Type: General
Source: Eberron Campaign Setting
You can use your Knowledge skills to extract information from books, scrolls, and other repositories of facts and figures.
Benefit: This feat expands the way you can use the Knowledge skills. It allows you to use a Knowledge skill to navigate a library, an office filing system, a chronicler's repository, or a church's records storage cell in order to discover information. You must be able to read the language the texts are written in to research them.
Research a Topic: Given enough time (usually 1d4 hours, though the DM can increase the time based on the amount of material you're examining)and a successful DG 10 skill check, you gain a general understanding of the topic you're researching. This assumes the information you are seeking exists within the collection of materials you are researching. The higher the check result, the better and more detailed the information (to the extent available within the source material).
When you want to find out specific information on a specific topic, you must first find a library with tomes relating to that topic. The quality of the library or collection can provide a circumstance bonus on your Knowledge check when performing research.
General-purpose libraries (such as those found in some wealthy households, small churches, or towns) contain basic information on a variety of topics and provide a +1 circumstance bonus.
A library devoted to a specific topic (usually owned by churches or organizations devoted to specific pursuits) provides a +2 circumstance bonus on Knowledge checks related to its topic. Comprehensive collections are harder to find, but they provide a +4 circumstance bonus. Such collections reside with large churches, in some larger cities, in some organizations and institutions, at Morgrave University, and in major chronicle offices. Even rarer and harder to gain access to are master collections, which provide a +6 circumstance bonus. Master collections are found in a few dragonmarked house enclaves, one or two royal libraries, and in the library at Korranberg.
Examine Records: Examining books or records to get a general sense of what's in them takes time, skill, and some luck. Find a stack of ledgers in the alchemist's lab? Discover records in the crime lord's hideout? Locate the files pertaining to taxes collected in the city? To get a general sense of the information contained therein and whether or not you can use it, you must make a research check using the most appropriate Knowledge skill. The DC depends on the complexity of the code or filing system used.
| Complexity of Code | Knowledge DC | Time Needed |
| Basic | 10 | 1d4 hours |
| Simple | 15 | 1d4 +1 hours |
| Moderate | 20 | 1d4+2 hours |
| Complex | 30 | 1d4 +4 hours |
Mark of Passage: On any successful check, the higher the result, the better and more complete the information you glean. If you start out seeking a specific fact, date, map, or similar bit of information, the DM might increase the DC by as little as +5 or as much as +15. You can retry a Knowledge check made to perform research, though if the material you are examining doesn't contain the data you seek, you can't find it. You can take 10 or take 20 when making a Knowledge check to research a topic or examine records. This use of the Knowledge skill takes a minimum of 1d4 hours.