And, can you take 20 on the attempt? If someone is searching for traps or secret doors, how do you handle it when a group wants to take 20 on every single square they've explored?
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And, can you take 20 on the attempt? If someone is searching for traps or secret doors, how do you handle it when a group wants to take 20 on every single square they've explored?
It takes 1 standard action to search a 5' square. That means if they want to take 20, that'll take them about 2 minutes. If they want to take 20 on every single square of the dungeon (which by the by doesn't mean the automatically find anything unless they've still got good search modifiers) then it's going to take them an extremely long time to get anywhere.
This is why you make sure you have random monster tables, and are making them keep track of time spent so you know what they're using up in terms of rations and water. Plus their long term buffs normally only last so long, especially at lower levels.
Managing the time flow of your campaign is probably one of the most challenging tasks a DM has that isn't normally talked about.