Getting rid of "Taking 10"

[SensoryThought]

Really? This is the easiest thing to houserule against if you want your players to roll for everything.

I think taking 10 makes complete sense or you just get pcs trying again and again and again until they succeed (which is the circumstance when you are supposed to use it).

 

[NMcCoy]

Think of "take 20" as actually "take 1 and 20" - if the 1 results in an irretrievable failure, it's not a take 20 situation. If it's something that can be endlessly retried, take 20 is the shortcut to skip all that rolling. If you're searching a room for a secret door, the door won't typically vanish if you roll a 1.

 

[ForeverSlayer]

Are you telling me that a master locksmith sitting at a desk with a pile of simple locks is going to fail to open 5% of them?

Or that a master herbalist is going to fail to spot the poison mushrooms 5% of the time and feed them to her family?

Or that the tightrope walker falls to his death 5% of the time?

I am fine with the taking 10 rule and it seems that 5e will have that concept even more ingrained into the system, making rolls unnecessary for tasks that are simple for a skilled character.

Again, you are assuming that it's always going to be the locksmith's fault. Also you have to understand that dice rolls are not going to perfectly simulate real life.

Let's use your locksmith for example. Locks and lockpicks, I am assuming, were built by hand and not in some factory. Sometimes the tumblers could malfunction or the lockpicks could be faulty and break.

Why do you keep using professionals in your examples anyway like they never fail? Did Michael Jordan hit every basket? Did Beckham make every goal? How many takes do you think professional actors and actresses go through when making movies, even the ones that have been doing it for years and years? There is always going to be a chance of error no matter how good at something we are.

 

[ForeverSlayer]

Interesting observation, I haven't though of Take 10 in that light...

Normally I don't care for more granularity. How many people can "feel" the difference between 60% and 65%? But I might feel some difference between failing once-in-20 and e.g. once-in-100 at least if we're talking about something that I do over an over.

This right here! Depending on someone's actual campaign, in all honesty how often do you actually use certain skills? I'm not really sure which skills are used on a constant basis. I don't think really anyone is using any type of skill continuously.

 

[BryonD]

Right, if it's interesting or important, it's worth a roll, if it's not a big deal then I'll just tell my players the answers to what they're asking.

It sounds to me like you use take 20, you just don't think of it in those terms. Because this is exactly what take 20 is all about, not bothering when it isn't worth it and just skipping to telling them.

I certainly use take 20, but in reality the circumstances for it rarely come up.

Just for an example stick with searching. There party correctly suspects the stolen golden necklace is hidden in this room. The king will be here in seconds and wants it. Can they find it in time? Roll.... 17 Nope. Didn't find it. The king chews them out and says find it or else.... And the king leaves. Now the party proceeds to tear the room apart. No one says the words "take 20", but 30 minutes later the room is a shambles and the party has the necklace. Groups have been doing that since long before the "take 20" rule was ever printed. The rule just formalizes it. It adds in the default assumption of "if you do this the bad potential thing will happen". And that makes sense. But the the actual implementation is so strongly case-by-case that it pretty much demands some DM thoughtfulness.

But in the end tearing up the room ISN'T interesting. So "Take 20" says: just tell them.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Again, you are assuming that it's always going to be the locksmith's fault. Also you have to understand that dice rolls are not going to perfectly simulate real life.

Let's use your locksmith for example. Locks and lockpicks, I am assuming, were built by hand and not in some factory. Sometimes the tumblers could malfunction or the lockpicks could be faulty and break.

Why do you keep using professionals in your examples anyway like they never fail? Did Michael Jordan hit every basket? Did Beckham make every goal? How many takes do you think professional actors and actresses go through when making movies, even the ones that have been doing it for years and years? There is always going to be a chance of error no matter how good at something we are.

Are they in a stressful situation? I guess so...

taking ten means: without preasure, an easy task. Taking 20 means: a task of normal hard difficulty. You succeed if you have plenty of time. Actually it makes little sense for a lot of skills to only take 6 secnds of game time. So I assume, that normal people just take 20 whenever they do something.

Jumping over a chasm. stretch a bit, look how far it is. Try a jump to compare. take measure, run and jump. Two minutes in game time...

A small chasm. Easily jumped over when there is no one firing arrows at you. (taking 10)

Rolling only needed, when arrows are fied at you, someone is chasing you etc... you could miss the right moment to jump, slip and fall...

Rollong for something shoul only be your last resort, if taking 20 is not possible.

