Search skill

[chomskola]

How do you guys treat searching? It seems like a massive pain. you can search 5x5 in full round, so a room with 15 squares, it would take one character 15 full rounds..not including the walls. what if the player would liek to 'avoid' certain areas, what if they take ten or even 20..and trigger an action etc. I have no idea how to play it out in a way that allows other players to not be bored, how to make the searching natural feeling and not routine..how not to lead the players by the nose..maybe im overthinking it.

[Daftendirekt]

Well, searching is generally not done in combat, so the full-round thing is kind of moot. Lots of times the person just takes 20 for the room if there's time. If not, roll a search check for the whole room which pretty much signifies a quick once-over.

[Elderand]

A full round is only 6 seconds
I don't think spending the equivalent of a minute and a half to search a room to be a massive pain.

Now the amount of dice roll on the other hand that can be tedious. Just let them roll once for the whole room.

[Story]

You could preroll or just assume taking 10 when not in combat. Unless there's a specific area they want to search particularly thoroughly, in which case you assume they're taking 20.

You don't have to waste IRL time on it unless the outcome is actually important.

[tyckspoon]

Preferably you open with a Spot ("you notice the stones in that area of the wall are worn down as if by the grinding of other rocks/covered in old bloodstains/oddly shiny") or a relevant Knowledge ("Your training in Architecture and Engineering tells you this room is a bit smaller than it should be! Specifically, the east wall should be about five feet farther back.") or something else that provides a clue as to exactly *where* one should be Searching. Blind-Searching an entire room is something that should basically never be happening, and probably wouldn't be an issue except that the basic mechanics of how traps work in D&D means it's just about the only way to deal with them other than accepting that you'll get hit and face-tanking them.

So I'd say use a different approach to traps (Dungeonscape has advice on 'encounter traps' that is pretty good) and if your player/s still insist on searching *everything* provide some feats/spells/magic items/etc that provide for quicker Searching so the designated Searchmonkey doesn't have to hold up the entire party while he does his things.

[chomskola]

Is prerolling done in other circumstances?

[chomskola]

Spoon, that sounds very sensible, the mechanics of the game allow and even describe blind searching, but the RP examples in the text suggest an approach much more like you are suggesting. The gap...between roleplaying fluidity..and interpretation of RP through the rules..and on the other hand the rigourous attempt to codify rules for so much in 3.5 makes me wonder if the game designers were trying to incorporate both approaches, but there's still this gap which DM'S have to fill in with their own style and judgement.

[Elderand]

Preroling is a great way to save some time whenever a roll is needed. If everyone agrees to it I don't see why you couldn't pre roll everything.

[Vorr]

How do you guys treat searching?

In general, if there is something to be found I will hint that something might be there to find.

"The room is filled with buckets of goblin poop and smells horrable" would indicate nothing to find.

"The guard captain's shinny new looking oak desk has a iron pad lock on the left drawer." might indicate something of value.

[Daftendirekt]

"The room is filled with buckets of goblin poop and smells horrable" would indicate nothing to find.


Unless that's what the DM wants you to think, and rewards your tenacity with some uber-loot...

Sneaky.

[ericgrau]

It's 25 squares. Anyway you take 50 minutes to take a 20, room searched from top to bottom, no rolls. Or 2.5 minutes to take a 10, no rolls. Or if the player must roll then have him roll once. Or have him make a few rolls if needed but don't tell him exactly how many things there are to find in the room, if any.

Or a player might take a 20 on the doors and a 10 on the floors for 6.5 minutes. Whatever.

[Curmudgeon]

As a DM I don't want players rolling for non-exciting things, and I definitely don't want to give away things by asking leading questions like "What's your roll for that area right by the door?". So I tell players to decide whether they want to "take 10" or "take 20" for an area and we do that without rolling. The longer ("take 20") Search time is much more likely to be interrupted by random encounters, naturally.

[Gavinfoxx]

Search is definitely a skill I have my Take 10 on. Sometimes I have characters search via a heuristic. Basically, they Take 10 once and then 'push themselves' (rolling), at each main feature of the room. I generally have the character Take 10 on all relevant knowledge checks they are trained in to get clues about things that seem odd and have further investigation.

[chomskola]

Ok,

A lot of the approaches sound good. You could even mix them up 'occasionally' asking leading questions, and occasionally taking ten. but taking ten or twenty assumes you search the whole room [or a decent part of it] sometimes where you are in the room matters ..a spell trigger, a trap, proximity to nearby monsters..i could go on and on. Where is the player adjudged to have been while searching, and how can you even trigger anything as a DM withou alerting the player by 'freezing' the character movement on the appropriate square? I dont think there is much way out...but tell me, do you guys consider movement, where the players are at any given time and so on, out of combat,. to be relatively unimportant and unspecific?

[Gavinfoxx]

You can search visually without triggering traps... no need to go into that much detail. Besides, traps are best used when there are monsters that are immune to the effects of the traps about...

[ericgrau]

Ya the only way a PC should trigger a trip while searching is if he fails a check and keeps going, assuming the trap is triggered by stepping on a square. Then, on the failed check, he feels the stone sink under his foot and the position of the trigger is obvious, although that information is too late. If it's a more sophisticated trigger like a proximity trigger he may still stop on that square if the trap fires immediately. Or if there's a time delay he may make it 1 square farther.

[rot42]

I have the searcher declare a search pattern that they will follow in the event that nothing of interest happens, then make a roll. That roll applies when they get to the interesting bit. Statistically this is identical to making a separate roll for every 5' square, but without the hassle. After the interesting bit is resolved, the searcher determines how to proceed and makes a new roll.

[nedz]

I have the searcher declare a search pattern that they will follow in the event that nothing of interest happens, then make a roll. That roll applies when they get to the interesting bit. Statistically this is identical to making a separate roll for every 5' square, but without the hassle. After the interesting bit is resolved, the searcher determines how to proceed and makes a new roll.

This is basically how I do it.
It's quick and involves a roll.
I might ask from multiple rolls if there are multiple things of interest, or I may ask for a few rolls anyway. Asking for 3 or 4 rolls is not much slower than asking for 1 roll since the slow bit is waiting for the player to look up their skill bonus.