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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Christian" data-source="post: 917294" data-attributes="member: 381">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. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":p" title="Stick out tongue    :p"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":p" /> )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. <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=":)" /></blockquote>

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