Search and taking 20: the problem

[Artoomis]

Indeed. Therefore, sometimes the clause to which 'generally' is applied is inapplicable. Since the statement is "you generally must be within 10 feet of the object or surface to be searched," we can conclude that sometimes, you don't have to be within 10 feet of the object or surface to be searched.

By the rules, there are no circumstances in which it is necessary to be closer than <=10 feet.

Now that's just silly. The rules do not preclude being closer that 10 feet at all. Some traps could not even be seen more than a few inches away. This is at DM's discretion, clearly.

I actually really like the opposite-side door jamb trap. If you forget to search the ground on the opposite side of the door, down into the pit of vipers you go. Especially useful if you've given out clues to door jamb traps, and allowed the rogue to find several others. It is, in essence, one large misdirection trick. Very clever if done right.

 

[Fester]

Take 10, take 20, it doesn't matter, if you have a DM who wants to be a rat bastard by setting the CR out of your reach, he can do so no matter what. If you have the luxury of time, you SHOULD be able to do a thorough search that would lead to you finding traps that are within your experience and ability to locate.

My thoughts exactly. When I set the Search DC for a trap, I think not about those who are going to encounter it, but those that are setting it. If people want to take time and effort to find it, why hinder them? I always throw in occasional traps, just to spice things up, and it is amazing what a very simple trap can do. I remember putting three pits in a 'T' interection at 5 ft intervals. Had anyone actually bothered to search, they would have been found easily enough, but they didn't and after they'd fallen in one, they climbed right out and fell straight down the next. Those pesky kobolds...

 

[Elder-Basilisk]

Well, my experience with published adventures is mostly Monte Cook's Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil, The Burning Plague, a few Dungeon advantures I've read or run and the RPGA's Living Greyhawk and Living Arcanis campaigns.

In all of those, I would say that time constraints--either due to external circumstances or spell durations are a often a significant factor.

In Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil, for instance--at least up to the Crater Ridge Mines section which is as far as our campaign went--most of the exploration would typically be done under time pressure since the forces of the various temples react fairly quickly to assault.

Anyone who's played the Burning Plague module will know about the time constraints there.

In general, however, the more sneaky the party is trying to be, the more important time will be. The examples aren't really idiosyncratic or contrived at all (the first two coming from published RPGA adventures and the second coming from my home-campaign actually). In the case of the shipyard, any urban break-in mission will hew fairly closely to the template. Most places you would have to break into have guards, in most urban areas, simply killing the guards isn't a good option--even for an evil party--unless it can be done silently and stealthily (which is a challenge in its own right). The presence of those guards and regular patrol patterns mean that taking two minutes to check a door for traps is far riskier than taking 6 or 18 seconds to check or triple check the door. It's one thing to break into an area and stay for 2 minutes (total) without being noticed; it's another to break in and stay for five, ten or fifteen minutes total. Rogue-centric situations are almost ALL time sensitive.

The case of the ruin patrolled by drow is pretty much going to fit the tempate of every adventure where competing sides are attempting to find something and the party doesn't find it practical to simply walk into their enemy's camp and kill them all. If the enemy wants a mcguffin X in location Y (that might be trapped), PCs will have to move quickly to find mcguffin X in location Y before reinforcements arrive. The degree of time pressure will of course vary but it will never be practical to take 20 on every five foot square of location Y unless location Y is very small indeed.

Even in the first example (drawn from the now retired "Isles of Woe" RPGA scenario--which does have a time limit of several days in which to explore the entire island before the superstitious sailors who dropped you off will return to pick you up again), a party that can explore on "their own time schedule" but taking 20 will cause significant problems. If one bless, shield, or enlarge person spell wears off before you get to the second battle, that's not a big deal. If, on the other hand, you explore three empty rooms and now the stoneskin and heroism spells wear off before the first battle, that is a problem.

I suppose you could have the party not use expensive spells like stoneskin and just explore a half dozen to a dozen rooms per day using the take 20 method but that's likely to cause random encounters to wear down the party. And, in any event, it seems to me that adventures with NO time pressure (where the adventurers can afford to explore only six rooms in one day) are a lot rarer than adventures where things have to be done within a reasonable amount of time.

The standard situation is most certainly NOT a rogue at the head of a party so patient and unpressured that they can afford to take 20 on every five foot square of each hallway or room. In fact, even taking 20 on doors and likely places for traps often presents a risk.

I can't agree that these examples occur very "often" -- in fact they're the kinds of suggestions that come up in these Take 20 Search discussions that seem very idiosyncratic and a bit contrived. I haven't seen very many published adventures (actually, any) that include such scenes. The standard situation for a rogue searching is at the head a party exploring on their own time schedule, and that's the key situation that Take 20 Search needs to be rationalized for.

Time-constrained adventures are very much the exception, not the rule.

 

[Sir Whiskers]

I will say, though, that one of the greatest character concepts I've heard of is the Rogue who maxes out Search (and uses magic, etc to boost it as muich as possible), but take 0 ranks is Disable Device. he'll find it, but after that you are on your own. What fun!!

I think this sums up why Take 20 is not a problem when searching for traps. It doesn't matter if the rogue can find every single trap - he still has to deactivate or otherwise avoid them. Take 20 cannot be used with Disable Device checks, so the rogue's still sweating out his rolls.

 

[Scion]

player intuition

Lets stay away from 'player intuition' shall we? I dont care if the player knows or has no idea what-so-ever. If the character has no way of knowing then he will not know, if the character has every way of knowing but the player cant seem to catch on then the dm should help out that player.

