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So I'm a brand new GM for PFS and I'm trying to get everything right, but, as I'm sure you understand, it's a lot to take in. I was running a group through First Steps I: In Service To Lore, and one member of the party wanted to take 20 to search the warehouse for valuables while the rest were working on securing the crate. I was unsure how to handle it. On the one hand, I get that you can take 20' and I get that it takes 20 rounds or 10 rounds depending on what you're doing, but how does it work when it involves opening up bags and chests and crates? I was inclined to give them a take 20 on each specific area rather than the whole warehouse, but I didn't even know what to tell them they found.
So I start making stuff up. "You find a case of 10 dog slicers and three 75 lb sacks of rice." The players kept asking what else they found. "Uh, you found a dozen empty coffins and four pounds of nails." I finally had to tell them that it was getting dark and they needed to report back to the VC. But I'm sure this technique will come up again. How do I handle them taking 20 in a large, poorly defined area such as a warehouse? Doth elegy to just know all the possible loot in the warehouse after a 2 minute search?
Any responses appreciated. Remember, BRAND new GM so be gentle if I'm being dumb.
Thanks
Nick
Venture-Lieutenant, Finland—Tampere
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I usually go the route of "if there's nothing significant, give an answer that is both vague and specific". Namely, give a description of the items present that is very general ("you open a few boxes and find what appears to be mostly clothing") and specific enough to give an idea of what is likely to be in the rest of the boxes ("you note that there appears to be a wide array of clothing from various areas and eras of Golarion - maybe this is a theater troupe's costume storage, or something similar"). By doing this, I try to discourage the players from spending forever searching rooms that don't have anything significant in them, while still keeping more flavor in the scenario than "you don't find any loot".
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First off Nick, Thanks for GMing. PFS has grown in the last few years so it can be challenging to GM regardless of how many times you have done it. It takes some guts to Gm and I applaud you.
In the experience you just described, you did it correctly. And by correctly I mean you handled it the best way you could given the set of circumstances. You could also talk in general terms as described above. Most importantly if there is nothing special in the area move on so that not much real time is spent on this.
A technique I use is when taking 20 to search I let them search a 5' square thoroughly (which is 2 minutes)
Also remember anything they find in your description they may try to use while playing in the scenario. So be careful with your description as you may give them an advantage that could change the balance of the scenario.
Most importantly HAVE FUN GMing! This is not a perfect science and everyone will have difficult scenarios or players and you will make mistakes (happens all the time). Learn some lessons, refine and move on to the next scenario, hopefully with some insight to providing a better game experience for everyone(yourself included.
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Thank for the responses. Looks like I wasn't foo far out of line, then. I was pretty much improvising.
Edit: and I always have fun. I figure usually even a weak gm is better than no gm at all, and PFS just doesn't seem to be running in my area. But after seeing what Mike Seales in Birmingham and James Becker in Asheville have going on, I figured I'd be a fool or a coward not to at least try to get it going here.
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It takes one round to search a 5' square. From there it takes (20x6 seconds) 2 minutes to take 20 on searching a 5' square. That's assuming a normal level of furniture in the square, not stacks of boxes and crates. You're within your rights to explain that it will take them longer depending on circumstances. A 25x10 ft. area would take 20 minutes at least.
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It takes one round to search a 5' square.
That's the old 3.5 search rule. I don't think it made the transition over to pathfinder.
_____I'd just say you search the place top to bottom, you find the listed items, everything else is either spoiled spoiled (the dire rats were here for the smuggled cheese apparently), or worthless to adventurers- like 2 crates worth of brochures to join Hermea (Hello, Do you have what it takes ! Fun times and excitement await... )
If you know there's no point in searching any further, give the party a prod to the next scene. There's no point in trying to accomplish victory after you've already won.
Yeah, but the Pathfinder version doesn't cover rifling through crates, chests of drawers, under beds, etc.
I don't think it covers "searching" (as in the 3.5 Search skill) at all.
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Ugh. You're right. It's still not a bad approximation. I feel maybe there was some baby thrown out with the bathwater on this one.It takes one round to search a 5' square.That's the old 3.5 search rule. I don't think it made the transition over to pathfinder.
I think making a perception check to look around is amove action - so its probably 10 rounds to search a square
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The time to do an extensive search is a GM judgement call that can vary a lot from GM to GM, but moreso based on the nature of the search. A largely empty chamber with light rubble is going to take a lot less time to search than a huge warehouse full of thousands of crates, chests, boxes, and barrels.
