Taking 20 Too Often

[Pbartender]

How does taking 20, which makes an action take 20 times as long, increase the amount of real life time before the characters need to rest? Or are you saying rolling dice tires the players out and they want to quit after an hour?

No... he's talking about in-game time.

Normally, in-game, characters burn through spells and hitpoints fairly quickly... You enter the dungeon just after breakfast, and by lunchtime you need to rest for eight hours. Taking 20 (especially on Search checks) helps stretch out that time between encoutners, so that PCs won't actually have to pack up and rest until much closer to bedtime.

 

[Chiaroscuro23]

We just had this argument on RPGnet, actually. I'll report my thoughts:

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Taking 20 works less well for trapfinding than for searching for treasure, secret doors, and such, IMO. I've been playing through the Age of Worms adventure path, and some of the dungeons we've done have been many hundreds of 5x5 squares big. Taking 20 as you walk down the hall would take a lot of in-game time, but on the other hand rolling a Search check for each square would take a lot of out-of-game time. Presumably the RAW answer is to habitually take 10 while walking through the dungeon.

The problem is that taking 10 and taking 20 take the randomness out. That's the point of the rules, and sometimes it's really a good idea, but when finding traps, I can see how you wouldn't like it. I'm not fond of it myself. If taking 20 the rogue will find all traps he is numerically able to find, and if taking 10 he's going to miss them the vast majority of the time, unless they are really easy to find. (At 7th level my guy has about +13 or so to his check; I'd be surprised if most traps this far into the adventure path weren't DC 25+. By habitually taking 10, I'd never find any at all.)

That's bad for two reasons, IMO: firstly, randomness in trap detection feels like an improtant part of D&D. Secondly, it forces you to either roll for each and every square (awful) or take 20 (not always practicable. Say when invading an enemy stronghold; taking more time lets them respond better. Why there are deadly traps in frequently-used corridors isn't clear to me, but hey, genre tropes, right?) because taking 10 will get party members dead.

So in my group we're using a bit of a houserule--the rogue rolls once for a general area, against the DC of the only trap in the area. He doesn't have to point to the specific square where he's searching, or describe his search procedure in advance. Instead, the check represents his searching each square, while simply not bothering to roll all the checks that can't possibly find anything. Presumably he wouldn't get the check if he were running flat out through the dungeon instead of carefully checking.

Now, it *would* be metagaming if a poor roll on that check promtped a second roll, because of the house-rule setting it up. The PC is just visually inspecting the path for tripwires, pressure plates, and so on. He has no reason to suspect that the absence of a tripwire here is more meaningful that the absence of one 10 feet back.

Part of the reason the GM agreed to this houserule, I think, is that we had a PC die in the very first session when I failed to declare I was searching a particular 5' square in a tunnel, activating a trap which did ~6d6 damage to a first level elven mage (she went splat.) I had been declaring searches for everything that looked vaguely interesting, but quite because they were annoying everyone by taking up screen time. And anyway, I wasn't declaring a search for each step of every hallway. (It never occurred to me how attention-whore-like the rogue's job is before I played this PC. Everyone has to stop and focus on him all the time while he searches for and disarms traps.)
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Of course we can and occasionally do take 20 on something that's very likely to contain traps or treasure, but taking 20 on every step of every hallway doesn't sound like as much fun as rolling only occasionally, to me. It's tons better then rolling for every 5 feet, though.

 

[Schmoe]

We just had this argument on RPGnet, actually. I'll report my thoughts:

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Taking 20 works less well for trapfinding than for searching for treasure, secret doors, and such, IMO. I've been playing through the Age of Worms adventure path, and some of the dungeons we've done have been many hundreds of 5x5 squares big. Taking 20 as you walk down the hall would take a lot of in-game time, but on the other hand rolling a Search check for each square would take a lot of out-of-game time. Presumably the RAW answer is to habitually take 10 while walking through the dungeon.

My solution to this is pretty much identical to yours. Have the player make one or a couple of Search rolls. I then assume the first result is the roll he makes when he comes to the first trap (or other searchable feature), and so on. I have him make a roll whether anything is present or not. This cuts out all of the irrelevant rolls, but still doesn't let the player know if there was something he missed.

 

[Al'Kelhar]

Along the same lines as Psion's ideas, I allow for "passive" trap searching by anyone with the Trapfinding ability, and use movement penalties similar to those for Hide or Move Silently...

"While watching for traps, you can move up to one-half your normal speed at no penalty. When moving at a speed greater than one-half but less than your full speed, you take a -5 penalty. It’s practically impossible (-20 penalty) to find traps while running or charging."

IMC, at 5th level rogues get an ability called "Improved Trapfinding" which works like an elf's sense secret doors, or dwarf's sense unusual stonework abilities, but for mechanical traps. Whenever a 5th level or higher rogue gets within 5 feet of a mechanical trap, he gets a Search check (rolled secretly by the DM) to detect it.

