Take 20 on disable device for a trap?

[Mookie1171]

Hey, for D&D 3.5, I read over the disable device skill entry, but it is still confusing to me.
Can a rogue take 10 or take 20 on disable device to search for a trap?
If not, why not?
Does the rogue's player roll disable device or does the DM roll it secretly?
If the rogue misses the DC check on disable device does the trap go off?
Does he know he missed the check or not?
Can you take 20 on a search to find traps?
If you fail to find the trap while taking a 20 on search is it automatically set off?


Thanks

 

[Greenfield]

First, a Rogue uses Search to find a trap.

Disable Device is what's used to remove the trap.

Generally, you can Take 20 on a Search check, if you have the time. It takes 20 times as long.

Generally you can't Take 20 on Disable Device, unless you somehow don't care if it goes off.

Taking 20: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), you are faced with no threats or distractions, and the skill being attempted carries no penalties for failure, you can take 20. In other words, eventually you will get a 20 on 1d20 if you roll enough times. Instead of rolling 1d20 for the skill check, just calculate your result as if you had rolled a 20.
Taking 20 means you are trying until you get it right, and it assumes that you fail many times before succeeding. Taking 20 takes twenty times as long as making a single check would take.
Since taking 20 assumes that the character will fail many times before succeeding, if you did attempt to take 20 on a skill that carries penalties for failure, your character would automatically incur those penalties before he or she could complete the task. Common “take 20” skills include Escape Artist, Open Lock, and Search.

As you can see in the SRD quote above, Taking 20 effectively presumes that you're also taking 10, 5, 17, 12, 1, 3, 19, etc. In short, if there's a way to do it wrong, you're trying that way before you get to 20.

So, since traps carry a penalty, you can't Take 20 when using Disable Device to disarm them.

 

[Dwimmerlied]

as for the differences, taking 10 represents one careful attempt. Basically, the luck factor is taken out of the equation, and represents the character's ability to perform routine stuff easily.

IIRC, the trap only goes off if the check fails by 5 or more. I don't have my books handy, but if you do, check out the disable device description, it's pretty comprehensive. The beginning of the skills chapter also explains stuff pretty well.

 

[N'raac]

I generally interpret "Take 20" as "I will try over and over until it works or until I have tried everything I can think of". As Greenfield notes, that means you'll get a 20 sooner or later, and a 1 sooner or later, but if there's no impact on a fail, we'll abstract that to 20 tries, 1 with each roll, over 20x the usual time for a check.

So if the player tells me "I'll Take 20 on this Open Locks roll", I'll simply say "eventually it opens" (or "You can't seem to do it") and mark off the time for 20 attempts. But maybe there's a trap here that goes off after 5 rounds. In that case, I'll roll - after five tries, the trap goes off. If the second succeed, the trap will still go off in another three rounds. If he wants to Take 20 to disable a trap, again I start rolling, and keep rolling until either he succeeds, or he sets off the trap. Of course, if his roll is good enough that he can't set off the trap, or poor enough that he can't disarm it, then the result is a foregone conclusion and we can abstract it again with 20x the time expended and the only possible result arising.