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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Hammerforge" data-source="post: 2999861" data-attributes="member: 23564">Other than the obvious numerical difference between these two, I wonder what other difference there is between them. The SRD says:Taking 10When your character is not being threatened or distracted, you may choose to take 10. Instead of rolling 1d20 for the skill check, calculate your result as if you had rolled a 10. For many routine tasks, taking 10 makes them automatically successful. Distractions or threats (such as combat) make it impossible for a character to take 10. In most cases, taking 10 is purely a safety measure —you know (or expect) that an average roll will succeed but fear that a poor roll might fail, so you elect to settle for the average roll (a 10). Taking 10 is especially useful in situations where a particularly high roll wouldn’t help.Taking 20When you have plenty of time (generally 2 minutes for a skill that can normally be checked in 1 round, one full-round action, or one standard action), you are faced with no threats or distractions, and the skill being attempted carries no penalties for failure, you can take 20. In other words, eventually you will get a 20 on 1d20 if you roll enough times. Instead of rolling 1d20 for the skill check, just calculate your result as if you had rolled a 20.Taking 20 means you are trying until you get it right, and it assumes that you fail many times before succeeding. Taking 20 takes twenty times as long as making a single check would take.Since taking 20 assumes that the character will fail many times before succeeding, if you did attempt to take 20 on a skill that carries penalties for failure, your character would automatically incur those penalties before he or she could complete the task. Common “take 20” skills include Escape Artist, Open Lock, and Search. What I'm wondering about, specifically, is when you take 10 or take 20. I know the SRD says that you may take 10 "[w]hen your character is not being threatened or distracted," but the rules for taking 20 say something very similar, just with different wording:  "When you have plenty of time (generally 2 minutes for a skill that can normally be checked in 1 round, one full-round action, or one standard action), you are faced with no threats or distractions, and the skill being attempted carries no penalties for failure,..."  IOW, the take 20 requirement of having plenty of time and not being faced with threats or distractions is very similar to the take 10 requirement of "not being threatened or distracted."So, if I'm reading it right, both may be used only in non-threatening, non-distracting situations, which is really to say that both may be used when you have plenty of time. Thus, there seems to be no difference in the time allowed for each one. As I said above, the only real difference I see between the two is the numerical difference, which itself indicates a difference in the level of risk of failure involved in the tasks attempted. You take 20 when you are trying to accomplish a far tougher task than you would attempt if you were taking 10.Any thoughts from you gurus out there?  I know I'm missing something here, but what is it? (Some game examples might be helpful.)  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />Thanks!</blockquote>

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