dcollins said:
A smith wants to make a complex item (DC 20). At one level, he's got a +9 bonus and fails 50% of the time. He gets one single more skill point and he fails 0% of the time due to being able to Take 10. I want the success to curve smoothly over increased skill, not jump cartoonishly like that.
It does curve smoothly, as long as you're measuring the auto-success line on a graph of "difficulty of task" vs "skill".
The smith with a +9 succeeds 100% of the time at DC 19 tasks. The smith with a +10 succeeds 100% of the time at dc 20. Etc. Gradually the smith is capable of more and more difficult tasks.
If you enforce rolling, then the level you need to guarantee success at moderately simple (in real-world terms) becomes ridiculous, and you need to resort to other twistings of the rules, like giving 0 level sailors a +10 climb bonus.
knifespeaks said:
There is a secret door, on the first level of a dungeon. It leads to the treasure room on the lowest level of the dungeon. How do you make it POSSIBLE that a player of skill 0 to find, yet prevent them from taking 20?
Assume that once the denizens of the room/dungeon level are killed, they are safe enough to search to their hearts' content, although the odd wandering monster is still possible.
If the odd wandering monster is possible, then time is still a limited resource.
Oh, and the solution is "the wizard casts
detect secret doors and walks all over the floor".
Way, way better than taking 20 to search the entire damn thing.
Generally if the players are taking 20 to search, then they have a good reason to suppose that there is something to find.
And if that's the case, they could always just go for the more direct option - smashing the wall in with appropriate tools.
For traps, usually it's entirely possible (if you ban take 20 on search) for people to get around the trap ANYWAY. Most door traps won't work if the players go through a hole in the centre of the door. Most of them won't work if a summoned critter goes through first (because the party can then use a strategy to avoid the trap regardless).
What you do when you ban take 10 and take 20 is you devalue the skills that can benefit from them.
Without take 10 on climb, there is never any point taking ranks in climb. By the point where you can reliably use it to solve difficult problems without killing yourself, the entire party is flying and levitating and spider climbing and whatnot (presuming spider climb still allows take 10 - otherwise it makes spider climb a waste of time as a spell).
Without take 10 or 20 on use rope - there's no point in using rope to bind prisoners without like 19 ranks in use rope. Manacles are much better.
Craft is a waste of time without take 10/20. It's pretty bad as is, but make it a more-or-less random affair and it just becomes a really, really bad waste of your assets.
Disguise? Expect lots of "how's that look" rolls between disguiser and disguisee.
Take 10 on heal just plain makes sense. I really don't want to see characters bleeding to death outside of combat, and I'd prefer it if my players DON'T have to spend all their zero level spells on cure minor wounds.
Open lock - again, without take 10/20, you just bash the thing down. Hell - enough people bash doors down anyway. Sure you can say "but monsters will hear them bashing in the door!" but monsters are going to hear a take 20 lockpicking attempt too.
Survival... Wow. Millions of rolls expected here. This is moving into "boring accounting land", when a simple take 10 for each party member could have left you NOT having to tally up the exact amount of food and water everyone is carrying... Not to mention the fact that your average 1st level skilled woodsman is going to get lost every other day... Just about any application of the skill will be very hit and miss, right up to the point where magic does it all far better anyway.
Swim. Really. Swimming in calm water is not really that difficult. In fact I'd expect the only people to drown in calm water would be those with a penalty to swim checks. You know - pretty much like the take 10 rule simulates.
