the fighter is a problem most of all for the fighter
As a longstanding fan of the band, Type O Negative, this video was difficult to keep straight. 😆
@@NyctophileXIII I think I am missing the reference here!
@@Mathfinder-aaa"Temp O Negative", I'm guessing?
@@pyr1t3radio48 that makes sense lol.
Yeah, sorry. 😅 Tempo-Negative just sounds a lot like Type O Negative and it kept nudging me through the video. There's nothing at all wrong with the video, I was just failing a bit at some light humor.
A darn shame you dont mention the upcoming Commander's auto scaling Warfare Lore and kinds of RK checks it may be best for. Im currently playing an Athletics/RK Commander and it feels a bit down in the dumps.
@@nad12985 I actually played an Athletics + RK Commander during my playtest session! What’s got you feeling down about it?
@@Mathfinder-aaa RUclips is deleting my comments and I dont know why. Very annoying. If this one doesnt go through I guess I'll have to track down a discrod or something. long story short bad party comp + my character is the only off-guard applier, the only battle medicine source, and the best/only viable RK user, leaving me with often no damage dealt on a turn. lv 6 analysis paralysis for what dedication after Medic.
8:36 on Regeneration - in the last session of one of my games the PCs couldn't figure out how to stop an enemy from constantly getting back up from 0hp via regeneration. Tried basically everything _except_ Recall Knowledge, lol. They literally ended up running away from that fight, mostly for other reasons but not being able to finish her off was a factor. So yeah, RK can be pretty important in combat!
I like the fact, that 40% of your video is obsolet if you take the Bestiary Scholar feat from the Scrollmaster Archetyp. It is just the goat of all Recall Knowledge feats. Pathfinder Agent into Scrollmaster is imo the best way to make a master of Recall Knowledge, especially with the rule, that you can take Scrollmaster without taking three feats.
@@bisliburtarock9513 This is cool but I don’t see how Bestiary Scholar on its own makes any of the builds I talked about obsolete? All it does is give you a universal Skill to Recall Knowledge with, at maximum Proficiency which:
- Thaumaturge and Ranger can directly access via Esoteric Lore and Master Monster Hunter respectively.
- Rogue and Investigator can indirectly keep up with via the doubled Skill Proficiency scaling.
- Anyone with Loremaster Archetype can get a lesser version of at level 2, and then pick up Loremaster’s Etude to pull ahead of Bestiary Scholar 6 whole levels before Bestiary Scholar is even available.
Like it’s a good option, and I’m happy you made me aware of it! But I don’t think it’s making anything obsolete.
And sure a Pathfinder Agent with Thorough Reports *and* Bestiary Scholar might be pretty damn amazing at Recall Knowledge, but at this point we took 4 Archetype Feats to get here and are still not convincingly ahead of the stuff I mentioned above (likely still behind the Ranger and the Loremaster due to their Fortune effects).
@@Mathfinder-aaa Don`t get me wrong. Bestiary Scholar doesn't make your builds obsolete but the decision what skill you'll invest in and if you should be a specialist. Just take Nature with your Hunter, max it and you're fine.
It comes online very late, that's true. But at lvl 10 it's the best feat you can take for recall knowledge builds. You get effectively 5 legendary skills on lvl 15 and you save a lot of Skill Boosts for other Skills you like.
Esoteric Lore is nice, I really like it, but the disadvantage is, that you are capped at trained/expert.
Btw you don't have to do one or the other. I'am working on a wizard build with FA and I'm done with Loremaster/Pathfinder Agend/Scrollmaster by lvl 12 with all the key feats. And I like the fact that Loremaster's Etude triggers Bespell Strikes.
Math time!
@@mkmasterthreesixfive So much math in this one!
Great video! I love Recall Knowledge (Investigator and Wizard are some of my favorite classes, so go figure) and I wish players recognized its value. Classes like Thaum do grind my gears and I enjoyed your breakdown of it. Looking forward to more videos.
