I've been thinking about reintroducing the sense of danger to a balanced game like 4E. Clearly, part of this involves creating challenges which are difficult to impossible to overcome in the most obvious fashion, and 4E gives me the tools to know when I'm doing this. But also, it is important for the players to have tools to realize when they are clearly outmatched before one of them gets eaten. This is especially tricky with humanoid foes, or with creatures that have nasty surprises.
Enter the knowledge skill. I want to preserve some of the sense of mystery that I feel a good adventure should have, so I don't want to dump all the information about a given foe on a successful roll. What I do want to do is give players a means to roughly gauge how threatening something might be. Therefore: the knowledge skill check to know something useful about a threat is DC 10 + threat level. On a successful check, I divulge a known-true fact about the threat, and the players now know an upper bound to the threat's level. On a failed check, I state a wild and terrifying rumor about the threat, and the players now know a lower bound to the threat's level.
But what about something that looks harmless but isn't? On a successful knowledge check, the players learn "some rabbits are known to be killer, and this is how you can tell" while on a failed knowledge check, the players learn only "some rabbits are rumored to be killer" - which is also what you learn on a successful knowledge check about regular rabbits.
In this way, I hope to lead players down a maze of various threats in such a way that they at least have an inkling where the walls are.
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