Can you take a 10 on disguise checks, or with other skills that are generally rolled by the GM?
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When your character is not in immediate danger or distracted, you may choose to take 10. Instead of rolling 1d20 for the skill check, calculate your result as if you had rolled a 10. For many routine tasks, taking 10 makes them automatically successful. Distractions or threats (such as combat) make it impossible for a character to take 10. In most cases, taking 10 is purely a safety measure—you know (or expect) that an average roll will succeed but fear that a poor roll might fail, so you elect to settle for the average roll (a 10). Taking 10 is especially useful in situations where a particularly high roll wouldn't help.
Assuming they're not trying to put on a disguise as lava floods into the room or the guards are banging of the door, I'd say so! Taking 10 is something I'm pretty sure you can do with any skill check that isn't specified as not allowing you to take 10... So long as the character isn't distracted, of course.
Since the Disguise check is opposed by a Perception check, taking 10 is perfect. There is really no sense in randomizing it twice by rolling both skill checks. I think Disguise checks should always take 10 unless it's against a set DC.
As long as you're not rushed I don't see why not.
I think only UMD expressly prohibits taking 10. Everything else allows it. Except under the danger/distraction clause as indicated under the Take-10 rule itself.
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Disguise is not only about putting masks, false beards etc on. It's also about acting and try to make yourself pass for someone else. So depending on how risky those activities may be I think a GM should reserve the right to allow or deny take 10 (are you trying to pass youself as some peasant great great uncle? No worries, take 10. Do you want to try decieving that ancient red wyrm posing as one of his minions you previously dispatched? No taking 10, and if you fail you are in for a world of pain).
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Disguise is not only about putting masks, false beards etc on. It's also about acting and try to make yourself pass for someone else. So depending on how risky those activities may be I think a GM should reserve the right to allow or deny take 10 (are you trying to pass youself as some peasant great great uncle? No worries, take 10. Do you want to try decieving that ancient red wyrm posing as one of his minions you previously dispatched? No taking 10, and if you fail you are in for a world of pain).
There is no acting mentioned in the disguise skill.
The effectiveness of your disguise depends on how much you're changing your appearance.
Take 10 with Disguise is possible, if you are not under immediate stress/distractions (just as normal for takeing 10).
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I also support the idea of taking 20 on Disguise with the help of a party member taking 20 on Perception. They pick your disguise apart, focusing in on every little detail, and the two of you keep retrying for however many hours until you have the best disguise you can muster; a 20 plus modifiers.
Wake up early, prepare spells, put on your face for 10 hours and then rock the queen's ball with your impossibly realistic likeness of that foreign dignitary you killed the other day.
So then is that taking 20 Perception for each of the 20 disguise checks? Thereby taking 400 tries?
So the average taking 20 for disguise would be 400 minutes, or 6 hours 40 minutes. Then for each 20 tries, assuming no time for Perception it would take 133 hours and 20 minutes to complete the checks.
Yeah, I don't think that will work.
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"I am the very model of a modern Major General, and am named Fred Flinstone' is a lie. Pretending to be someone you aren't is a lie.
You don't have to make those checks unless you say those things.
But none of this matters because the sort of people who will be pulling this are Bards and Mesmerists who will also have massive Bluff checks.
halloweenjack 0 seconds ago |
As am honest question, why would it be different against a set DC? (Mentioned above)
Also, if GM knows taking 10 is an auto-fail of that DC, how should s/he encourage the table to not take 10?
It is the player's decision to not take 10. As a GM I would not say anything, however that is not everyone's playstyle. If it were the playstyle that I used I would just tell the group that taking 10 would fail instead of hinting towards it.
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if GM knows taking 10 is an auto-fail of that DC, how should s/he encourage the table to not take 10?
I'm not sure that it matters, honestly. If taking 10 is an autofail, the odds are that they're going to fail anyway, which means that the GM needs to be prepared for a failure and have appropriate plans to hand.
halloweenjack 0 seconds ago |
As am honest question, why would it be different against a set DC? (Mentioned above)
It's not different.