Earlier today I wondered where mathfinders videos are, and here you go
Pre-combat Recall Knowledge is in a weird spot in my opinion. Since RK is both from previous knowledge and in-combat assessment, I believe using RK without seeing the creature/fighting it needs some limitation. If the PCs heard that a Horned dragon was wrecking havoc somewhere and pre-RK'd it before going to kill it, I personally would not allow them to ask questions about lesser known things such as the weakest save or the Twisting Tail reaction. I still would allow questions on more obvious abilities like the Poison Breath, the fly speed and the Impaling charge.
@@coco5593 I think I disagree with your interpretation here. Recall Knowledge is explicitly coded as being a recall of things the character *already knows* rather than a study of what’s happening in front of the character (those things get encoded into specific Feats like the Rogue’s Battle Assessment or the Fighter’s Exacting Strike).
You are, of course, free to rule that some specific and unique aspects of a statblock are hard to recall but I’d make that to be the exception, not the rule. I’d also then telegraph to my players that incomplete information can be gained via gathering information in some other way, be it via asking around or researching the foe indirectly.
@@Mathfinder-aaa I agree about RK being things your character has already learned somewhere, but my interpretation of my out-of-sight limit is that it is harder to jug your memory to find the information without seeing the actual monster. Kind of like Witcher 3 where you often don't know exactly what you are facing (vague information from witnesses, more when you stalk, full identification on sight). Now that I've typed this though, I'm wondering how often this situation comes up in play.
That said, I could definitely go the other way and lower the in-combat DC instead to get a similar effect but that is beneficial for the players.
I do agree that if you get a really clear identification and have access to an information source, you should be able to find out all about the creature with the appropriate checks.
Regarding untrained improvisation and lore - personally I would never allow this interaction. The DC benefit of lore skills is meant to be a bonus for a specific investment that a player has made into an area. Allowing lore skills with UI turns the game into a weird system of mother-may-I where you're constantly trying to justify using lore skills for everything because if you have high enough intelligence the DC bonus of a specific lore makes it as though you're better than being an expert in a skill. This could easily start to step on other player's skill investments. Need to secure a knot? Normally a chance for someone with good thievery to shine until the UI player says "I tie the knot with knot lore!"
Now admittedly where I will allow this - and something I think you missed in the video - is with higher level cognitive mutagens, which allow you to become trained in an intelligence based skill. You could definitely choose a lore skill appropriate to the situation. By the time these become trivially accessible, the characters extremely good at their specialized skills will still be better than someone just trained in a lore skill.
But at high levels Cognitive mutagens make alchemists one of the best RK users, especially outside of combat. Drink a cognitive mutagen, become trained in the most appropriate lore skill, absolutely crush the RK check.
One last note - Investigator's Keen Recollection definitely IS intended to be used with lore skills imo. The existence of this feature is actually one of the reasons I think UI shouldn't allow it. Just feels wrong that a general feat should allow anyone to step on the toes of one of Investigator's key class features around RK.
I have been running a Stolen Fate game with the Starfinder Playtest Akashic Mystic as one of the PCs, and I don't see how anyone could run for that class and doubt RK's power.
The only time where Recall Knowledge feels bad is if your party members are asleep at the wheel and are basically not paying attention to useful new information. Which happens more than you'd like at most tables.
Or when an enemy has already used all its special skills and has no weaknesses or resistances.
More things need weaknesses to discover...
OR when the enemy does not have a useful weakness (or dangerous resistance), OR if you roll a nat 1 (which you can't know) and your information is now way more harmful than any other skill action, OR if the enemy has any rarity adjustment (even for generic things for it's creature type because RK is not well thought through), once again you won't know this until the bad info you got backfires, OR if you are fighting an enemy 2 or more levels ahead of you (bonus points if it overlaps with the previous point), or when the enemy you are fighting is not one you can use a skill you have against.
I am pretty sure I am forgetting some aspects.
