nittanytbone said:
Time pressure is the only way to discourage Taking 20 for Search checks.
Any decent rogue will ALWAYS take 20 to search every suspicious surface if there's no reason not to.
Not exactly true--or, to be more accurate myself, there is almost always a reason not to. It is easy to forget how long it takes to actually perform a take 20 search: 2 minutes per 5x5 square. Not bad? Well that means that it will take ten minutes to go down a 25x25 hallway. Search a 20x20 room (which is fairly small as far as many dungeons go)? That will be 32 minutes. Since it was convenient, I just went to my closet and pulled out Defenders of the Faith. The small sample temple to Erythnul (hidden in the wine cellar of a popular tavern) would take 3 hours and 20 minutes just to take 20 on the wine cellar. If you wanted to take 20 on the shrine and the closet, you're looking at 11 hours and 48 minutes.... and that's for a simple three room dungeon. If you wanted to take 20 searching the first floor of the mount baden chapterhouse in the same book, it would take days--and that's before you explore any cellars or the second floor.
Now, let's compare the time to simply search each square in the Erythnul temple once: 35.4 minutes. That's still a fairly long time, but it's much more reasonable. At that pace, you could go through a mid level dungeon and still have some spells active by the time you reach the next room.
The smart rogue does not take 20 on the entire dungeon. If you ask me, the smart rogue takes 20 only on places that are likely to have a trap--chests, strongboxes, vault doors, suspicious statues, etc. Otherwise, even exploring a dangerous dungeon, the rogue will at most roll three times on every square. (Or take ten once and roll once). But that also depends upon the situation.
There are other mitigating factors.
Time is one factor. Time pressure can come from external events (the princess will die at midnight if we don't get the antidote... we have exactly one hour to find it and return). It can also come from competition (we know that the Nazis are also searching for the grail; we have to get there first). Time pressure can also come from the players themselves (OK, we've got ten minutes left on the bless spell and the shields of faith; let's make them last through the next encounter).
IMO, there should nearly always be one of the above kinds of time pressure in a D&D campaign. It won't always be acute, but the question of whether that week is better spent doing a take 20 search of the upper moathouse or scribing scrolls in Hommlet should come up for reasonable players. Similarly, if the PCs want to take a week off searching the dungeons beneath the moathouse with a take 20, they should at least wonder what the cult of the elemental eye will be up to during that time.
Another factor is how difficult it is to actually find things to begin with. In Defenders of the Faith, the search check to notice the new wall in the wine cellar is 15 and the search to find the secret door is DC 20. So, given a second level rogue with a +6 search (we'll assume a 12 intelligence for this exercise, simply rolling once on every square, the odds are 99.998% that the rogue will notice that the wall is of newer construction (perhaps prompting a closer look for secret doors) and 57.75% that the rogue will find the secret door itself on the first try. So if the roll once solution basicly gives you a 99.998% chance of success in 40 minutes (10 minutes to search the wine cellar and another 30 minutes to take 20 on the new wall), along with a 58% chance to succeed right off the bat in 10 minutes, why would you spend 3 hours and 20 minutes? (The answer: only because it's your habit because you're used to absolutely no time pressure at all and super high search DCs). If you're playing in the home game I'm currently playing where even the things the DM describes as simple are DC 40+, maybe you do take 20 whenever you think you can afford to, but if you can reasonably expect a less exacting method to be effective, you're most likely going to use it.
So, that said, how can you make searching for traps more Indiana Jonesish? (Though now that I think about it, I don't actually recall Indy ever searching for traps, just falling into them).
1. Keep track of time. Don't just let players say "we take 20" and then read off the list of treasures. Count out the squares in the room (basic geometry makes this easy to calculate rather than count) and tell the players how long it will take. If nothing else, it will keep players honest with their spell durations.
2. Introduce a living world. Even the vague and soft time pressure of "if we take an extra week, the cult of the elemental eye might do something bad" is enough to make people think twice about taking 20 on an entire dungeon. The thought of "what are the gnolls in the next room going to do if we take three hours to search the entrance hall" should at least dissuade characters from taking 20 anywhere other than on simple, discreet objects like doors, chests, and idols until they have cleared the level.
3. Experiment with more specific outside time pressure like rivals or events (don't get caught in the graveyard after dark; the spirits of the dead walk in the moonlight). Indiana Jones was always racing the Nazis or some other adversary.
4. Make sure that the PCs can find stuff without taking 20. If the key that opens the plot essential door takes a DC 25 search check to find, your rogue will have to take 20 after looking everywhere and not finding it the first time--or the second. On the other hand, if rolling once will usually get what the PCs need then they're much less likely to take 20.
