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<blockquote data-quote="Scotley" data-source="post: 4740381" data-attributes="member: 11520">I think there are a couple of good reasons for taking 10 and taking 20. They are different. You take 10 to represent the easy things that any reasonably skilled person should be able to do. If you are a true master of the skill +20 or better then when taking 10 you can do even really hard stuff (DC30 or better) with ease. Makes sense. If you have little or no skill say less than 5, then even moderately difficult stuff DC15 or better is out of reach. Makes sense too. Taking 20 is a little different. If you have plenty of time to kill then eventually you should be able to accomplish even fairly hard things if you have some skill. Again that makes sense. If there is a decent chance you could get hurt doing it then it no longer makes sense that you should be able to keep at it until you succeed. Presumably that's where you get hurt before you succeed. Thus the limit on 'when failure carries a penalty'. At least that's the way I understand it. The idea has grown with 4e into skill challenges--now taking 10 or 20 isn't enough. It actually makes skills more important which you may like. Now it takes multiple successes often with more than one person and skill to succeed on something important. If you screw up too many times then there is no chance of success. Taking ten grew into passive perception checks and knowledge checks. Instead of a roll the assumption is that anyone with a certain level of skill is automatically going to succeed. Which isn't a bad assumption, but it also has an important advantage of speeding things up from a purely mechanical stand point.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Scotley, post: 4740381, member: 11520"] I think there are a couple of good reasons for taking 10 and taking 20. They are different. You take 10 to represent the easy things that any reasonably skilled person should be able to do. If you are a true master of the skill +20 or better then when taking 10 you can do even really hard stuff (DC30 or better) with ease. Makes sense. If you have little or no skill say less than 5, then even moderately difficult stuff DC15 or better is out of reach. Makes sense too. Taking 20 is a little different. If you have plenty of time to kill then eventually you should be able to accomplish even fairly hard things if you have some skill. Again that makes sense. If there is a decent chance you could get hurt doing it then it no longer makes sense that you should be able to keep at it until you succeed. Presumably that's where you get hurt before you succeed. Thus the limit on 'when failure carries a penalty'. At least that's the way I understand it. The idea has grown with 4e into skill challenges--now taking 10 or 20 isn't enough. It actually makes skills more important which you may like. Now it takes multiple successes often with more than one person and skill to succeed on something important. If you screw up too many times then there is no chance of success. Taking ten grew into passive perception checks and knowledge checks. Instead of a roll the assumption is that anyone with a certain level of skill is automatically going to succeed. Which isn't a bad assumption, but it also has an important advantage of speeding things up from a purely mechanical stand point. [/QUOTE]

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