As far as the description, unless the scenario specifically calls out the contents, you can just describe it as "general mundane dry-goods, common household items that have little value in small numbers and not of particular interest to an adventurer of your caliber."
Course, asking if they are looking for something particular is a good tactic as well. It could take days or even weeks to thoroughly search a large warehouse.
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RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32
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In my experience, I've found the following to be a good way of handling searching that is both reasonably realistic/immersive and in line with the actual printed Perception rules (a coexistence which I think is achievable far more often than many folks seem to think).
First, remember that saying "take 20 on Perception" literally means the same as saying "I spend a move action to make a Perception check" twenty times. When you're deciding how to respond to someone announcing a T20, imagine that they were instead announcing a single check, getting the result from you, then announcing another, and another, and another... Aside from being annoyingly repetitive, what would you tell them? What would you consider them to be doing?
If I announce my third check from the same spot, do you announce that this time my PC opened the crate first? And then four checks later, you inform me that my PC walked over to the other side of the room? If you wouldn't insert actions in between individual Perception checks, don't insert them into a T20 situation, because it's the same thing.
Relatedly, remember that the Core Rulebook suggests T20 as a common practice for searching for traps, and that the Core Rulebook also says that doing so will not trigger a trap. Putting these facts together with the knowledge that touching and walking can trigger a trap, it becomes pretty clear that adjudicating the declaration of a T20 search should not automatically include touching and walking.
Conveniently, this also addresses one of the main issues some GMs have with T20 searches: some GMs think "take 20" means "search everything thoroughly, no matter how big and complicated the room is", which of course conflicts harshly with the fact that T20 for Perception is only a 1-minute endeavor. Well, of course you can't completely search everything in the whole warehouse in one minute. But that doesn't mean you have to default back to the 3.5 rule of one 5ft square at a time (a rule which Pathfinder removed). Just as a series of individual checks wouldn't let you see through containers or around corners (barring some kind of x-ray vision), neither would T20. They get exactly what they would get if they announced a single check and happened to roll a 20, except that 1 minute passes in-game instead of one move action.
In short, the Perception system actually works beautifully as-written 99% of the time as long as you don't forget what T20 really means. Just pretend they rolled a 20 on a single check but a full minute passes. If they want to see inside the box, they'll need separate actions to open it. If they want to see around the corner, they'll need to announce that they're walking over there. When the player says "I take 20 on Perception", give them what they'd get on a single, rolled 20.
Hope that helps!
P.S. If the players don't believe there's a rush, and you as a GM know there's not a rush and also no hazards (i.e., most instances of loot collection), feel free to fast-forward a bit more; as long as there are no (real or perceived) drawbacks to doing so, players are usually okay with me informing them that they "spent a while searching and found..."
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How's that?
It depends on the nature of the search. If the PC just wants to stand in one place and take 20 to thoroughly perceive everything within line of sight, fine. Your description works perfectly. If however, they want to search everything and everywhere, that will require that they move about the room to gain line of sight and to open crates, barrels, etc. That would trigger the hazards as described in the text. It falls to the GM to understand exactly what the player intends by their take 20 announcement and for the player to be clear with their intended actions.
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RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32
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How's that?It depends on the nature of the search. If the PC just wants to stand in one place and take 20 to thoroughly perceive everything within line of sight, fine. Your description works perfectly. If however, they want to search everything and everywhere, that will require that they move about the room to gain line of sight and to open crates, barrels, etc. That would trigger the hazards as described in the text. It falls to the GM to understand exactly what the player intends by their take 20 announcement and for the player to be clear with their intended actions.
In my admittedly-much-less-than-yours experience, players who simply declare that they're taking 20 on Perception usually mean exactly that, which is what I described earlier. I find it's usually safest/fairest to assume that the term used is the term meant until I encounter evidence to the contrary (such as my announcing the result and them asking "So there was nothing around the corner at all?"). Typically (again, IME) this has been successful when players have announced T20, while other intents have usually been expressed by other language (like "Let's toss the whole place" or some such).
Relatedly, if you interpret a T20 announcement to mean a 1-minute stand-in-place search and you're wrong, you've not cost them anything, so they can just specify. If you instead interpret it as a half-hour, building-roaming, trap-springing search and you're wrong, there's a lot more backlash to deal with (especially if they had buffs running).
As you said, communication is key, but as a default, I find it's better to assume they spent less time and let them add more than to assume they spent more time and deal with protests, you know?