For example: I had a room with a large pool (3'6" deep), with a small stone island in the center and a stone walkway on either side of the pool. The pool was incredibly clear water, but the bottom was covered with green algae. What was not clear was (this is in 1st edition) that the spell attraction had been cast on the stone blocks that made the floor of the pool. Attraction acted like magnetism, but only for living creatures, with (in this case) the range set to 3'.

Magical trap, high dc, slight bonus for being underwater.

Take 20, character of high skill, and possibly some magical assistance:

'hey guys, I just dont feel right about this pool.. something about it strikes me as wrong, but I cant seem to see what. Can you detect for magic mr. wizard?'

 

[Saeviomagy]

In 3.X - I wouldn't allow a search roll to find it. A player could describe his experiments testing it, but not a blanket roll. A take 20 search would find it - how! Does a take 20 search assume you physically interact with the area? If so, it triggers the trap. Does it assume you probe it? If so, unless something living is used, no chance of discovery is possible. There are situations where a simple roll does not find/solve the problem. Player smarts, though, goes a long ways to bypassing this.
BB

So what exactly is so clever about this? I'd expect a perceptive thief to notice that there was very slippery algae on the rocks below the water, and the fact that it's a spell trap using a spell of (probably) around 8th level, for a DC of 33 - That's pretty high. You have to assume that someone getting a DC at that sort of level is doing things like noticing that there are fish stuck to the rocks at the bottom of the pool, no floating algae below the 6 inch mark etc.

Simply put - you as a DM saying "you cannot find my trap with a search roll, it is so uber!" is the equivalent of saying "you cannot hit my NPC with any attack roll, he is so uber!".

As to the dm simply setting trap dcs so the thief either finds or doesn't find the traps... so what? He can do that with anything in the game. making it seem like he doesn't is part of his job.

 

[The Souljourner]

Any trap that is completely undetectable is what we in the business call DM cheese. It's the DM making things more difficult just because he wants to screw with his players. "It's behind a plate, which itself is trapped" Well, ok, so how does one spring this trap? That's the thing, unless it's magical, there has to be some physical tie between the character and the trap.

If it is magical, it is more difficult to find. This is already built into the rules. But seeing as a rogue can find a purely magical trap that has absolutely no physical representation, obvously they can feel the tingle of magic, or somesuch crap.

When a trap is completely unable to be found by the most skilled searcher, it stops being a trap and becomes an environmental hazard. If you as a DM choose to include an environmental hazard that is undetectable and will just kill the first PC dumb enough to walk into it, you will soon find yourself without players.

As for the original problem - take 20 finds the trap, sure. Time is not always on your side.... but the key is putting traps where they are not obvious. Sure, every single chest might be trapped, but far more insidious is the trap in the middle of a long hallway that no one thinks to search.

Everyone expects the chest to be trapped, and they search for it. There are only so many ways you can trap a chest, so the searcher is bound to find it. Doesn't mean you can disable it though. Can't take 20 on that check! And that's the one that can simply blow up in your face, too.

AS for take 10... yeah, if the chest is trapped with a crapass trap, the rogue is gonna blow right through it, so what? Anything that take 10 automatically works on should be fairly routine, thus the definition of take 10.

-The Souljourner

 

[dcollins]

This is not a game system problem, it's a DM problem. If a DM does not set things up very well, it's boring. True for traps, true for everything.

No, it is definitely a game system problem. If the D&D rules assert that they are balanced towards a 4-character party exploring a dungeon (e.g., 3.0 DMG p. 106), then they should deliver on exactly that -- the fact that so many people are house-ruling, or uniquely interpreting Take 20 Searches, or coming up with contrived examples where it sort-of makes sense, is an indicator that it isn't fully working right as written.

 

[Artoomis]

No, it is definitely a game system problem. If the D&D rules assert that they are balanced towards a 4-character party exploring a dungeon (e.g., 3.0 DMG p. 106), then they should deliver on exactly that -- the fact that so many people are house-ruling, or uniquely interpreting Take 20 Searches, or coming up with contrived examples where it sort-of makes sense, is an indicator that it isn't fully working right as written.

No - it is the DM who is supposed to place traps in appropriate circumstances. If the DM makes it easy to take 20, that's not a game system problem. Sheesh - it's not like the DM doesn't know the rules when designing the challenges.

Besides that, finding a trap is only half the problem anyway. You can't take 20 on disabling.

 

[Elder-Basilisk]

As others have pointed out, it's a DM problem. The fact that "so many" people are house-ruling or uniquely interpreting take 20 searches points not to the fact that there's a problem with the way the rules are written but to the fact that some DMs can't handle players actually defeating their traps using skills.

The so-called contrived examples you point to are actually typical of gaming environments--and reasoned arguments that, the more rogue-centric the situation, the more likely it is to be time-sensitive. (Even for non-rogue-centric mods, time pressure is typical; off the top of your head, name ONE adventure path adventure where there is no time pressure.) At least half of the trap encounters my characters have faced in adventures--published and unpublished--have been under some kind of time pressure. Either it's the guards returning, the lizardmen shooting at you from the other side of the trapped bridge into their village, the hobgoblins chanting and beating drums attempting to summon a bullette, the goblins sacrificing the village leader's daughter, the ship that's returning in less than a week, the cultists of the elder elemental eye regrouping and bringing reinforcements, or something like that.

No, it is definitely a game system problem. If the D&D rules assert that they are balanced towards a 4-character party exploring a dungeon (e.g., 3.0 DMG p. 106), then they should deliver on exactly that -- the fact that so many people are house-ruling, or uniquely interpreting Take 20 Searches, or coming up with contrived examples where it sort-of makes sense, is an indicator that it isn't fully working right as written.