Deception, stealth, and sleight of hand each have a penalty for failing. The others do not. You're constantly observing things, instead of rolling each round, they just get averaged... There could be an argument for stealth I suppose...
Persuasion, Intimidation, Animal Handling, Athletics, Acrobatics, Medicine, Performance and Survival can all easily have penalties for failing. The rest of the skills could too with some creativity.
I talked about this a bit in another thread on the same topic, but one deal breaker on the idea of applying the "always on" concept for all passive skills is that passive scores represent the average of a skill done over and over constantly without deliberate effort. This works fine for something like perception or investigation where it doesn't matter if you fail to find the hidden door ten times as long as you notice it on the eleventh time. It definitely does not work on something like deception, stealth, or sleight of hand where you can succeed ten times, but if you fail even once, you're going to get busted.
The "you're averaging 100 checks where there's no penalty for failure" logic doesn't apply to Insight at all. You're not spending as much time as you want trying to figure out if someone's lying - you either notice the eyebrow twitch (or whatever) or you don't. Conversely, it does apply to something like Athletics, where you're constantly swimming/running/climbing/whatever.
And maybe there's not a failure penalty for Investigation/Perception when you're looking for a door, but there is when you're looking for a trap.
Excellent examples. For some skills it works and for others it does not. That is what I mean when I say it’s a deal breaker (for me at least) to apply the “always on” logic to all skills.
Also, I feel like if you’re looking for a door or trap, that’s an active search. You would make your roll and either use your roll or your passive perception score—whichever was higher. Walking into a room and seeing the door or trap instantly or maybe after a few seconds of doing something else is passive and more in line with the situation I am describing.
Now that I think about it, I think it would, in fact, apply to insight. You are standing there listening to someone talk and weighing everything they say, their body language, etc dozens or hundreds of times and they may sound legit right up until they don’t.
Now that I think about it, I think it would, in fact, apply to insight. You are standing there listening to someone talk and weighing everything they say, their body language, etc dozens or hundreds of times and they may sound legit right up until they don’t.
It depends on what the DM allows and the circumstances. If you enter a room and want to passively look for traps maybe the passive only applie to 1 trap or hidden object per room. Anything else needs to be sought out actively. Maybe the check is time based, allowing only a limited number of checks over a few turns. Maybe the DC for a check can only be checked against by one individual to prevent bandwagon checking. Maybe everyone is allowed to go their own way in a room to trap check and possibly take a poison dart to the face. Maybe the character have a map that tells them there is a magic door in the room and the DM allows them to make checks until they find it.
So many tools, mechanical, narrative, circumstancial etc.
Logically it works for me, but as DM, I have to weigh it against having one of the NPCs tell a story and then making the players actually call bullshit on it. It's a question of which scenario works better with my group of players:
DM: The hobgoblin tells you with a big grin about the suit of armor in the shop and how a down-on-his-luck paladin came in a few weeks ago to sell it for some much-needed gold. Player: That sounds sketchy as hell. I'm doing an insight check. *rolls a 5* DM: Well that roll sucked, but your passive insight is 14 so you can tell hobgoblin's delivery just sounds too smooth, like he has practiced this line several times in the mirror and a few of his details don't add up right.
or
DM: The hobgoblin tells you with a big grin about the suit of armor in the shop and how a down-on-his-luck paladin came in a few weeks ago to sell it for some much-needed gold. Samuel, you notice the hobgoblin's delivery sounds a little too-polished as he tells this story and a few of his details don't add up right. Player: Insight check! DM: No need. He doesn't sound honest at all.
It isn't that one way is right and one way is wrong. I suppose it's just a question of what flows better at your table. In both cases I tipped my hand. In one of them, I baited the player into making the insight check. In the other, I didn't bother baiting the player at all and just laid the doubt on the table because his passive insight was high and I think he would have seen the deception in the hobgoblin's story. Personally, I like the first option better for my group of players. Likewise, if the hobgoblin had a very high deception, I might have said:
DM: The hobgoblin has a suit of armor for sale that he says was sold to him a while back by a paladin, but it remains in excellent condition.
