Take 10/20 hate

[Archmage]

Under the no roll system, a skill of 1 means you can pick every single DC 21 lock in the world in 2 minutes, guaranteed.

And a "standard lock" has an Open Lock DC of 25, so most people require some talent or skill and the right tools for the job to succeed.

Suppose I'm making a dungeon (it happens), and I reckon a player will have about a +5 to lockpicking (it happens). I set a lock in a wall, opening up access to some minor treasure, not a big part of the game (it happens).

*stuff about four options for setting the DC*

Yes, when you set the DC for a task where Take 20 is possible, you have declared in advance whether or not the party can succeed, unless they pull more modifiers out of their asses (through Aid Another checks, spellcasting, or whatever).

But so what? The fact is that if they can't pick the lock for some reason, your players are going to find some other way to get through the door. At low levels they might just batter it down; at higher levels they're going to phase through it or cast passwall or something.

If you want your players to have a chance to earn a reward that is greater than zero but less than one-hundred, and you want them to have to use a skill to earn that reward, you need to make sure that either that skill is explicitly retry: no or you need to provide some logical consequences for failure that prevent them from trying again. You can't just tell them "well, you failed to pick the lock, so you can never open this door," because they're going to find some other way to get through if they really want to find out what's on the other side.

If a player tries to do something and fails, and they could plausibly try again and succeed on a subsequent attempt, you need to have a good justification for why they can't try again rather than just cockblocking them.

[TheFlatline]

Also, I think a lot of resistance is a throw-back to older editions of D&D, when you had to roll your percentage chance of Find/Remove Traps.

Taking 20 for a search is an immaculately inefficient prospect for finding/removing traps unless you're talking about a single object like a door or chest.

Taking 20 on search means that you take 20 times as long as you normally would, and only cover a 5x5 foot square. Looking for traps/secret doors/whatever via take 20 means you're basically taking hours per room to verify that there is, to the best of your ability and knowledge, no traps/secret doors/whatever.

Not very timely unless you have a lot of time to kill.

[Zherog]

Under the no roll system, a skill of 1 means you can pick every single DC 21 lock in the world in 2 minutes, guaranteed; all such locks are apparently made in the exact same way, and the same goes for all other skill based problems.

Your first sentence is correct; your second is not.

Suppose I'm making a dungeon (it happens), and I reckon a player will have about a +5 to lockpicking (it happens). I set a lock in a wall, opening up access to some minor treasure, not a big part of the game (it happens).

Now, I have to set a DC for that possibility. If I use the 'roll to open' method, I have options:

a) Set the DC to 1, so he has an automatic chance of getting the irrelevant loot.
b) Set DC low (DC12) so he has a good chance of getting the irrelevant loot
c) Set the DC high (DC 23), so he has a low chance of getting the irrelevant loot
d) Set the DC impossibly high (DC30), so he has no chance of getting the loot.

Under the 'roll' system, all of these are options.

Under the "no roll" system, I only have options a and d. A lock with DC 23 is just as easy to open as DC1 as far as a no-roll campaign is concerned, because he can just take 20/retry until he gets a 20. The game collapses into pass/fail, and skills no longer model reality. Either he has the treasure, or does not, and it may as well be decided before they enter the dungeon, perhaps via an empty/full gift basket.

As was said by others, if you really want all four options on the table (for whatever reason) simply set the conditions such that they can't take 20. Put in a consequence of failure, or put them under some form of pressure, or rig the plot so that taking 2 full minutes to fuck around with the lock causes the princess to die a horrible and painful death.

[RobbyPants]

"Wrecking" is a strong word, but let me try to explain how auto-always-20s alters the game.

You're right that there are basically 20 DCs that any one given rogue can always hit, with take 20, and that anything lower is auto-win and anything lower is auto fail.

But remember that the "thrill" that the skill system is trying to pull over from older editions is Disable Device, not Open Locks. You still have to roll for traps, because you can spring them on a bad roll. Locks are speed bumps, and nothing more. There's a saying IRL that says "locks are there to keep honest people honest", and it's pretty pertinent in D&D too. All it does is slow you down, and that's all it's supposed to do. The traps are what's supposed to stop someone.

