Take 20 on Open Lock?

[Celtavian]

re

There's a misconception sometimes. People think that not-finding a trap with a Search check is a penalty, "because then the trap kills you". But in that case, there's no difference between searching-and-failing, and not-searching. The trap doesn't go off because of the Search check, it's because of what you do next.

Whereas with Disable Device, there's a difference between disabling-and-failing, and not-disabling. It's the act of unsuccessfully attempting to disable the trap that sets it off. That is a penalty for failure.

The way I look at it, the penalty for failing to find a trap is not having the chance to disarm it or bypass it. If a person can't find the trap, then they are guaranteed to set it off, and I view this as a penalty.

From a DM standpoint, if they are able to take 20 on the search check for a trap, most players will do this every time, thus making finding a trap a foregone conclusion. I don't think this encourages a person to continue to increase their search skill, and thus I don't usually allow it. I prefer the Search skill to be a useful skill requiring constant training.

That is how I like to run it. Good to know that the rules support taking 20 on Open Locks.

 

[bret]

Re: re

From a DM standpoint, if they are able to take 20 on the search check for a trap, most players will do this every time, thus making finding a trap a foregone conclusion. I don't think this encourages a person to continue to increase their search skill, and thus I don't usually allow it. I prefer the Search skill to be a useful skill requiring constant training.

From a GM standpoint, Take 10 and Take 20 are ways to speed up the process. If the players are just going to keep trying until they get it right, you might as well allow them to take 20.

Also remember just how long take 20 requires. It is extremely likely that they will not always have *time* enough to take 20. If the characters are under any sort of time pressure (including needing to hurry out before the reenforcements come), they aren't going to take 20 on a search.

 

[mmu1]

Re: re

From a DM standpoint, if they are able to take 20 on the search check for a trap, most players will do this every time, thus making finding a trap a foregone conclusion. I don't think this encourages a person to continue to increase their search skill, and thus I don't usually allow it. I prefer the Search skill to be a useful skill requiring constant training.

That's just not true - another thing people forget or ignore all the time is that Search takes 1 round/5' square. If you take 20, that means taking 2 minutes to check every square - so unless you run a game in which the players can afford to spend one hour searching a 25'x30' room, and you would actually allow such absurdly bad role-playing (Yeah, let's just take a break from our quest and take 4 hours to search this wide hallway... hope everyone brought lots of torches!) then it's not a problem, unless the traps are always in obvious places.

 

[RigaMortus]

We always assume that when you make certain skill checks (such as Search or Hide) you are always trying your BEST at it. So we generally do not allow retries of any kind, because it doesn't make any sense to do so. This is why the DM usually rolls for the player, behind the screen. You never know if you rolled that 1 or 20.

If you are searching a 5x5 square and don't find what you are looking for, it could be because you didn't roll high enough OR because there really isn't anything there to find. In either case, why would you reroll? You did your BEST at Searching, so it makes no sense to reroll, unless you allow metagaming (I rolled low, therefore I will keep rolling until I get high enough that I am satisfied with the roll).

 

[Christian]

Allow me to suggest a 'principled' distinction to add to the 'take 20' rule to support Celtavian's method. (With the caveat that I agree with the posters who say that the rules clearly allow 'take 20' to be used with Search. And yes, I know we aren't in House Rules. )

The 'take 20' rule is supposed to replace the boring situation of players rolling over and over until they get a 20. Take 20 times the base time 'in game' and pretend you've rolled a 20-all set. The listed rules make perfect sense in this context; the skill must allow retries (you couldn't roll over and over otherwise), and there must not be a negative result for failure beyond not succeeding (you can't assume that you'd roll a 20 on your Disable Device before rolling something low enough to miss by 5 and set off the trap). But there's one natural restriction that isn't included: you should have to know whether you've succeeded or failed on a given roll. If you're trying to open a lock, you can see after your attempt whether the lock is open or not. From the metagame point of view, you could roll, roll again, etc., and if you rolled a twenty and the lock still wasn't open, you would know it was beyond you. But when you Search and find nothing, you have no way to tell whether that was a bad roll or there was just nothing to find. (Which is why most DM's make Search rolls for the PC's behind the screen.)

That said, I prefer to let the players 'take 20' on Search checks. It prevents long delays when they're positive there's something there. "There's got to be a secret door somewhere in this room. I'm going to look until I find it!" That can be a lot of rolling, especially if it's a large room. Just make them take two minutes per 5'x5' section of wall and floor, and if there's something to find with a DC of <= the character's Search bonus plus 20, they've got it. It still takes a lot of in-game time, but the real time is much more compact and less boring. And believe me, it's still useful to have at least one character in the party with a decent Search skill, because the DC's can easily be high enough that a 20 is a failure for many characters. Voice of experience here-the group I play with was in exactly the situation I referenced above. We knew there was a secret door in there somewhere, but try as we might, we couldn't find it. Turned out that the Search DC was 30, and our best Search check was a +6.

One of those PC's now has a rogue cohort.

 

[RigaMortus]

Re: Re: re

That's just not true - another thing people forget or ignore all the time is that Search takes 1 round/5' square. If you take 20, that means taking 2 minutes to check every square - so unless you run a game in which the players can afford to spend one hour searching a 25'x30' room, and you would actually allow such absurdly bad role-playing (Yeah, let's just take a break from our quest and take 4 hours to search this wide hallway... hope everyone brought lots of torches!) then it's not a problem, unless the traps are always in obvious places.

An average party consists of 4 characters, if they all Take 20 Searching your 25'x30' room it should take 15 minutes total. And obviously less time if there are more characters in the party.

I agree they might not have time to do this ALL the time, but it is possible to do once in awhile.

 

[mmu1]

Re: Re: Re: re

An average party consists of 4 characters, if they all Take 20 Searching your 25'x30' room it should take 15 minutes total. And obviously less time if there are more characters in the party.

I agree they might not have time to do this ALL the time, but it is possible to do once in awhile.

Not if you're searching for traps, and not if you're doing more than just shaking down the room for loose change - if you're looking for something well-hidden, chances are only one or two people in the party will have a Search bonus good enough to be able to actually help.

 

[hong]

Re: Re: re

(Yeah, let's just take a break from our quest and take 4 hours to search this wide hallway... hope everyone brought lots of torches!)

Who needs torches when you have continual flame?

 

[mmu1]

Re: Re: Re: re

Who needs torches when you have continual flame?

Don't know of any party that'd want to drag you around with them...

 

[hong]

Re: Re: Re: Re: re

Don't know of any party that'd want to drag you around with them...

Tch. You'll need to do better than that to get into my sig.


Hong "or my pants" Ooi