No obvious tells in the delivery and the suit of armor seems fairly legit and it just happens to have a small story behind it. It's up to the player to probe further, or not.
Sometimes you don't have a whole different storyline to account for when mechanics flubs get in the way of story narratives. That's when baiting can be useful so, players know they are on the right track and purses a line of thought. Sometimes characters roll results can establish their level of understanding of a situation beyond pass/fail on a check. Poor rolls resuling in very little information or completely erroneous information, while a nat 20 with bonuse might net you a floor plan of a stronghold the party intends to infiltrate. I guess that all the option I posted could prove useful to a DM that is worried about a character with a high passive noticing every thing. It's like worrying about a dex based character statistically going first in initiative or a high level fighter having the most attack plus extra attack rolls for their turn. It doesn't wreck the game unless you let it.
Exactly... Honestly the people complaining about this remind of the DMs that are afraid to allow the players to be good at anything. I've had DMs that would do everything in their power to avoid any scenario where your skills could be a problem for the NPCs, or add nothing but absurdly skilled people to the point no matter your skill his NPCs succeed. Meanwhile combat encounters were somewhat balanced and PCs could win those. It's like some DMs just hate skills, or at least people with good skills. It's like they can't think of what to do if the NPC can't just sneak up and put a note in your pocket undetected... Stupid trope to begin with... but so often showing up in games... I mean seriously... Like people that do things like that never fail and get noticed? I mean one would assume such skilled and important organizations would have some idea who they are dealing with...
To be clear, I don't hate high skilled characters, I just hate the passive mechanic.
I can't bring any specific examples to mind right now, but it seems like some published adventures have had separate (higher) DC for passive vs. active checks.
I could see a mechanic for that. Though I'd make it a difference of exactly five. Basically it makes the observant feat represent people that are always 'on' which is a state of mind that really exists and can be trained.
Basically active skills have a lower dc to notice things because it represents a character specifically deciding to focus on their surroundings. Giving people a reason to as players occassionally ask to look around when they suspect something that might have a higher dc than their passive.
Wheras observant represents a certain type of person who either through trauma, paranoia or specialized training has developed the habit of constantly taking active note of their surroundings. Such people actually have a hard time not doing so. Which actually has RP implications if played right that can have it's own issues.
Mechanically all observant is doing in this case is for such characters is eliminating the need to actively use the ability to hit the same difficulty of challenge.
For most people the dc to notice the vase has been moved recently due to dust is say dc 20 passively but 15 if actively looking to represent that when actively looking you're more likely to notice such things. If a pc has a passive 15 they won't notice unless the character decides to actively look and rolls a 15 or higher, a passive 15 is however not enough. Meanwhile give the same character the observant feat representing their always on state. Now their passive raises to 20. They notice the vase without rolling.
They still have reasons to actively search though, cause sometimes the dc might be even higher than their advanced passive and a roll if 16 or higher might allow them to notice it.
I think this is a reasonable compromise and something I might use.
Main reason I think it's just a different dc for passive instead of just starting passive at 5+ skill etc is because I think passive is supposed to work against stealth and pick pocket type things. It allows the dm to roll against a dc equal to the pcs passive and never let them know if they failed. So the pc just sets their passive as the dc check.
Ardenwolf, this is very similar to what I posted and another possibly effective way to deal with always on passives. My way gave distraction penalties when anything could interfere with the passive. You decided to use a higher DC for passive vs active ability use, it's almost the same mechanically and narratively. Goes to show that there are many interesting ways to handle this situation.
Slight difference as I don't penalyze passive against active abilities like stealth, bluff and sleight of hand, as the entire purpose of passives it to give a flat dc the dm can roll against without the players noticing. I only give active a low dc vs things that are passive in nature like the the moved vase scenario or hidden doors, etc. I mean you're more likely to find a hidden door if actively searching for it than you are just being alert. While someone sneaking or trying to pick your pocket is moving or trying to stay quiet. There are things to notice even if you're not actively searching.
