Stopping take 20 Searching.

[Mark]

Yes, it's horribly unrealistic for someone whose life depends on them finding the nigh-invisible tripwire near the door to do their utmost to find it.

Anyone who is saying that taking 20 is "unrealistic" is, at best, a fool.

Strong words.

It's my contention that how realistic it is to always take 20 on searching depends on the circumstances. It is, IMO, a good idea (tm) for GMs to create circumstances that make it less than ideal to take 20 on all searches of every single area as a group moves along, and to be sure that there is plenty more to find when searching than just things of high value or a magical nature. It is important to create a greater number of considerations, time factors, diminishing returns for searching, etc., in an effort to deepen the reality of the game world setting and challenge players to prioritize beyond the idea that turning over every rock will always be the one and only strategy. Those things, too, are part of the game and anyone who loses sight of that is, at best, not reading my posts.

 

[Urbannen]

There is a rules variant that can speed up searching, esp. for traps.

Search is a move equivalent action. It is a visual action that can be used at a range of 10 feet.

The effects of this are that characters can move at half speed and still make Search checks as they move through dungeons. (More likely they will move at one-fourth speed if they are moving quietly.) The DM rolls the characters' Search roll whenever they get close to something hidden. If you'll notice, this is pretty much the way Indiana Jones does it. If the party wants the rogue to check everything, they sacrifice movement, they don't add dice rolls, plus a dice is only rolled (in secret) when there's a chance of actually finding something.

 

[IronWolf]

I am in the I don't see it as being a big deal camp. Of course maybe that's because of the games I have been in it hasn't been abused or slowed the game down at all.

As for the what if the item shouldn't be found yet, I guess I am in the set the DC really high. If the person with the item is intelligent and expects people to be looking for it, it only makes sense they took some real time to be creative and hide it rather well. Or they placed it in trapped box or alcove where the taking 20 sets the trap off.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

Hey all.
Here's my problem: On every dungeon crawl, every time my group of PCs clears a room, they take 20 on the Search checks... With a typical party of 5, spreadout in a standard room, this doesn't take much time at all.

So what is the problem, if it doesn't take much time?

Unfortunately, Search is not a well-designed skill. Players want to search the whole room for traps and/or interesting stuff, but the rules limit you to 10-foot squares. For some reason the Search example in D20 Modern is different. Did they change the rule in 3.5?

Two other problems develop, one of patience, and one of killer traps.

I'm not patient, so I don't do well in games where you're expected to search for stuff, such as Angband, Diablo or Baldur's Gate... and at least some Final Fantasy games. If I can't take treasure off my opponents' corpses, I don't bother searching. Maybe you're the same way? Maybe you rarely put junk around for players to find, but they don't know this? If you've done so in the past, you've rewarded them for taking 20 while Searching, and they'll keep doing this until they get the hint that they're not rewarded.

This hint takes a long time to develop, BTW. They know they won't always get rewarded, so they pass off not finding anything as "bad luck".

Players are often scared of traps, and don't want to end up in a situation where the rogue with the great Search skill didn't bother to Search, and so someone gets injured or killed. They'll say "if we were real adventurers we'd always search" (which isn't true at all...). If you try to make them stop searching, that may convince them there's a trap in the area and they'll search all the harder.

Short of simply not allowing taking 20, what are some good ways to make time more relevant? Wandering monsters doesn't do much, since the PC's will just kill them. (And if they can't kill them, they're in the wrong dungeon.). The "the dungeon is going to flood/explode/vanish in exactly 2 hours" thing is just a bit too farfetched for the typical dungeon.

So... What do you do to avoid this minor annoyance? Any good "realistic" reasons for the PCs to hurry through a dungeon? Maybe with enough examples, I can incorporate one into every dungeon crawl I run...
Thanks!
Gruns

While they're spending time, have the monsters in the dungeon organize and attack in a large group. Give them a leader or two with high Int and decent tactics. If the players are stuck in a room or a hallway, that makes things easier for spellcasting monsters.

It is not necessary for the monsters in the dungeon to just ignore or passively dislike each other. But if you do that, maybe only the kobolds will organize. If the dungeon has 50 kobolds, and 20 are sent to slay the PCs, things will get messy. (Remember to give the kobolds decent class levels! And don't bother with the MM organization charts.)

 

[RSKennan]

Even though I posted early on in the thread, I wasn't saying that it was a particularly big deal. I was just saying it's not very dramatic, and dull for the characters (not necessarily the players- the characters have to deal with all the time used; it's mostly an RP issue in this edition) that don't search well. It's entirely in character for them not to want to sit around for ten minutes in every room. My problem was with players who insisted on searching every inch of an adventure's setting; it's very brute force, and there's not much fun in it. It's a very specific behavior that only comes up with certain players in my experience.