Of course, this doesn't mean the standard trap system is that good either, but that's a different point.

I think it's a holdover from older editions. You used to get one shot to open a lock, and if you failed, you had to go up a level before you could try again. There weren't really good rules for breaking down doors.

Well there was the Break Doors part of the Strength table, but I would hardly call that 'good'.

Well, there's the Open Doors column in the Str table, but that base number was for stuck doors, not locked doors. There was a much higher (harder to roll) number in parenthesis for locked doors, but you needed an 18/something or other Str to pull it off. It was literally impossible for a non-warrior to have a Str high enough to bust a locked door.

[Archmage]

But remember that the "thrill" that the skill system is trying to pull over from older editions is Disable Device, not Open Locks.

Quoted for truth. The fact of the matter is that a locked door/chest/grate/whatever is not actually a challenging obstacle to overcome for most parties. If they can't pick it, they're going to smash it. And it's not an interesting obstacle, either.

If you're going to include a dungeon feature in an adventure and make it a big deal obstacle, overcoming it needs to be fun and interactive. Locked doors don't usually fit the bill, and neither do traps when they're set out in the traditional manner--which is basically a binary pass/fail "does your party have a rogue?" check.

Making someone roll until they get the door open isn't dramatic or exciting, it's tedious--and the whole point of Take 20 is to reduce tedium and pointless die-rolling when success is either guaranteed or impossible.

[Princess]

I think that there is nothing bad in taking 20.
Players retrying bad rolls in activities with no obvious failure (for example when you fail to open lock you know about it. When you fail to find clues in room you don't know it's you failed or there were no clues from the beginning) and players abusing aid another ("I aidanother him to pick the lock/search/whatever, because I have no ranks to make a decent roll but I can roll 10 or more") is bigger problem.

Conclusion: Take 20 is good because it speeds up the game, do not provoke debates (like is it appropriate to use aidanother in this situation), do not provoke lots of rolls (like all party rolling Knowledges even if only one of them have chance to succeed this DC).

[Doom]

Your first sentence is correct; your second is not.

Heh, okeedoke...only one sentence there, however.

As was said by others, if you really want all four options on the table (for whatever reason) simply set the conditions such that they can't take 20. Put in a consequence of failure, or put them under some form of pressure, or rig the plot so that taking 2 full minutes to fuck around with the lock causes the princess to die a horrible and painful death.

Yep, can do all that crap, and have to do all that crap every single time for every single non-automatic roll in every single way it comes up, and then have to go through every single condition I set up so that eventually there won't be a scenario that could turn it into a 'take 20' situation...or realize that there's no reason to go through all that trouble for very minor possibilities in an adventure, and understand that skills are abstracted to some extent.

Take 20 has its uses to be sure, but so do other points of view.

[Sashi]

It's not like there's a reason to force players to roll their way through dozens of challenges with no chance of pressure. Picking a lock while the room fills with water and orcs throw rocks at you is a dungeon crawl, picking ten locks by taking 20 with no chance of failure is an archeological dig.

[Zeezy]

Here's how I see it:

Failing an Open Lock check doesn't mean you didn't have the right tool for the job; it just means you failed to employ the tools you have skillfully enough. If the DC is 21+ higher than your skill bonus, then yes, the lock does require a skill you lack. If it's precisely 20 higher, it requires a skill you know, but haven't truly mastered. A character with a +15 to Open Lock can do DC 15 locks in his sleep, and DC 25 if he can devote his undivided attention to the task (take 10). However, DC 35 requires a specific trick he had recently picked up from shadowing a fellow thief, but has lacked the opportunity to exercise. Picking a DC 40 lock comes in volume 3 of Security for Dummies, and he hasn't even finished volume 2 yet.

Yep, can do all that crap, and have to do all that crap every single time for every single non-automatic roll in every single way it comes up, and then have to go through every single condition I set up so that eventually there won't be a scenario that could turn it into a 'take 20' situation...or realize that there's no reason to go through all that trouble for very minor possibilities in an adventure, and understand that skills are abstracted to some extent.