Observant makes you Sherlock Holmes levels of perceptive, you'll notice the slight breeze, or the dust slighly lacking from the crack where the secret door is, because you can't help but note everything even if you try not to.
The sneak is screwed against such types often because there's no time they aren't noting everything so it's a lot harder to find their blind spots.
Now that I think about it, I think it would, in fact, apply to insight. You are standing there listening to someone talk and weighing everything they say, their body language, etc dozens or hundreds of times and they may sound legit right up until they don’t.
It depends on what the DM allows and the circumstances. If you enter a room and want to passively look for traps maybe the passive only applie to 1 trap or hidden object per room. Anything else needs to be sought out actively. Maybe the check is time based, allowing only a limited number of checks over a few turns. Maybe the DC for a check can only be checked against by one individual to prevent bandwagon checking. Maybe everyone is allowed to go their own way in a room to trap check and possibly take a poison dart to the face. Maybe the character have a map that tells them there is a magic door in the room and the DM allows them to make checks until they find it.
So many tools, mechanical, narrative, circumstancial etc.
To me, you try something, it doesn’t work, you don’t get to keep rolling until you succeed, you failed. The idea of a high passive, or other passives, is that if it is applicable you only need to roll if your passive didn’t catch it. Why would I actively do something to find something I already know about? If you are going to let everyone at the table roll until someone is successful don’t even call for a roll, just pick the player who would most likely be successful and say “as your party enters the room [player name, the Wizard] recognizes the faint aura of magic in the outline of a door.” I think Colville has a video about this topic on YouTube. You shouldn’t call for a roll you need your players to succeed on to continue the story.
That is one of the things I don’t like that Matt does on Critical Role, he will sometimes let everyone at the table roll. You have 8 players, someone’s gonna get it. He really should limit it to the situation to the players who would have a chance to know. For instance, the party was trying to ask if they knew a detail about where they were and he let everyone role. Realistically only 3 people should have any chance of knowing that, one who grew up in the area and the two that have extensively studied books. And if those 3 failed it would not of mattered, but because everyone rolled they succeeded.
Logically it works for me, but as DM, I have to weigh it against having one of the NPCs tell a story and then making the players actually call bullshit on it. It's a question of which scenario works better with my group of players:
DM: The hobgoblin tells you with a big grin about the suit of armor in the shop and how a down-on-his-luck paladin came in a few weeks ago to sell it for some much-needed gold. Player: That sounds sketchy as hell. I'm doing an insight check. *rolls a 5* DM: Well that roll sucked, but your passive insight is 14 so you can tell hobgoblin's delivery just sounds too smooth, like he has practiced this line several times in the mirror and a few of his details don't add up right.
or
DM: The hobgoblin tells you with a big grin about the suit of armor in the shop and how a down-on-his-luck paladin came in a few weeks ago to sell it for some much-needed gold. Samuel, you notice the hobgoblin's delivery sounds a little too-polished as he tells this story and a few of his details don't add up right. Player: Insight check! DM: No need. He doesn't sound honest at all.
It isn't that one way is right and one way is wrong. I suppose it's just a question of what flows better at your table. In both cases I tipped my hand. In one of them, I baited the player into making the insight check. In the other, I didn't bother baiting the player at all and just laid the doubt on the table because his passive insight was high and I think he would have seen the deception in the hobgoblin's story. Personally, I like the first option better for my group of players. Likewise, if the hobgoblin had a very high deception, I might have said:
DM: The hobgoblin has a suit of armor for sale that he says was sold to him a while back by a paladin, but it remains in excellent condition.
No obvious tells in the delivery and the suit of armor seems fairly legit and it just happens to have a small story behind it. It's up to the player to probe further, or not.
