Taking 10 practices

[DonEsteban]

Hi playgrounders. That other thread inspired me to ask a long-standing question I had regarding skill uses.

In our group, there are certain skills where we tend to never take 10. This includes Spot and Listen, but also Knowledge skills.
Take for example a monster trying to ambush the party. It could take 10 on its Hide check. The party takes 10 on their Spot checks. (Neither side is distracted or hurried.) Now it's always only a question of who has the higher skill modifier. This seems kind of lame. I think you need a random variable to represent environmental influences, coincidences beyound your control and so forth. (On the other hand, having both sides roll a dice might just result in too much randomness...)
Or take Knowledge checks. Allowing to Take 10 would mean that a character knows every monster with HD less or equal to his skill modifier. (Of course he might still not remember in combat, so this is more of a theoretical issue.)

Don't get me wrong, I think in many cases Taking 10 is a wonderful mechanic that makes sense and saves time, but in some cases it isn't. What do you think? Do you have skills where you almost never take 10?

Then there are skills which almost have something like a built-in take 12 (at least) mechanic, like Disguise, Forgery or Disable Device (given time), or Craft, because you can practically always somehow achieve "favorable circumstances". This is not an argument against Taking 10, nor is it necessarily a bad thing. Only a minor weirdness that just crossed my mind...

[Silfir]

Why would the entire party take 10 in its spot checks? Only one needs to spot the monster and warn the others. Even if the party consists of, say, three complete Spot duds and one who is really good at it, the only one who would take 10 is the pro. The others can still roll even if it's just for the 5% to automatically succeed.

I might be a tremendous rule noob, but can you even take 10 on a spot check (usually unconsciously) used to detect ambushes? That sounds plenty threatening to me.

[HunterOfJello]

Taking 10 doesn't make sense in the context of Spot or Knowledge checks. Taking 10 is the practice of doing multiple attempts at an action. Occasionally, there are specific feats or instances where you can skip taking a roll and choose to take a '10' dice roll instead, but that's different from the core rule of Taking 10.

If a character is walking through a forest, stop and looks around themself, then that's 1 spot check. There would be no reason to take multiple spot checks unless they have a reason to doubt their own vision. If the character heard something, they might go as far to take 3 spot checks, but if they see nothing after looking around for all that time, looking around even more wouldn't make sense.

As far as Knowledge checks go, taking 10 makes no sense at all. A knowledge checks is a check to see if the character has retained information from what they've heard on a specific topic from rumors or studying (if trained). There is no situation in which a character gets multiple attempts at seeing if they've previously retained information or not.

[ImperatorK]

you have mistaken Take 10 for Take 20. The later is repeating one thing over and over again until you get it perfectly (20 times, thus Take 20). The former is just an average.

[Knaight]

Taking 10 doesn't make sense in the context of Spot or Knowledge checks. Taking 10 is the practice of doing multiple attempts at an action. Occasionally, there are specific feats or instances where you can skip taking a roll and choose to take a '10' dice roll instead, but that's different from the core rule of Taking 10.


Taking 20 is the practice of doing multiple attempts. Taking 10 is a roll avoidance method used in situations where failure isn't dangerous and there aren't complications.

[LansXero]

So what would be a good way of doing a passive check? Ive been using 10+relevant modifier for cases in which they may not be actively using a check but it would make sense for them to notice things if they are skilled enough at that.

[Curmudgeon]

Take for example a monster trying to ambush the party. It could take 10 on its Hide check. The party takes 10 on their Spot checks. (Neither side is distracted or hurried.) Now it's always only a question of who has the higher skill modifier. This seems kind of lame. I think you need a random variable to represent environmental influences, coincidences beyound your control and so forth.
The DM supplies that degree of uncertainty with modifiers for favorable and unfavorable conditions. If somebody in the party is being chatty, the Listen DC for the monster goes down. If there's nothing but echoing hard surfaces around, the Listen DC to discern the meaning of various noises goes up for everyone. If the light is shifting about, the Spot DC goes up for everyone. If party's only got one torch bearer and is spread out, everyone else gets a penalty to their Spot checks. Also remember that the distance between characters making opposed checks imposes penalties to Spot and Listen, so that's going to vary randomly with the separation between the individuals in the groups. There's plenty of variability without needing dice.

As a DM, "take 10" is something I require outside of combat. It's either too much information to give the PCs if I ask them to make Spot and/or Listen checks as needed, or extremely tedious to have them roll those checks every round and disregard 98%. :smallfrown:

[Urpriest]

Why would the entire party take 10 in its spot checks? Only one needs to spot the monster and warn the others. Even if the party consists of, say, three complete Spot duds and one who is really good at it, the only one who would take 10 is the pro. The others can still roll even if it's just for the 5% to automatically succeed.