As someone mentioned above, it does tend to relegate adventurerers to archeologists, and that much wasted time would have repurcussions if the dungeon was inhabited and their presence was known.

 

[TheAuldGrump]

With a typical party of characters, only the Rogue has a chance of finding any of the traps. (Note that only Rogues can find traps of DC 21+). So, that increases the amount of time they must take significantly.

Not quite, he's just the only one who can find them safely. *CRUNCH!* Yep, that was a trap, anybody got a Raise Dead scroll for the cleric?

The Auld Grump

 

[Zelgar]

Ways to limit or discourage Taking 20 for Search Checks:
1. Deadlines the PC's know about (e.g., to prevent a sacrifice)
2. Alerting the Dungeon (e.g., escaped monsters, monsters who raised alarms)
3. Flood the PC's with details (e.g., in square 1,1 you find a spider web, a dead spider, orc toenail clippings, etc.) & red herrings (e.g., you find a lever - if pulled the PC's have just set off an alarm, you find a brick that is a different colour than the others - they may take hours trying to figure out the importance of the brick where there isn't any). Make a spreadsheet that will provide you with a random number of miscellaneous things that you can just hand to the PC's every time they Take 20.
4. Have multiple entrances/exits in room. More doors mean more PC's guarding them = more time to search room.
5. Don't have static adventures. Have NPC's/monsters (e.g., friends, lovers, children, pets, enemies) come to visit the room to talk to the NPC's/monsters the PC's just killed.

Additionally, when the PC's first begin their search, I'd tell them what they would find initially if they only Took 10 (e.g., saying "After a quick glance, you notice X. Do you still want to continue searching?") The important thing is to make certain that you don't make too many critical things that the PC's need to be Taking 20 in order to finish the adventure. Also, if the PC's have cleaned out the dungeon, assume that the PC's have taken 20 for seaches in all of the rooms and list all of the things that they found. This way your players are happy that they are assured they found everything, and you're satisfied that the game is moving at a reasonable pace.

Zelgar

 

[Mark]

Additionally, when the PC's first begin their search, I'd tell them what they would find initially if they only Took 10 (e.g., saying "After a quick glance, you notice X. Do you still want to continue searching?") The important thing is to make certain that you don't make too many critical things that the PC's need to be Taking 20 in order to finish the adventure. Also, if the PC's have cleaned out the dungeon, assume that the PC's have taken 20 for seaches in all of the rooms and list all of the things that they found. This way your players are happy that they are assured they found everything, and you're satisfied that the game is moving at a reasonable pace.

Well said/added!

 

[Psion]

If I may suggest an (already extant) alternative, with a few home-spun guidelines, which may satisfy those who are most comfortable with randomness in searches.

The ELH suggests open ended rolling, i.e., if you roll a 20, roll again and add 20.

So, if you do set the DC impossibly high, the players can still possibly get a roll to make it... assuming you are comfortable letting an "automatic d20" "explode".

You may want to carefully consider revising your DCs if you choose this option.

 

[Wendigo]

In my view there are three problems with routine take-20 on searches:

1) Routine non-productive searches are out of character. Unless there really are routine results of doing exhaustive searches, people will get tired of doing them. Airport security, whose job it is do to searches, get bored and sloppy. Security improvement runs various forms of "tests" to keep the searchers alert. Of course, if a dungeon is full of secret doors, traps and cleverly hidden loot then routine searches ARE in character.

2) It removes the element of player judgment. In my campaign I like to challenge the players to analyze the situation and conduct appropriate searches - not rely on a mechanic to resolve the challenge for them. I don’t mind them finding everything – if they’ve done it through good play. The corollary is that the people who hide things do so in realistic places. It takes a very unusual person and circumstance to hide the daily use magic item in the bottom of the pit toilet – and that unusual type of villain might have other behaviors to suggest to the players that a toilet search would be in order.

3) Realist searches don't have an arbitrary effective limit. The longer one searches the more likely to find something – but each extra time period produces diminishing returns. So how long should a “complete” search really take – there is no actual x20 maximum. Rolling 20 times (when the searcher doesn’t know what the role is) more accurately reflects this.

As for the cure, the best I’ve read so far is the old stand-by – discuss with the players. I’m less enamored of using random monsters or artificial flooding or the like because that is simply solving one metagaming problem with another. A better approach might be to introduce a rule called “search fatigue”. Every time the group does a take-20 on a search (or more then say three successive searches in the same area) that doesn’t produce any results they incur a cumulative –1 penalty on all future searches UNTIL they find something. As soon as they find something the penalty is eliminated. This allows the group to still use take-20 searches where appropriate – they just have to be smarter about when and where.