The problem in you example is that you assume that in the first case, you don’t roll deception for the hobgoblin. Insight, passive or active, is always a deception vs insight check if someone is trying to lie. So what you would actually do is roll deception for the hobgoblin. If you rolled an 8, you can simply tell the player with a 14 passive that “as he is saying this, you don't feel he is being completely honest” or some variation. But if the DM rolled a 15 or higher, they would have to ask “do I believe him” and it would be a roll, needing to match or beat the DM roll.
AaronWho, some players really like to roll dice and feel like it gives them more connection to the story by participating with a chance of randomness added in, rather than flat narratives deterimed by passives. I regularly roll nat 1 for abilities I am supposed to be good at and nat 20 on things I'm not. I let players TRY to do things they want to do, if it seems like a reach, I tell them what it could take to make it happen. As far as only letting certain characters make rolls depending on the likelihood that the character would reasonably match up to the task is ok. The other end of the spetrum is to not make assumptions on what the character can do. I could disallow you from answering a trivia question on mechanical engineering only to find out, that the answer to my question is the only thing you know about mechanical engineering. Some random fact you heard once that stuck in your head.
Some of the issues with randomness is it can often result in characters not knowing things they should, while other character's know things they have no reasonable way of knowing. I try to take background and history into perspective. Like clerics always get substantial bonuses to knowledge religion involving their own religion, especially to compensate for intelligence being a dump stat for clerics. I have no problem with wizards and others knowing more than a cleric about other religions, but I'll be damned if the cleric can't at least be a scholar in their own. Like I might give a character advantage on appropriate checks, disadvantage on inappropriate checks, lower the dc, or simply say, dude there's no reason your character could know this outside of magic or there's no way your character could be what they are if the didn't know this, and just say, you can't know it, or just tell them they know it.
Sometimes DMs make people roll really dumb checks they never should.
AaronWho, some players really like to roll dice and feel like it gives them more connection to the story by participating with a chance of randomness added in, rather than flat narratives deterimed by passives. I regularly roll nat 1 for abilities I am supposed to be good at and nat 20 on things I'm not. I let players TRY to do things they want to do, if it seems like a reach, I tell them what it could take to make it happen. As far as only letting certain characters make rolls depending on the likelihood that the character would reasonably match up to the task is ok. The other end of the spetrum is to not make assumptions on what the character can do. I could disallow you from answering a trivia question on mechanical engineering only to find out, that the answer to my question is the only thing you know about mechanical engineering. Some random fact you heard once that stuck in your head.
Yes, randomness is great, but my point in the limit of 3 characters in that particular example was that he gave 8 people the chance to roll on what was basically not vital information which of course resulted in one of them rolling high enough. So why bother roll if you are going to give that many chances of success? Furthermore as stated, it was a detail about a particular region. It would be like me asking someone who was born in the 1800s and lived their entire life in the US in a town with no immigrants to know a small detail about the regional superstition of a small village in Russia. There is no reasonable expectation of success, the person simply has no basis for the knowledge. So in that example, 3 of the party members 'might' know, but the other 5 have 0 grounds for knowing.
Its the story of the guy who falls of a cliff in full plate and ask to flap his arms like a bird, he rolls a natural 20 for athletics. Are you seriously going to let him fly?
Some of the issues with randomness is it can often result in characters not knowing things they should, while other character's know things they have no reasonable way of knowing. I try to take background and history into perspective. Like clerics always get substantial bonuses to knowledge religion involving their own religion, especially to compensate for intelligence being a dump stat for clerics. I have no problem with wizards and others knowing more than a cleric about other religions, but I'll be damned if the cleric can't at least be a scholar in their own. Like I might give a character advantage on appropriate checks, disadvantage on inappropriate checks, lower the dc, or simply say, dude there's no reason your character could know this outside of magic or there's no way your character could be what they are if the didn't know this, and just say, you can't know it, or just tell them they know it.
Sometimes DMs make people roll really dumb checks they never should.
