Knowledge

This skill encompasses several categories, each of them treated as a separate skill. These categories are identified and defined below.

The number of Knowledge categories is kept purposely finite. When trying to determine what Knowledge skill a particular question or field of expertise falls under, use a broad interpretation of the existing categories. Do not arbitrarily make up new categories.

**Check:** A character makes a Knowledge check to see if the character knows something.

The DC for answering a question within the character’s field of study is 10 for easy questions, 15 for basic questions, and 20 to 30 for tough questions.

Appraising the value of an object is one sort of task that can be performed using Knowledge. The DC depends on how common or obscure the object is. On a success, the character accurately identifies the object’s purchase DC. If the character fails, he or she thinks it has a purchase DC 1d2 higher or lower (determine randomly) than its actual value. If the character fails by 5 or more, he or she thinks it has a purchase DC 1d4+2 higher or lower than its actual value. The GM may make the Knowledge roll for the character, so he or she doesn’t know whether the appraisal is accurate or not.

The fourteen Knowledge categories, and the topics each one encompasses, are as follows.

***Art:*** Fine arts and graphic arts, including art history and artistic techniques. Antiques, modern art, photography, and performance art forms such as music and dance, among others.

***Behavioral Sciences:*** Psychology, sociology, and criminology.

***Business:*** Business procedures, investment strategies, and corporate structures. Bureaucratic procedures and how to navigate them.

***Civics:*** Law, legislation, litigation, and legal rights and obligations. Political and governmental institutions and processes.

***Current Events:*** Recent happenings in the news, sports, politics, entertainment, and foreign affairs.

***Earth and Life Sciences:*** Biology, botany, genetics, geology, and paleontology. Medicine and forensics.

***History:*** Events, personalities, and cultures of the past. Archaeology and antiquities.

***Physical Sciences:*** Astronomy, chemistry, mathematics, physics, and engineering.

***Popular Culture:*** Popular music and personalities, genre films and books, urban legends, comics, science fiction, and gaming, among others.

***Occult:*** The arcane, magic and the supernatural, astrology, numerology, and similar topics.

***Streetwise:*** Street and urban culture, local underworld personalities and events.

***Tactics:*** Techniques and strategies for disposing and maneuvering forces in combat.

***Technology:*** Current developments in cutting-edge devices, as well as the background necessary to identify various technological devices.

***Theology and Philosophy:*** Liberal arts, ethics, philosophical concepts, and the study of religious faith, practice, and experience.

**Try Again?:** No. The check represents what a character knows, and thinking about a topic a second time doesn’t let the character know something he or she never knew in the first place. Only after sufficient research on a topic may a player make a knowledge check pertaining to it again.

**Special:** An untrained Knowledge check is simply an Intelligence check. Without actual training, a character only knows common knowledge about a given subject.

A character can take 10 when making a Knowledge check, but can’t take 20.

The GM may decide that having 5 or more ranks in a specific Knowledge skill provides a character with a +2 synergy bonus when making a related skill check.

**Training** You cannot make an untrained Knowledge check with a DC higher than 10.

**Equipment (Library)** If you have access to an extensive library that covers a specific skill, this limit is removed. The time to make checks using a library, however, increases to 1d4 hours. Particularly complete libraries might even grant a bonus on Knowledge checks in the fields that they cover.

**Time:** A Knowledge check can be a reaction, but otherwise requires a full-round action.

**Monster Lore**

You can use this skill to identify monsters and their special powers or vulnerabilities.

**Check**: In general, the DC of such a check equals 10 + the monster’s CR. For common monsters, such as goblins, the DC of this check equals 5 + the monster’s CR. For particularly rare monsters, such as the tarrasque, the DC of this check equals 15 + the monster’s CR or more. A successful check allows you to remember a bit of useful information about that monster. For every 5 points by which your check result exceeds the DC, you recall another piece of useful information. Some creatures can fall into more than one knowledge category.

 Mythological creatures from Legends such as minotaurs, trolls, dragons, and the like
 Strange creatures with ties to old beliefs and occult practices or from other dimensions
 A Gang member
 Member of a military or organized criminal organization
 Humanoid or serial killer
 Creatures that hail from popular fiction, television or movies
 Robots or killer machines
 Extraterrestrial creature

**Recall Intrigues (Knowledge)**

You can identify feats and the class features of various classes with successful Knowledge checks when you observe the feats or class features being used.

**Check**: You can attempt a skill check to identify a feat or class feature when you observe it in use. The feat or class feature must have some observable effect in order for you to attempt the Knowledge check. For example, you can’t see the internal determination of Iron Will, so this ability can’t identify that feat. In general, if a feat or class feature creates a noticeable effect (such as the extra attack from using Cleave) or has a variable modifier a character must choose to use (such as Combat Expertise, Or Heavy Weapons Specialist), it can be identified. If it creates a static bonus (such as Dodge or Lightning Reflexes), there’s no telltale sign to give it away unless you spend multiple hours observing them utilizing the ability.

 Identify a combat feat being used
 Identify teamwork feat being used

The Knowledge skill required to identify a feat or class feature varies depending on the type of feat or class feature to be identified and is outlined in the Recall Intrigues (Knowledge) table above, along with the DCs of such skill checks.

**Mental Treatment**

If a character possesses ranks in heal as well as in Knowledge Behavioral sciences, they can attempt to provide psychiatric or mental health treatment to creatures suffering from sanity based effects.

 Long Term Psychiatric Care

##### **Immediate Psychiatric Care**

When someone suffers an episode of temporary insanity, a therapist can bring him out of it—calming his terror, snapping him out of his stupor, or doing whatever else is needed to restore the patient to the state she was in before the temporary insanity—by making a DC 15 Heal check as a full-round action.

A therapist can also use immediate care to stabilize the Sanity score of a character whose current Sanity is between -1 and -9. On a successful DC 15 check (requiring a full-round action), the character’s Sanity score improves to 0.

##### **Long-Term Psychiatric Care**

Providing long-term care means treating a mentally disturbed person for a day or more in a place away from stress and distractions. A therapist must spend 1 hour per day doing nothing but talking to the patient. If the therapist makes a DC 20 Heal check at the end of this time, the patient recovers 1 Sanity point. A therapist can tend up to a number of patients equal to his number of ranks in the heal and ranks in knowledge behavioral science added together and then divided by 2; each patient beyond the first adds 1 hour to the total time per day that must be devoted to therapy. The check must be made each day for each patient. A roll of 1 on any of these Heal checks indicates that the patient loses 1 point of Sanity that day, as she regresses mentally due to horrors suddenly remembered. The heal DC is increased by +5 on a day in which the patient has already lost sanity.

**Knowledge Unchained**

A creature that possesses the Signature Skill feat for this knowledge skill gains additional abilities at 5, 10, 15, and 20 ranks in a skill.

With sufficient ranks in Knowledge, you earn the following.

**5 Ranks**: When you successfully identify a creature, you gain one additional piece of information for every 5 ranks you possess in that Knowledge skill.

**10 Ranks**: When you successfully identify a creature, you gain a +1 competence bonus on attack rolls, opposed ability checks, skill checks, and caster level checks against creatures of that kind (e.g., glabrezu demons, but not other demons or evil outsiders) for 1 minute. This bonus increases by 1 for every 5 ranks beyond 10 you possess in that Knowledge skill.

**15 Ranks**: When you fail a Knowledge check, you can reroll the check at a –10 penalty. The competence bonus above also applies to saving throws against abilities used by creatures you identify.

**20 Ranks**: Whenever you attempt a Knowledge check, you can roll twice and take the better result.