Please avoid the use of take 10 for anything other than rutine tasks. Aside from the subjectivity of what situation could be interpreted as tense, that often leads to different understanding from person to person, and GM to player, there are a couple of reasons inherent to PbP for not using them in most cases.
First is if you take 10 to open a spoiler or pass a DC, you are using metainformation to take your decision on whether to use take 10 or risk a roll. On the table you risk your take 10 will not be enough to fetch a piece of information. Here you are seeing the difficulty and you are taking 10 only for the spoilers you can succeed but not for the others... Also, as this is not a real-time medium, it is not possible to properly manage retries as you players do not know if you have many time available to react to a certain situation. Likewise and more important I am presenting a spoiler for you in order to speed up things, when in fact I would be just letting you try things out by yourselves or suggest certain rolls. I work here with an honor system. I expect you do not open spoilers not intended for you and I expect you do not decide to take 10 or take 20 based on a spoiler difficulty. I would not like having to change the way I do it, because it really helps you players to react to scenes and both enriches and speeds up PbP gaming.
Secondly, because taking 10 skips a roll from the dice roller which lends itself very easily to roll-crafting, which deters from the swingness and fairness of the game.
I usually assume take 10 on Perception rolls (taking into account distance and obstacles) and for Sense Motive rolls unless you make a proactive roll. The same for Stealth when you describe yourselves as moving cautiously (I otherwise assume Take 0) unless you provide a roll. Similarly, I consider take 20 is fair game for certain things as breaking doors and similar things, as you already know that is a difficult task that requires effort.
Of course some classes have certain abilities that allow them to use take 10 and those are fair uses, like Bard 'Lore Master'.
Also, to set the expectation, unless someone is explicitly doing an effort to hide information from others, I consider opening spoilers that someone in the party has succeeded at is a fair game, because they sometimes do not have the time to properly transfer all the information in-game and someone else might help better with something the GM set there for the players.
What are your thoughts? How do you usually work with that stuff?
It would be good to have some guidance of what constitutes a "routine task". Taking 10 seems to be an area where there's significant table variation.
I can see your point about the DC on the spoiler being used to decide whether or not to take 10.
The skill system can sometimes lead to credibility-straining results, like a cleric not recognizing a statue of their own god (not that that's the issue here).
With 'routine' I was referring to anything you do without almost realizing. Like listening or hearing your environment. I fear any attempt to define when can you take 10 or 20 will always be subjective regardless of our efforts though from the start point that we share different amount of information on what is going on.
As a rule of thumb do not take 10 as a reaction to a spoiler or direct roll call from my part. In the first place I would have never lost my time writing down a spoiler or a call for a roll if I was considering take 10 acceptable here, I would just have checked your character sheets and delivered you the proper information. That is the advantage of PbP over F2F.
Anyway my main reason against it in PbP is to avoid players metagaming and roll-crafting.
The skill system can sometimes lead to credibility-straining results, like a cleric not recognizing a statue of their own god (not that that's the issue here).
I sometimes place the name of a character in addition to the difficulty roll for other players to solve those kind of things. That said, knowing the symbol of a major god is a rather easy task and should be a DC 5 in my opinion. It is like going around the world nowadays without knowing Apple or Audi logo. You might find many people that do not but it is rare.
Most games I've been in have used Taking 10/20 as GM fiat depending on location, urgency etc and it looks like it's the same here, although I agree with Ingolf about defining a routine task - that and the bit about results that strain credibility - but I also get that subjectivity can bog things down if allowed to to.
I guess I'm just taking a roundabout way to say I'm okay with taking 10/20 being entirely GM discretion.
As a rule of thumb do not take 10 as a reaction to a spoiler or direct roll call from my part.
I'm good with that.
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Taking 10: 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.
Are we in immediate danger or distracted? Not that Tonny would necessarily be aware of that fact - especially after his night of rough sleep. X-D
I’ve also seen GMs not bother to put something in a spoiler when a Take 10 would reveal it - best example I can think of is looking for traps when dungeon crawling. Rather than force players to declare that they are looking at every square, the players and GM agree that the characters spot anything with a DC their Take 10 Perception meets. Conversely, it means they walk right into anything with a higher DC.
