Getting rid of "Taking 10"

[Mattachine]

Generally speaking, I don't think the subject is simple at all to solve... Automatic success/failure is going to cause a lot of dissatisfaction with some tasks, such as detecting secret doors or traps. Players will just say "from now on, I am always in detect mode" and the DM has to decide if they will always or never find them. That's not fun...

Please let 5e avoid "detect mode" like the plague. Back when I DMed 1e and 2e, players often used the words "detect mode" to mean searching for traps and secret doors every 10'. That meant that their characters were plodding along at a snails pace, there were interminable die rolls, and there was no point in placing traps or secret doors anymore.

Fourth edition dealt with this by assuming that adventurers are cautious by nature, and included Passive checks. No special mode is detected, except for very clueless PCs, you will notice the obvious, and the PCs that are very perceptive notice most things that are moderately hidden.

Rolling for every action and skill was a common way to slow the game down in 3e.

Additionally, just being able to roll once, or roll until you get it, also was a strange mechanic back in 1e. I am thinking not only of secret door searches, but also of open doors rolls. I hated when the strong PC, who opened the door on 1-5 out of 6, failed, but the weak PC, who only opened the door on 1 out of 6, succeeded. The first time it happens, the PCs joke how the strong guy must have loosened the door (if so, why couldn't he try again?). The second, third, etc. times, it's just obvious metagame rules mechanics, laughable, and unsatisfying.

 

[WheresMyD20]

We shouldn't need a mechanic for this. If the DM thinks you can't fail or can't succeed, then he shouldn't ask you to roll for it. If he thinks failure is a possibility, then he asks for a roll.

 

[WheresMyD20]

Please let 5e avoid "detect mode" like the plague. Back when I DMed 1e and 2e, players often used the words "detect mode" to mean searching for traps and secret doors every 10'. That meant that their characters were plodding along at a snails pace, there were interminable die rolls, and there was no point in placing traps or secret doors anymore.

Were you tracking time and using wandering monsters? Using "detect mode" should result in the party getting worn out from having to fight low treasure/XP wandering monsters.

There needs to be some sort of trade-off. A smart party should be able to figure out when it's worth taking time to search for traps/secret doors. Wandering monsters are a necessary pressure to keep them from searching all the time.

 

[CM]

Like I mentioned in my other post, if the PC does fail the check then it becomes one of those rare instances that do happen. In my games a 1 always fails no matter what. I don't care if you have +50 to the check because like I said earlier, it's not always the PC that's at fault it could be outside intervention.

Are you telling me that a master locksmith sitting at a desk with a pile of simple locks is going to fail to open 5% of them?

Or that a master herbalist is going to fail to spot the poison mushrooms 5% of the time and feed them to her family?

Or that the tightrope walker falls to his death 5% of the time?

I am fine with the taking 10 rule and it seems that 5e will have that concept even more ingrained into the system, making rolls unnecessary for tasks that are simple for a skilled character.

 

[El Mahdi]

Honestly it doesn't matter what the "take" is, higher takes will just mean higher DCs. Sure, the 18str breaks down the DC 15 door, but lets face it, the guy with 18 str was probably going to have a 5-8 in their athletics skill and break down the door anyway. Really, a guy with 18 str is probably not going to fail on a DC 15 check anyway. Probability is low.

Yes, the probablility would be low. But with the system as is (without the automatic successes that 5E is bringing), no matter how good you were, no matter how high your ability score, ranks, or levels, you always had at least a 5% chance of failure (1 on 1d20). 5E is eliminating that for high scores and high skill ranks (like Monte's Legends & Lore article about having ranks like Expert and Master, etc. with skills).



Correction, Li Shenron is correct. There is no automatic success (on 20) or automatic failure (on 1) in 3E or 3.5E. I've always played it that way though, I just don't know how we started using that. Every group I've ever played with has done the same...

 

[Sunseeker]

A is how it works for taking 10. You can't take 10 if you are threatened or distracted.

B is how it works for taking 20. You can't take 20 if you are threatened or distracted, or don't have sufficient time (at least a couple of minutes). And you can only take 20 if there is no adverse effect for failure (if there is an adverse result for failure, you can only take 10).

Yeah, I just don't even allow "taking a 20", no matter how much time or space or security the person trying has. I can tolerate taking 10's given good circumstances, but taking 20's is just pushing it too far in my book. But hey that's just IMO.

So then why add in the additional subsystem of "athletics" when it wasn't necessary?

Honestly I can see the argument for doing away with skills entirely and just leaving it up to the players to provide a reasoning as to why their attempt at X would use Y stat. For some abilities at least, I think certain skills aren't quite as intuitive as kicking down a door.

Correction, Li Shenron is correct. There is no automatic success (on 20) or automatic failure (on 1) in 3E or 3.5E. I've always played it that way though, I just don't know how we started using that. Every group I've ever played with has done the same...

Yeah, it's not a book-rule, but it is IMO, a good one and like you most games I've been in used it.

 

[Dausuul]

Only if you have an "automatic failure" rule, which was not the case in 3ed.

Point taken, but the OP's complaint about taking 10 was that it removed the chance of failure. The lack of an automatic failure rule has the same effect.

The thing about a d20 system is that granularity is limited; you can have a 5% chance of failure, or a 0% chance of failure, but nothing in between*. Both "take 10" and "no automatic failure" account for the fact that in most tasks, 5% is a disastrously high failure rate.

[size=-2]*Unless you add a confirmation roll or something else of that nature. Which you could do, but it hardly seems worth it.[/size]

 

[1Mac]

*Unless you add a confirmation roll or something else of that nature. Which you could do, but it hardly seems worth it.

That's more or less what I do, actually. It's totally worth it!

 

[was]

I never believed in taking 20. Taking 10 was alright, but always when you weren't being pressured. Which wasn't very often.

 

[Li Shenron]

The thing about a d20 system is that granularity is limited; you can have a 5% chance of failure, or a 0% chance of failure, but nothing in between*. Both "take 10" and "no automatic failure" account for the fact that in most tasks, 5% is a disastrously high failure rate.

Interesting observation, I haven't though of Take 10 in that light...

Normally I don't care for more granularity. How many people can "feel" the difference between 60% and 65%? But I might feel some difference between failing once-in-20 and e.g. once-in-100 at least if we're talking about something that I do over an over.