Quote:
Originally Posted by Jhaelen  I don't see any good reason why you shouldn't be able to take 20 for other activities as well - assuming a non-stressful situation. |
Take 20 is a very reasonable shortcut for any skill check in which the DM allows the players to keep rolling until they succeed, without penalty for failure. This would only apply to a minority of skill checks - it wouldn't make sense for knowledge checks or social checks, even in a non-stressful situation.
Even for things like searching for secret doors, I rarely use such skill checks in a non-timed situation, for the same reason I avoid passive checks - it means you decide whether they succeed based on the skill bonus rather than by rolling, which I think is less fun and means that only the highest skill bonus in the party makes any difference. If the task is sufficiently tricky to require a noncombat skill check, then I set a difficulty based on the assumption that the players perform a thorough search, and allow one group skill check. Either the party is perceptive enough to find the secret door, or they are not and the adventure moves on.
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