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

[KarinsDad]

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.

On the surface, this seems like a reasonable suggestion.

Except that it does not really address the mathematical issue. The same problem occurs, but slightly obscured. The guy slightly better always succeeds and the guy slightly worse always almost succeeds (for a given DC).

Your suggestion here should be a part of the skills system regardless because it is lacking in many cases (although recently, many books have been putting in multiple DCs for varying degrees of Knowledge and other skills).

But, your suggestion does not come close to addressing the mathematical flaws in the mechanics.

Game designers for as complex a system as DND HAVE TO check out the math. They have to get a real high powered mathematics major looking over even short cut rules like Take 10 and Take 20 and seeing if they have holes. Your Joe Average gaming enthusiast will ignore the holes, even if they are explained to him (as evidenced by this thread).

As has been illustrated in this thread, the 3E/3.5 Take 10 and Take 20 are mathematically flawed. That might not bother some DMs and that's fine, but the facts are the facts.

4E will improve upon this aspect of the rules which generally bothers some of us because of its quirkiness, or it won't. Personally, I don't see why people are arguing against an improvement. Adversion to change maybe?

 

[Lanefan]

Once the trap is found, that may be all the time it takes.

Is forcing the Rogue to tell you "now I'm searching THIS five-foot square" really that rewarding?

Is forcing every Rogue to be the Search guy (or alternately forcing every Search guy to have at least one level of Rogue) good for anyone's fun?

I hate that traps:
1/ Force you to have a Rogue; and
2/ Force Rogues to Search & Disable.

In my games, Thief (Rogue) is already the least-played class. If you take away traps (thus don't need find-remove traps) and secret or concealed doors/items (thus no need for good search ability), you almost might as well sink the class completely because what reason is there to play one? Sure they can still open locks (but "Knock" takes care of that) and backstrike/sneak attack, and pick pockets (does anyone ever use that anymore in this era of goodly PCs and co-operative parties), but what else can they do that another class cannot?

And, traps are fun for *two* players even under worst-case scenario: the Thief's player, and the DM. Everyone always forgets the DM is allowed to have fun too....

The answer, of course, is to make the Thief/Rogue more valuable by taking away all the things that make her redundant...Knock spell, Lens of Secret Door Detection, Find Traps spell, etc....and let her do her job.

I almost sense this is a small aspect of a bigger issue that may well deserve its own thread: pace of play. 1e as written seemed to expect the pace to be quite slow, sometimes cautious, and generally much more meticulous than 3e. So many discussions here seem to be geared toward "how can we speed the game up", and removal of anything that takes any time. To this I say slow down and smell the flowers, immerse yourself in the richness instead of glossing things over, and accept that an adventure might take several sessions instead of just one, and a campaign might take 5 years instead of 2.

Lanefan

 

[KarinsDad]

The answer, of course, is to make the Thief/Rogue more valuable by taking away all the things that make her redundant...Knock spell, Lens of Secret Door Detection, Find Traps spell, etc....and let her do her job.

The problem with that answer is that it forces the party to have a Rogue in it, just to survive traps and open locked doors.

And quite frankly, the Find Traps spell sucks.

It would be nice to have a middle ground somewhere, but I cannot think of a good solution. Even changing some of those items and spells to be a mere bonus to the skill instead of being absolute successes only muddies the waters and doesn't really address the issue.

 

[Lanefan]

The problem with that answer is that it forces the party to have a Rogue in it, just to survive traps and open locked doors.

I fail to see a problem here...a party is equally "forced" to have a Cleric to cure, and a Fighter or equivalent to fight...why not a Rogue? A party without a Rogue just has to rely on door-bashing, and using summoned monsters or other expendables to find traps. But as Rogue *is* supposedly one of the core 4 elements to a party, might as well make it useful.

Lanefan

 

[Nifft]

My group's PCs got up to level 16 without a Cleric or Rogue. Why should anyone be forced to play either? I want my players to play characters they enjoy, not jobs that need a warm body.

The sort of "role monopoly" that you seem to be in favor of was one of the WORST design decisions made in 3.0e and kept in 3.5e, in my opinion. Why can't Wizards cast cure spells? It's not a balance issue, that's for sure -- those spells are inefficient.

Cheers, -- N

 

[Plane Sailing]

Another possibility (that might be unpalatable to some) would be to change this from a bug to a feature.