I prefer the approach where you don't throw in random locked doors and save locked doors for when they actually matter, such as when there's a bunch of goblins on the other side and they hear the rogue fiddling with the lock (go ahead and take 20, they'll be good and ready), or when the party is on a timer. If you randomly generate a dungeon, check the locks to see if it would make sense to lock that door. If not, unlock it. You'll be checking the dungeon anyway to come up with a plot hook and to ensure the RNG didn't stick any closet trolls inside, why not add another item to the checklist?

For the record, you've yet to address the fact that the fighter's greatsword is a wonderful back-up lockpick. No, I'm not talking strength checks, I'm talking straight-up shattering the door into tiny, insignificant bits.

[Doom]

Well, I never said it was on a door, it was a lock set into a wall...and not really the point, the issue is taking 20 and understanding what 'skills' are.

You're absolutely right, I could just not have random locked doors, but sometimes players want to explore, sometimes having everything being perfectly predictable is bad...and sometimes I don't want to have to go through all that arbitrary "you can't take 20" bs by coming up with extensive bogus reasons for it. I'll stick with bogus reasons for "either you know how to do this or you don't", and keep things simple that way, instead.

[Ice9]

I'm actually curious then - if you've been running things this way, have your players ever failed to unlock a door (or wall lock, whichever), and if so, then what have they done? Have they actually given up and gone elsewhere, with no attempt to break it down?

[Zeezy]

Well, I never said it was on a door, it was a lock set into a wall...and not really the point, the issue is taking 20 and understanding what 'skills' are.

A skill modifier is an abstraction of your cumulative training in that area of expertise. The d20 roll is an abstraction of your performance relative to how well you usually do (10.5 being the average, 1 being you made a huge error that you recognize, 20 being you couldn't do any better). If you mess up on escape artist to escape a set of manacles, do you just say, "oh well looks like I can't slip these bonds?" No. You try again. You keep trying until your wrists are raw. If you take 20 and still fail, then you realize you're not nearly as good a contortionist as you thought you were, and those manacles are just too tight around your wrists. If you want to treat everything as though it were a Knowledge check, that's fine, but I'm just saying that's an extremely stupid way to go about things, especially things like Open Lock which can easily be bypassed.

I didn't say the lock itself had to be on the door. Indeed, in my first paragraph, I never said it had to be a door. It could just as easily be a chest, which the fighter can force open, or simply hack apart. Alternatively, it could be, as above, manacles, where the fighter can jolly well hack the chains until they split apart. Perhaps the only way a lock can't be bypassed with brute force is if it doesn't really control anything that opens or closes, but I'm having trouble thinking of any examples which aren't actually covered by Open Lock.

So, please answer this before we continue: why are we debating about whether taking 20 on Open Lock is broken? Given sufficient in-game time, unless you can prove otherwise, this is a non-issue. Either discredit the Adamantine Master Key, or go home.

[Princess]

Locks do not provide challenge to party unless they need to make hush-hush silent infiltration or dm invented some nonbreakable door in a nonbreakable walls.
And each time some DM makes adamantine doors he suddenly discovers that party loot the blasted door and try to sell it.

So what's the problem with take 20 on locks if any door just can be easily destroyed or opened with lowly knock spell?

[Lich-Loved]

In my game, I encourage Take 10 and 20 for all the reasons above. My players use it regularly. I also use it both with NPCs (Just how much attention is the guard paying right now? If he has no reason to be suspicious, give him a Take 10) and with players when they do anything where a skill check might be needed but they aren't explicitly using a skill (Spot and listen checks while moving about a dungeon or to determine how much noise they make while moving normally, whatever).

What I don't get is this fixation on locked doors. As soon as my group can afford it, they buy (or more likely make) a wand of knock. That does it. No lock can beat a knock unless it is a "plot lock" and those are few and far between. My players don't even stop at locked doors, they just pop the wand out of their haversack and on they go. Locks only matter at low levels (under about 5 or 6). After that, they have no real impact on the game. The same goes with secret door detection. A first level wand gives plenty of infallible search checks; search skills are not really even needed except in rare cases and usually what is hidden behind one of the 50 secret door detection attempts is enough to pay for another wand retail. It also saves valuable time on the game clock when expensive buffs are ticking away. In the same vein, detect magic is a far better way to search than physically rooting through chests and piles of fur. Between these three simple spells, it is a rare door/treasure that is missed.

