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

[Li Shenron]

I have no problems with Take 20.

I do have some minor open questions with Take 10, but nothing I cannot live with:

- Take 10 used for reactive checks (e.g. Listen & Spot), when the player doesn't choose to roll... when should the DM use take 10 and when not?

- there is a problem when you try to use Take 10 on something that rolling a 10 would mean failure: should the DM let the player know? how much should the character be able to guess he cannot make it?

- lots of people still pretend to use Take 10 with Knowledge checks because the rules don't specifically forbid it; the fact that Knowledge represents what you have learned and not the act of recalling what you know is the reason why you cannot retry Knowledge checks (until you gain another rank), but that actually also means it's wrong for a Knowledge check to depend on the circumstances at the time you answer the question (which is what taking 10 is about); still many refuse to understand and keep pointing that "take 10 has nothing to do with retries, so you must be able to Take 10 with knowledge"

 

[Geron Raveneye]

Personally, I don't think the game "needs" to handle this, any more than it needs to handle any other event of extremely low probability. It's possible that a meteor falls from the sky right in the middle of the PCs while they are on their way to the dungeon, but do we really need to dice for that? I find that the most interesting probabilities tend to be between 20% to 80%, anyway - not so low that the players get tired from rolling to succeed, and not so high that success is all but guaranteed. I suspect that this is part of what makes the math "work right" at the middle levels - the success rate for most tasks for most of the PCs fall within this range.

And yet Malhavoc Press published a whole sourcebook around the topic of meteors (and other stuff) falling from the sky. A damn interesting one, even, as far as I recall.

 

[Storm Raven]

Since threats are specified as Combat, each DM has to decide what distraction means. The rules do not specify it.

I have read the rules, which is why I was wondering if you had, given your question. Now I am left to wonder why you pose questions that you know are actually covered by the rules.

So one wonders why you asked the question in the first place, if you knew the rule, since it is covered by the rules.

 

[Storm Raven]

I was waiting for that counter argument (which I recognize is a valid one). In fact this is why take 20 was created as mentionned by a previous poster. But this was the worst sort of meta gaming under the old edition that any Dm worth his salt would have never allowed.

Why should a DM limit the ability of a player to keep searching until he is satisfied he has done a completely thorough job of it? Other than metagaming on the part of the DM, why does it make sense for him to say "three tries at searching and no more" or some other arbitrary number? All of the "fixes" proposed for Take 10/Take 20 are significantly clumsier than those rules, and make no sense.

 

[billd91]

I am creating an adventure and decides to place a secret room that will be very difficult to find but with extremely great rewards as a fun little extra if the players look at the right place. I know my players have search at +5. Without take 10/take 20 I put the DC at say 20 and know they have about 25% chance to find it. With take 20 I am now stuck. Either I put a DC below 25 and now the room will automatically be found or I put a DC above 25 and the room will never be found and then what's the point in creating it. There is then no way to create a reward proportional to the challenge because it's now an all or nothing proposition and basicaly as a DM I just know the room WILL be found or I don't create it. This creates extremely predictible adventures and linear situations of the worst kind.

Let's add the caveats:

If the search DC is set at 20, they'll find it easily IF they take 20 and have time to do so. If they feel time pressured, they may not take it.

If the DC is set higher than 20, they could still find it if they're using the aid another action and the secondary searchers are getting DC10 results on their search rolls.

Setting the Search DCs is rarely an all-or-nothing prospect unless you set the DCs so high that they could never match the results even with everybody successfully helping, but that would be the case even with die rolling so I really don't see the distinction.

 

[billd91]

Doing everything I can think of, in total, is a Take 20 and could take quite some time. But here's where the problem comes in: what if the keys are sitting right out in the open (i.e. normally a DC of about 2) and despite all my searching I idiotically don't see them? I've taken 20 (I'm absolutely convinced I've looked everywhere), and my search skill is higher than -18, but I still missed 'em. In other words, no matter what I do I can never remove *all* of the luck factor. The game needs to be able to handle this!

I really don't think it needs to do this in the sense that you miss something completely obvious in a thoroughly searched area. If you missed the easily found keys in a super-thorough search, I guess that's the 5' square you chose NOT to take 20 on...

 

[KarinsDad]

I have read the rules, which I why I was wondering if you had, given your question. Now I am left to wonder why you pose questions that you know are actually covered by the rules.

So one wonders why you asked the question in the first place, if you knew the rule, since it is covered by the rules.

The definition of the term distraction is not covered by the rules.

Since you are obviously in "SR rant rave" mode (i.e. using the words "you" and "I" more than any other words in your post), it's obvious that the discussion topic is no longer important. Talking about the other poster is the only important part of the discussion when you get in this mode.

So, I'll just be ignoring your posts for the rest of this thread.

 

[Storm Raven]

The definition of the term distraction is not covered by the rules.

Not specifically, no. But the term is used in the definition of Take 10, as in " Distractions or threats (such as combat) make it impossible for a character to take 10." Your question asked whether it would be kosher for a DM to rule that a character was distracted and hence could not take 10. Since this is easily answered by looking at the plain text of the rules, and taking the intent of question in the most charitable light, there are two possible reasons for this question:

(1) You didn't know the rule.
(2) You knew the rule, but aksed the question anyway for no apparent reason.

In one case, the asker is merely ignorant, which can be corrected. In the other, one is left to wonder why the question was asked at all, and furthermore what relevance does it have to anything related to the topic of the thread.

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

What can possibly be wrong with "I try {xxxxxx} - do I discover anything?" Far better than a dull, bland "Take 20 on Search"...

... Because "The Door Protocol" and "The Chest Protocol" and "The Wall Sconce Protocol" are neither creative nor particularly entertaining.

 

[Piratecat]

I really don't see any reason to keep this thread open.

Klunk.