Hi Guys,
I have a question: My party have requested to lock down the Hextor temple and take 20 on the complex to loot all the items?? is this realistic? considering there are 2 other temples and it would take a long time to spend 20 on each and every room.
What should i do?
Thanks
DM Shane
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If I have counted correctly, the complete Citadel of Hextor consist of 347 5-foot-by-5-foot squares your party has to search through. Statistically spoken they could expect to roll a 20 not later than in round 10,5 (expected value). So they would basically need a bit more than 6 hours to search the whole complex when taking 20. Given that the three parts of the Ebon Triad act indepently (most of the time) I think it's principally possible to search the complex without disturbance.
If they have slain all enemies and nobody escaped I think I would allow them to do it. But be aware that there's a trap with a higher Search DC in the chapel of Hextor. In this case I would deny them to take 20 (the trap has a touch trigger so if someone makes a mistake... ) but let them roll individually (or make a hidden roll)
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Hmm, seems that i wasn't mathematically correct in the post above. So I'd recommend to follow the advice given in the PHB (the duration of taking 20 ist 20 times longer than that of an individual search check). In this case, your party would need 12 hours to search through the Citadel of Hextor. But even then, I see no point in denying them the search (same argumentation, there's normally no reason for members of the other cults to visit the temple of Hextor)
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I tend to get a little annoyed with that kind of meta-gaming statement when I hear it from my players. "Well, we're just gonna take as much time as possible to search the whole thing till we''re sure we've recovered all the loot."
That kind of short-circuits the sense of adventure and makes my game too much like a board-game. When I hear this kind of thing from my players, I tend to change the plot on the fly to interrupt their efforts with a new encounter (something that pushes them to the wall, like a nasty fight before they've been able to rest). Over time, my players learn to sense that if the players are going to meta-game, then so are the monsters.
In this case, I would probably throw in a visit to Theldrick's domain by the denizens of one of the other temples. Perhaps the Faceless One, accompanied by a retinue of sneaking kenku (to guard against treachery by Theldrick, of course). I would probably add these creatures (with the exception of the FO) to the encounters for the adventure, so as not to dumb-down the temple of Vecna. And I'd make sure to let the FO escape.
I don't think that this kind of thing is at all unrealistic, seeing as though your party is probably going to want to rest in the same timeframe, making the total time they are wasting more like twenty hours.
Another thing is that it's unrealistic to expect that anyone could concentrate on an intensive search for twelve hours without getting distracted. I can't even make it through a ten hour work day without checking news on the web, eating, discussing the playoffs, etc. You might just make a concentration check for them for each square (or perhaps for each item cache) and only let them take twenty for that area if they pass it. Make them say what order they're searching the temple, and make the concentration DC incrementally harder, the later they get to an area.
I tend to get a little annoyed with that kind of meta-gaming statement when I hear it from my players. "Well, we're just gonna take as much time as possible to search the whole thing till we''re sure we've recovered all the loot."
That kind of short-circuits the sense of adventure and makes my game too much like a board-game....
While often true, I don't think it is in this case. There is no 'adventure' left (I assume they cleared things out), and it would certainly bore everyone to tears if they had to play through the process.
I'd let'em do it.
My players have done this before. Sucks to be them when they didn't really clear things out -- everyone gets caught surprised as some nasty comes out of nowhere :)
Jack
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I always thought that secret caches of treasure were usually too hard to find without taking 20 unless the DM metagames and drops huge hints that maybe the party should search this room as opposed to the others. If a party misses a couple caches then suddenly they are below the wealth by level guidelines and can't outfit the party as well, creating a downward spiral for the party. Let 'em take 20, they have more fun and that's what the game is about, not dragging them down with rule mechanics.
my2
FH
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While I understand the point about not wanting to mire the game in rules or rolls, I can't just let the party plunder the whole level with a single statement like that. What's the sense of having interesting item caches (like the one in Theldrick's shrine, for instance), if you're not going to make the PCs role play through the looting aspect of the game? The room descriptions might as well feature a big pile of all the interesting stuff in the middle of the room if you're going to let the party plunder in this fashion. Little episodes like mass-plunderings, or mid-dungeon rest stops are places during the game where the mood can get wrecked and the 'realism' of the game can suffer. I try to minimize these in my game.
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What's the sense of having interesting item caches (like the one in Theldrick's shrine, for instance), if you're not going to make the PCs role play through the looting aspect of the game?
But what if the SC aren't really interested in the looting aspect of the game? They will likely to get bored if you force them to search each room individually (and if I think about e.g. Jzadirune (SCAP), there were a lot of uninteresting rooms with respect to the looting aspect).
Naturally you can solve this problem by other means (no caches, treasure is found by the killed enemies), but I won't argue against the "Take 20", if it's possible without a risk. By the way, I don't think it to be "more realistic" to roll a 20 in the first (empty) room, and then to roll a 1 in the next room, where all the treasure is stashed.In fact, I see it the same way, and as a DM, it can be disappointing, if your creativity is partly ignored by the players. But if your players don't want to search each room individually, there is (in my humble opinion) no much sense in forcing them to do so or to punish them, if they deny it. I don't like punishments as a player, so I don't do it if I run the game as a DM.
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Yeah. The bottom line here (like everywhere) is to know your players and what they're looking for from the game, right? The fact that your players requested that indicates their style, so you should probably allow it. I would still do something like I suggested above with the concentration checks, though. If nothing else, it adds a little bit of mystery to the end result.
My players (the way I read them), seem to enjoy the game most when I talk least to them as players in the game and more as characters in the story. Unless we're debating the application of a rule in combat, we tend to steer clear of table talk that is 'out-of-character'. I don't think they'd enjoy the game as much if I let them get away with taking 20 in one swoop to search the entire complex, even if I were to go through each cache and describe how each is found. That being said, the Hextor temple in particular does lend itself to what your players are requesting, since there's not much left to do except loot once the main battle is over.
Of course, they shouldn't know that!
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I don't like punishments as a player, so I don't do it if I run the game as a DM.
Well, I wouldn't view the insertion of another combat as a punishment, but as a challenge. After all, the players do get experience and more loot from the new encounter. Plus it makes the temple complex seem more dynamic, and (at least to my mind), more realistic. That is, if a fantasy game can ever be described as being realistic.
To some extent, the fact that there's not much left to do in the temple once the main fight is over is a bit of a deficiency in the module itself. If you were a player, would you assume that is the case once the main combat is over, and make no attempt to sneak your way around the remainder of the complex to make sure? Isn't a player that suggests this asking to be ambushed/wacked by a trap?
I guess Shane's party probably did some of this scouting before suggesting that a take 20 would cover the whole complex. If that's the case, then I would have applied the search rolls they made when looking for hidden opponents and such the rolls that they live by when searching for treasure.