Taking 20 is poorly defined

[Otterscrubber]

In the PHB it states that you can take 20 "when the skill being attempted carries no penalties for failure". My question is there is always a penalty for failure, usually the fact that you fail to acheive something that you wanted to do. Can anyone help clarify this?

 

[LokiDR]

Penalty is not the same as failure. If you fail to open a lock, the situation hasn't changed - take 20. If you fail to balance on a cliff edge, you fall, much different than not trying, no taking 20.

I think it is pretty straight forward, really. YMMV.

 

[Otterscrubber]

So penalty is defined as taking damage?

 

[Mike Sullivan]

Think about it this way: if you take 20, you fail 19 times, and then succeed the 20th.

If there's some reason why failing 19 times makes it unlikely that you could ever succeed, then you can't take 20.

 

[Otterscrubber]

Makes sense, thanks.

 

[LokiDR]

Not always. Failing a disable device check by 5 or more sets off the device. This could be trap or a door latch you are trying to seal. Traps don't always cause damage themselves, they are sometimes just alarms, or insanity spells. Insanity isn't damage, but it certainly isn't good.

A rule of thumb seems to be: can rolling bad on this check be any worse than not doing the check at all. You can take 20 on search because failing means you don't find the trap, just like not searching.

 

[AuraSeer]

This has been explained very well in this other thread. In short, something is only a "penalty for failure" if it makes you worse off than you started.

Penalties include: injury (as with Jump or Climb), loss of resources (as with Craft), loss of opportunity to retry (as with Decipher Script), setting off a trap (as with Disable Device), and so on.

If you fail on something innocuous like a Search check or an Escape Artist check, you don't actually lose anything. You simply don't gain the benefit of a successful check. You can still try again, as many times as you want; even if you don't gain any ground, you won't worsen your situation.

 

[Cheiromancer]

The way I think of taking 20 is that you go through all possible die rolls in succession, from worst to best.

i.e. first try you rolled a "1," second try you rolled a "2," and so on.

If something jams/blows up etc. on a 1, then that is what happened!

In other words, taking twenty is a slow, methodical process whereby you try everything... and if anything bad could happen, it does.

 

[Nephet]

3E+ will lay down the law in this regard. Until then, d20M's descriptions will work.