Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Inspired_Mage 08-18-05, 06:44 AM	I know with some skills you can 20 or take 10 and on other skills you can take neither, but some skills are a bit 'murky' as to whether or not you can take your time on. Can you, for instance take 20 on a disable device check when trying to disarm a trap? Is there a general guideline as to whether or not you can tell if you can take 20 on a skill check or not, barring the PH telling you otherwise?
Another Gnome 08-18-05, 08:56 AM	Taking 20 means you try the skill check with each roll from 1 to 20, and see what happens. In all cases where you can take 20, the consequences of a failed check simply means wasting some time, but when disabling a trap or climbing a wall, low check results usually have a negative impact on what you're actually doing. Note that you can't simply accept the negative effect (such as falling down a wall a few times) - in such cases you can't take 20 at all. Now, skills don't say in absolute terms if you can take 20 or not, because with a high enough skill modifier the outcome may not be an automatic failure even with a natural 1 (but you must still spend 20 times the minimum time no matter which number would actually be sufficient - you can't for example "take 17" or the like to save a few rounds of time). So, for example, while most of the time you can't take 20 on Disable Device checks to disarm a trap, nothing prevents you from doing so if your check result can't fall short of the DC by 5 or more (which would trigger the trap). Of course, when you would succeed 15 times out of 20 on a random roll anyway, you'd really need to be distrusting of your dice to waste your character's time... You still can't take 20 on skills that specifically state you can't retry them, no matter what.