On a related note, I’ve also seen GMs make “reactive” rolls to keep things moving. An example would be Reflex saves vs a pit trap - rather than wait 24 hours to resolve who falls, the GM rolls so the players can start fixing the problem. This is also useful for things like “did you take a fireball to the face?” It’s important, however, that the GM and players agree on what constitutes a reactive roll and what dice they’d rather roll themselves due to the gravity of the consequences (such as a Fortitude save vs a death effect).
Are we in immediate danger or distracted?
Set yourselves in scene. I know as players you are an experienced lot that know what is going on and that you know you can handle the situation (hope so :D), you are in a controlled gaming environment anyway. But get into your characters for a second. You are in a complete new environment for you. You are researching into the only stronghold in the region, which is supposed to maintain the security of the colony. Then you are finding increasing hints that something is amiss... and there is no soldier to be seen, the people that should make you feel safe in the region is not there, and their gate is shattered. Do you feel calm and safe?
In fact, I have really been trying to build up towards that sense of threat, and if your characters are not feeling in danger I certainly have things to improve as a GM xD
I hope my point is understood at the least. Again, anyway my main point against it is the way we use spoilers and present DCs to the players in order to speed up PbP.
Sometimes, I do roll for the players if that is required to speed up things, like initiative or certain Perception rolls. But for saves I often do prefer the players to roll themselves as sometimes that is all reaction you can take against certain events.
I should mention that Ingolf will not have his weapon drawn, unless specified. That way, he'll have a hand free to cast a spell at the beginning of combat (typically Bless).
So here it comes, your first real combat! Enjoy! :)
I should mention he does always keep his walking staff (club) on him; not like he can do much with it mind you.
I have added a falcon token for Rosemary. Please feel free to change it for a different one.
When I click on the map link, it opens in view-only mode, so I can't move my tokens. Please move Ingolf and Ebba on the map.
Typical mistake. It is fixed now!
Hey we can move ourselves. Nice.
I did the AoO and my attack in a single post for ease of tracking, do you prefer them on the same posts or separate?
I actually prefer single posts. It feels weird to me when someone responds to its own post.
Same as before, AoO and then normal action in the same post. I didn't ask last turn but does my movement mean that green and blue now count as flanked or are they too small for that?
And the damage could have been better but those fort saves were great!
Tiny creatures flanking is not well covered in the rules, but I do guess you could be flanking with Jonah if he was holding a melee weapon. Currently he is holding a bow, so no, you are not flanking.
Your AoO wipes out Green before it attacks, which means it never reached to damage you in the end.
Also, try to roll die in the order of events. In this case you first AoO, then you are attacked and thus affected by poison, finally your round arrives and you roll your attack. That would had mean your Fort rolls would have come before your attack.
It is sometimes tricky, but try to roll in chronological order.
I forgot Jonah's using his bow, so yeah, flanking doesn't count. I should have worded my question about it better, I mostly wasn't sure if small creatures had additional rules regarding flanking - the rules on flanking in general can get fiddly pretty quickly.
And next time I'll do my rolls in order.
Posting this in all my games (GM and player):
My wife just had our third baby, a little bit ahead of schedule. my posting will be off and on for the next few weeks as i stay home and help my wife. i will still post when able, but posting consistently in multiple games takes a chunk of time, which i will not have for a little bit.
thank you for your patience! if this is a game where i am a PC please feel free to bot me. if this is one of the games i am running, thank you for your patience. feel free to fill the dead space with RP or discussion or just wait for my posts to return!
thanks all
Congratulations on the new addition to your family!
Congratulations Jonnah! :D
And thanks a lot for letting us know.
Congratulations Jonah! Hope it all goes smoothly.
Congrats!
Thought I posted yesterday but apparantly not, so fixing that.
I should have asked before posting but is there jungle canopy or anything that would make Adriana's weather question a bit silly? She does want to know the time and assumes Splits can tell her but the weather part might be a bit more obvious.
My apologies for my lack of posting. I'm sick and have been feeling pretty wiped out.