That was in part my point, some rolls are really not necessary. People like rolling dice, but not everything needs a roll. Some characters are just going to know things or be able to do things. A goliath with a 20 strength shouldn't need to roll a check to break a cheap lock, but a bard with a 12 should.
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Persuasion, Intimidation, Animal Handling, Athletics, Acrobatics, Medicine, Performance and Survival can all easily have penalties for failing.
The rest of the skills could too with some creativity.
The "you're averaging 100 checks where there's no penalty for failure" logic doesn't apply to Insight at all. You're not spending as much time as you want trying to figure out if someone's lying - you either notice the eyebrow twitch (or whatever) or you don't. Conversely, it does apply to something like Athletics, where you're constantly swimming/running/climbing/whatever.
And maybe there's not a failure penalty for Investigation/Perception when you're looking for a door, but there is when you're looking for a trap.
Excellent examples. For some skills it works and for others it does not. That is what I mean when I say it’s a deal breaker (for me at least) to apply the “always on” logic to all skills.
Also, I feel like if you’re looking for a door or trap, that’s an active search. You would make your roll and either use your roll or your passive perception score—whichever was higher. Walking into a room and seeing the door or trap instantly or maybe after a few seconds of doing something else is passive and more in line with the situation I am describing.
"Not all those who wander are lost"
Now that I think about it, I think it would, in fact, apply to insight. You are standing there listening to someone talk and weighing everything they say, their body language, etc dozens or hundreds of times and they may sound legit right up until they don’t.
"Not all those who wander are lost"
It depends on what the DM allows and the circumstances. If you enter a room and want to passively look for traps maybe the passive only applie to 1 trap or hidden object per room. Anything else needs to be sought out actively. Maybe the check is time based, allowing only a limited number of checks over a few turns. Maybe the DC for a check can only be checked against by one individual to prevent bandwagon checking. Maybe everyone is allowed to go their own way in a room to trap check and possibly take a poison dart to the face. Maybe the character have a map that tells them there is a magic door in the room and the DM allows them to make checks until they find it.
So many tools, mechanical, narrative, circumstancial etc.
Logically it works for me, but as DM, I have to weigh it against having one of the NPCs tell a story and then making the players actually call bullshit on it. It's a question of which scenario works better with my group of players:
DM: The hobgoblin tells you with a big grin about the suit of armor in the shop and how a down-on-his-luck paladin came in a few weeks ago to sell it for some much-needed gold.
Player: That sounds sketchy as hell. I'm doing an insight check.
*rolls a 5*
DM: Well that roll sucked, but your passive insight is 14 so you can tell hobgoblin's delivery just sounds too smooth, like he has practiced this line several times in the mirror and a few of his details don't add up right.
or
DM: The hobgoblin tells you with a big grin about the suit of armor in the shop and how a down-on-his-luck paladin came in a few weeks ago to sell it for some much-needed gold. Samuel, you notice the hobgoblin's delivery sounds a little too-polished as he tells this story and a few of his details don't add up right.
Player: Insight check!
DM: No need. He doesn't sound honest at all.
It isn't that one way is right and one way is wrong. I suppose it's just a question of what flows better at your table. In both cases I tipped my hand. In one of them, I baited the player into making the insight check. In the other, I didn't bother baiting the player at all and just laid the doubt on the table because his passive insight was high and I think he would have seen the deception in the hobgoblin's story. Personally, I like the first option better for my group of players. Likewise, if the hobgoblin had a very high deception, I might have said:
DM: The hobgoblin has a suit of armor for sale that he says was sold to him a while back by a paladin, but it remains in excellent condition.
No obvious tells in the delivery and the suit of armor seems fairly legit and it just happens to have a small story behind it. It's up to the player to probe further, or not.
"Not all those who wander are lost"
I was responding to the six skills he was comparing and the difference between the three that were passive and the three he mentioned.
All reasonable ways to resolve that scenario.
