I've been mulling over how to diversify the Knowledge skill for my upcoming fantasy game.

So far, I was thinking (get it?):

Nature : geography, plants, animals, fey, elementals

Community : cities, towns, living nobility, customs, laws, humanoids

Mystic : magic (generally), identify a spell or magical effect, magical beasts, dragons, constructs, other inherently magical creatures

Lore : history, religion (Community would know prevalence of religions, but not specifics about them), deities, wars, deceased nobility, planes

I was thinking that I want one more that covers illicit knowledge: criminal activity and organizations, undead, aberrations, and cults, but I can't think of a name that feels right. Illicit? Forbidden? Dark?

I was also considering assigning each knowledge to particular spells for the "Gain x benefit for x ranks in 'Knowledge'".

Mystic: Attack, Barrier, Curse, Dispel

Nature: Augment, Conjure, Heal

If I add more spells...

Lore: Illusion

Dark?: Necromancy, Enchantment

Further consideration is being given to locking Additional Effects on spells behind ranks in the associated Knowledge skill: you can learn 1 Additional Effect for each spell you know (tied to ranks in the appropriate Magic skill) that's tied to that skill. For example, if I have 2 ranks in Magic (Arcana), and 2 ranks in Knowledge (Mystic), I could learn Attack and Curse, and could learn Burn and Deadly for Attack, and Enervate and Doom for Curse.

My concern is that I don't want to make one Knowledge skill much better than the rest (such as by having Mystic cover all spells), but even this distribution feels like it puts too much weight on a couple of Knowledge skills, and most careers will begin with only a single Knowledge skill, which may make Well Read much better than a tier 2 talent (I'm already changing it from 3 to 2 Knowledge skills), although I don't want to gate this too hard.

Thoughts?

from the top of my head ...

Knowledge

• Cities
• Demons
• Monsters
• Lore
• Magic
• Sacred Scriptures
• Underworld

Science/Scholarship/Academics

• Humanities -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humanities
• Astronomy
• Geography
• Heraldry
• History
• Politics

If you plan on having a typical fantasy world setting I wouldn’t split up the nobility based on if they are living or dead. Also I would make religious knowledge it’s own thing, as far as an underworld style knowledge how does the underworld in your world work? In other words is it similar to modern day underworlds or is it composed of regional thieves guilds and banditry?

I really like the ones FFG came up with for their GenCon module.

Adventuring: anything to do with Survival, exploration, rights of pillaging, what’s legal and what’s not

Forbidden: the dark arts, all the evil knowledge and where to find it, also who to ask for more knowledge

Lore: History, religion and Magics

Geography: the world, where things are and how to get there

1 hour ago, Lotr_Nerd said:

If you plan on having a typical fantasy world setting I wouldn’t split up the nobility based on if they are living or dead. Also I would make religious knowledge it’s own thing, as far as an underworld style knowledge how does the underworld in your world work? In other words is it similar to modern day underworlds or is it composed of regional thieves guilds and banditry?

Fair point on the nobility.

I was considering making religious its own thing, but then wasn't sure what it should cover beyond religions and deities. In D&D, it covers undead, but I kind of want a separate skill for that.

In my world it would be mostly regional thieves' guilds or roving bandits.

9 minutes ago, Richardbuxton said:

I really like the ones FFG came up with for their GenCon module.

Adventuring: anything to do with Survival, exploration, rights of pillaging, what’s legal and what’s not

Forbidden: the dark arts, all the evil knowledge and where to find it, also who to ask for more knowledge

Lore: History, religion and Magics

Geography: the world, where things are and how to get there

Maybe it's worth keeping the list of Knowledges fairly limited. EotE could branch out more, because you're getting more skills thanks to Specializations, and then there was "multiclassing," and nothing depended upon the Knowledge skills. D&D can have a lot of granularity here, because, again, skill points are fairly abundant.

Still, I'm fairly attached to D&D's breakdown where certain Knowledge skills pertain to certain types of monsters. I think I've got all that fairly well covered if I add one more skill like the Forbidden you have listed.

