Anyone else hope the rules for taking 10 & 20 see some revision?

[heirodule]

The Take 10/20 rules are fine as written and work great.

My problem with them is that many people have NO CLUE how they work. I played a bunch of games at GenCon and was shocked (and appalled) at how many people either a) flat-out didn't use them when it was blatantly obvious or b) got mad when I tried to encourage people to do so.

If anything, taking 10 and 20 are a 3ed rule that is intended to speed up play.

Theres an RPGA LG module that docks you XP for taking 10 because the author thinks it's "Bad roleplaying"

 

[heirodule]

Isn't that a failure of how the skill system works then. Really the same thing could happen when rolling. If I roll a 15 but needed a 16 I missed it by one point - close does not count.

The missed climbing check could be interpreted as someone who almost made it but got a little overconfident and grabbed a loose rock or something.

See, in 4e, you'll have at-will action points for use with take 10 situations. And 1/encounter action points for combat rolls, and 1/day action points (2d6) for diplomacy checks

 

[Felon]

Cool. Thanks.

That is a fine argument, and I rather agree with the sentiment. But riddle me this, Batman: is there any rules support for it? The rules seem silent on when you make your Hide check. The way I've always seen it played, the hider makes his check when he declares that he's hiding. Then any spotters will make their own Spot checks against that one Hide check. It feels natural to me to do this, nothing in the rules says we shouldn't, and Sean Reynolds thinks that's how it should be.

Personally, I think there's a prima facie element to deciding that the time for a check is when the challenge actually presents itself. I guess I could decide to disarm all the traps in a dungeon before I actually enter it. It would certainly be more efficient and speed up gameplay than actually waiting to come up against one. I could just tell the DM "oh, here's the one I rolled badly on, so blow me up" but something about that seems wrong. Maybe it's just me.

OK, facetiousness aside, I'll bite. Let me see if I have this right. I can make a Hide check in advance, and put it on ice until somebody gets around to opposing it? So, when I get a great roll on my Hide check (putting aside for a moment the issue of taking 20), shouldn't I try to milk it as long as I can, declare that as my check in perpetuity against anyone who might ever try to detect me? Once you can "oppose in advance", you then beg the question of your check having an expiration date. Does my Hide check only last until I get to the end of this row of bushes, or can I keep it when I'm at that hedge of trees over there?

And, an even more salient question, if I roll like crap on my post-dated opposed check, how long do I have to sit on that bad roll? You better believe I'm going to unhide and rehide as quickly as I can. I might as well be able to take 20, since I"m just going to hit the reset button until I get a check I like.

Now, getting back on-topic, it's just a darn lousy idea to have people able to pad their opposed skill checks with a take 20. Generally on one side of the check is the aggressor and on the other is a guy who's just reacting. The aggressor will often have advance knowledge of the upcoming skill check, and gets to hedge his bets. The reactor only gets this benefit if he's just sitting around waiting to be opposed by whomever (maybe he can get up in the morning and take 20 on some Spot and Sense Motive checks for future use). Once again, we're talking about using take 20 to make a canard out of haing a check.

I dunno, just seems a heck of a lot more logical to handle opposed checks as dynamic contests where you succeed or fail at the critical moment, not two minutes before the critical moment.

 

[Felon]

Are you suggesting that they... ban bards?

Oh, here's a violin playing just for the bards!

Wait. They can play their own violins. Screw'em.

 

[Storm Raven]

"Come back when your Search skill has improved, then you may check again."

"So, a six second search of a ten foot area is all you can expect to be able to do?"

 

[Lanefan]

I think you're looking at it the wrong way. If folks are playing the rogue out of the necessity to have someone to deal with traps, then the rogue is alredy sunk: the rogue is de facto lame at that point, because playing classes out of necessity rather than desire is lame.

They usually play one out of a need to deal with locks, as I don't use *that* many traps. That said, I'd like to try to find ways to make them more useful and-or necessary rather than try to sink them outright.

In 3e, traps are generally boring. In 3e, picking pockets is generally unnecessary (because there's an inherent assumption that characters will gain significant wealth as they level).

Then design better traps. As for picking pockets, a true Thief (i.e. greed-motivated) would still do so anyway, I'd think, yet one never hears of it now.

If you don't have somebody longing to play a smart, skill-oriented character, then the other major attraction is sneak attack. If sneak attack isn't appealing, then you might want to evaluate the amount of undead, constructs, and other annoying uncritables that the players have to fight.

That's one rule I'd throw out in a heartbeat, changed to anything that can take damage can take critical damage. Everything - even a construct - has a key piece that holds it together; all you have to do is find it and hit it.

