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Thanks for the suggestion, Li. I agree that performing one of these checks should take longer than 6 seconds, so I will definitely consider how long such a check should take. (15 minutes seems reasonable.) But I have little doubt that the player I have in mind would simply grab the body and...

I have a player in my group who likes to use the Heal skill to try to figure out how a corpse died. The cheesiness of how much information he can sometimes get from this tactic has made it an inside joke among our gaming group. Whenever he tries it, we always start humming the theme song to...

I disagree that Taking 10 is the same as taking your time and being as careful as possible, and here's why: you can Take 10 in a single round (i.e. six seconds). I'm trying to find a mechanic that allows you to really take your time, size up the situation, and do the best you possibly can...

Earlier today, I started a thread about Taking 20 in which I learned a lot in a very short amount of time. (Thanks to those who helped me understand how it works.) In particular, I learned that you can't Take 20 to disarm a trap without setting it off. And the reason why is because Taking 20...

Thanks for the link, Delta!

So now I want to focus on a part of my original question that got a bit submerged under all the other stuff before. Is there anything in the D&D rules which simulates a person taking their time, concentrating, and being careful so that their first attempt is the best it can possibly be? Again...

If there are those who are interested in this topic but don't want to take the time to read the 2 threads that Infiniti2000 gave us links to, the following post seemed to be the most informative. What I'm learning from this experience is that my fellow gamers and I have been doing Take 20s all...

Thanks for your response, Infiniti. You say there is some debate about what the rules say about Taking 20 on Disable Device checks. Here is what they say verbatim: "Since taking 20 assumes that the character will fail many times before succeeding, if you did attempt to take 20 on a skill that...

I'm not a new DM, but I'm usually a player. So I could definitely use some help with my DMing. Here's what I'm struggling with the most in my games: deciding when to allow players to Take 20 on a skill check. As far as I can tell, the official rules on when a player can Take 20 are that it...

I play in two campaigns where the players have multiple characters. In one military-themed campaign, each player started off with 6 characters - a seargeant and a small squad of 5 enlisted men. Of course, our group has incurred losses, but each player still controls 3 or more characters. In...

I'm INTP.

Delta makes a good distinction. However, to clarify, I mean *both*. I mean the surprise round itself (the round during which every character may only take a partial action *if* they are aware of the attack), *and* the condition of being flat-footed (which begins during the surprise round and...

Back when I was playing the Temple of Elemental Evil computer game, I noticed that it always included a Surprise Round at the beginning of every combat, even if my characters had already noticed the bad guys before the combat started. However, in the face-to-face campaigns I play in, surprise...

In the campaigns I participate in, the players roll (pretty much) everything associated with their characters, including info-sensitive rolls like Spot, Listen, Sense Motive, etc. The main reason is that it is just too time-consuming for the DM to keep track of every player's modifiers. (DMs...

In the campaigns that my friends and I are in, there is a certain understanding between all the players/DMs involved: DMs fudge a bit for the characters until the cleric hits 9th level (and can cast Raise Dead). After that, the kid gloves come off.

We are too lazy to paint, so we use unpainted metal miniatures and pre-painted plastic miniatures for every combat. I've recently come to the realization that my friends and I have turned D&D into more of a skirmish-level tactical wargame than a role-playing game. For us, the role-playing we...

This question should be a poll topic. That way I could just click "ripping character sheets is offensive" without having to submit a "me too" reply. But here I go... Me too! Ripping character sheets is offensive because a) I keep old beloved characters in a file, and b) the practice gives...

That's funny! My gaming group and I were just talking a few days ago about "words we learned from Gary Gygax". Here are the ones that leap to mind for me. (Please keep in mind that I was 10 years old at the time.) keep (as in "on the borderlands") melee dais bas-relief boon companion pole...

Of course, this is even stickier, because Yoda *lied*. Luke *didn't* die and neither did his friends! Well, I guess we could just say that Yoda was *wrong* instead of saying that he outright lied. But if we are likening Yoda to the DM in the original example, then the DM is offering up...

Works well for small groups. When you only have 2 or 3 players, allowing players to run multiple PCs is a great solution. The current campaign I'm playing in has a military theme, and each of the 3 players started the campaign with 6 PCs, a leader character with a PC class and 5 subordinates...