I just had a mildly weird situation with skills

[Dr TPK]

Taking 20 with Gather Information.

The PCs wanted to hear rumors about dragons (in general). The most charismatic PC decided to take 20 in Gather Information AND have another PC aid him (aid another).

I ruled that it took 7 days to take 20 in GI and the cost without aiding is 60 gp and with aid another 120 gp. They took it. The result was 27.

I found this a bit weird, but I accepted it since it seemed to go ok with the rules. What to do think?

[Ashtagon]

I wouldn't have allowed it.

Taking 20 implies that the general circumstances are staying the same throughout the entire time. I'm not sure many people would want to sit around being pumped for information seven days straight with no let-up.

[Curmudgeon]

Taking 20
When you have plenty of time (generally 2 minutes for a skill that can normally be checked in 1 round, one full-round action, or one standard action), you are faced with no threats or distractions, and the skill being attempted carries no penalties for failure, you can take 20. In other words, eventually you will get a 20 on 1d20 if you roll enough times. Instead of rolling 1d20 for the skill check, just calculate your result as if you had rolled a 20.

Taking 20 means you are trying until you get it right, and it assumes that you fail many times before succeeding. Taking 20 takes twenty times as long as making a single check would take.
There was plenty of time, and failing (not getting information) has no associated penalty, so taking 20 for this is perfectly fine.

Aid Another
You can help another character achieve success on his or her skill check by making the same kind of skill check in a cooperative effort. If you roll a 10 or higher on your check, the character you are helping gets a +2 bonus to his or her check, as per the rule for favorable conditions. (You can’t take 10 on a skill check to aid another.) For a standard check only one "aid another" roll would be required. But for "aid another" to apply to someone who's "taking 20", I'd require 20 consecutive successful (roll of 10 or higher) checks.

[Hiro Quester]

There was plenty of time, and failing (not getting information) has no associated penalty, so taking 20 for this is perfectly fine.


However, in taking 20 you are failing some of the time, often disastrously, in the hopes of eventually succeeding big.

In situations like this, in which you are taking a week to do so, you also run the risk of alerting the people (dragons) you are trying to find out about that you are making this investigation.


Try Again:
Yes, but it takes time for each check. Furthermore, you may draw attention to yourself if you repeatedly pursue a certain type of information.

Some of the failures you make on the way to eventually getting a 20 might be the kind of failure that bring your investigation to the attention of those whose attention you don't want to attract.

And they might start issuing threats to the townspeople, that cooperating with the investigation will bring severe repercussions. Or they might just try to kill you before you find someone willing to talk. Or kill all the people who might talk.

So conditions don't remain essentially the same.Repeated failures to a GI check can increase the DC of further attempts.

[nedz]

Presumably they were hanging around town for a week trying to obtain information about dragons? Sounds like they should get a bucket load of tales — some of which may even be true. How do they sift the wheat from the chaff though ?

[Deophaun]

However, in taking 20 you are failing some of the time, often disastrously, in the hopes of eventually succeeding big.
Actually, the "penalty," as worded, isn't for failing. It's for repeatedly following the same line of inquiry. Go to town A, ask about X. Succeed. Go to town B, ask about X. Succeed. Got to town C, ask about X. Succeed. But now it's getting out there that you've been asking about X.

And I put "penalty" in scare quotes because it really isn't. Sometimes, you really do want to attract attention. If you have no leads, spooking your quarry into giving you one isn't a bad way to go.

And they might start issuing threats to the townspeople, that cooperating with the investigation will bring severe repercussions.
Great. Then that is the information they should pick up on. There's been a mysterious hooded figure with clawed hands going about the town, making sure people keep their mouths shut. Maybe you should investigate this guy.

[Sith_Happens]

I found this a bit weird, but I accepted it since it seemed to go ok with the rules. What to do think?

Perfectly fine, though if there's any reason that someone constantly asking around town about dragons might get into some sort of trouble then the these two PCs are going to get into that trouble.

[Theomniadept]

This is why Pathfinder put gathering information into the Diplomacy skill. Your players aren't going to waste ranks (more than 5 for the synergy) in Gather Information, and they're taking 20 because the only other alternative is to sit put and know nothing at all.

[JDL]

Remember that Gather Information takes 1d4+1 hours per check. Therefore I'd rule that the time taken is 20d4+20 hours for taking 20, and that you can only spend a maximum of 8 hours per day doing this, as nobody is going to hang around and answer your questions about dragons at 3AM in the morning. This would average 9 days of time for the mean value of a d4 roll.

If they wanted to use Aid Other, I'd have the aiding party roll their Aid Other check while the person taking 20 rolls the d4 for time taken. If the person aiding fails their check, that d4 time roll is wasted time and doesn't count towards the 20 consecutive checks. If it's a success, count one check off the 20. Continue until 20 Aid Other checks are successful, add the time up and work out how many days it takes. Assume it costs 1-2 gp per check, successful or not, to avoid a -2 circumstance penalty for being a cheapskate.

[Segev]

Frankly, not only does this seem to work with the rules, but I cannot see how it's a problem. The PCs succeeding on Gather Info is just an excuse to give them whatever it is you wanted them to know to move on with the plot, anyway. Even succeeding spectacularly well isn't going to let them know things that aren't there to be known.

