Take 20 on Aid Another?

[Arrowhawk]

Sure, that logic applies to many a task.

OTOH, there are also many tasks where the main character will say to the helper:

"Hey, hold me this tightly while I do the rest."

Jimlock,

I think you're conflating two completely separate things. Aid Another does not require that you roll a 20 to assist someone. Your example of holding someone or something, is a good example. You're just providing assistance and as long as you roll a 10 or better, you're assistance is beneficial. And to be honest, it's not entirely clear to me why both people couldn't Take 10 with AA because T10 is not based on attempts, but ability to focus and performing the task at a level that you could consistently repeat it.

Take 20...does assume you are rolling every try, you just don't have to for the benefit of the human players. That's exactly why you characters incur any penalties for each attempt. Patryn's assertion that you get the 20 on the last attempt is the disconnect. It's a total and complete failure to understand the probability basis of what WotC is doing witih the Take 20 rule. You don't get nineteen failures in a row. You just have to pay a "tax" of having attempted it twentiy times because the probability of rolling a 20 is 1/20. If there was a skill check that required a d12, then the rule would be Take 12. If it was a d6, it would be Take 6. "20" isn't some magic number WotC pulled out of its ass, whereby a task is automatically completed.

If you're having trouble understanding this, you really need to think about the underlying probability and the basis under which T20 is allowed. Again, WotC is saying rather than make you roll...let's agree that since you have a 1/x chance of getting the best number, we'll just charge you x attempts and call it even. To Take 20 with two people both needing 20 to complete the task at the same time. Your odds go to 1/400. That mean it becomes Take 400. If the task did not require simultaneous 20's, then you could use Take 20. If a door could only be broken with a DC of 40...both players would have to kick the door with a 20 at the same exact roll. With Take 20, you don't know which roll that occurs on.

Reading the T20 rule such that you get that 20 on the last roll is what is silly. I'm not sure why you keep trying to force the T20 rule on top of AA. As I said above, you don't need a 20 to provide +2 assistance bonus.

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

Take 20...does assume you are rolling every try,

No, it doesn't. It really, really doesn't. The fact that you believe this is why you are wrong.

Taking 20

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, 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.

Nowhere does it say that you are actually treated as rolling anything - until the end, at which point you calculate your result as if you had rolled a 20.

Halfway through, you haven't rolled anything - you are treated as having failed 10 times, but there's no assumed number rolled on the die. That's why, if you Take 20 on something which you could succeed at on a roll of a 1, you still take 20 times as long to accomplish it.

Patryn's assertion that you get the 20 on the last attempt is the disconnect.

It's not a disconnect. It's the rules - because there is no rolling.

You don't get nineteen failures in a row.

Yes, you absolutely do, which is why the rules say:

when ... the skill being attempted carries no penalties for failure, you can take 20.

... it assumes that you fail many times before succeeding ...

Since taking 20 assumes that the character will fail many times before succeeding, ...

So for a 1-standard-action action, when you take 20, you fail for 19 rounds (regardless of the die value needed to succeed) and on the 20th, you get a result as if you had rolled a 20 (which may, also, be a failure).

EDIT:

Consider someone breaking down a door, Taking 20 on the Strength check. In round 1, he takes the "Break down the door" standard action. Did he succeed at breaking down the door? No - the door is obviously still standing. He has, therefore, failed to break down the door in round 1. This continues for 18 further rounds. Then, in round 20, we check whether or not a 20 + Strength mod is enough to break down the door - thus, success becomes possible only in the 20th round. This is true even if the door's break DC is 5 and he's got a Strength bonus of +4 (and could auto-succeed if he just rolled). In rounds 1-19, even though any roll of the die would result in a success, he fails to break down the door.

 

[Arrowhawk]

I'll give it one more go with you, then I give up.

The first and most obvious problem here is you don't understand the underlying principle behind the T20 rule. Because of that, every subsequent interpretation is wrong.

The T20 rule is an exchange/contract/back alley agreement provided by the game between the Player and the DM for the sake of speeding up game play. If there were no T 20 rule ...it might take you 100 rolls to get on 20. It could theoretically take you a 1000 rolls to get one 20. It would thus be retarded for the game not to provide some workaround. So the game says, let's just assume you make 20 attempts because you have a 1/20 chance of getting a 20. If it were a 1/15 chance, it would be a Take 15. Do you comprehend this?

Because this a probabilistic shortcut, or simulation, you don't know precisely when you got the 20. All we care about is that at some point, we will concede that you rolled a 20. And technically, it doesn't even have to be a 20...it can be any number on the die. So the agreement is that regardless of whether you would have gotten it on the 1st roll or the 1000th roll, we'll just say that on average (thought it's higher than that), you would have rolled your target number after 20 rolls....why? Because you have a 1/20 chance of rolling an specific number.

If you don't understand this...then I can see how you think there has to be 19 failures in a row. But that has no basis in probability or reality. Why would you create a rule that specifically calls for 19 failures in a row and then lets the player always succeed on the very last roll? That is irrational.