One of the special abilities then available to rogues from 10th level is "Greater Trapfinding", which makes the range of detecing mechanical traps 10 ft, and allows the rogue to sense magical traps within 5 feet.

On the issue in question, I agree with other posters' comments. Don't deliberately penalise players for their characters being cautious, but emphasise the length of time taking 20 on Search checks takes. Then put them in a few situations where time is of the essence for good, in-game reasons (not ones contrived to force the point). Have dynamic dungeons - I've never used 'random' encounter tables, but if some place is the lair of an intelligent adversary, it or its guards are likely to be wandering around the place, probably in force if they know the PCs are there. And as other posters have noted, disarming traps isn't the same as finding them; and just because they've found the secret door doesn't mean they've found the special key or command word required to open it.

Cheers, Al'Kelhar

 

[airwalkrr]

I would not worry about players taking 20 all the time. For one, it speeds up the game. For another, the important thing to remember is that taking 20 takes twenty times as long. The PCs are hardly going to have the time to search every 5 ft. square of a 15,000 sq. ft. dungeon. As for random encounters, I have found they have become uncommon in 3e, but if you still use them, you don't need to increase the chances of a random encounter, since that is already accounted for by the fact that they are taking more time. For example, if you roll for a random encounter every 10 minutes, then PCs spend 2 minutes taking 20 on a Search check, they have gotten 20 times closer to the next random encounter roll than they would have if they had rolled once.

 

[SgtHulka]

A couple of rules comments for the original poster:

1) If the trap has a DC of 21+, the character requires Trapfinding to discover it. Unless your entire party consists of Rogues or Scouts, they won't be able to "aid another".

2) As per the official FAQ, you can't take 10 on opposed checks. Listen is an opposed check (opposed by Move Silently).

 

[wedgeski]

2) As per the official FAQ, you can't take 10 on opposed checks. Listen is an opposed check (opposed by Move Silently).

Except there are many more things to listen to than that! How many adventures have said something along the lines of: "When players enter this room have them make a Listen check (DC 15). Those who succeed hear the faint murmur of water behind the southern wall." In any case, opposed or no, I do not allow Take 10's on such Listen checks, because it implies some kind of preparation.

 

[RFisher]

I think that taking 20 is a brilliant mechanic that helps to speed along gameplay.

I don't know if it's brilliant. Letting PCs automatically succeed at tasks when there is no failure or time pressure is a time honored DM technique. Clearly having something like that in the book--whether defined as mechanically as take 20 or not--should be expected.

No offense meant, but I let the players roll.

I tend to let the players roll for almost everything these days as well. When 3e first came out, I did it mostly because--with a game that was so new to all of us--I guess I wanted the mechanics to be transparent. The game has seemed more fun for everyone involved the more I continue to do it, though.

I do still tend to keep the DC secret in traditional DM-rolls-for-player situations. Actually, I tend to keep the DC secret--or at least fail to volunteer it--all the time. I'm trying to be better about that.

I love the "uncertain" thing I stole from Traveller 4 & used with the Coda system. (Megatraveller had an uncertain rule, but it, IMHO, didn't work.) Coda is a 2d6 system, but on "uncertain" rolls, I'd have the player roll one die & the I'd (secretly) roll the other. It's kind of cool because--if the player has a good guess at what the difficulty is--how much he knows about how successful his attempt was tends to fit the difference between his skill & the difficulty. But, it just never seemed to work well for us in practice.

 

[jameswilliamogle]

Another note on Aid Another: unless those characters can hit the search DC themselves, they can't aid to any effect. If the search DC > 20, only the Trapfinders can aid (usually, this means no Aid Another for the Rogue, unless the party has a Beguiler or Artificer).

Also, (I think this was already said) the other people can't take 10 on an AA check.


You probably shouldn't Take 20 hate. As everyone's mentioned, Disable Device can't have Take 20. Also, so what if the party can take 20 on listen? The monsters can take 20 on Move Silently as well . If I was a monster, and I heard the party coming (thanks to that very noisy full-plate cleric in the party), I'd take 20 on MS.

 

[Lanefan]

The problem with Take-20 is the all-or-nothing-ness of it. I'd far prefer something like Take-18, where there is still a known chance of failure, if such a thing must exist at all; better yet would be to drop the mechanic entirely and roll the dice. (and if people try to jerk the system by rolling 20 times for each 5' square, bring out the +12 smackdown hammer...or just tell 'em their first roll represents their best attempt for the day/hour/encounter/whatever and move on)

And keep in mind even Take-10 still assumes you're doing a somewhat-competent job at whatever you're doing...otherwise it'd be Take-5, or Take-2...

Lanefan