If a total score of +10 (from ranks plus ability mod) is classified as 'expert' in a skill, then you could reasonably expect the expert to reliably make DC20 checks by taking 10, and someone who was less than expert (total +9 or less) can't make the cut with such reliability.

So when someone in a game world is seeking 'an expert' in a particular subject area, whether it is a blacksmith, a sage or a tracker, they are basically looking for someone who can reliably hit a DC20 difficulty check, aka an expert in a skill, aka someone with a total +10 modifier.


After all, there is no real reason why there should be a linear growth were every point of modifier has exactly the same benefit. It is an attractive idea that every extra point in a skill gives a uniform benefit, but it isn't strictly necessary. Personally I find something that could map onto the old 'apprentice/journeyman/master' of guilds quite an attractive theme (and the intermediate skill bonuses reflect how good someone is within their 'station')

Cheers

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

In my games, Thief (Rogue) is already the least-played class. If you take away traps (thus don't need find-remove traps) and secret or concealed doors/items (thus no need for good search ability), you almost might as well sink the class completely because what reason is there to play one? Sure they can still open locks (but "Knock" takes care of that) and backstrike/sneak attack, and pick pockets (does anyone ever use that anymore in this era of goodly PCs and co-operative parties), but what else can they do that another class cannot?

I think I never wanted to play a Rogue for trap-finding. I wanted it for the Sneak Attack and for the major amounts of skill points I get to use for things like Bluff, Diplomacy, Sense Motive, Spot, Forgery, Tumble and what else there exists.
But whenever I tried to make a Rogue, I knew: If you don't take Search, Disable Device and Open Lock, you will not do what the group expects from you. There will be traps, everybody will be looking at you, and you will have to say "I have got no clue about that!".

I think the fact that the Rogues are the only ones that can find magical traps is not a positive feature for them. It's basically just as annoying as being the only one that can heal the group. And it might very well be the true reason why no one in your group enjoys playing a Rogue. Because they don't want to specialize their character in traps.

What all in all reduced the fun in D&D 3.x the most for me was the necessity of certain classes. Sure, we sometimes found ways around it, but it made some campaigns so incredibly difficult that it sometimes, it wasn't really fun. It was an exercise of maximizing an unoptimized group. Which wasn't always bad, because we enjoy power gaming and optimizing our group tactics. But sometimes it was a bit to tedious...
Often enough, character deaths eventually lead just to us falling back in the traditional Cleric/Rogue/Wizard/Fighter setup.
Our best way to circumvent the requirements so far was removing the need for Trap Sense and giving everyone 2 extra class skills and 2 extra skill points per level. In our Shackled City campaign, my Fighter had Balance and Open Lock, the Ranger took Disable Device and Tumble. That worked pretty well in the traps department. We had a Bard as third character, and only later we got a fourth character that was a Cleric. (Wow, did that help our group!)

 

[Dice4Hire]

I think I never wanted to play a Rogue for trap-finding. I wanted it for the Sneak Attack and for the major amounts of skill points I get to use for things like Bluff, Diplomacy, Sense Motive, Spot, Forgery, Tumble and what else there exists.
But whenever I tried to make a Rogue, I knew: If you don't take Search, Disable Device and Open Lock, you will not do what the group expects from you. There will be traps, everybody will be looking at you, and you will have to say "I have got no clue about that!".

That is when those ranks in bluff and diplomacy some in handy. A few in Heal are also appreciated.

 

[hong]

Except that it does not really address the mathematical issue. The same problem occurs, but slightly obscured. The guy slightly better always succeeds and the guy slightly worse always almost succeeds (for a given DC).

Nothing wrong with that.

On the average, the guy with +10 _should_ do better than the guy with +8. Take 10 just makes that consistent. If you're not letting random factors affect your performance, it stands to reason that your performance should not be subject to random variation.

 

[hong]

And I might add, in the past I've run things like reflexive Spot and Listen as auto-take 10. This basically means that Fred with Spot +20 will always see stuff that Joe with Spot +18 sees, who in turn will always see stuff that Mary with Spot +14 sees.

This hasn't caused any problems; if anything, I'd guess it made Fred's player feel good that those ranks in Spot were paying off. There might be a problem if Joe's player felt shortchanged that Fred always sees what he sees, but it hasn't happened. That's because Joe still always beats Mary; and sometimes Fred might not be there, or incapacitated, etc.