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

[Felon]

I think that proves that logic works differently for different people...

Agreed. Personally I think the take 10 and take 20 rules work just fine, and I'm not seeing anything in this thread which changes that opinion.

Feel free to rebutt the arguements presented, rather than just post to announce that you're dismissive of them.

 

[hong]

Feel free to rebutt the arguements presented, rather than just post to announce that you're dismissive of them.

Both take 10 and take 20 are aimed at reducing the variance of the result for a given individual, so of course they will play silly buggers with the probabilities. That's the point.

For take 10, you can deal with the variance between individuals by adopting some kind of partial success/failure rule. Under the current rules, the guy with +8 completely fails a DC 20 check, and the guy with +10 completely succeeds. If, say, a result that's up to 5 below the DC is a "partial failure" and up to 5 above the DC is a "partial success", that can bring the difference in results closer together: now the +8 guy gets partial failure, while the +10 guy gets partial success.

Take 20 is nothing more than a shortcut for rerolling a skill check. The only time that this causes difficulties is with Search; I haven't seen anyone complain about taking 20 on a Listen check, or a Climb check, or a Jump check (assuming a failure doesn't mean you fall into lava or something). This suggests that Search should be rewritten/clarified so that people won't have problems with taking 20 with it (under the allowed circumstances). For other skills, you can again address the variance between individuals with a partial success/failure rule.

 

[Wormwood]

Traps need to go away as written. I'd like to see them completely re-done to be better.

Why? Because traps are "fun" for one PC (the Rogue). Everyone else sits there and watches.

Exactly. I would like to see 'encounter zones' become the the 4e equivalent of the 'trap'.

 

[Glyfair]

If it must be kept, it should be refined to Take 18, to take away that absoluteness and keep some of the mystery.

If there was a "take 18" rule no one would use it. They'd just keep rolling and rolling until they succeed or roll a 20 (if they don't make the rolls they'd keep trying until satisfied that they would have rolled a 20.

Traps need to go away as written. I'd like to see them completely re-done to be better.

Why? Because traps are "fun" for one PC (the Rogue). Everyone else sits there and watches.

Based on comments from Mike Mearls (and probably others), it sounds like you might get your wish. Trap rules are definitely changing, and it sounds like it might be more of a group effort thing.

 

[Felon]

Traps need to go away as written. I'd like to see them completely re-done to be better.

Why? Because traps are "fun" for one PC (the Rogue). Everyone else sits there and watches.

Secret doors are "fun" for one PC (the Elf). Everyone else sits there while he walks within 5 ft. of every square in the room. (This whole concept is a relic from when we thought having players make their own map was fun. And actually mapping kinda was fun. It just took too much time away from other, more fun stuff.)

And the first thing they can do along the way? Get rid of the silly "find traps" ability and just give rogues a healthy bonus to it if they still want to keep rogues as the dungoneer experts class. It's silly and archaic in a skill-based system.

Well, this line of discussion underscores how D&D has experienced a shift in the way people are expected to play. Back in the day, players were expected to proceed with caution at every step. Dungeons were intended to be regarded as a place where sudden death was the customary price to pay for impulsive tactics. I recall the amount of time spent executing all kinds of crazy precautions on a door just because it happened to be sitting at the end of a long hallway ("bet there's a lightning bolt trap--or a ballista waiting to spring!"). And y'know what? Oddly enough, I recall enjoying it. As Nif points out, it was a kind of puzzle.

The rogue's ability to find and diarm traps was usually just a fallback position; it was something to do to speed the game up in the instances where the players or DM rand out of the time or patience to treat a door or a hallway or a chest like a puzzle. It was something to resort to when it was three in the morning and the caffenated beverages were running low. Same thing with finding secret doors. Much of the time, the trigger for opening a secret door was incorporated into the room's description. It was a matter of being methodical. If you twisted stuffed moose's antler just so, a door would unlock. No check required. Again, it was a reward for being detail-oriented.

So, I'm back to wondering what purpose the Search skill check element serves in 3e. If the consensus now indicates that hidden suprises are considered a waste of time that could be beter spent rolling initiative, then instead of reducing the search to a bland, perfunctory skill check that kills the fun of looking for easter eggs ("OK, eventually you find that turning the stuffed moose's antler just opens a hidden panel--here, have some treasure"), just ditch the easter eggs. I recall enjoying Tome of Horrors immensely as a kid. I wouldn't touch the 3.5 version with a ten foot pole (ah, ten foot poles--anyone remember those?).

 

[Felon]

Presumably you inform a player beforehand whether searching a particular area involves hands on work or not? I can imagine players deciding against searching something if the DM says 'you'll have to shift a lot of papers to search that corner'; Similarly If someone says "I want to use search to spot any triggers or tripwires in this area" and you said "when you touch the door jamb, the bomb goes off" I could imagine an aggrieved player coming back with 'hey, I didn't say I was *touching* anything!'

i.e. Saying that search sometimes involves touching things seems OK to me as long as you let the PC know beforehand whether it will or not, so they have the choice as to whether to proceed with the search (knowing likely consequences).

Eminently reasonable.

 

[Transit]

I vote to completely get rid of both Take 10 and Take 20.

If a player is in a position to be able to roll a check over and over, it should be up to the DM to decide "fine, you keep trying and eventually you succeed." It's really just a gamplay issue, for speeding up play and moving the story along.