[Doom]

I have no idea why the fixation is on locks, it just keeps going to back there, for some reason.

I just think 'take 20' should have some significant limitations. I mean, suppose one guy has skill Gaming (Chess) at +4 and another has skill Gaming (Chess) at +5.

If both players take 2 minutes for each move, the same guy should win every time under the no dice rolling rules. I personally find this slightly unrealistic, and prefer simple dice rolls rather than just assume every game turns out exactly the same way.

I know, someone will point out that Chess is knowledge, or should only be even numbers, or that some guy with a sword can just chop the board in half, or some of the pieces need to be dipped in poison so there's a penalty for failure, or some other such irrelevancy, the point is, in my opinion, skills don't *have* to be deterministic and precisely defined with exact limitations, because they aren't in the real world.

[Doom]

I'm actually curious then - if you've been running things this way, have your players ever failed to unlock a door (or wall lock, whichever), and if so, then what have they done? Have they actually given up and gone elsewhere, with no attempt to break it down?

Well, my players certainly fail skill rolls from time to time. Yes, they don't necessarily get to find out what happens if they had made the roll, and certainly they find workarounds sometimes (eg, failed at diplomacy, bribed a guard instead). I do recall one chest that they dragged back to town for a 'take 20' situation, at the risk of getting dragged into another "just cast Knock" irrelevancy.

But this whole "must always succeed at everything if it is at all possible" thing comes from computer games, where players got trained to save and reload until they found out whatever they wanted to know.

Tabletop RPGs don't have conversation trees....in live play you generally get one conversation, you don't get to re-load over and over until you get the conversation you want, and that's basically how the world works. This may seem terrifying to some, but, I recommend trying it sometime (and yes, I do play computer games quite a bit, just kinda want something different at the tabletop).

[hogarth]

I have no idea why the fixation is on locks, it just keeps going to back there, for some reason.

Because there are a limited number of skills you can retry without any penalty. Open Lock and Search are the most popular for "take 20" in my experience. Handle Animal and Disguise are possibilities, too.

[Doom]

Heh, Search is another one. I can "take 20" searching for my car keys, sometimes I find them in 2 minutes, sometimes not, although invariably they're in a less-than-epic hiding place. Sometimes I need to take 20 multiple times, searching the same spot, finding them after a few tries.

So now I'm taking 20 more than once, and getting different results?

I just don't find that a universally satisfying model of reality. When I 'take 20' to search for my damn keys, it just means more than taking 2 minutes, to me. Alternatively, I ask my girlfriend, and she spots them with little difficulty.

[Sashi]

I have no idea why the fixation is on locks, it just keeps going to back there, for some reason.

I just think 'take 20' should have some significant limitations. I mean, suppose one guy has skill Gaming (Chess) at +4 and another has skill Gaming (Chess) at +5.

If both players take 2 minutes for each move, the same guy should win every time under the no dice rolling rules. I personally find this slightly unrealistic, and prefer simple dice rolls rather than just assume every game turns out exactly the same way.

I know, someone will point out that Chess is knowledge, or should only be even numbers, or that some guy with a sword can just chop the board in half, or some of the pieces need to be dipped in poison so there's a penalty for failure, or some other such irrelevancy, the point is, in my opinion, skills don't *have* to be deterministic and precisely defined with exact limitations, because they aren't in the real world.

The problem with your example has nothing to do with any of your examples but instead because it's a gross misreading of the Take 10/20 rules, especially the take 20.

There's some wiggle room on the take 10 rules for what "Under pressure" means. I generally rule that being under pressure means that the target of your check knows about you and is actively your enemy. So you could take 10 on a bluff check to write a lie into a letter, and you could take 10 on a bluff check to tell the barkeep you come from a different hometown than you really do. But you can't take 10 to lie to the kings face when he has you arrested and tortured on suspicion of sleeping with the Queen.

Take 20 is just a shorthand for sitting at the situation and rolling the dice 20+ times. You literally make 20 attempts and get the result of 1 through 20 on the die. So two chess players could play 20 games with each other and you could declare "the player with the +5 bonus wins 11 games and the player with the +4 bonus wins 9", but you can't say "I work through the 20 possible moves I can make in my head and choose the best one".

