For you as DM, maybe. But the whole point for the players in taking the super-cautious approach is that they want to avoid any nasty surprises.
Search Skill and Taking 20:House Rule, no taking 20 on search checks
- Thread starter Belzbet
- Start date
For you as DM, maybe. But the whole point for the players in taking the super-cautious approach is that they want to avoid any nasty surprises.
The thing is, you DO fail. Repeatedly. But because there's no penalty for failure in these cases, you just keep trying and trying again until you succeed.
Taking 20 isn't contrary to the core mechanic; it's a natural extension of it.
billd91
Not your screen monkey (he/him) 🇺🇦🇵🇸🏳️⚧️
And, technically, it isn't really trying until you succeed. It's trying until you manage to do the best job that you can do, given your level of skill and ability.
Ultimately, what take 20 (and take 10) does is allow you to get around lots of extra die rolling that players will ask for. If they're searching an area normally and they don't like their results, they'll search again. And again. And again for as long as they are allowed to do it or until satisfied. Taking 20 allows you to cut to the chase and abstract unproductive retrials into one quick adjudication.
Yes, I agree. So IMO in these cases there should be two possible resolutions:
1. You take 20 and succeed.
2. You take 20 and fail, but your character thinks everything is ok even though it's not. Then you roleplay it like that.
I think there should always be 1% chance for the option #2.
That sort of reasoning would actually work just fine if you usually roll search, spot, listen, etc. secretly, since then you're already operating under the assumption that the players won't necessarily know how well they've done.
Personally, since I like things to be as realistic as possible without bogging down play, I'd make a table of what the actual likelihood is of failure given 20 retries for a given number needed to succeed. For instance, if they can only succeed on a natural 20, that's a 95% chance of failure on a given trial, so the chance of failure on each of 20 tries in a "secret" take-20 would be .95^20, or roughly 36%. So you roll d%, and if the result is 36 or less they fail. If they succeed on a 19 or 20, that's .9^20, or roughly 12% chance of failure on all 20 tries. And so forth.
With the advent of computer rollers, I'm tempted to outlaw taking 20 in favour of having a computer spit out a list of 20 (or more) d20 rolls, and asking them how long they search. If they look for 10 time intervals, I'll look and see if any of the first 10 rolls are a success. If they want to "take 20", they get 20 rolls, made instantly. Or 30 or 60, if they want. But it takes the certainty of "I definitely got a 20" out of the equation. As anyone who has played D&D long enough knows, you can absolutely roll a d20 20 times and never get a natural 20. Since computer rolling makes it totally possible to roll a d20 100 times with no issue, I'd prefer that.
I don't mind PCs taking 20 when they would have been rolling the dice... They'd obviously know when they succeeded anyway, like on a craft skill. But taking 20 on a DM-rolled check takes the uncertainty out of a system that requires risk and suspense for entertainment value.
I don't mind PCs taking 20 when they would have been rolling the dice... They'd obviously know when they succeeded anyway, like on a craft skill. But taking 20 on a DM-rolled check takes the uncertainty out of a system that requires risk and suspense for entertainment value.
MrFaust
First Post
To tell you the truth I dont allow my players to take 20 at all. I think the whole idea is kind of stupid. I think an important part of role playing is the chance of failure (dispite the fact that the newer editions are more and more player friendly). This give for more role playing opportunities and makes the game far more interesting. The few times I do allow anything of the sort is a character may take 10 when not rushed or what not.
Dandu
First Post
Don't keep me in suspense
Warforged are immune to fatigue and exhaustion. You would literally be a searching machine.
As much as I hate take 20 mechanics, I'd have to allow that with no drawbacks because it makes perfect sense. It literally COULD search to the best of its mechanical ability, given enough time. Any character immune to fatigue effects would be similarly affected.
Vegepygmy
First Post
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.