If they want to spend a week or more patiently pounding the pavement, chasing down leads, etc., that's their prerogative.

The "worst" I would do to them is, if they and you are (as players) interested in RPing any of it, actually run some sort of vignette style detective tale. If you had such a thing planned, start telling them about the first leads they find, and see how the players respond. You can narrate through the whole thing, presuming relevant successes, as long as it doesn't delve into things better handled by other skills. You can also make up NPC contacts who dig into the skill angles for them. Talk about how they met with some urchins who they hired to get more information, and then mention how it's a different, more somber kid who reports back - his gang lost some members on the stealth-run when they were caught.

And that's only if you had some serious story stuff you wanted them to adventure through just to gather the info. (Played right, they might decide to go do that adventuring, themselves, to rescue people or just to take the risk onto themselves. Again, gather info gives them what you want it to. If the DC was only 15, a DC 27 will make it...and let them know that all their leads point to the same place.)

[Feint's End]

Remember that Gather Information takes 1d4+1 hours per check. Therefore I'd rule that the time taken is 20d4+20 hours for taking 20, and that you can only spend a maximum of 8 hours per day doing this, as nobody is going to hang around and answer your questions about dragons at 3AM in the morning. This would average 9 days of time for the mean value of a d4 roll.

If they wanted to use Aid Other, I'd have the aiding party roll their Aid Other check while the person taking 20 rolls the d4 for time taken. If the person aiding fails their check, that d4 time roll is wasted time and doesn't count towards the 20 consecutive checks. If it's a success, count one check off the 20. Continue until 20 Aid Other checks are successful, add the time up and work out how many days it takes. Assume it costs 1-2 gp per check, successful or not, to avoid a -2 circumstance penalty for being a cheapskate.

I agree with the first half for the most part albeit 8 hours a days is a bit short. Maybe up it to 12 or more depending on season.

The second half is really weird. That's not how take 20 in general works. Or is that intentional? If so why make it so much harder than it has to be? In that case I'd never even consider taking 20 because I'd be much better off just trying over and over since you don't rely on somebody else making their roll (who might have lower stats than you).

[Vizzerdrix]

Remember that Gather Information takes 1d4+1 hours per check. Therefore I'd rule that the time taken is 20d4+20 hours for taking 20, and that you can only spend a maximum of 8 hours per day doing this, as nobody is going to hang around and answer your questions about dragons at 3AM in the morning. This would average 9 days of time for the mean value of a d4 roll.

If they wanted to use Aid Other, I'd have the aiding party roll their Aid Other check while the person taking 20 rolls the d4 for time taken. If the person aiding fails their check, that d4 time roll is wasted time and doesn't count towards the 20 consecutive checks. If it's a success, count one check off the 20. Continue until 20 Aid Other checks are successful, add the time up and work out how many days it takes. Assume it costs 1-2 gp per check, successful or not, to avoid a -2 circumstance penalty for being a cheapskate.

Right. Because skills need to feel even more useless.

[JDL]

Taking 20 assumes you're performing 20 consecutive checks with the same modifiers for all values of 1 to 20. However Aid Other doesn't allow you to take 20 or even take 10, it must be rolled. Assuming there's a chance of failure on the part of the person who's aiding, each of the 20 rolls by the person who's taking 20 would need to be successfully aided in order to count. Alternatively, just have the aiding person roll a single check at the end and have it apply to all the rolls, either success or failure.

Honestly, there should only be so much information you can get with a Gather Information check. It's not a substitute for a good Knowledge skill. Gather Information should tell you about noteworthy things that have happened recently, help you locate a difficult to find item for purchase, or get gossip about the local notables. General information about dragons would be covered under Knowledge: Arcana, with specific information requiring a check 5 points higher than the base DC. In this scenario, I'd say that finding out whether there's rumours of dragon activity would be DC 15 (10 base +5 for searching for a specific type of rumour instead of general information) to get the name and location of the NPC who has further information. From there you can hook the characters with either a social encounter using things like Diplomacy to get the information or have them perform a side-quest to earn the info instead. Have the NPC describe the dragon (not using colour, but instead the favoured habitat, hunting habits, etc.) and get the characters to roll a Knowledge: Arcana check to see if they can identify the type from the description.

[Curmudgeon]

Honestly, there should only be so much information you can get with a Gather Information check. It's not a substitute for a good Knowledge skill.
These skills cover different types of information. Knowledge will only tell you things you could have already known (what's been written down, and could be learned in a library or classroom). Gather Information will only tell you things that people in the vicinity know. There could be overlap, of course; if you're using Gather Information around library workers who don't get out much that could be a 100% overlap. But if you're trying to find out non-recorded gossip then Knowledge will never help, and if you're trying to gather information amidst nomadic Barbarians then Gather Information won't ever get you library data.

[JDL]

Precisely. As in the example given above, the Gather Information roll would give you the general gossip about who's the local authority on dragon activity and where you can find them. The Knowledge skill would let you understand what type of dragon is involved when you are given the description from the NPC, as this is general information about the species. Useful if the NPC tells you there's three dragons in the local area he knows about, and you're trying to decide which one is evil and not too high a CR to attack.