A character should usually be smart enough to know his chances, more or less. Want to climb that cliff? Go for it, you're a tough athletic adventurer so you can probably make a reasonable assessment of your chances (e.g. the DC is 15). Now you can decide if being careful and taking no chances is good enough (Take-10) or do you need to take chances and risks (roll a d20) to climb this cliff?
But, when making an opposed skill check, you usually don't have any way to know the ability of the monster or NPC who is opposing you. Do you want to Stealth? Fine. Want to Take-10 and hope those monsters have a low Perception, or do you want to take your chances with a d20 roll in case they have a high Perception? The character probably doesn't know if a take-10 is certain to succeed or not, so it's more risky.
That's the only difference (whether or not you can accurately predict the outcome), but there is no difference regarding whether you are ALLOWED to try a Take-10 instead of a roll.
Also, if GM knows taking 10 is an auto-fail of that DC, how should s/he encourage the table to not take 10?
I wouldn't say a thing. Because before they made their decision, I gave them the info. I told them that this was a very steep cliff with almost no hand or foot holds, or that the monster resting on that pile of treasure was not sleeping and actually might be very alert. They know the situation already, so if they want to take-10 when I know they'll miss the DC, I let them find out the hard way.
If climbing a cliff will fail with a take 10, then the GM doesn't want that cliff climbed, because making multiple rolls will also fail...eventually, and hurt a lot worse as well.
That may be true. But it might be an easy Take-10 for one PC and an auto-fail for another, so maybe the good climber goes first and leaves a rope for the worse climbers.
In any case, it was just an example. Let's not digress into difficult climbing and bad GMing on a thread about taking 10 on disguise checks.
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Taking 10 specifically says it is something you do instead of rolling. If you don't roll, you can't take 10.
Further, for disguise it specifically says that "you can’t be sure how good the result is" which seems to me to specifically say you can't take 10 (or 20 for that matter.)
Also, since the opposed perception checks use the take 10 mechanics, it doesn't make a great deal of sense for the disguise to use it.
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the rules have been clarified that EVERY skill but UMD has a time you can take 10 on.
And you're not sure how good the 35 disguise check is. You know it's a pretty average disguise for you, but how good that actually is is left to be tested.
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Further, for disguise it specifically says that "you can’t be sure how good the result is" which seems to me to specifically say you can't take 10 (or 20 for that matter.)
You can't be sure how good the result is because it is an opposed skill check. How good it is depends just as much on how well the observers do and if they have any circumstances that would reveal said disguise -- such as knowing you have a certain medal upside down and on the wrong side of a uniform.
The rules are pretty clear when a skill specifically does not allow you to take 10. See Use Magic Device skill for an example.
the rules have been clarified that EVERY skill but UMD has a time you can take 10 on.
That may be so, but the take 10 rules clearly state that it happens when you roll. Once again, if you don't roll you can't choose to take 10.
I would imagine the GM could choose to take 10 on the roll, but I don't see why he would.
the rules have been clarified that EVERY skill but UMD has a time you can take 10 on.
That may be so, but the take 10 rules clearly state that it happens when you roll. Once again, if you don't roll you can't choose to take 10.
I would imagine the GM could choose to take 10 on the roll, but I don't see why he would.
What are you saying?
You can take 10 on every single skill except UMD. It's pretty clearly spelled out in the skill section.
In my WotW game my players like to check their disguises by looking at each other, but at around level 9 our resident lich cleric has a perception bonus in the 40s so he's always like "Oh come on guys, you can see a freckle right there, that's not going to fool anybody."
The rules are pretty clear when a skill specifically does not allow you to take 10. See Use Magic Device skill for an example.
Specifically saying it is not allowed in one place does not necessarily mean that it is allowed anywhere it doesn't specifically prohibit it.
In any case, the main point is how the take 10 rules work.
the rules have been clarified that EVERY skill but UMD has a time you can take 10 on.
That may be so, but the take 10 rules clearly state that it happens when you roll. Once again, if you don't roll you can't choose to take 10.
I would imagine the GM could choose to take 10 on the roll, but I don't see why he would.
Since all the skill checks say that you roll that means that the GM cannot roll for you.