What is rational and very good game design is to provide the players a mechanic to forgoe the uncertainty of physically rolling in exchange for a guaranteed result...but at a logical cost. That cost is having to try it 20 times and ignore the fact that you might have technically succeeded on the very first attempt.

Your example below underscores the fact that you aren't grasping the math. If a character needed a 15-20 to succeed, that would be a 1/4 chance of succeeding, then having him Take 4 to simulate what happens if he had rolled would be consistent with the rule. Is this the most believe or objectively fair way to handle the situation...who cares. The point is that it saves the human players a lot of time to avoid the situations where it takes them way more than 20 attempts to get a 20. Hell, in real time, it's faster than if the player had to roll twice to get a 20.

The more you keep insisting that the 20 is deemed to be rolled on the very last attempt, the more you're demonstrating a failure to grasp the mechanic at work at its most basic level.

I'm almost positive this won't click for you...so I won't continue to try and convince you other wise.

No, it doesn't. It really, really doesn't. The fact that you believe this is why you are wrong.



Nowhere does it say that you are actually treated as rolling anything - until the end, at which point you calculate your result as if you had rolled a 20.

Halfway through, you haven't rolled anything - you are treated as having failed 10 times, but there's no assumed number rolled on the die. That's why, if you Take 20 on something which you could succeed at on a roll of a 1, you still take 20 times as long to accomplish it.



It's not a disconnect. It's the rules - because there is no rolling.



Yes, you absolutely do, which is why the rules say:



So for a 1-standard-action action, when you take 20, you fail for 19 rounds (regardless of the die value needed to succeed) and on the 20th, you get a result as if you had rolled a 20 (which may, also, be a failure).

EDIT:

Consider someone breaking down a door, Taking 20 on the Strength check. In round 1, he takes the "Break down the door" standard action. Did he succeed at breaking down the door? No - the door is obviously still standing. He has, therefore, failed to break down the door in round 1. This continues for 18 further rounds. Then, in round 20, we check whether or not a 20 + Strength mod is enough to break down the door - thus, success becomes possible only in the 20th round. This is true even if the door's break DC is 5 and he's got a Strength bonus of +4 (and could auto-succeed if he just rolled). In rounds 1-19, even though any roll of the die would result in a success, he fails to break down the door.

 

[kitcik]

I am giving up on this thread because it seems to me that everyone is laying out the same facts in different ways and I'm no longer clear on people's conclusions.

If you take 20, you are assumed to have 19 fails and one 20.

If you take 20 on Aid Another, you are assumed to have 19 fails and one 20.

Does RAW indicate that if both take 20, that would take the same amount of time as one taking 20? Clearly not, since RAW says you can't take 20 on Aid Another.

Therefore, we are left with RAI. To me, it seems clear that it would take longer for two people trying to work together to both get maximum efficiency at the same time than it would for one working alone. However, if you do not share that view, it's ok by me.

take 20To assume that a character makes sufficient retries to obtain the maximum possible check result (as if a 20 were rolled on d20). Taking 20 takes as much time as making twenty separate skill checks (usually at least 2 minutes). Taking 20 assumes that the character fails many times before succeeding, and thus can't be used if failure carries negative consequences.

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

I'll give it one more go with you, then I give up.

The first and most obvious problem here is you don't understand the underlying principle behind the T20 rule. Because of that, every subsequent interpretation is wrong.

This is 1) insulting and 2) wrong.

Do you comprehend this?

Of course. But it's completely irrelevant because ...

Because this a probabilistic shortcut, or simulation, you don't know precisely when you got the 20.

... We know exactly when you got the 20. For almost all cases, you get it exactly 20 rounds later. Otherwise, taking 20 would take 1d20 times as long. It doesn't, though.

Consider the case where you have to unlock a door. Unbeknownst to the player, a bomb in the room will detonate / the ceiling will collapse in 1 minute. The player takes 20 on the open lock check.

The player's character is still in the room when the bomb goes off, because the 20 doesn't happen until 20 rounds later.

So, again, we know exactly when the nat 20 occurs.

If you had a spell running that buffed your Dex by enough to make the check, and it ran out midway through your Take 20 attempt, you fail the check at the end of those 20 rounds.

Why would you create a rule that specifically calls for 19 failures in a row and then lets the player always succeed on the very last roll? That is irrational.

It's also exactly what the rules say. The more you keep talking about "we don't know when the 20 happens" the more I'm convinced you don't know how to read the actual rules, rather than what you think they should be.

 

[Arrowhawk]

It's also exactly what the rules say..

No it doesn't. It says "you fail many times." There is nothing the in the rule that says you fail "19 times in a row" and succeed on the very last roll. You're just making that part up. What I will concede given Greenfield's Postulate is that you do have 19 failures....by virtue of Take 20 giving you every number on the die. They just aren't assumed to happen consecutively. However, I can see how you can come to this interpretation...if you ignore the trade-off. But as others have noted, that interpretation is exposed as incorrect when you consider the probability of two people taking 20 and needing a combined 40 to succeed. Allowing that to happen in 20 attempts would be "silly."

