Reply to thread

Message

<blockquote data-quote="Psikerlord#" data-source="post: 6853397" data-attributes="member: 93321">Personally I believe the &quot;Take 10&quot; or passive scores are terrible. Anything that takes the random out is a bad idea, imo. I prefer making secret rolls. The DM will be making all kinds of secret rolls anyway (random monsters, treasure tables, NPC reaction checks, monster hiding checks, etc) - so what's the of another roll matter? (note I am not talking about &quot;combat&quot; rolls, which I prefer all out in the open).I believe &quot;take 10&quot; /passive arose out of an attempt to prevent the &quot;I try again&quot; problem: when players attempt the same action over and over until success, or until they rolled a 20 (eg: I check for secret doors until I roll a 20, and so on). A better solution to this however is generally ruling that &quot;retries&quot; are not allowed unless the situation somehow changes in the PC's favour. There is no genuine use for passive checks that is outweighed by the downsides imo - those downsides being (i) the same person spots all the traps/ambushes/clues etc all the time, and (ii) the static traps vs static passive perception problem (auto detect/fail, barring any direct action nullifying the trap/etc). If as GM you want to give the players some info - just give it to them - don't rely on &quot;passive&quot; as a reason why. There have been lots of threads on passive. For me the answer is simple: don't use passive at all. 2e and earlier had no passive and the game worked fine. As do most other RPGs (I cant think of one with passive?).</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Psikerlord#, post: 6853397, member: 93321"] Personally I believe the "Take 10" or passive scores are terrible. Anything that takes the random out is a bad idea, imo. I prefer making secret rolls. The DM will be making all kinds of secret rolls anyway (random monsters, treasure tables, NPC reaction checks, monster hiding checks, etc) - so what's the of another roll matter? (note I am not talking about "combat" rolls, which I prefer all out in the open). I believe "take 10" /passive arose out of an attempt to prevent the "I try again" problem: when players attempt the same action over and over until success, or until they rolled a 20 (eg: I check for secret doors until I roll a 20, and so on). A better solution to this however is generally ruling that "retries" are not allowed unless the situation somehow changes in the PC's favour. There is no genuine use for passive checks that is outweighed by the downsides imo - those downsides being (i) the same person spots all the traps/ambushes/clues etc all the time, and (ii) the static traps vs static passive perception problem (auto detect/fail, barring any direct action nullifying the trap/etc). If as GM you want to give the players some info - just give it to them - don't rely on "passive" as a reason why. There have been lots of threads on passive. For me the answer is simple: don't use passive at all. 2e and earlier had no passive and the game worked fine. As do most other RPGs (I cant think of one with passive?). [/QUOTE]

Verification