Take care Ingolf! Do not worry, health comes first.
Hope you're feeling better Ingolf!
So I misread a little yesterday and it turns out Adriana didn't need to be shouty and mean, so as both player and character it's an embarrassing turn BUT at least it gives good RP opportunities, so hopefully it balances.
GM do either of the maps show a way onto the ramparts?
No, the way into the watchtowers and the ramparts must be concealed inside one of the three buildings, because there is not an obvious stair to go up from the courtyard.
Alright, posting from my phone since my internet (and my posts) keep dropping -
Gm, in situations where we aren't rushed or in combat, do you mind of we roll dice here in discussion and then post IC accordinly? I want to base my post on the result of the climb check.
As Tonny said, we use the "Preview" button in those cases.
In fact there is a good routine for posting in this forums.
1) Select your Post As alias
2) Write your post
3) Select all
4) Copy
5) Click "Preview" button
6) Check post
7) Complete or modify post
8) Select all
9) Copy
10) Click "Post" button
It seems a bit of a work, but once you get the routine it feels automatic, and it will spare you from a lot of future headaches when the post engine decides to timeout your posting or cause similar havoc.
Well look at that, I learned something useful. Thankyou both!
Two questions.
1) Are the centipedes big enough to provoke AoO's?
2) Do we know they are poisonous by default? I didn't see a check.
I'm just planning my turn here.
They are Small sized. The Cat sized reference was intended to hint that :)
I forgot to add a spoiler for monster id. There is not much to them though, but feel free to roll K. nature to know more about their poison's effect.
So... where to next?
You still have some locations to explore in the Fort before heading back and reporting to Sheriff Adaela, but we can skip them and go back to Pridon's Hearth immediately if you prefer.
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Checking in real quick, weekend has been crazy - and not just because of virus panic.
Adriana wouldn't mind giving the fort one last once-over before heading back to inform the sheriff about what's happened. She also wants to make sure Zloof is aware that humans will come back for the fort.
I'll try to get a proper ingame post in today but I'm not confident with all I have to handle. Stay safe everyone.
As gear is starting to pile in the group's hands I have put up a treasure sheet with all the items you have collected so far.
The sheet includes tabs for each character individual tracking. Try to keep both those tabs and your profiles aligned with your purchases.
The party share will automatically update in your tabs if you feel your name in the K (Claimer) or L (Currently in) columns. I usually place the name on Claimer for the item until the player writes down the item in the profile, making the name then into L (Currently in).
Feel free to claim any item you feel useful and keep updating yourselves the sheet as you find new items.
I think I used all my actions to escape from the webbing, if not I'll edit my post accordingly.
Thanks to Ingolf's timely spell you only consumed your swift action. You can perform your standard and move actions this round!
I just got (unofficially) laid off so I've been finding motivation hard right now.
I'll still post but I might need a day or two to figure this all out.
Sorry to hear about that — take care.
I am sorry for that. I am confident you soon will find a new place Splits.
Meanwhile, take all the time you need. We will be here to try give you some entertainment if needed.
Sorry to hear Splits, look after yourself.
@GM I have a bit of IRL to still sort out and didn't realise Ingolf helped out (Thankyou Ingolf!) so I didn't have any further plans other than maybe withdraw.
@GM I'm gonna be a little behind today's been a mess and to top it all off I've got a flat tire to sort out. It's the topper of a terrible day, and I'll attempt to catch up when I can.
Thanks for the heads up! It's a complex time.
I will GMPC Adriana to have this finished and have us moving once more.
Hi! No need to rush about the level up. Having it before the weekend ends would be ideal, but if you find no time, I think stats update will not be very relevant through the next week.
Woo level up!
While we're working on that, are we keeping track of that we're bringing back from the fort? I might have a bit of time to go back and read through to write up if needed.
I'll get on it soon. this weekend is pretty busy and of course this would be the weekend that 2 of my PCs need to level up!
I have made a treasure list of everything you have picked so far. You can find it at the top.
If you write your name in column K (items claimed but not yet written in your profile) or L (claimed and written in your profile), the items in that line will be summarized in your character tab.
Feel free to keep it up to date.