15.8 Knowledge

15.8.1 Monster Identification

Although monsters have specific information listed in their descriptions, those generic descriptions might not answer specific questions that are relevant to the players. This is especially true if you are making custom modifications to existing monsters or inventing your own monsters from scratch. You will have to use your judgment to determine how obvious or well-known specific features are. In general, characters in the universe often have a rough understanding of how dangerous monsters are, though they wouldn’t use words like “level”.

One thing to consider is that it’s often good to tell players if their attacks will be useless or very unlikely to succeed ahead of time. It can be frustrating for a player to try a particular attack once or twice before they realize that they were wasting their time all along. Monsters may also have specific weaknesses that players can try to take advantage of. Weak monsters might not have any damage reduction, which can encourage players to use abilities that are more effective when they inflict hit point loss. Spellcasters with a wide variety of spells are often particularly interested in learning which of a monster’s defenses are lowest, so they can choose the perfect attack.

Be careful not to get bogged down giving too much specific information to the players before a fight starts. Giving players too much information at once can be more confusing than helpful, and ruin any sense of dramatic urgency. This is especially true for numeric statistics like a monster’s accuracy or defenses. Comparative information, like highest or lowest defenses, is generally better than than absolute information, like exact defenses or hit points.