Search Skill and Taking 20:House Rule, no taking 20 on search checks

[Vegepygmy]

Maybe this will make my point clearer.

If you set the DC of finding an item at 11, you're saying that 50% of average searchers (Int 10, no ranks in Search) will find the item on their first attempt, and 100% of them will find it after 20 attempts.

If you set the % chance of finding an item at 50% (regardless of the searcher's skill), you're saying that 50% of searchers will find the item on their first attempt, and 99.9999% of them will find it after 20 attempts.

So you're basically saying the same thing (unless that 1 in 1,048,576 chance of not finding the item really matters to you).

If you don't allow retries, there's no difference at all.

A DC 11 (no retries) means 50% of average searchers will find the item on their first (and only) attempt.

While a 50% chance to find an item (no retries) means 50% of searchers (regardless of individual skill) will find the item on their first (and only) attempt.

So it seems to me that the advantage of setting a DC is that it makes it very easy to apply the individual's skill as a modifier to the chance that he will find the item on his first, tenth, or twentieth attempt. The only difference is the granularity of the system determining success or failure.

 

[Jon_Dahl]

Hmmm, okay. Why not just pick 1 out of 100 traps and set the DC of that trap above the maximum your players can succeed at finding? You'll get the same result, which is they'll find 99% of the traps and get "surprised" by 1%.

Or do you as the DM want to be surprised when a trap goes off? Because it seems to me that from the players' perspective, there's no difference in "surprise factor" between failing to find a trap because its DC is too high for them to beat and failing to find a trap because it was the 1 in 100. In both cases, they're doing their best to search for it, and in both cases, their best wasn't good enough. The only difference is that with the high-DC trap, the DM knew from the get-go that they weren't going to find it.

If I knew they didn't have a chance to find it, that would seem like I was just trying to troll them. "Hey Jon Dahl, why did you give us a trap that was impossible to find? I hate you!"

With random element this would be different. "We were unlucky, better chance my d20".

It seems that you strongly disagree with me out of principle so this argument is fruitless, but I just want to say that from my point of view there is a huge difference between the DM deciding that you can't find one specific trap AND having a random chance of not finding some easy traps.

 

[Dandu]

If I knew they didn't have a chance to find it, that would seem like I was just trying to troll them. "Hey Jon Dahl, why did you give us a trap that was impossible to find? I hate you!"

What if they say "Hey John Dahl, why aren't you letting use search thoroughly for traps?"

 

[TKDB]

It seems that you strongly disagree with me out of principle so this argument is fruitless, but I just want to say that from my point of view there is a huge difference between the DM deciding that you can't find one specific trap AND having a random chance of not finding some easy traps.

I still want to know why you're so stuck on the finding of traps in the first place. As I've pointed out repeatedly in this thread, just because a trap is found doesn't mean its purpose is fulfilled. Heck, just because you find it doesn't mean you necessarily even know what it does. Ok, so your rogue found a funny patch of floor that seems to be a pressure trigger. There's no guarantee that he'll necessarily be able to figure out what exactly it triggers.

And more to the point, there's no guarantee even if the trap is found and identified that it won't still be able to serve its purpose in harming/hindering a PC or two. As I noted previously, you can't take 20 to disable traps, and you could quite easily rule that disabling traps isn't even eligible for taking 10 due to the pressure and risk involved.

Finding the trap is only the beginning. It does grant an advantage in terms of preparedness, but that's the natural reward for the effort and caution the players invested in order to be prepared. If they spent a great deal of time and effort researching the habits and capabilities of a particular monster they wanted to slay, it would be cruel to undo that preparation by suddenly invalidating some or all of their information based on the roll of a die simply for the sake of surprise. Why should traps be different? They still have to face the threat one way or another; it's just that the effort spent in preparation gives them a better chance at success (and success with less loss along the way) than recklessly charging in headlong.

 

[Vegepygmy]

If I knew they didn't have a chance to find it, that would seem like I was just trying to troll them. "Hey Jon Dahl, why did you give us a trap that was impossible to find? I hate you!"

So, uh...why did you give them a trap that was impossible to find? That seems a fair question. You could tell them the truth: that you think it's boring when they can find every trap if they search carefully enough, so you decided that 1 in 100 traps would be beyond their ability to find (and there's nothing wrong with that; it only makes sense that in the wide, wide world, there might be traps beyond their ability to find), and this happened to be that trap.

With random element this would be different. "We were unlucky, better chance my d20".

I don't see how it is different. In both cases, there is a chance they won't be able to find the trap, no matter how hard they look. How is it different from their perspective?

It seems that you strongly disagree with me out of principle so this argument is fruitless, but I just want to say that from my point of view there is a huge difference between the DM deciding that you can't find one specific trap AND having a random chance of not finding some easy traps.

I don't even weakly disagree with you. If it makes the game more enjoyable for you to not set DCs for traps, then by all means don't do it. I'm just pointing out to you that the "difference" is largely (if not entirely) illusory.