Without looking it up, I'm fairly certain that Arcana, Nature, and maybe even Survival checks can all be employed to fill this "character knowledge" confirmation, and have always been used for this and more. ‍️

Ah, okay then. Hadn't seen it in that phrasing before. Pretty stupid as an idea though. The issue is not that someone wants to follow diagetic character motivations, or even that someone else wants to play with a focus on successful combat encounters regardless of diagetic knowledge. It's that they both ended up at the same table. The DM fucked up by not setting expectations regarding the kind of table they were running. It is our duty as organizers of play to prevent these kinds of people from playing different games at the same table.

slightly neurotic diviner who almost always knows what's optimal, and struggles between doing the obviously ideal thing or rejecting that and knowingly doing something suboptimal so they aren't just a puppet to the magic

"ooh, grape flavour"

That's how I did it when I DMed. On the off chance they need to make a check and I don't want to alert them I just use passive or roll for them.

Yeah, this is the way. We just fought a Troll in a Pathfinder session I was in. I'm playing an Athamaru (fish person) new to dry land, so I don't have a ton of knowledge about stuff like fire. But the Druid hitting it with a fire spell, and the GM describing the way the Troll reacts is enough to naturally gain that knowledge on the spot. There are all kinds of reasons a character might not know even common monster weaknesses. I think doing this kind of metagaming is important, because it gives opportunities for specific characters to stand out. If you have a party member with monster knowledge, it's cooler for them to yell a warning, than it is for everyone to just act like they already know

It's not just the GM's responsibility. All the players at the table should be having those discussions throughout play

You have other people to manage wildlife, often times, and are probably not likely to encounter said animals. If you are then you know to carry bear spray, for example. Now imagine you’re in a world where bandits on the road are threat you actually have to consider. Trolls might live down the road and your town sends out memos saying “if you see these signs, run, and if you absolutely must then fire is the only thing that will be effective.” It’s perfectly plausible, you just need to be the littlest bit creative/steal stuff like wildlife advisories from the real world. You don’t even need an NPC. My first character was a sorceror who didn’t know what he could cast but his will, muscle-memory, and being in certain situations brought it out of him. Any “puzzle fight” should have enough room for players/characters to realize there’s a problem and the discover the solution. You can’t _plan ahead_, maybe, but there’s no reason you can’t have one roleplay turn and then “get lucky” choosing a fire spell next to see what happens.

Tip for shy/annoying/cowardly/etc. characters is to make it a thing they overcome. My current character is just a lil’ guy who basically got possessed so he’s constantly scared shitless but he’s trying his best and I’m always on the lookout for opportunities to get him out of his shell or even just to feel like he has to say something whether he likes it or not.

Ok, I'll throw my hat in the ring. **Metagaming is fine, actually.** Obviously, don't read the module you're a player in, but knowing to use fire on trolls is just basic game knowledge. It's ok to be good at the game, because it is a game. If you're playing dungeons and dragons, or pathfinder, or any other rpg that spends most of the pages on combat rules, then you're playing a tactics game. I like tactics games (I'm not good at them, but that's a separate conversation). I cannot tell you how frustrating it is to come up with a brilliant plan to do a thing, and then be told that I'm not allowed to do it because me figuring out the puzzle is metaknowlede. It is exclusively in the tabletop rpg space that being good at the game is considered a bad thing. It's in a similar vein that I hate tutorials in video games, especially when I'm being prevented from doing things that I already know how to do (because I've been playing games for multiple decades now and I have some amount of media literacy) for no other reason than the game hasn't taught me yet. So arbitrarily, I'm not allowed to use fire damage on the trolls until some npc tells me that trolls are weak to fire? That's asinine. If you want to play let's pretend with dice, that's fine. just be honest about the kind of game that you're running from the get go so I know not to join your table.

