Rules Codex: Skills

New skills introduced in Sun & Scale products are collected below.

Creature Knowledge (Int; Trained Only)

As other Knowledge skills, Knowledge (creature) represents study of the body of lore surrounding creatures of various types. You must specify the creature type when you take this skill, and you may take this skill multiple times, once for each creature type.

Creature types include Aberrration, Animal, Beast, Construct, Dragon, Elemental, Fey, Giant, Humanoid*, Magical Beast, Monstrous Humanoid, Ooze, Outsider*, Plant, Shapechanger, Undead, and Vermin.

*Note: You must select a more narrowly defined category for the Humanoid or Outsider creature types, much as a ranger does when selecting a favored enemy.

Check: You can recognize creatures or their behaviors, tracks, physical residue (fur, feces, skin, etc.), and the results of their attacks or actions on other creatures or the environment. You know the special qualities and attacks, their strength and weaknesses, and strategies to combat them. A successful check determines the amount of information you know, but you can only know detailed information for creatures with a Challenge Rating equal to or less than your skill modifier for Knowledge (creature) for that creature type.

	Skill Checks
	DC Task 10 Determine broad, general properties of a creature of the indicated type. 15 Recognize a specific species of the indicated creature type. 15 Recognize typical climate or terrain, organization, and alignment of a creature. 15 Determine what creature may have caused particular effects or identify what creature certain physical residue may have originated from. 15 Recognize what type of creature made a given set of tracks (but the Track feat is still required to follow these tracks). 18 Recognize combat preferences, general weaknesses, and special attacks and qualities of a creature. 18 Recognize general social behavior and customs of a creature. 20 Recognize above properties of a creature with a reasonable level of precision. 25 Recognize subtle details of a creature's properties, behavior, combat abilities and weaknesses.

Retry: No. You either know the answer to the question you're asking or you do not.

Special: You may make an untrained Knowledge (creature) skill check, but you cannot learn more than common knowledge about that creature.

A character with more than 5 ranks of Knowledge (creature) gains a +2 synergy bonus on all Animal Empathy, Diplomacy (if intelligent), Handle Animal, Heal, Sense Motive, and Wilderness Lore skill checks pertaining to that creature type.

A ranger gains a +2 synergy bonus to any Knowledge (creature) check pertaining to a favored enemy.

Knowledge (creature) is a class skill for rangers, druids, and barbarians. It is a cross-class skill for all other classes. Knowledge (creature) for Magical Beasts and Constructs is considered a class skill for wizards and sorcerers.

Creature Knowledge Skill, Copyright © 2001 Gaslight Press.

First appeared in The Gryphon's Legacy, 2001.
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