D&D 3.x [3.5] No Take 10/20 specifics?

[Psion]

So how do you decide what constitutes "basic knowledge"?

GM call. The point not being that in this isntance that I think there needs to be one ruling for all knowledge skills (perhaps a few specifics might be appropriate). But rather, that knowledge skills are a specific example of a skill type that is not handled well across the board by the general take 10 rule.

 

[Bagpuss]

The odds of success should not be based on the player's gamble that his DC is high enough to make it by taking ten.

So instead the gamble is on the random roll of a dice, at least with take 10 the player knows they aren't going to get penalized for a unfortunate roll. 5 ranks and take 10, you get 15, 15 is pretty good result you know you are likely to know all but some obsure facts on the topic. 5 ranks and a d20 you roll and get 6, chances are you've somehow forgotten all but the basics of the field.

 

[buzz]

And here's the other sticking point for me. Usually, the player decides whether or not to take 10, by deciding to "take it easy" or whatever. How much sense does this make for a no-retry task like knowledge rolls? It doesn't make any sense. You either know the result or you don't. The odds of success should not be based on the player's gamble that his DC is high enough to make it by taking ten.

If knowledge is an either/or thing, that would imply *less* randomness to me, and anything that made a Knowledge check less random, such as taking 10, would make sense to me. Skill ranks are granular enough in D&D that there's no way I'd let a PC with even a single rank in a Knowledge skill blow a common DC10 check because of a bad roll.

AFAIC, disallowing take 10 on Knowledge checks hoses the player and makes the game less fun; if something makes the game less fun, it needs to get tossed.

 

[Rune]

It's always been that way -- it never took more time to take 10.

Yeah. Must be something that I latched onto in the pre-3.0 days, when we only knew enough about the rules to get us into trouble.

And how does reacting to something imply distraction? If I'm looking for somebody, and they're hiding, how does my reacting to their hiding imply that I'm distracted from looking for them? I don't get it at all.

My reasoning is something along the lines of this:

The very fact that you have to react to something means you're already in a state of distraction. To comment on your example, if you are actively looking for someone, you're not reacting, you're actively acting. (Perhaps I can coin a phrase here? Proacting?)

 

[Psion]

So instead the gamble is on the random roll of a dice, at least with take 10 the player knows they aren't going to get penalized for a unfortunate roll.

And instead, they are going to get penalized by an unfortunate guess. No, that's not any better. If it's going to be "guess or roll" and be random, then I'd say skip the damn guessing game and just roll.

Worse yet, the player might be metagaming it and using some knowledge of the DC that he shouldn't have, in which case I also say: skip the metagaming and just roll.

In short, I think that when you are talking about no-retry knowledge skill checks, the GM should be making the take-ten call, not the player.

 

[Pielorinho]

If knowledge is an either/or thing, that would imply *less* randomness to me, and anything that made a Knowledge check less random, such as taking 10, would make sense to me. Skill ranks are granular enough in D&D that there's no way I'd let a PC with even a single rank in a Knowledge skill blow a common DC10 check because of a bad roll.

Exactly.

I think the real problem with Take 10 is twofold:
1) Folks keep getting it confused with the mechanics for take 20; and
2) Folks keep thinking the rule should have exceptions, when really it has extremely few exceptions.

Neither of these, IMO, is a problem with the rules. I think it's a fine dynamic the way it is, and shouldn't have many exceptions. The fewer exceptions, the easier it is to learn, and the less need there is for people to look up every skill to see whether they're allowed to take 10 on it.

I will concede that, although the rule for taking 20 is explicit, it does require a bit of thought on each use of the skill to determine whether the skill's use allows taking 20; to make things simple, perhaps a take 20 listing for each skill would be nice. HOWEVER, that gets complicated: some skills allow taking 20 in some circumstances but not in others (e.g., if I want to disable somebody's clock so that they can't tell time any more, I can take 20 on it; if I want to disable a trap, I can't take 20 on it).

But the take 10 rules are:
1) Unambiguous; and
2) Reasonable.

Daniel

 

[Psion]

I don't think Psion is confused: I think he just disagrees with the unambiguous rules. (Sorry if I'm wrong, Psion -- I just don't get much confusion from you over what the rules actually state).

Nope, right on the nose.

I thought the point of this thread was talking about whether the rules should be different, not about what the rules actually say. Which is why I found Joshua's little lecture a little frustrating yesterday.

 

[Joshua Randall]

I agree with Daniel (Pielorinho) almost 100% here. The Take 10 rules are very clear. You might not like them, but they are clear.

The Take 20 rules sometimes confuse people (generally people who don't understand the part about "penalty for failure") and require more a DM judgement in some cases. So what's new? D&D has always been about DMs making judgements.

When in doubt, I go by what Sean K. Reynolds recommends in the article on his web site.

Now I'm finished discussing this. It's getting pointless and redundant.

Edit: Psion, here is what buzz (the thread starter) originally posted:

If there's any rule that I find players continually forgetting to use, it's Take 10/20.

The Star Wars RCR and d20 Modern both specifically state in each skill description when you can or can't Take 10/20. This was obviously a great idea, seemingly learning from the utter vagueness the 3.0e contained on the subject; we would end up consulting the SW skill descriptions all the time in our D&D games.

Why in deity's name couldn't they have done this in 3.5e as well? I can't fathom the logic.

I don't read anything there about wanting to change the Take 10/20 rules - just a desire to clarify them.

 

[Henry]

Moved to D&D Rules.

 

[The Little Raven]

I had this same problem with my players, taking 10 on Spellcraft checks to learn any spell they came across, so I came up with a reasonable solution.

You can only take 10 to learn spells of one level lower than your highest level spell. So a 5th-level wizard could take 10 to learn 2nd-, 1st-, and 0-level spells, but would be required to roll normally for a 3rd-level spell. Once he reaches 7th-level, he can take 10 on 3rd-level spells as well (but not 4th-level).

And you can't take 20 on these checks... because if you fail, you can't learn the spell, and taking 20 assumes failure until you take the required amount of time.

One of my players asked to take 20 on a Disable Device check... I handed him the 3.5 book, flipped to the take 20 rules and told him to read them carefully, then tell me if he wanted to take 20 with Disable Device... after reading it three times, he said yes, and was killed by a poison trap he set off.