Sometimes you don't have a whole different storyline to account for when mechanics flubs get in the way of story narratives. That's when baiting can be useful so, players know they are on the right track and purses a line of thought. Sometimes characters roll results can establish their level of understanding of a situation beyond pass/fail on a check. Poor rolls resuling in very little information or completely erroneous information, while a nat 20 with bonuse might net you a floor plan of a stronghold the party intends to infiltrate. I guess that all the option I posted could prove useful to a DM that is worried about a character with a high passive noticing every thing. It's like worrying about a dex based character statistically going first in initiative or a high level fighter having the most attack plus extra attack rolls for their turn. It doesn't wreck the game unless you let it.
Exactly... Honestly the people complaining about this remind of the DMs that are afraid to allow the players to be good at anything. I've had DMs that would do everything in their power to avoid any scenario where your skills could be a problem for the NPCs, or add nothing but absurdly skilled people to the point no matter your skill his NPCs succeed. Meanwhile combat encounters were somewhat balanced and PCs could win those. It's like some DMs just hate skills, or at least people with good skills. It's like they can't think of what to do if the NPC can't just sneak up and put a note in your pocket undetected... Stupid trope to begin with... but so often showing up in games... I mean seriously... Like people that do things like that never fail and get noticed? I mean one would assume such skilled and important organizations would have some idea who they are dealing with...
Fair enough.
To be clear, I don't hate high skilled characters, I just hate the passive mechanic.
I can't bring any specific examples to mind right now, but it seems like some published adventures have had separate (higher) DC for passive vs. active checks.
I could see a mechanic for that. Though I'd make it a difference of exactly five. Basically it makes the observant feat represent people that are always 'on' which is a state of mind that really exists and can be trained.
Basically active skills have a lower dc to notice things because it represents a character specifically deciding to focus on their surroundings. Giving people a reason to as players occassionally ask to look around when they suspect something that might have a higher dc than their passive.
Wheras observant represents a certain type of person who either through trauma, paranoia or specialized training has developed the habit of constantly taking active note of their surroundings. Such people actually have a hard time not doing so. Which actually has RP implications if played right that can have it's own issues.
Mechanically all observant is doing in this case is for such characters is eliminating the need to actively use the ability to hit the same difficulty of challenge.
For most people the dc to notice the vase has been moved recently due to dust is say dc 20 passively but 15 if actively looking to represent that when actively looking you're more likely to notice such things. If a pc has a passive 15 they won't notice unless the character decides to actively look and rolls a 15 or higher, a passive 15 is however not enough. Meanwhile give the same character the observant feat representing their always on state. Now their passive raises to 20. They notice the vase without rolling.
They still have reasons to actively search though, cause sometimes the dc might be even higher than their advanced passive and a roll if 16 or higher might allow them to notice it.
I think this is a reasonable compromise and something I might use.
Main reason I think it's just a different dc for passive instead of just starting passive at 5+ skill etc is because I think passive is supposed to work against stealth and pick pocket type things. It allows the dm to roll against a dc equal to the pcs passive and never let them know if they failed. So the pc just sets their passive as the dc check.
Ardenwolf, this is very similar to what I posted and another possibly effective way to deal with always on passives. My way gave distraction penalties when anything could interfere with the passive. You decided to use a higher DC for passive vs active ability use, it's almost the same mechanically and narratively. Goes to show that there are many interesting ways to handle this situation.
Slight difference as I don't penalyze passive against active abilities like stealth, bluff and sleight of hand, as the entire purpose of passives it to give a flat dc the dm can roll against without the players noticing. I only give active a low dc vs things that are passive in nature like the the moved vase scenario or hidden doors, etc. I mean you're more likely to find a hidden door if actively searching for it than you are just being alert. While someone sneaking or trying to pick your pocket is moving or trying to stay quiet. There are things to notice even if you're not actively searching.
Observant makes you Sherlock Holmes levels of perceptive, you'll notice the slight breeze, or the dust slighly lacking from the crack where the secret door is, because you can't help but note everything even if you try not to.