Heh, Search is another one. I can "take 20" searching for my car keys, sometimes I find them in 2 minutes, sometimes not, although invariably they're in a less-than-epic hiding place. Sometimes I need to take 20 multiple times, searching the same spot, finding them after a few tries.

So now I'm taking 20 more than once, and getting different results?

I just don't find that a universally satisfying model of reality. When I 'take 20' to search for my damn keys, it just means more than taking 2 minutes, to me. Alternatively, I ask my girlfriend, and she spots them with little difficulty.

The 2-minute approximation is just that: an approximation. When you "take 20" in real life you're not using the abstract game mechanic "Take 20", you really are walking around your house rolling the damn d20 until you finally get the right result. Just like flipping a coin and getting tails 100 times in a row, you really can roll a die and get a 1 20 times in a row. The take 20 rules approximate to 2 minutes because it helps no-one to say that taking 20 takes 4d10 rounds (average 2 minutes) and that you have to pass a DC 15 willpower check or just give up in frustration and ask your girlfriend before you actually manage to roll that 20..

[Kaelik]

Well, my players certainly fail skill rolls from time to time. Yes, they don't necessarily get to find out what happens if they had made the roll, and certainly they find workarounds sometimes (eg, failed at diplomacy, bribed a guard instead). I do recall one chest that they dragged back to town for a 'take 20' situation, at the risk of getting dragged into another "just cast Knock" irrelevancy.

But this whole "must always succeed at everything if it is at all possible" thing comes from computer games, where players got trained to save and reload until they found out whatever they wanted to know.

Tabletop RPGs don't have conversation trees....in live play you generally get one conversation, you don't get to re-load over and over until you get the conversation you want, and that's basically how the world works. This may seem terrifying to some, but, I recommend trying it sometime (and yes, I do play computer games quite a bit, just kinda want something different at the tabletop).

Stop being stupid. The idea of taking 20 doesn't come from video games, it comes from RPG games, where a 20 succeeds, and there is no fucking penalty for trying again. That's why people used to take 20 the hard way back when every DM was a retard like you.

Once again, why the fuck did your PCs take a chest back to town for taking 20? They can do that right there. It's 20 rounds, not 20 hours.

Seriously, stop being retarded. When people disagree with you about your retarded ideas, it's not because they are evilly corrupted by video games, it's because your ideas are retarded.

[Zeezy]

If both players take 2 minutes for each move, the same guy should win every time under the no dice rolling rules. I personally find this slightly unrealistic, and prefer simple dice rolls rather than just assume every game turns out exactly the same way.

A poor example. You can't take 20 here; you can only take 10 because there is a penalty for failure. Taking 20 means you make 20 moves, or complete 20 games. If you take 10, you're making the best move possible. If you roll, you're making a suboptimal move in hopes that you confuse your opponent. It might work, or it might not work. That's what the die roll is for: to see if it does.

The same situation arises with the social skills: you have a chance to fail, so you can't take 20. This is an encounter. Not all encounters involve combat, but they can all be rather dangerous. If you fail that Diplomacy check to get in the castle, you'll have to find another way to meet the king, and that might make peacefully negotiating with him extremely difficult, even if (especially if) you actually reach him. If you fail on any Bluffplomacy check, the NPC won't be receptive to any further talk. Thus, you can't take 20: not because there's a chance to fail, but because failure carries negative consequences.

All told, there's still no justifiable reason to disallow taking 20 on a check where no penalty for failure exists. Disallowing it isn't realistic, it's cock-blocking your players. Taking 20 is performed nigh-exclusively on small-scale tasks where you have the time to be meticulous. The only events I can think of where taking 20 would take longer than an hour (but less than a day) are searching a room larger than 25'x30' (waste of time: the adventurers have an entire dungeon to raid) and the Spellcraft check to make the diagram for a magic circle against evil spell. That's it. Only one of those examples are unreasonable, and not because it'd break the game to allow it.

Handle Animal and Disguise are possibilities, too.