What do you all think about my ideas (separately or jointly) to tie different Knowledge skills to the different spells, and the idea of using ranks in the associated Knowledge skills to grant access to Additional Effects for spells?

1 minute ago, yeti1069 said:

What do you all think about my ideas (separately or jointly) to tie different Knowledge skills to the different spells, and the idea of using ranks in the associated Knowledge skills to grant access to Additional Effects for spells?

As far as tying spells to different knowledge skills that’s great, it really fits the flavour better than every priest, Mage, Druid and bard knowing all there is to know about every Spell

The additional effects part is really a setting and personal preference thing. I do like that in the core a spell can do everything from the start but a caster just has no way of doing it all at the same time. I like the flexibility it brings to magic users, they will know that they can reasonably expect a Hard Difficulty Spell to work but what that Spell looks like changes from casting to casting.

If your going to set limits I would do it on a whole spell level and not by the additional effects. Everyone gets cantrip but then only one other Spell per Rank in the Skill.

FFG also gave their NPC Necromancer a Talent called Dark Insights which lets them use Knowledge (Forbidden) to determine spell effects, so it’s not for casting but it changes the skill from Lore. You could do something like that, have most be tied to Mystic or Lorebut have talents that let you use Nature or Forbidden instead.

12 minutes ago, Richardbuxton said:

FFG also gave their NPC Necromancer a Talent called Dark Insights which lets them use Knowledge (Forbidden) to determine spell effects, so it’s not for casting but it changes the skill from Lore. You could do something like that, have most be tied to Mystic or Lorebut have talents that let you use Nature or Forbidden instead.

I like this. Not sure what tier such a talent would be, though.

6 minutes ago, yeti1069 said:

I like this. Not sure what tier such a talent would be, though.

Tier 3 is for talents that “change how you play the game “. I would go there.

Probably 3. I feel like a Necromancer needs to know a bit about normal magic before they take the plunge into bad stuff

I'm erring on the side of simplicity for my swords and sorcery setting: I have two knowledge skills, Knowledge and Forbidden Lore. Knowledge is.... knowledge, about normal stuff in the world. Forbidden Lore is a career-only skill, and is all the stuff man was not meant to know. I use Forbidden Lore in place of Knowledge whenever Knowledge is required for spells, and for knowing about all the ancient evil and weird stuff in the world.

I suggest as an alternative to specific knowledge fields for a fantasy setting (adventuring, lore, geography, etc), that you divide it up by region, and allow those with knowledge of a given region to have a chance to know something about whatever goes on in that region. To use Middle-Earth as an example, you could have:

Knowledge: Gondor

Knowledge: Rohan

Knowledge: Shirelands

Knowledge: Elf Lands (Lorien, Mirkwood, Rivendell and its environs, etc)

Knowledge: Dwarfholds and the Deeps (Erebor, Moria, Iron Hills, etc)

I'd probably restrict Knowledge: Mordor in this case.

I suppose a Knowledge: Dungeoneering skill might also make sense, if there is enough specific knowledge about dungeons and such that would warrant it.

5 hours ago, Lotr_Nerd said:

If you plan on having a typical fantasy world setting I wouldn’t split up the nobility based on if they are living or dead. Also I would make religious knowledge it’s own thing, as far as an underworld style knowledge how does the underworld in your world work? In other words is it similar to modern day underworlds or is it composed of regional thieves guilds and banditry?

yes, Knowledge/Underworld would be Regional

41 minutes ago, Direach said:

I'm erring on the side of simplicity for my swords and sorcery setting: I have two knowledge skills, Knowledge and Forbidden Lore. Knowledge is.... knowledge, about normal stuff in the world. Forbidden Lore is a career-only skill, and is all the stuff man was not meant to know. I use Forbidden Lore in place of Knowledge whenever Knowledge is required for spells, and for knowing about all the ancient evil and weird stuff in the world.

i usually make a distinction between:

• something you can acquire on you own (Knowledge),
• something you must learn actively from others (ie. Writing),
• something you can learn passively from others (ie. Academics/Scholarship/Science),
• and something you must learn by trial and error (ie. Magic?)

