Help me nail down this 'take 10, take 20' nonsense

One of my long-time frustrations with D&D 3.0/3.5 is the 'Take 10, Take 20' rule. Although it isn't the rule itself, so much as the ambiguity with which it is presented. One thing I really admired about D20 Modern, and was disappointed to see left out of D&D 3.5, was that for each skill we are *explicitly* told if we can take 10 or take 20 or not. Now *that* was refreshing. "You can take 10 on a *** check, but you can't take 20." And so on.

My game of choice is D&D 3.0, and I'm planning an upcoming campaign, and I would greatly appreciate the help of you wiser folks in finally nailing down this stubborn little imp of take 10/take 20. What follows is the skill list from D&D 3.0. Kindly comment on as many as you can on whether or not a PC can take 10 or take 20.

Alchemy
Animal Empathy
Appraise
Balance
Bluff
Climb
Concentration
Craft
Decipher Script
Diplomacy
Disable Device
Disguise
Escape Artist
Forgery
Gather Information
Handle Animal
Heal
Hide
Innuendo
Intimidate
Intuit Direction
Jump
Knowledge (any)
Listen
Move Silently
Open Lock
Perform
Pick Pocket
Profession
Read Lips
Ride
Scry
Search
Sense Motive
Speak Language
Spellcraft
Spot
Swim
Tumble
Use Magic Device
Use Rope
Wilderness Lore

***
a few comments:

We are told that "When you are not in a rush and are not being threatened or distracted, you may choose to take 10" (PHB 61). So theoretically, following that description, it should be possible to take 10 on EVERY skill, provided one isn't rushed or threatened or distracted.

We are further told that "When you have plenty of time (generally 2 minutes for a skill that can normally be checked in 1 round, one full-round action, or one standard action), and when the skill being attempted carries no penalties for failure, you can take 20" (PHB 61). The big question, of course, is what "penalties for failure" means. In some cases it is spelled out for us; for example, we can't take 20 on a climb check, since failure involves falling and falling is bad. Can we take 20 on an Open Lock check? How about a Heal check? How about Wildnerness Lore?

One rule of thumb that I've been told is that if a skill description says that retries are not allowed, then one cannot take 20. True?

Please help, fellow enworlders! :\

Sebastian Francis said:

We are told that "When you are not in a rush and are not being threatened or distracted, you may choose to take 10" (PHB 61). So theoretically, following that description, it should be possible to take 10 on EVERY skill, provided one isn't rushed or threatened or distracted.

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Yes.

One rule of thumb that I've been told is that if a skill description says that retries are not allowed, then one cannot take 20. True?

Click to expand...

True.

Can we take 20 on an Open Lock check? How about a Heal check? How about Wildnerness Lore?

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Open Lock, yes. Heal, I think not, because I don't think you can retry. Wilderness lore, depends what you are doing: The skill has several uses.


glass.

I think you should read through the section in the 3.5 PHB (or SRD, presumably) about what you are asking. They clarified it a lot compared to the 3.0 rules.

And the reason there is no indication on each and every skill whether you can take 10 or 20 with them is because it is more dependent on the situation than the skill. You could take 10 or even 20 when using Balance to cross a slippery floor, but not while walking on a rope between buildings.

Sebastian Francis said:

We are told that "When you are not in a rush and are not being threatened or distracted, you may choose to take 10" (PHB 61). So theoretically, following that description, it should be possible to take 10 on EVERY skill, provided one isn't rushed or threatened or distracted.

Click to expand...

Yes. Except Use Magic Device, which explicitly disallows it.

We are further told that "When you have plenty of time (generally 2 minutes for a skill that can normally be checked in 1 round, one full-round action, or one standard action), and when the skill being attempted carries no penalties for failure, you can take 20" (PHB 61). The big question, of course, is what "penalties for failure" means. In some cases it is spelled out for us; for example, we can't take 20 on a climb check, since failure involves falling and falling is bad. Can we take 20 on an Open Lock check? How about a Heal check? How about Wildnerness Lore?

One rule of thumb that I've been told is that if a skill description says that retries are not allowed, then one cannot take 20. True?

Click to expand...

Yes, that is true. No retries equals no take 20.

Open lock, yes, you can take 20. There is no penalty for failure. A penalty is some bad thing that happens, besides the action simply failing. The fact that the lock doesn't open on a failed check isn't a penalty for failure- the general state of the lock hasn't changed a bit.

Disable Device has an explicit penalty for some failures. If you fail by 5 or more, you spring the trap. Therefore you can't take 20.

Heal checks, in some cases you can, in some you can't. First aid, well, you wouldn't want to because they will have bled to death by the time 20 rounds pass. Long-Term Care, I would say no, because you make one check for each 8 hours of light activity, and the hit points apply each day. It would take 20 days to take 20 on a long-term care check.

Treat Wound from Caltrop, Spike Growth, or Spike Stones, yes, you could take 20. It takes 20 times as long, so 200 minutes for the latter two, and 20 rounds for a caltrop.

Poision and Disease treating, no, you can't, because your check isn't used until their next save rolls around. Taking 20 requires being able to try again, and trying again requires proof that your last attempt failed, which you won't have until after their next save, by when it is too late.