Actually, I'm unsure if Disguise works. You don't make the check until somebody tries to oppose your Disguise check. By that logic, I'd imagine taking 20 is right out, RAW. You might be allowed to take 10, though, and I'd certainly rule that you could take 20. RAW, however, I don't think that's allowed.

[hogarth]

Heh, Search is another one. I can "take 20" searching for my car keys, sometimes I find them in 2 minutes, sometimes not, although invariably they're in a less-than-epic hiding place. Sometimes I need to take 20 multiple times, searching the same spot, finding them after a few tries.

So now I'm taking 20 more than once, and getting different results?

No. If you absolutely ransack a drawer, literally taking everything out of it, examining every item closely, and you satisfy yourself beyond a shadow of a doubt that your car keys aren't in there, that's taking 20.

Now you may complain that that should take more than two minutes. But the fact still remains that searching a drawer as thoroughly as possible should have a maximum amount of time associated with it. Whether that's 2 hours or 20 minutes or 2 minutes is moot.

[Kaelik]

Heh, Search is another one. I can "take 20" searching for my car keys, sometimes I find them in 2 minutes, sometimes not, although invariably they're in a less-than-epic hiding place. Sometimes I need to take 20 multiple times, searching the same spot, finding them after a few tries.

So now I'm taking 20 more than once, and getting different results?

I just don't find that a universally satisfying model of reality. When I 'take 20' to search for my damn keys, it just means more than taking 2 minutes, to me. Alternatively, I ask my girlfriend, and she spots them with little difficulty.

You never take 20 with searching. If you take 20 on Search it means you spend two minutes searching a single five foot square.

If you then search a second square, that's either another two minutes to take 20, or another chance to roll.

When you search for things, you don't ever take 20, likewise PCs don't unless they know there is a trap, and they are doing a specific thing like "a door."

[8headeddragon]

I was spot on. Any way you slice it there are going to be people out there that want the "excitement" of a player possibly failing at a challenge, and out of habit want to see the challenges involve risk and possibility.

Formula or drill, that's what the roll is about. "Taking 20" can make too many things too automatic.

There are many more DMs than this one that don't like an option to skip their obstacles. I once dealt with a stubborn DM that demanded rolls for checks that were impossible to fail. Stupid? Yes, but with a stupidity prevalent enough that this DM was not unique for his mindset.

The good DMs kind of resign to the fact that at around 5th level their party is going to start rolling less and less for skill checks, whether they're taking 10 or 20 or neither.

[Doom]

A poor example. You can't take 20 here; you can only take 10 because there is a penalty for failure. Taking 20 means you make 20 moves, or complete 20 games. If you take 10, you're making the best move possible. If you roll, you're making a suboptimal move in hopes that you confuse your opponent. It might work, or it might not work. That's what the die roll is for: to see if it does.

But there's no reason to roll a die in this system.

Let's try it again more slowly. A guy sits at the chess table, and 'takes 20', making the best possible move. He then gets up and leaves the room.

Another guy comes in, looks at the board, and 'takes 20' for the best possible move based on the board, and leaves the room. They go back and forth like this, neither one knowing that they're even playing a game against the other.

No penalty for failure whether they know or not, of course (just a game), each one is taking 20 every time, the same game plays out every time, the guy with the +1 bonus wins every game.

Just like the real world, eh?

Next up, a skilled kicker on the practice field of football. He takes 20 every time, kicking 50 yard field goals with perfect accuracy, every single kick identical.

No penalty for losing, using a physical skill, and makes every single kick, 10,000 in a row if need be, with no variation...and yet, somehow, I don't think it really works that way.

I guess I just can't express the idea that there really is a possibility of randomness in skill execution, above and beyond other issues with the no-die roll system...but I've have no trouble finding folks that don't freak out at the concept like this.

It's not 'stupidity' to toss 'take 20' when it leads to automatic success. The stupidity is bothering to have scenarios where the players need to waste time on 'take 20'. If it's automatic, I don't waste time on rolling or forcing my players to say "I take 20, durrrr"..."it's a simple lock, you find the golden egg, you smash the door in.", no reason to waste time in such stupidity, at least for me. But sometimes, some players, actually like getting lucky as opposed to an endless series of either impossible or trivial pseudochallenges, like in the no die roll system.