[3.5] Which skills are best for Knowledge Devotion?

[Extra Anchovies]

I'm currently working on a melee character build, one of the key elements of which is using Knowledge Devotion at pretty much every opportunity possible. One of my first level feats will be Education (appears in the Eberron Campaign Setting, the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting, the Player's Guide to Faerun, and Ghostwalk) to get all the Knowledge skills as class skills, which is very helpful, but I'm still not sure which Knowledge skills are most important to put ranks into. Nature (applies to Animals, Fey, Giants, Monstrous Humanoids, Plants, and Vermin) and Arcana (Constructs, Dragons, Magical Beasts) are both givens; Nature covers a huge range of creature types, at least three times as all other creature-linked Knowledge skills other than Arcana, and Arcana includes Magical Beasts, which are a very common catchall type. However, after that I'm unable to decide between the remaining four creature-relevant Knowledge skills: Dungeoneering, Local, Religion, and The Planes. Local applies to humanoids, Religion to undead, Dungeoneering to aberrations/oozes, and The Planes to outsiders/elementals. All four of those are appealing, but I only have room for four or maybe five Knowledge skills in the build.

TL;DR If I want to get as much mileage out of Knowledge Devotion as possible, which four or five of the creature-linked Knowledge skills should I put ranks into?

And a secondary, related question: if a creature has monster hit dice and class levels, is the DC to identify the monster 10+monster HD+class levels, or is it just 10+monster HD, ignoring class levels entirely?

[holywhippet]

It can really depend on the campaign the character will be in. Going to be working for/against the social elite? Knowledge: Nobility might be essential. Facing an undead horde? Knowledge: Religion could help. Going to be travelling between worlds? Knowledge: The planes could be your best friend.

[Thurbane]

• Arcana: 3 creature types
• Dungeoneering: 2 creature types
• Local: 1 creature types
• Nature: 6 creature types
• Religion: 1 creature types
• The Planes: 2 creature types

Nature and Arcana and the best, but don't discount Local - you fight a LOT of humanoids over your adventuring career.

If I was to pick 4, it would be Arcana, Local, Nature and The Planes. Dungeoneering would be my 5th, most likely.

[Extra Anchovies]

• Arcana: 3 creature types
• Dungeoneering: 2 creature types
• Local: 1 creature types
• Nature: 6 creature types
• Religion: 1 creature types
• The Planes: 2 creature types

Nature and Arcana and the best, but don't discount Local - you fight a LOT of humanoids over your adventuring career.

If I was to pick 4, it would be Arcana, Local, Nature and The Planes. Dungeoneering would be my 5th, most likely.

Thanks for the suggestions. I wasn't leaning too much towards putting ranks in Religion anyways; there are better ways to deal with undead than through direct damage. Might still toss one rank into that one for +1 attack/damage (or +2 if I roll 15 or better) against all undead. Dungeoneering was one of the ones I was pretty intent on including, but now that I put some more thought into it, maybe that one isn't worth more than the one rank either; lots of aberrations are relatively poor at direct combat for their CR but have a host of other abilities that attack/damage bonuses won't help against.

I'll definitely be taking Nature, Arcana, and Local at max ranks; depending on the sort of campaign, the fourth skill will be The Planes or Dungeoneering. Whichever of the two I don't go with will get 1 rank, as will Religion. Thanks for helping me figure this out!

[Thurbane]

Do you have a build in mind for this? There is a lot of tips and tricks to pump Knowledge checks to get the best out of KNowledge Devotion.

[Extra Anchovies]

Do you have a build in mind for this? There is a lot of tips and tricks to pump Knowledge checks to get the best out of KNowledge Devotion.

It's a TWF build, using either a greatsword+unarmed strike or a glaive+unarmed strike, depending on the conditions. Starts as Ranger/Monk, and after one level of Lion Totem Barbarian (gotta have my Pounce), it spends the last eleven levels in Tome of Battle territory. Here's a link to a spreadsheet with the work-in-progress class, level, and feat progression, and here's a link to what I've brainstormed so far in terms of maneuvers and stances.

ETA: Knowledge Devotion is in the build partially because I love the feat, and also to offset the TWF attack penalties while boosting damage. Even a mere +2 damage adds up when I'm making five attacks at 12th level.