The sneak is screwed against such types often because there's no time they aren't noting everything so it's a lot harder to find their blind spots.
To me, you try something, it doesn’t work, you don’t get to keep rolling until you succeed, you failed. The idea of a high passive, or other passives, is that if it is applicable you only need to roll if your passive didn’t catch it. Why would I actively do something to find something I already know about? If you are going to let everyone at the table roll until someone is successful don’t even call for a roll, just pick the player who would most likely be successful and say “as your party enters the room [player name, the Wizard] recognizes the faint aura of magic in the outline of a door.” I think Colville has a video about this topic on YouTube. You shouldn’t call for a roll you need your players to succeed on to continue the story.
That is one of the things I don’t like that Matt does on Critical Role, he will sometimes let everyone at the table roll. You have 8 players, someone’s gonna get it. He really should limit it to the situation to the players who would have a chance to know. For instance, the party was trying to ask if they knew a detail about where they were and he let everyone role. Realistically only 3 people should have any chance of knowing that, one who grew up in the area and the two that have extensively studied books. And if those 3 failed it would not of mattered, but because everyone rolled they succeeded.
The problem in you example is that you assume that in the first case, you don’t roll deception for the hobgoblin. Insight, passive or active, is always a deception vs insight check if someone is trying to lie. So what you would actually do is roll deception for the hobgoblin. If you rolled an 8, you can simply tell the player with a 14 passive that “as he is saying this, you don't feel he is being completely honest” or some variation. But if the DM rolled a 15 or higher, they would have to ask “do I believe him” and it would be a roll, needing to match or beat the DM roll.
AaronWho, some players really like to roll dice and feel like it gives them more connection to the story by participating with a chance of randomness added in, rather than flat narratives deterimed by passives. I regularly roll nat 1 for abilities I am supposed to be good at and nat 20 on things I'm not. I let players TRY to do things they want to do, if it seems like a reach, I tell them what it could take to make it happen. As far as only letting certain characters make rolls depending on the likelihood that the character would reasonably match up to the task is ok. The other end of the spetrum is to not make assumptions on what the character can do. I could disallow you from answering a trivia question on mechanical engineering only to find out, that the answer to my question is the only thing you know about mechanical engineering. Some random fact you heard once that stuck in your head.
Some of the issues with randomness is it can often result in characters not knowing things they should, while other character's know things they have no reasonable way of knowing. I try to take background and history into perspective. Like clerics always get substantial bonuses to knowledge religion involving their own religion, especially to compensate for intelligence being a dump stat for clerics. I have no problem with wizards and others knowing more than a cleric about other religions, but I'll be damned if the cleric can't at least be a scholar in their own. Like I might give a character advantage on appropriate checks, disadvantage on inappropriate checks, lower the dc, or simply say, dude there's no reason your character could know this outside of magic or there's no way your character could be what they are if the didn't know this, and just say, you can't know it, or just tell them they know it.
Sometimes DMs make people roll really dumb checks they never should.
Yes, randomness is great, but my point in the limit of 3 characters in that particular example was that he gave 8 people the chance to roll on what was basically not vital information which of course resulted in one of them rolling high enough. So why bother roll if you are going to give that many chances of success? Furthermore as stated, it was a detail about a particular region. It would be like me asking someone who was born in the 1800s and lived their entire life in the US in a town with no immigrants to know a small detail about the regional superstition of a small village in Russia. There is no reasonable expectation of success, the person simply has no basis for the knowledge. So in that example, 3 of the party members 'might' know, but the other 5 have 0 grounds for knowing.
Its the story of the guy who falls of a cliff in full plate and ask to flap his arms like a bird, he rolls a natural 20 for athletics. Are you seriously going to let him fly?
That was in part my point, some rolls are really not necessary. People like rolling dice, but not everything needs a roll. Some characters are just going to know things or be able to do things. A goliath with a 20 strength shouldn't need to roll a check to break a cheap lock, but a bard with a 12 should.