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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Wendigo" data-source="post: 2061363" data-attributes="member: 5964">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.</blockquote>

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