Trying to make actual game rules out of Take 10/Take 20 just leads to lots of confusion and misuse, and players trying to twist the rules so they can succeed at things they would otherwise be unable to do with normal checks. And no one even seems able to agree on what skills you can and cannot use Take 20/Take 10 with.

I think the 4E rules for skill checks should just say something like "If it's obvious the check can continue without interruption and will eventually succeed, the DM should feel free to just skip ahead to the successfull result" and leave the rest up to the DM and the particular in-game circumstances.

 

[hong]

I vote to completely get rid of both Take 10 and Take 20.

If a player is in a position to be able to roll a check over and over, it should be up to the DM to decide "fine, you keep trying and eventually you succeed." It's really just a gamplay issue, for speeding up play and moving the story along.

Unless the check is difficult enough, in which case you keep trying but fail. How do you distinguish between the two?

 

[Felon]

For take 10, you can deal with the variance between individuals by adopting some kind of partial success/failure rule. Under the current rules, the guy with +8 completely fails a DC 20 check, and the guy with +10 completely succeeds. If, say, a result that's up to 5 below the DC is a "partial failure" and up to 5 above the DC is a "partial success", that can bring the difference in results closer together: now the +8 guy gets partial failure, while the +10 guy gets partial success.

Well, we have that now to some degree for some skill checks, like Climb, Disable Device, Jump, Swim, and Balance. They have two degrees of failures: one where you simply fail to make progress, and another that's a major debacle (falling, drowining, setting off the trap). I suppose someone who takes 10 and just slightly fails at least has the comfort of not suffering a major debacle.

Take 20 is nothing more than a shortcut for rerolling a skill check. The only time that this causes difficulties is with Search; I haven't seen anyone complain about taking 20 on a Listen check, or a Climb check, or a Jump check (assuming a failure doesn't mean you fall into lava or something).

From anotehr perspective, take 20 can be considered a longhand for "if you persist, you can eventually succeed, no check required". As I've said, Search is noteworthy because it makes it possible to find stuff when you aren't looking for anything in particular or haven't even been paying much attention ("huh, there was a stuffed moose?").

Unless the check is difficult enough, in which case you keep trying but fail. How do you distinguish between the two?

He's talking about DM fiat. If the DM thinks you'd succeed, you succeed. If he thinks you'd keep failing, you keep failing, at least until you tried something differently.

 

[billd91]

I've never had a problem with the Take10 and Take20 rules. As I see it, they're just quick ways to handle a character doing relatively routine things quickly, without stopping for a die roll.

In the case of Taking10 the character just does an average job, quite useful for things done routinely. In the case of a game I'm running, the scout checks the way ahead with a cursory search in each area of the corridor, taking10 on his search roll. It enables me, as DM to judge whether or not he finds some basic corridor traps without the player having to roll every 5' square.

In the case of Taking20, it's just the PC spending time and doing the best job the PC can do... which says little about whether or not the job is actually doable by the PC. The search DC might still be too high for the PC taking 20 to achieve. So it's not really a case of the DM just saying that the PCs search until they succeed. Getting a 20 on a skill check does not mean they succeed. It just means they do the best they can do.

I think it's also important to stress how much time it does take compared to rolling a single die on a single check. I've given the PCs situations in which taking 20 was not really possible given the time constraints they were under (not without being discovered and attacked by alert guards, anyway) so they had to resort to basing their hastier search rolls on the clues I gave them from the room description.

As far as whether or not searching requires manipulating/moving things, I assume it does in some cases. If there's something hidden in a bed, they'll most likely have to touch or move the bed to get at it. The relative success of their search check indicates whether or not their PC thought to move the bed. If they succeed at the roll, obviously they did so. If they took 20, I also think that makes it obvious they did so as well. But what I also assume is that the touching is done after first eyeballing the situation and that any movement is done carefully. Therefore, I don't assume they automatically trip the trap that is triggered by moving the mattress by conducting their search. If their search check had been enough to detect the trap, I assume their search found the trap before triggering it, thus putting the moving of the mattress on hold until the trap is dealt with. As a result, I'm pretty much assuming that traps are to be found before anything else, given a good search result.

Given the way I do things, I don't really see a problem with taking 20 on searches. It's not auto-success. It's not an insta-find, except in the way it is adjudicated. The PCs still spend the time, which can have consequences (certainly for spell duration expiration if nothing else).

I can see the OP point that taking 10 on a task like climbing can lead to weird appearances of success vs failure. And the character on the less successful end of things has to be made subject to risks the PC with one more point of the skill is not subject to. If that PC with the +9 on his climb must roll to make the DC 20 climb check, he might miss by more than 5 and fall, something the PC with +10 on his climb is not subject to due to the Taking10 shortcut. But I still think taking 10 has a positive use here. At some point, a PC is skilled enough at something that it's not really worth making a check for certain kinds of tasks. I'm content with it coming down to a difference of 1 point in skill modifiers, in part, because the better skilled PC can always Aid Another to extend that 1 point difference into auto-success on taking10 for other PCs with similar skill levels. Other PCs will still have trouble even with the help, but that just serves to illustrate that they're that much farther behind the more skilled PC anyway and shouldn't be given the same benefit of the doubt he's given when it comes to accomplishing tasks he's well skilled in.

I guess that's a bit of a ramble but that helps outline my philosophy on why taking10 and taking20 aren't bad.