That's the kind of video I want to see in my feed
The audio at some points is a bit "bubbly", assuming that's just how your microphone is set up and processing echoes?
@@ev3867 my mic setup has always been a bit uh.. problematic. Moving to my new place hasn’t helped.
If you have any recommendations on how to fix it, I’d really appreciate it!
In case you need my settings:
- I am currently using a Blue Yeti.
- I set its dials to cardioid + 0 gain
- On OBS I have (a) RNNoise suppression, (b) 4:1 Compressor, -12 dB Threshold, 6 ms Attack, 60 ms Release, 10 dB Output Gain, (c) Limiter set to -2 dB
Amazing analysis as ever. Didn't change my mind though. :) Gator (and alchemist) have been my favorite classes since day one I started playing: it's so satisfying to RK a creature and immediately capitalize on it with other abilities, as well as the team.
i really don't understand where people get the idea that thaum is the best RKer in the game when a level 20 investigator is the only class in the game who can achieve 50 RKs in a single turn
oh yeah especially since with keen recollection the investigator can just always use a creature's specific lore for the dc, which is only outperformed once they get to master proficiency in a skill at level 7
Great video as always.
Quick side note before I get to what I really want to talk about: The word 'étude' is pronounced 'A-tood', and is the French word for 'study'. In music terminology an étude is a work that is intended to help master musical skills.
On to my point: I have learned that with Free Archetype *any* class can be very good at Recall Knowledge, and in the process bypassing most of the objections to RK (if your debunking weren't enough).
I really like the concept of the classic 'monster hunter' that uses knowledge to defeat enemies, so when my group started Extinction Curse I played a Thaumaturge. Unfortunately the mechanics never really 'clicked' for me. So when HotW came out I retired her for a Kineticist.
In part because they relied on my thaum, the rest of the party hadn't invested much into RK, so I worked out how to make my kineticist - a class not particularly well suited to the role - do as much as possible *without diminishing my effectiveness as a kineticist*.
I took Pathfinder Agent, Scrollmaster, and most recently recently worked in Ranger.
Other than my Free Archetype feats I have only invested one skill increase, a few skill feats, and two ancestry feats - Adopted Ancestry (Human) and Multitalented. Neither is truly necessary, but getting Ranger Dedication from an Ancestry feat is nice.
* Pathfinder Agent Dedication's pseudo-Untrained Improvisation and Thorough Reports covered for the limited skill investment and low attributes until I got Bestiary Scholar and put attribute increases into Wis.
* Recognize Threat and Diverse Recognition let me RK without 'taxing' my action economy.
* Ranger got me Master in Perception so I can more frequently get the RK off before my impatient party charges in or casts high rank spells.... Later I will pick up Hunter's Luck and maybe Monster Hunter.
We found that Thorough Reports was slowing down the game, so we use a homebrewed variant - the GM rolls a flat check with the DC based on the creature's rarity to determine if I get the bonus. I forget the exact DCs, something like 10/14/18 for common through rare, and I never get the bonus on unique creatures.
Loved the "tempo-negative" take down. Really well done.
Happy new year!
Wooo new mathfinder!
Happy New Year!
Commenting before watching, but I have definitely seen this sentiment reflected in my actual play groups. In situations where a lack of knowledge is killing us, my party members often reflect the sentiment that RK is (as your chapter says) "tempo negative."
Why RK when I can just use that action to get into position and cast an 'effective' spell (One of the go-tos, fear, slow, etc.)
In situations like that, I found it quite incredibly to be playing a scoundrel rogue with the dandy dedication. Even though I don't have intelligence that high (I have invested a little bit), being able to have a dubious knowledge RK for any subject has been super useful for filling those knowledge gaps. Even if it might be hard to reliably succeed, Dubious knowledge just means I have to reliably fail to get SOMETHING.
Anyways, looking forward to watching. Will comment again if I have any thoughts
The tendency to underrate Recall Knowledge and the tendency to overrate "go-to" spells like Fear, Slow, etc often go hand-in-hand in my experience!
