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General Tabletop Discussion
*Dungeons & Dragons
Balancing Investigation checks and player descriptions
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<blockquote data-quote="Li Shenron" data-source="post: 6909766" data-attributes="member: 1465"><p>One possible idea is to consider the <strong>time</strong> required by the investigation, and set the DC appropriately.</p><p></p><p>So if someone chooses the nondescript way (meaning that they are trying a little bit of everything randomly, but nothing specific), ask them "how long would you like to work on this task?" and then maybe do something like this:</p><p></p><p>- 24 hours (with reasonable breaks) > DC - 10</p><p>- 8 hours > DC -5</p><p>- 1 hour > normal DC</p><p>- 10 minutes > DC + 5</p><p>- 1 minute > DC + 10</p><p></p><p>Instead, if they choose the narrative way, it takes just as long as you think those narrated actions should take. Looking under the carpet may take anything from an action (if the carpet is a doormat) to a few minutes, if it's a large carpet and you're looking for something small. Searching all drawers in the room takes minutes at least (if they are mostly empty or you're looking for something big), but possibly even hours (if they're full of stuff and you look for something small), but IMO the best idea is that it should take significantly less time if you guess correctly where to look for, and equal or even more time if you guess wrong. You can also decide for an autosuccess on a correct guess, but it's up to you, if you want to include the chance to overlook what they are searching.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Li Shenron, post: 6909766, member: 1465"] One possible idea is to consider the [B]time[/B] required by the investigation, and set the DC appropriately. So if someone chooses the nondescript way (meaning that they are trying a little bit of everything randomly, but nothing specific), ask them "how long would you like to work on this task?" and then maybe do something like this: - 24 hours (with reasonable breaks) > DC - 10 - 8 hours > DC -5 - 1 hour > normal DC - 10 minutes > DC + 5 - 1 minute > DC + 10 Instead, if they choose the narrative way, it takes just as long as you think those narrated actions should take. Looking under the carpet may take anything from an action (if the carpet is a doormat) to a few minutes, if it's a large carpet and you're looking for something small. Searching all drawers in the room takes minutes at least (if they are mostly empty or you're looking for something big), but possibly even hours (if they're full of stuff and you look for something small), but IMO the best idea is that it should take significantly less time if you guess correctly where to look for, and equal or even more time if you guess wrong. You can also decide for an autosuccess on a correct guess, but it's up to you, if you want to include the chance to overlook what they are searching. [/QUOTE]
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