Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Excalibur_1977 06-13-05, 05:24 PM	After 11 levels of party experience, I have come to the conclusion that noone in my group cares for the way ability checks are made. For example, when a fighter attempts to break down a door, it could be assumed that he uses all his strength to accomplish the task. However, should it really take multiple (Take 20) attempts to break down the door? Shouldn't the fighter know within a try or two if breaking the door is feasable? Why would a fighter ever use part of his strength to break down a door when he wants to use all of his capacity? The converse of making a ability check roll is, of course, assuming that the fighter can always apply his full strength. This will result in him always getting the maximum roll possible and he will know with certainty if he can or cannot accomplish a task. I believe this approach to also be undesireable because it gives no variability to the equasion. Sometimes the first attempt you may not muster all your strenght (but normally you will muster most of it). So what's the happy medium? Here's what I have proposed as a house rule: Ability check = 20 + 1 + Ability Modifier - dCircumstance. In other words, a fighter may 'take 20' on all ability rolls in any given round, but the circumstance may make it difficult for him to reach his full potential on any given attempt. For example if a fighter is winded from a fight and tries to break a door down, he would likely roll a high dice roll (say d10) for circumstance. If the circumstances are ideal, he would not have to roll dice but would rather take an ability check of 20 + Ability modifier. Do you believe that this system is in the spirit of ability checks or am I missing something with the way ability checks were fundamentally designed? Help and input appreciated in order for me to come up with a solution that works well with our group! Thanks, Excalibur
Temrek 06-13-05, 05:49 PM	Perharps the fighter applies his strength in the wrong place on the door, or the door is well made and thus more durable and thus it might take multipli attempts to break the door down.
Excalibur_1977 06-13-05, 06:01 PM	If the door is more durable than normal, that factors into the break DC of the door, it should do nothing to the roll the character gets. If the door has a weak point, I can see factoring that into either a poor roll, or more likely, a higher circumstance roll. Let me give you another example: Your players are given a hard, but possible math problem. A character with high intellect will likely be able to solve it after thinking about it for a while... However, the whole time he is thinking about it... isn't he bringing his full intellect to bear? The problem I have is that the players see the d20 roll as not using thier full potential. I can't get them to see that perhaps it's not thier potential but rather the difficulty of having to try something multiple times... that's why I proposed a house rule change. It directly says they bring thier full skill to bear (By rolling a 20) but that something may impede thier progress (circumstances)
prettyripples 06-13-05, 06:06 PM	It's for a small thing, but yes your change is against the spirit of the rules. One of the main ideas in 3.5 edition is that every time you want to do something, you roll a die, and try to get a high number. In other words, your rule does away with the foundation of the RAW. Of course, you may not care. It's not really a big deal. But you asked.
yonman 06-13-05, 06:12 PM	The d20 is designed to add variability in skills not just in the character, but environmental, social, physical, etc. Meaning in your two examples above: 1) Breaking down a door has multiple variables. Not every door is made equal to each other. Physical differences in construction, both structural and environmental factors like time, wear and tear, perhaps termites, wood rot, rusted hinges, stronger wood/weaker wood, etc. Taking a 20 (or multiple attempts) reflects that in one round, simply attacking the door to break it down wasn't enough, but multiple attemps within 20 rounds is necessary for one of those attempts to succeed. It might have been the first round, or it might have been on the 20th round, but somewhere in between 1-20 rounds the fighter succeeds. Have you ever tried to kick in a door? It's not that easy, sometimes you need to hit it multiple times and more often than not it's not the first time. But you know you can DO it it just takes some effort to hit it correctly and in the right spot and then Bam! it opens. 2) Your second example is reflective of Knowledge skill checks. Say for instance a player has Knowledge Arcana and comes across an Iron Golem (construct). The DM secretely rolls a Knowledge check to determine what the player knows about this creature. The end result is that if the player had never seen a construct before, can he deduce that this is truly an Iron Golem and if he rolls high enough....he might even know a few details about it that he has read/heard. Have you ever tried to remember a math formula from back in high school even though you got an "A" in the class? Again, not easy to do especially if it isn't 3.14 for pie....