Then again, what's wrong with nobody wanting to play a class? I used to have a DM who tried everything he could think of to make bards an appealing class. I alsways used to ask him that very question. If you own a restaurant, and people seem to enjoy your cooking, why would you care if nobody ordered the poached salmon? Forget the salmon. Strike it from the menu.

I'm not about to ban Thieves. As I said above, I'd rather make them more playable by giving them their niche back that all the other classes...ironically enough...stole.

Lanefan

 

[Geron Raveneye]

"You generally must be within 10 feet of the object or surface to be searched."

Fortunately, given that my arms aren't ten feet long, I'm confident that I didn't touch the object I was searching even slightly.

-Hyp.

That's the fun part about the abstract nature of D&D rules...they can work for and against the player (or the DM, of course).

See, my PHB describes this example in the paragraph about retries:
"For example, if Lidda the rogue misses an Open Lock check, she can try again and keep trying. If, however, a trap in the lock goes off if she misses an Open Lock check by 5 or more, then failing has its own penalties."

You'll notice that the the skill description generally doesn't mention a penalty for a failed Open Lock check by 5 or more. That means the result was brought in by the trap. It didn't mention which tumbler had to be touched, or if the trap is triggered by touching the lock's frame, or whatever. It's simply a trap with the trait "lock trap, goes off when an Open Lock check is missed by 5 or more".

Similarly I could design a trap that goes off if the Search check is missed by 5 or more. Why? Because for that trap, the failure doesn't just mean "you didn't find it" but it means "you didn't find it, but stepped into it while searching". After all, when you search for something, you don't know where it is exactly, and if you fail bad enough with that trap in your search, you completely missed the signs of where it is and blundered right into it.

That is, if you keep to the abstract nature of simply rolling skill checks against equally abstract traps.

Just wanted to throw this in here. Of course, with this trap, you couldn't Take 20 either.

 

[S'mon]

As GM I think there's a problem with Take 20 on search rolls - at 2 minutes per 5' square it doesn't take long, and it entirely eliminates uncertainty - either that secret door is unfindable or it will automatically be found. Likewise for locks, either the lock is unpickable or will automatically be picked. This greatly alters the dynamics of D&D; it means the GM can know in advance what will happen in a way that didn't exist with "detects secret doors 1 in 6" or "35% to pick locks" rules.

Now, maybe that's a good thing in 3e, where the prep & rules load on the GM is much higher than in prior editions, but it does reduce spontaneity and, for me, some of the excitement of the dungeon adventure.

 

[Geron Raveneye]

The basic problem I have with Take 20 is the fact that it applies to every skill that can be retried without penalty for failure, and simulates the player rolling often enough to finally hit 20. So basically it took some bad habit that arose from metagame thinking, and made it a core rule to shorten time...but doesn't apply common sense to the situation at hand. Because basically what happens is that a rogue is searching a specific 5 foot square over and over and over, even if he didn't find anything at the first try. Which, at some point, simply sounds extremely comical, if you think about it...a rogue sitting in a dungeon, staring at one 5 foot square, mumbling "but there MUST be something, I just have to look hard enough".

I know it's nitpicky, but I wish they simply had made Take 20 the aforementioned "Take your time" rule, and stated that it simply means the character being extra careful, slow and methodical, etc. It would have given it all a different flavour altogether, in my opinion.

Take 10 is not so much a problem, since it implies the character is using his "average" amount of competence in trying to overcome an obstacle, and if that's not enough, it simply isn't enough, and he has to try harder. The problem might be that the 5% difference that come with using a d20 may look small compared to the 50/50 chance he suddenly has of not making the climb check (for example), and the 25% chance he has of falling, while the other guy takes 10 and looks surprised his buddy can't keep up...but otherwise, we'd have to use a d100, and even there you can get moments where a tiny difference can give you a huge competence gap all of a sudden. So either we need to eliminate the Take 10 rule, modify it (Take 5, and change "Average" difficulty to a DC of 5), or live with the fact that people whose average performance isn't enough to overcome a lots more than average challenge face a real and threatening chance of failure. After all, a Climb check DC 20 is not Average (DC 10), but Challenging, and something challenging should be average only if you are REALLY good (Skill bonus +10, for example, is pretty good, since you have to be 7th level to get there in the first place for a class skill).

 

[Gentlegamer]

"So, a six second search of a ten foot area is all you can expect to be able to do?"

"No, you searched quite a bit longer than that, but at your present skill level, you couldn't find anything. There may not be anything to find, but if you wish to search for traps again, come back when your skill has increased. Or describe to me in more detail where and how you are searching and we can play that out. If you want to just roll for it though, you'll need to increase your skill rank to get another crack at it."