What happens when someone has to balance but doesn't have balance?

[WhiteBread]

My question can be answered in general. What if someone has to make a skill check but doesn't have the needed skill? Like for example grease that asks for a balance 10 when enemies would like to move. Can anyone point me to the rules section of this? My google-fu failed me.

[Necroticplague]

Depends on the skill. Some skills are trained-only, so they automatically fail. Others allow for untrained checks, which are simply normal skill checks, except you don't get a bonus from having put ranks into it (because you didn't).

Under Skill Summary:

A character’s number of ranks in a skill is based on how many skill points a character has invested in a skill. Many skills can be used even if the character has no ranks in them; doing this is called making an untrained skill check.

Under Using Skills:

To make a skill check, roll: 1d20 + skill modifier (Skill modifier=skill rank + ability modifier + miscellaneous modifiers)

[SethoMarkus]

Edit: swordsaged

Untrained Skill Checks is what you're looking for, and the rules can be found under Using Skills in the srd. The short version us that they roll the check as normal, without adding any ranks (as the don't have any). So for balance it would be 1d20+Dex+misc bonuses.

Although I didn't see it in thr SRD and am away from book at the moment, I thought I remembered a rule that untrained skill checks only can succeed on a DC 10 or lower, though that may be for Knowledge skills only...

[Endarire]

Knowledge skills if used untrained have a success cap of DC 10. All other skills usable untrained have no such cap.