Do what Greenfield suggests:

Roll two d20s and keep track of rolls in two columns. In Column A...every time you get a single 20 on either die...mark which roll it occurred on.

In Column B, every time you get double 20's, mark which roll you got it on.

Do this until you get ten double 20's. Then, come back and tell us how many rolls you averaged between single 20's and double 20's.

EDIT:

For almost all cases, you get it exactly 20 rounds later. Otherwise, taking 20 would take 1d20 times as long. It doesn't, though.

You've thrown this out twice now and it evidences either your unwillingness or inability to connect the dots on this rule. Why isn't the time requirement d20? Because if you were actually rolling, it could take you 100 tries to get a single 20. Twenty rolls doesn't guarantee you a 20, so why would you limit the time to do it to a random d20 roll? By suggesting a a d20 roll would mean that you believe the player would always get a 20 within twenty attempts and were' just rolling to see which attempt it occurred on. So the player would get the benefit of having gotten the 20 sooner than twenty-one rolls, but would never face the penalty of what happens if it took LONGER than twenty rolls. It is more equitable to just charge a flat tax of twenty attempts and concede success at some point within those attempts because it's not important when you actually rolled it.

 

[Tharkon]

I voted no, but there might be some exceptions.
If both the aiding and aided character got infinite time, yes then grant the +2 bonus. But if that would only be 20 times as long as normal, idk, maybe have the two take 22 as a team and have it last 22 times as long.

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

If you are going to take 20 to knock down a door, how long does it take in game time?

 

[Greenfield]

Citation, please?

Or, rather, review the rules on taking 20. At the end of a Take 20 Aid Another attempt* (which takes 20 times as long as a single Aid Another attempt), you are treated as having rolled a 20 on your check to Aid Another.

If you are attempting to do something which takes a standard action, it therefore takes 20 rounds - 2 minutes - to Take 20 on that thing.

And Take 20 does not assume any rolling. Rather, it assumes "fail, fail, fail, fail, fail, ..., fail, result as if you had rolled a 20."

It in no way assumes that you, in practice, roll every number - elsewise, if you take 20 at something you would have succeeded at on a roll of a 1, why don't you automatically succeed after a single round?

And folks, I know statistics; let's not start waving math credentials around at each other. The 400 rolls thing is ridiculous.

* Putting aside, for the moment, the Rules Compendium change that you cannot Take 20 on an Aid Another attempt.

Hmm. How do I provide a rules citation for something that's specifically against the rules. Good question. Do you really want me to answer?

According to the SRD, a Take 20" attempt is actually many many attempts. 20, to be specific, in that it takes 20 times as long as a single attempt, and the rules specifically say that you try many many times.

Let's say you're picking a lock, and I'm holding the light for you. Let's also say that I'm blind, which is why I have a -10 on my Aid attempt, so I need a nat-20 to be of any use.

You're going to try every trick you know on that lock because you also need a nat-19+ to open it (otherwise your own "Take 20" would make it without my help). You're going to "Take 20" on it.

That means that, for each of your 20 different approaches, I need to make 20 different attempts to hold the light at just the right spot.

That is, I have to try over and over, failing many times before I succeed, exactly as described in the Take 20 rules.

And you have to try each and every approach in coordination with my each and every one of my attempts, failing many times before you succeed, also exactly as described in the Take 20 rules.

So each of your 20 tricks/techniques/approaches has to be made 20 times, once for each of my 20 attempts to blindly hold the light in just the right spot.

No matter how you slice that, 20 x 20 is 400.

Now, under the Take 20 rule, does your "20" come on the last attempt? Functionally, yes.

How do I conclude that? Easy. It takes many attempts, in fact enough attempts that it takes 20 times as long as a single attempt, and you'd have to be an idiot to keep trying something after you've already succeeded.

If you want to do it faster (maybe), don't "Take 20", roll the dice. You might make it on the first roll, after all. On the other hand, you might hit a cold streak and be at it for hours. "Take 20" is a trade off, granting you the mathematically dubious presumption that you're somehow guaranteed to roll a 20 once in every 20 rolls, in exchange for 19 rolls that aren't 20s.

In its own way, it's kind of like "take 10", applied to dice rolling itself: You'll take a presumed average result of 20 rolls.

While "Take 20" is specifically not allowed on "Aid Another" attempts, there's nothing to prevent you from rolling the dice all those times. You'll go through enough rolls to cover all 20 attempts implicit in the Take 20 of the primary person with a 20 of your own, so on average you'll be rolling 400 times.

Hmm. Where have I heard that before?

 

[Arrowhawk]

Greenfield,

Do you have an opinion on why Take 10 is specifically not allowed with an Aid Another?

Based on the definition of both T20 and T10, logically I don't see a problem with with someone using T20...while someone else used AA and T10?

In your example, if I'm not blind and holding the light...I should be able to give the average AA bonus on every attempt.