I might be a tremendous rule noob, but can you even take 10 on a spot check (usually unconsciously) used to detect ambushes? That sounds plenty threatening to me.

There is no 5% chance to automatically succeed. That's for saves and attacks only.

[Curmudgeon]

I might be a tremendous rule noob, but can you even take 10 on a spot check (usually unconsciously) used to detect ambushes? That sounds plenty threatening to me.
Until they're aware of a potential ambush the PCs aren't being distracted or threatened.
Distractions or threats (such as combat) make it impossible for a character to take 10. Until somebody rolls initiative, the PCs aren't in combat; all threats are possibilities rather than actualities before that.

[DonEsteban]

Why would the entire party take 10 in its spot checks? Only one needs to spot the monster and warn the others. Even if the party consists of, say, three complete Spot duds and one who is really good at it, the only one who would take 10 is the pro. The others can still roll even if it's just for the 5% to automatically succeed.
I might be a tremendous rule noob, but can you even take 10 on a spot check (usually unconsciously) used to detect ambushes? That sounds plenty threatening to me.
I'm not sure if I understand what you mean. For one thing, a 20 on a skill check is not an automatic success. That's only for saves and attacks. And then it's not always the characters' choice if they take 10 or 20. See Curmudgeon's method below.


Taking 20 is the practice of doing multiple attempts. Taking 10 is a roll avoidance method used in situations where failure isn't dangerous and there aren't complications.

According to the rules you may Take 10 "when your character is not being threatened or distracted". That includes far more situations than you seem to allow.

Curmudgeon: I fully agree that favorable or unfavorable conditions should be included as modifiers to DC or skill roll. But there are certain things that I can't or don't want to control as a DM. Did the sun just happen to break through the clouds so they're slightly dazzled? Or was there a sudden rain shower? Do they happen to look in the right or in the opposite direction? Things like that.


Also remember that the distance between characters making opposed checks imposes penalties to Spot and Listen, so that's going to vary randomly with the separation between the individuals in the groups. There's plenty of variability without needing dice. I'm impressed. I don't usually care to calculate a modifier for every member of the party based on distance. This appears way too complicated (up to impossible) for almost all situations. Rolling a die is simpler.

Finally

So what would be a good way of doing a passive check? Ive been using 10+relevant modifier for cases in which they may not be actively using a check but it would make sense for them to notice things if they are skilled enough at that.

What you can do is to roll the check secretly. Or cunningly ask the players to make a Spot check for reason A, while you really use the result for event B. ;)

Let's compare both practices: Let's assume a skill modifier of +10. Taking 10 means the character spots everything with a Hide check of 20 and below (or a modifier of 10 and below) with 100% probability and everything above 20 with 0% probability. Rolling the check means 45% for DC 20 and 50% probability for DC 21. This makes for two entirely different types of games. (Well, probably not entirely different, because DCs tend to be random as well, to a certain extent...)

I'm just curious which is the most commonly used method. Taking 10 if ever possible, or rolling as much as possible?

[Urpriest]

Until they're aware of a potential ambush the PCs aren't being distracted or threatened. Until somebody rolls initiative, the PCs aren't in combat; all threats are possibilities rather than actualities before that.

Someone forgot to mind-meld with his dictionary this morning:


threat
–noun
1.
a declaration of an intention or determination to inflict punishment, injury, etc., in retaliation for, or conditionally upon, some action or course; menace: He confessed under the threat of imprisonment.
2.
an indication or warning of probable trouble: The threat of a storm was in the air.
3.
a person or thing that threatens.

The first definition doesn't really make sense in context, so we use the second. A threat is an indication or warning of possible trouble. If there's a possibility of trouble that someone can spot, then by definition the characters are under threat, and cannot take 10.

[DonEsteban]

Well, before they make the Spot check there is no "indication or warning of probable trouble. But yeah, there are different possible interpretations of "threatened". But that's something I'd rather not discuss in every painstaking detail here...

[Curmudgeon]

Someone forgot to mind-meld with his dictionary this morning:
I'm well aware of the dictionary meaning, thanks. D&D uses some terms differently than the dictionary does, though.

A threat is an indication or warning of possible trouble. If there's a possibility of trouble that someone can spot, then by definition the characters are under threat, and cannot take 10.
The specific example used in the "take 10" rule for a threat is combat, which only applies after initiative is rolled. The other D&D-specific definitions are:
threat

A possible critical hit.
threaten

To be able to attack in melee without moving from your current space. Even using the definition you quoted, there is no indication or warning of possible trouble until after a Spot or Listen check succeeds, so it's still legal to "take 10" before that success is achieved.