*Great* spell use requires having a variety of spells, targeting a variety of defences, addressing a variety of situations, and Recall Knowledge is a valuable part of that toolkit. If you don't have all the tools for that great variety, you'll always aim for "good enough" spells that are generically good.
Basically you need savvy players and good tactics to make Hypnotize feel *better* than Slow or to make damage mitigation feel *better* than Heal. If you don't have that, you'll always go for Slow or Heal.
I want to tell you from a graphic design perspective putting light text on a light background is not a good idea. Contrast makes things visible.
@@xeltanni8999 Could you timestamp a specific part for me? I thought I pretty much always used black text on a beige background.
Or are we talking about my red “errata” text?
@@Mathfinder-aaa Actually I'm talking about your thumbnail. You have yellow text on a white speech bubble.
@ Ahhhhhh you right!
Usually my partner makes my thumbnails and they come out way, way better. I made this one and uh… it shows.
I always find it funny that many people don't consider recall knowledge good because recall knowledge is so frequently used in my group
The bigger issue I've always had with Recall Knowledge is more often how it yields nothing of value.
If you demoralize an enemy, use Bon Mot or the like it's got some solid penalties slapped on it now. If you Recall Knowledge, odds are, you arn't going to learn anything that will help you win the fight. Most enemies don't have glaring weaknesses that can be exploited, and where they do, they're usually pretty obvious ie. A fire elemental is weak to cold. Or a golem has resistance to physical damage which became apparent the moment the fighter hit it with their sword
Solid vid, as usual. I love to point to your discussions on PF2 as good ways to explain and introduce folks. Forgive the non-sequitur but who's the little figurine with the scythe?
That is Goku Black, from Dragon Ball Super! Gonna keep it relatively spoiler free: he's an antagonist in DBS who shows up in Future Trunks's timeline (Trunks assumes he's a clone of Goku) and starts killing everyone on Earth. That's why I placed him and Trunks in the face-off!
Did a hydra write the GM section?
@@proffingers No, definitely not, whatever gave you that impression, no please keep that flaming torch away from me, no reason.
This is one of those things I feel was held back by the years of portions of the community actively insisting Recall Knowledge was vague and fighting actively against the rulings other players would provide by citing rules text and filtering it through logic and the structure of the base rules.
I mean, it did need to be more tightly worded but legit I spent years with a copy pasta explaining the way to read the text and why I ruled that, which fixed everything, and is near exact the remaster version and FOR YEARS I would run into people that would do anything to die on the hill of "NO RECALL KNOWLEDGE BAD! YOU USE CREATURE IDENTIFICATION FOR ALL RK ON CREATURES EVEN THOUGH IT DOESN'T FUNCTION AND THE LANGUAGE DOESN'T REALLY FOLLOW THAT LOGIC!"
This community honestly has a recurring problem with a goon squad running around deciding things and then fighting against people learning because they oddly want to be right that something's bad rather than be proven wrong and have the thing be good.
@@cheezeofages “you use creature identification on all RK”
Wait I don’t understand what this means. Were people arguing you have to spend a whole Action to say “yes, that is an omen dragon”, and then any actual factual questions you have have to be your *second* RK check at a higher DC?
@@Mathfinder-aaa Nah, RK naysayers for years would argue you used the rules and the degrees of success chart for creature identification for literally every RK check on creatures. as in "identify = learn the properties of" like in games where Scrolls of Identify tell you what magic items do.
Even though using that DoS chart for checks beyond figuring out what the creature is makes absolutely no sense and would be a logistical absurdity on a scale of madness that could only be described as Lovecraftian.
Hell yeah a new Mathfinder video 😎
I will watch this at work tonight to ease my suffering lol, thank you
I don't understand why some people hate on recall knowledge. My group uses it if we have a third action and don't know what to do with it, and we happen to have the appropriate skill. Or if the creature's doing something weird and we need to figure it out. I don't get the idea of hating on it.