Excalibur_1977 06-13-05, 06:18 PM	Your correct in that the base rules do not have subtraction. One way to get around this would be to make the DC of the door have a random factor and then compare that to the output of the PCs ability score plus modifier. I.e. a DC 28 door with circumstance d8 would be DC 24 + d8 Thus a player with strenght mod + 5 could break the door down after several attempts -- which is not true of a normal break DC 28. The reason I did not take this route is because it lowers the DC of the door rather than lowering the roll a player may make. A player with strength mod +5 should never be able to break a door of DC28 open without special preparation (crowbar, acid, damage inflicted, etc) More true to the rules though, if I can give a reasonable explaination as to why you roll d20 when attemting something without the perception that the character is "not trying 100%" I can keep the existing rule in place (which is always my first preference). The problem is I find myself agreeing with thier arguement that if you are going to attempt something, you will do it with all your ability -- not 5%, 10% based upon some stupid roll. I don't want the mechanics of the game to be ticking off my players every time they encounter a door. (Or similar ability check)
yonman 06-13-05, 06:20 PM	Excalibur you forget that your players only really need to roll when they are in COMBAT. Out of combat they can just take a 10 or a 20 if they are willing to use 20 rounds (2 minutes) of their time.
Excalibur_1977 06-13-05, 06:23 PM	Thanks Yonman, That's more in line with what I was looking for. The player perception is that they see the randomness as "not trying hard enough" rather than seeing it as "There's a lot of things that could make a given attempt fail even if you try as hard as you can" I should be able to take that back to my group and let it sink in. After one or two sessions they may even come back to agreeing with the rules.
Excalibur_1977 06-13-05, 06:28 PM	Actually, I didn't forget that out of combat they can take 10 or take 20... the issue came up last Friday several times. Some were out of combat issues that really had a mute point. The ones that disturbed the group the most were the in combat break DCs for webs. A break DC of 24 on a web is simply insane when you consider that our strongest party members have a strength mod of +5. In that instance, taking 20 is simply not an option and the strong guys have a 10% chance of breaking free. The weaker guys are bound indefinetely (unless you consider a natural 20 auto-success)...
yonman 06-13-05, 06:32 PM	If you want to respond to In-Combat skill checks simply tell them this: Have one of them stand by the door and tell them to break the door down and then you come over with a plastic spoon and pretend to attack them.....let's see if they can break the door down effectively while being attacked. Just tell them you're a burglar with a knife... I can't even imagine trying to come up with a math formula while a lightning bolt is being shot across my chest. That is one of the beautiful things about a High DC web, the web is just reallllyyy strong. Sucks to be a wizard...
Hugin 06-13-05, 07:10 PM	The problem is I find myself agreeing with thier arguement that if you are going to attempt something, you will do it with all your ability -- not 5%, 10% based upon some stupid roll. A skill check takes into account a character’s training (skill rank), natural talent (ability modifier), and luck (the die roll). It may help to reinforce the idea to the players that the roll does not represent the amount of ability the character is using, but rather all external elements. Others have given may examples of these external variables that effect the outcome of a skill check. Anyone can tell you that it is a rare thing indeed to be able to do something that is difficult on a first attempt. When in combat, the skill roll also represents the amount of time it takes to finally "get it right". Again, look at all the examples people have given. Any physical or mental task takes some time to successfully complete, if it is even possible for the individual to do. So, try to explain to the players that the roll itself represents all the external elements and the time to get it done right. When it is not important to know the length of time, or there are no negative results from a failure (such as falling), than the roll is not nessessary and they can take 10 or 20. Have them re-read the section in the PHB about skills, especially the "Time and Skill Check" and "Checks without Rolls" sections. Hope this helps a bit.
Nom 06-14-05, 12:31 AM	Taking 10 is for when you are sufficiently experienced at something that you don't really need to put a lot of effort in to do it successfully. For example, braking to stop your car for a red light. However, if you were distracted then you might not be able to take 10. For example, you'd probably need to roll a check if you were having an argument about directions and glancing at a map while trying to stop the car. You'll probably still succeed, but there's more chance that you'll make an error. You also need to roll if something suddenly happens. For example, you couldn't take 10 when trying to stop the car to avoid running over a pedestrian who just dashed out. The sudden adrenaline rush may make you do an excellent job (20), or you may completely botch it (1). If you cannot easily do a task, you cannot take 10. Or rather, you automatically fail if you don't strive at it. A DC of 11 represents a task that you'll succeed at 50% of the time, so taking 10 only works if you'll succeed more often than that. Taking 20 is when you need to strive, but you just keep trying until it eventually succeeds. Rather than make you roll 20 times (which is the average number of attempts required), they just allow you to say "I try until I succeed" and assume that this takes 20 attempts. Because you are likely to fail dismally in the process, you can't take 20 if rolling a failure would cause problems. If even a natural 1 just results in "fail, try again" then you can take 20. So, for bashing open a door, you have 3 options: * Take 10. Only do this if you're pretty confident you can open the door first try. Avoids any chance of messing up. * Roll normally. You might roll well, or you might fail, depending on exactly how things play out. Note that each time you fail, someone may well hear the noise. * Take 20. Technically you might not be able to do this, since every time you fail someone might hear the noise. A better option is to simply treat taking 20 as 19 failures before a succees, and see how long it takes for somone to investigate.