In general, this is all better spelled out in 3.5, because they tried to indicate everywhere you were allowed to retry checks. Check the skills at http://www.d20srd.org/

Henrix said:

And the reason there is no indication on each and every skill whether you can take 10 or 20 with them is because it is more dependent on the situation than the skill. You could take 10 or even 20 when using Balance to cross a slippery floor,

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True

but not while walking on a rope between buildings.

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False. You can take 10 on that check, unless you are threatened or hurried. If the rope is on fire or someone is shooting arrows at you, you can't take 10, but just because there is a penalty for failure (plummetting to the street) doesn't stop you from taking 10.

Right, taking 20 is doing the thing 20 times and assuming you will roll a 20 on one of them. But, keep in mind that what you get is 19 failures and one success.

I never tell my players they can't take 20. I always allow it. But, as I said, they get 19 failures and one success. If it's something like picking a lock, they don't care. If it's something like disabling a trap, setting it off 19 times will pile the damage up!

As for taking 10, it's there to allow commoners to do things. Since a "1" is always a failure, do you fail 5% of the time you try any action at all? 5% of the time you try to walk across a room you fail the (DC -10) balance check and fall on your face? No, so there is "take 10".

If you have the time / quiet to just focus on not messing up, you can take 10.

Our rogue does a great job of explaining these in character. For a lock she would say this...

(Take 10) "I take an exploratory look at the lock, but don't try anything fancy. I go over the most common methods to open it, maybe it's an easy one!"

(Roll) "I look at the lock, and try a couple things that seem like they might work."

(Take 10, then roll twice -three rounds-) "I look at the lock and try the most common things I know. If that doesn't work, I try my first two ideas."

(Take 20 -20 rounds-) " I sit down and try every single thing I can think of. I don't care if it takes all day, I will get it open!"

Tatsukun said:

As for taking 10, it's there to allow commoners to do things. Since a "1" is always a failure, do you fail 5% of the time you try any action at all? 5% of the time you try to walk across a room you fail the (DC -10) balance check and fall on your face?

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False. A "1" is not always a failure on skills. Only on attacks and saving throws. Highly skilled characters never fail the easy stuff.

Agree with both of the following (yes and yes):

Sebastian Francis said:

- So theoretically, following that description, it should be possible to take 10 on EVERY skill, provided one isn't rushed or threatened or distracted.

- One rule of thumb that I've been told is that if a skill description says that retries are not allowed, then one cannot take 20. True?

Click to expand...

In addition, there's one other thing I think needs to be incorporated to make sense, which I do as a ruling as DM. Namely (for Take 20): Can the PC identify when he has succeeded, and therefore when to stop? Clearly most skills have a goal that the PC knows in advance, like Climb, Craft, or Open Lock. But others may be a "success" without any clear evidence of that, like Spot, Search, or Listen, if there's nothing to be detected. Personally, I don't allow Take 20s on those because how does the PC tell the difference between failure, versus success with nothing around?

(Also, I rule that for "DM-makes-the roll" situations [see DMG ch. 1], you can't choose to Take 10, I actually make the roll.)

Finally, you might look at Sean K. Reynolds article on Take 20 subject, where he deals with each 3.0 skill in turn (he disagrees with me on the previous issue, sort-of): http://www.seankreynolds.com/rpgfiles/misc/take20.html

dcollins said:

Clearly most skills have a goal that the PC knows in advance, like Climb, Craft, or Open Lock. But others may be a "success" without any clear evidence of that, like Spot, Search, or Listen, if there's nothing to be detected. Personally, I don't allow Take 20s on those because how does the PC tell the difference between failure, versus success with nothing around?

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He doesn't know the difference. I rule that taking 20 on an informative skill means looking until you either find something, or until you are convinced that there's nothing to be found.

When a PC makes a regular check to search a door, and finds no traps, I tell the player, "You do not see any traps." The character knows he may have missed something. But if he takes 20 and still finds no traps, I tell the player, "You are certain that there are no traps." The player knows there's a possibility that his character is not skilled enough, but that's metagaming; as far as the PC is concerned, the door is safe.

This works for all the informative skills that don't have a visible goal: Search, Spot, Listen, Gather Information, Survival (when looking for tracks), and probably some more I'm forgetting.

If you don't allow taking 20 on Search at all, what mechanic do you use when a PC decides to search a particular place as well as possible? Maybe the BBEG just ran down a dead end hallway and disappeared, so the party searches high and low for the secret door he used. Do you allow just one ordinary Search check for each party member, or what?

Gentlemen:

Thank-you for your input thus far. Awesome answers! I especially appreciated the Sean Reynolds link. Interesting, though, that Reynolds thinks one can take 20 on a Heal check:

"Heal:
First aid: Yes, because there is no penalty for failure (the character is already losing hit points, and failing the check doesn't change that, so the absence of a reward should not be seen as a penalty). Note that in the case of someone at -1 hp and losing 1 hp per round, you don't have enough time to take 20."

It seems that most of the trouble comes from the question of Take 20. Are we all agreed that we can Take 10 on every skill, given the right circumstances? (With the exception of Use Magic Device)