> Eh, I know nothing about how to handle most dangerous animals, even ones that live in my area; I'd imagine that even in a world with trolls, regular people wouldn't know anything about them. Debatable. You definitely know a Tigers greatest weakness, and a bears greatest weakness even if you don't know how to use them. >!Bullets!<

> Is this meta- metagaming?

>If you want to play let’s pretend with dice, that’s fine. just be honest about the kind of game that you’re running from the get go so I know not to join your table. That is the game of DnD, Pathfinder, or really any other TTRPG. What it sounds like you want is war games. Go play that. Just because the only parts of the books you've bothered to read/remember are combat rules, does not make that the majority of the books. I feel like video games calling themselves RPGs have ruined entire swaths of people to what an RPG means. These are games about telling a story, not who can do the most damage. You sound like an awful person to have at the table. You aren't "being punished for being good at the game", I'd argue you actually aren't good at the game because you only care about or focus on one aspect of the game and ignore the rest of it. Stop looking at TTRPGs as video games, as a means to make big numbers go brrrrr, and (re-)read the core rulebook. You'll find a lot more of it than you are suggesting has nothing to do with combat when you aren't looking at it through a lens of "how to combat".

in the remaster trolls have the humanoid trait, so they use society. GM can rule to change that, though.

The person you're replying too explicitly said that not playing the game the way they do is fine, yet you're here telling them that they're playing it wrong and should play something else. That is psycho shit. Just don't play with each other.

Id say that we don't know those things now because we live in modern technological times where you don't have to know those things to survive. If this was the middle ages and you were an adventuring type who could hold their own out in the wilds, you would almost definitely know all of those things.

yeah in pf2 it's a level based DC, and if it's an uncommon, rare, or unique creature that will increase the DC also the skill to use for recall knowledge depends on the creature's trait: humanoid > society; animal > nature; dragon > arcana; abberation > occultism; etc though the GM can rule that you can use something else if they choose.

oh so DnD does have that, but nobody knows about it. sick

Wat? They absolutely are belittling people that play the game as it is written... You think "play let’s pretend with dice" is not meant in a derogatory way just because they said "that's fine" after? Even then followed up with basically "you won't catch me doing that". Their entire post is absolutely "yucking the yums" of everyone that doesn't play DnD as a combat only tactical board game.

> Metagaming is fine, actually. To some degree, this is why Knowledge Checks exist. If you're going to Troll Canyon and you make your Know(Local) check to have an idea about what a troll is and does and you get a high enough roll, you know. If you don't, maybe you forgot. Maybe trolls aren't common to your neck of the woods. Roleplay your reasons. That said, I believe DMs reserve the right to mix it up a bit. As an anecdote, I had a friend play in a game in which they were hunting a White Wyrm in the glaciers of the north. The experienced players, knowing that White Dragons breath frost, fully stocked up and pre-buffed with anti-cold gear. When they arrived, they positioned themselves on a large ice-flow and pushed off towards the mouth of the cave. But the cracking of the ice awoke the dragon. Dragon came flying out, spotted the players, and immediately engulfed them in a plume of fire. The ice flow melted, the party floundered in the freezing water, and two of them died to a happy dragon who'd just been offered an easy meal. The players were initially upset, but the DM tisk-tisked. "Everyone knows that dragons breath fire". > If you want to play let’s pretend with dice, that’s fine. just be honest about the kind of game that you’re running from the get go so I know not to join your table. If you're not playing "Let's Pretend" with dice, I'm not sure what kind of D&D game you're actually playing. A dumb-as-rocks barbarian should presumably see the troll as some big meat sack to be repeatedly bludgeoned into a fine paste. And that may possibly work, at least to the degree that the threat is neutralized for the purposes of the combat. A savvy Bard probably has a song or two about the proper remedy for persistent trolls - and a clever player might even dash off a cute little poem or song to help the rest of the party recall. The dice keep the game spicy, but you shouldn't be shy about leaning into the cinematics of the situation.