ETA2: If any of you are curious about the specifics of the build, I just finished the draft and have started a critique-seeking thread here.

[Chronos]

Is this a character that's starting at low level and working up, or a character who's starting at high level? If the former, keep an eye on what you're encountering and what the DM is hinting you might encounter, and each time you level up put points in the appropriate Knowledge. If you're starting at high level, then it's probably implicitly assumed that you've been doing this all along, and you should ask the DM for advice on what creature types you'll encounter most.

Either way, I like to put a single point each into all the trained-only skills I have access to, just to have the opportunity to make the roll. Who knows, you might get a natural 20.

Oh, and I assume that if you're using Knowledge Devotion, you already know about the Collector of Stories skill trick. Your DM might or might not allow it to apply, but the RAW is pretty solidly in favor (even Curmudgeon says that you get the bonus).

[Extra Anchovies]

Is this a character that's starting at low level and working up, or a character who's starting at high level? If the former, keep an eye on what you're encountering and what the DM is hinting you might encounter, and each time you level up put points in the appropriate Knowledge. If you're starting at high level, then it's probably implicitly assumed that you've been doing this all along, and you should ask the DM for advice on what creature types you'll encounter most.

Either way, I like to put a single point each into all the trained-only skills I have access to, just to have the opportunity to make the roll. Who knows, you might get a natural 20.

Oh, and I assume that if you're using Knowledge Devotion, you already know about the Collector of Stories skill trick. Your DM might or might not allow it to apply, but the RAW is pretty solidly in favor (even Curmudgeon says that you get the bonus).

Helpful advice all around. I was indeed already aware of and very intent on taking Collector of Stories; however, I didn't know that the RAW supported it applying to Knowledge Devotion. If whatever DM I end up playing this character with allows it, that'd be great! Thank you for pointing it out

[aleucard]

It really depends on the campaign, but assuming a standard one, there are some clear winners.

Local may very well be both the most common and the most important one of the entire bunch. These mostly include PC races, after all, and more often than not if your DM wants to make an enemy adventuring party, this is where they'll be pulling their races from. It also does very well for a party face, though some DM's might require you to specify which kind of local is involved in this case. Most effective when you're going to be sticking around a specific location and pick said location as your Local.

Nature can very easily be more common than Local to fight, although the average power drops a bit. Some very odd things here, though, so do NOT neglect it. It's also good for dealing with various types of encounter without even needing to draw weapons, though Survival can stand in for a lot of this functionality easily (to be honest, why in the Hell did they not combine these two together?).

Arcana is the last that has potential to be the most common category to fight in a generic campaign, and is likely to be in the same ballpark as Local for power too. This also does double-duty in serving as one of the most important Knowledges for not getting fatally surprised by things that the skill can tell you about. If you're worried about potentially activating previously-inert magical doomsday devices or something, this one is how you know you're in the red zone.

The Planes is also pretty common (albeit not as much as previous ones, at least until later levels), and tends to be on the higher end of the power scale to boot. A LOT of DMs who have their campaigns run into the high-teens like having the campaign wander to other planes (most commonly the Evil Afterlife planes, but all of them have their moments), and being able to tell the difference between a short, pudgy demon that you can safely punt over the skyline for laughs and a short, pudgy demon who can pull your insides out by thinking about it is a very nice thing.

Religion is common in only a limited number of campaigns, though almost all campaigns will touch on it several times throughout, usually with the occasional catacombs/graveyard romp. The general idea behind the two varieties of undead remain the same for the most part throughout, and outside of things like Liches they aren't all that strong once you deal with the absolutely silly amount of Energy Drain floating around here. If you're going to Ravenloft or similar, though, this is equal to Local, and in fact may very well be able to be used for a lot of the same checks in those settings.

Dungeoneering's monsters are the least common of the whole bunch, especially when not underground. The majority of these monsters are of the puzzle variety, too, which lowers the effectiveness of Knowledge Devotion's main ability. It's got some of the largest amount of utility of this entire list for the Dungeon Crawler type of campaign, though, so if you find yourself in Undermountain or something you might as well, though the KD bonuses are just icing on the cake in this case rather than the cake itself.