And picking a lock: you examine you pick first, test it in the lock, if it is the right one, be very carefull not to break it. Don´t overrush it if it gets stuck. 4edition has a sightly different mentality compared to 3rd edition. (i let the players roll, and then just decide how long it takes depending on the roll.)

 

[Starfox]

5E will have a lot more taking 10.

It's called "Taking Ability Score".

If the door requires a DC 16 Strength check to knock in, the Str 18 PC does it automatically.

This is not taking 10 - it is "Take half your stat" (Assumin stat modifiers remain at 1/2 ability score, which we don't know it will.

((BTW, this is a general comment, not an attempt to undercut the debate))

I liked Take 20, and Take 10 so-so.

 

[enigma5915]

Again, you are assuming that it's always going to be the locksmith's fault. Also you have to understand that dice rolls are not going to perfectly simulate real life.

Let's use your locksmith for example. Locks and lockpicks, I am assuming, were built by hand and not in some factory. Sometimes the tumblers could malfunction or the lockpicks could be faulty and break.

Why do you keep using professionals in your examples anyway like they never fail? Did Michael Jordan hit every basket? Did Beckham make every goal? How many takes do you think professional actors and actresses go through when making movies, even the ones that have been doing it for years and years? There is always going to be a chance of error no matter how good at something we are.

Its not that failure is impossible, but that a manditory chance of failure especially at 5% for a minimum is rediculous. Tasks that can be accomplished routinely or commonly shouldnt need to be rolled for all the time. A locksmith failing 1 in 20 is rather high regardless of the cause. Failure rates like that would be akin to failing to open a car door, or stepping off a curb, if failure rates are that common the whole world would end up as an episode of monty pythons flying circus....lol. Rolling dice takes time....it should be used sparingly ...IMHO. though my opinion and 60 cents will by you a cup of coffee, so take it with a grain of salt.

 

[Fanaelialae]

Again, you are assuming that it's always going to be the locksmith's fault. Also you have to understand that dice rolls are not going to perfectly simulate real life.

Let's use your locksmith for example. Locks and lockpicks, I am assuming, were built by hand and not in some factory. Sometimes the tumblers could malfunction or the lockpicks could be faulty and break.

Why do you keep using professionals in your examples anyway like they never fail? Did Michael Jordan hit every basket? Did Beckham make every goal? How many takes do you think professional actors and actresses go through when making movies, even the ones that have been doing it for years and years? There is always going to be a chance of error no matter how good at something we are.

A basketball/soccer game contains elements of risk (you might lose the game, you might get injured) and therefore take 10/20 don't apply here.

As for actors, I went to plenty of the drama productions my younger sister was in during high school, and though mistakes occasionally happened, they were minor and vastly less frequent than 5% (less than 1%, even). Typically it was a brief pause while someone attempted to recall their next line. And this was with non-professional high school students.

In fact, arguably, the reason that professional movies do so many takes is to take 20. They want the absolutely best take, not just the good one. Along the way they probably have a take or two where the actors completely forget their lines as well.

Removing take 10/20, IMO, leads to generally silly results. Take a flimsy door (DC 6), a brawny fighter (Str 18), and a scrawny wizard (Str 8). When take 10/20 is banned, this tends to happen.
-Fighter rolls a 1 and the DM describes the "flimsy" door as really stuck.
-Wizard rolls a 7 and the door pops right open.
-Fighter looks annoyed and says, "I loosened it for you."

In situations where only one attempt is allowed, other silliness occurs. Technically, the DM I played under allowed retries provided we found some way to give ourselves a new advantage. So we started carrying a crowbar. When we encountered a stuck door, we'd first try to kick it down. If that didn't work, we'd retry with the crowbar. Every time we used that trick however, a part of me wondered why our characters wouldn't just use the crowbar first? It was disjoined from what I would reasonably expect to happen.

For those reasons, I'm very glad to hear that the designers will be basing the mechanics of the new edition around the mechanic of "Take Ability Score".

 

[Gentlegamer]

Rolling over and over when it doesn't matter isn't fun, in my own opinion.

PCs know there's a secret door in a room, DC 20. PC has +10 to find it.

Player rolls, 12, roll again

Player rolls, 17, roll again

Player rolls, 15, roll again

Player rolls, 11, roll again

Player rolls, 19, roll again

I can keep going, but you get the picture.

The picture I get is a roll-playing game instead of a role-playing game.

Players: We know there's a secret door here somewhere! We search for secret doors.
DM: Where do you search, and how?

Take the dice out of the equation (and the auto-success "take 10" nonsense).