For my Eberron conversion I came to a similar conclusion as you but just called them differently.

Lore - History/Monsters/Religions

Society - Personalities/Factions/Current Events

Worldwise - Places/Lifestyles/Traveling

Spellcraft - Planes/Effects/Traditions (This would also be the knowledge skill counted for spells)

I was imagining underworldy type stuff to fall under society since it’s an aspect of how society functions and identifying the who’s who of the underworld fits right in. I can see some merit to liking different magic bonuses to different knowledges depending on the settling (particularly since iirc the only spellcasting career to have Knowledge by default is Wizard) but that might add more skills than can really be justified.

I'm actually thinking most additional effects will use Mystic, but some select ones will use another skill as appropriate. For instance, Primal Fury will use Knowledge (Nature), while Divine Health will use Knowledge (Community) since it's likely affecting humanoids (I might have a player use a different knowledge skill if they are using this to target a non-humanoid).

I usually try to keep my list to 5 or 6 like the SW Core Books. I also kind of use them as a guide. Any more than that and the skill list seems to get a bit unwieldy and characters points are being spread too thin. Plus if you are using magic, you already have 3 more skills they have to deal with.

If I was doing a Fantasy Setting I would do something like this:

• Core Worlds = Known World
• Outer Rim = Wilderlands
• Lore = Lore
• Underworld = Same? Expand into all Guilds?
• Education = Could be same, could be swapped to Heraldry.
• Xenology = This is the odd one. I use this one as whatever extra bit I need. This one I let the campaign flavor decide for me. Planar? Demonology? Another Region? Monsters? Psionics? Or better yet... just dump it if you don't need it.

11 hours ago, BrashFink said:

If I was doing a Fantasy Setting I would do something like this:

for (general) medieval education i usually use the following (example) three tiered skills:

• Knowledge: Lore (includes Reading/Writing and Basic Numbers)
• Scholarship (Basic Math pre-algebra, Literary Language like Latin or Greek)
• Academics (Humanities)

you may want to add specific Sciences, Church Education usually means:

• Academics: Theology
• Knowledge: Religion
• Knowledge: Cults/Heresies

(eg. Sacred Scriptures)

I think the goal with Genesys was really to pare down the knowledge skills. I would go with

Knowledge (education things, like heraldry and math)

Lore (non-forbidden knowledge of magic, fae, religion and such)

Forbidden Lore (undead, demons and such)

And that is it... knowledge of other areas would just be "Knowledge" with setbacks if the character is not from that area. Knowledge of the underworld is baked in to streetwise. Knowledge of the hinterlands is baked into survival.

For my personal game, we added and shifted some things. Main point being not to overwhelm with multiple knowledge skills. My group could break down and have like 10 Knowledge skills, but that's not what the game is about. So we scaled it back to cover the bases without too many specifics.

Knowledge is more like Education from Star Wars.

Culture is tied to the differing cultures and customs of the nations and people.

Lore is more myths/legends and also tied to Magic Skills (instead of Knowledge).

Without reading what's posted above:

• Nobility: Knowledge of high society etiquette, heraldry, who's who.
• Underworld: Opposite of nobility, but is this already covered by a Streetwise skill (book at home)?
• Religion: Knowing the various deities and their dogma.
• Nature: Plant identification, animal identification, rural geography.
• Urban: Knowing where stuff is in a city, who's who, politics.
• History

After looking at this quick list, I suppose for simplicity Nobility and Urban could be combined into one skill?

I think all of these could be regional. If you are outside your homeland, setback could be applied.

Coming from DnD I wanted to create a number of knowledge skills but came to agree with others that having a 3-4 knowledge skills is probably enough. I suggest sticking with FFGs that Richard posted.