Recall Knowledge Revisited

What is the problem?

It's been a couple of years now since Pathfinder 2 was released, and we've had some time to try out the new rules. In fact, we're approaching the release of the remastered version. I like PF2 a lot, but Recall Knowledge is one part that I'm disappointed in. It has some issues:

It's too hard.

The DC for checks to Recall Knowledge are based on the level of the thing you're asking about. So if you're level 1, and asking about a level 1 creature, that's a DC 15. But if you're asking about a level 3 creature, that's already a DC 18, which is hard for a level 1 character.

To make this worse, what is the creature you most likely need information about? Yep, the high level boss. Oh, the boss has some minions. But they're probably simpler creatures, and odds are, you've already encountered them before.

So we already know you're usually going uphill in DC, but then we have rarity to consider. An uncommon enemy is +2 DC, a rare one +5 and a unique one +10. Of course, these are also again the creatures where some extra information would be the most useful. A powerful boss is more likely to be uncommon or unique than their minions.

Finally, the DC goes up each time you try again. And when do you need more than one bit of information? Well, probably not when facing off against the low-level mook. So we have a pattern here that when it's hard, it's really really hard.

You get locked out when you fail

The rules say that once you fail a Recall Knowledge check, you can't try again. Ever.

Why is this so bad?

Being super secretive and keeping the players totally in the dark is actually not such a cool style of gameplay. If players can't get any information about the monster's interesting weaknesses and resistances, all they can do is just try to hit it really hard. Just like they did with the last monster. Ignorance makes bland. Instead of the party carrying out some unusual and cool plan specifically for this enemy, they're just going to rage, flank, trip, demoralize and all that stuff that they know almost always works.

The high DCs and iffy chance of payoff also means there's not a lot of incentive for anyone but specialists to use Recall Knowledge. This really disappointed me because when I just got to know PF2, I really liked the idea of Recall Knowledge as a "third action". Since each attack in a round has more penalties, it makes sense to spend your third action on something else that's more useful. And you could have fighters and rangers doing some Recall Knowledge too instead of it being reserved for the specialists. But the high DC and getting locked out quickly, means this option isn't really all that appealing after all.

A Solution

• When face to face with a creature, ignore the DC modifiers for it being uncommon, rare or unique. Recall Knowledge isn't only book learning, it's also analyzing what you see. Now that you have the monster in front of you and you can see it's mandibles, faceted eyes, stinger, pincers dripping with sour-smelling something -- you can draw some conclusions about it based on what you know about other creatures with those features.

• Each time you get new information about the creature, you "reset"; if you were blocked from trying after a failure, now you're unblocked. And if the DC had gone up after previous successes, it's back to the original DC now. For example, if you were dealing with a mysterious killer, and you're examining the crime scene, you can find some clues and make some Recall Knowledge checks to guess at what kind of creature the attacker could be. But eventually you'll fail and don't know anything else. But then if there's another killing and you examine that scene, you can start making new checks. Of if you're preparing to fight a powerful dragon and you just don't know anything about it, you could hit the library and reset.

• When fighting a creature, each time it gets a turn, that counts as new information. Because you can continue observing it and retry your analysis.