There is no reason to make opposed checks secret, otherwise the DM should be rolling the PCs stealth rolls, perception rolls, bluff rolls, sense motive rolls, and everything else that is potentially contested. Or you could just trust the players.
The reason would be the disguise skill specifically tells you that the roll is make secretly. This is a rules forum, not house-rules.
right, so are disable device checks and a variety of others, which are all able to be done with take 10.
Hey GM, I'm going to take 10 and disable this trap. The Gm then takes 10 in secret.
Hey GM, I'm going to take 10 while searching for traps. The Gm then takes 10 in secret.
I have had not one, but multiple GMs at a convention tell me that you can't take 10 on disguise checks on the basis that it was a GM roll.
So, can other PCs tell how good the disguise check is, or only NPCs? Can PCs use 'aid another' to help? Is that roll also done in secret?
There is no reason a PC couldn't penetrate another PCs disguise. That won't necessarily tell how good it is, since the PCs perception check would be a take 10, so you would know if you fooled your friend, but not if you barely fooled him or easily fooled him.
If they knew they were testing a disguise I would probably give a circumstance bonus to see through it. If they actually saw you putting on the disguise I would give them an automatic success in most cases. If you disguised yourself secretly and then came up to them in a tavern or something to see if they noticed anything off it would be a good test though.
Why doesn't a perception check tell you how good a disguise is? Is this some property that is unknowable? It should have a DC associated with it just like any other property that can be perceived. It's not 'penetrating' a disguise, since you know that you're you, it's using your perception to perceive how good the disguise is.
Can't a PC look in a mirror to see if he put the wig on backwards?
Basically it is a yes/no question. Either you realize it is a disguise or you don't. Once you know it is a disguise, it is possible that all sorts of flaws would be apparent (because you know what you are looking for) but if you don't know it is a disguise everything seems fine and you see what you would expect to see. It is kind of like the difference between watching a magic trick when you know how it works vs. when you don't.
I would imagine anyone with ranks in disguise, even when they roll a 1, isn't putting a wig on backwards. It might be something like forgetting this type of makeup will run if it gets too hot, or the person you are imitating always wears a red cape on thursdays or something. In any event, we don't know the particular differences between low and high results, other than low ones are easier to perceive flaws in.
Why doesn't a perception check tell you how good a disguise is? Is this some property that is unknowable? It should have a DC associated with it just like any other property that can be perceived. It's not 'penetrating' a disguise, since you know that you're you, it's using your perception to perceive how good the disguise is.
Can't a PC look in a mirror to see if he put the wig on backwards?
The skill pretty much assumes that you're not being so incompetent that you're putting the wig on backward. That said, using your own perceptions to determine how good your own disguise is doesn't really make sense. The PC is trying to disguise himself is already aware of everything he's doing - what else is there for him to perceive? He needs the perspective of a second party.
As to other topics floating about, I'd argue that taking 20 on any opposed check really isn't possible. The goal of skills like bluff, stealth, and disguise is to fool an unknowing other character. That's the only test of success that's really valid. Rather than allowing a PC to take 20, I'd offer up a circumstance bonus to reflect extra time and care spent above and beyond the normal time spent on such an endeavor.
This has been discussed before.
Sean K Reynolds wrote:
Seeing what professional makeup artists can do to make humans look like Klingons, Cardassians, Twileks, Minbari, Narn, and Hellboy, and the use of prosthetic appliances like those used in Mrs. Doubtfire, I'm quite comfortable with allowing someone to spend hours on a disguise and take 20 on the Disguise check.
I think it has been said many times that he isn't a rules guy. It is what he would allow, not what the rules say.
In my opinion a better interpretation is that 'professional makeup artists' is have a high skill modifier and 'prosthetic' are masterwork tools, possibly even special ones that give a circumstance bonus to negate specific penalties (these false tusks negate the penalty for a human trying to look like a 1/2 orc for example but require extra time when putting on a disguise).
If I have +20 to the GMs secret roll, even one my worst day I'm going to fool most of the people. Only those with a perception of 11+ would realize it was a disguise.
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This is so funny because I was watching ST:TNG this weekend and the nose on one Klingon was SO BAD! It was driving me crazy.
They didn't take 20 that day.