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Hi,
I am brand new to RPG's and struggling with one concept in particular. I understand the sequence of rounds during combat. However, when not in combat what are the general rules for how far you can move, how many skills you can use, etc.
1. Can you walk into a room say and do perception check to find out a trap exists and then immediately do disable trap, or do you have to let everyone else do something first. I guess what I am getting at is, what is to keep people from just doing skill checks until they finally pass.
2. How about movement? Up until players encounter a monster how does movement work...in turns? If a statue is in the middle of the room and a player wants to poke it with his sword, does he have to move first...and if so, what is the use since if not in combat, movement isnt measured?
Hope these make sense.
Nick
Movement outside of combat is technically done in turns, most people just choose to handwave it to avoid an hour of "I move 30 feet" "Okay, my turn, now I move 30 feet."
Making a perception check is usually reactive and does not require an action, however, intentionally searching for a stimulus (like searching for a trap) is a move action. So you could move into the room (1 move action) and then choose to give up your standard action to take another move action which you will use to search for traps. On your next turn, you could then proceed to a trap detected this way and begin disarming it. Disarming a trap usually takes 2d4 rounds unless you have an ability shortening this time.
1. Up the GM. Sometimes I will call a "soft initiative" in order to make certain everyone gets a chance to do something. But in general, if there isn't a combat encounter or other thing that forces an initiative sequence, then there's no reason you have to wait for your friends to act.
2. The GM decides how fast things happen, but a round is about 6 seconds. This means the average character can walk about 10 feet per second on a double move. Again, since you're not usually competing with your allies, if they're the only ones around there's no reason to track initiative.
If the GM secretly knows of a situation where this timing becomes important, then they will usually secretly track how much time passes.
Hi, Nick.
For most actions in the game, we know about how much time they take. For example, a perception check takes a move action, while disabling a trap usually takes 2d4 rounds (see the skill description). Even outside of combat, you can roughtly keep track of that amount of time.
But while outside of combat, it's generally going to be fine to stick to one character until they do something that takes a while, then use that as a good stopping point to see what another character is doing. Certainly if one character is doing a lot of stuff and another player wants to jump in too, you should let him -- after all, the other characters aren't just standing around while you're doing stuff.
The main thing is, you don't usually need to be strict about movement order in D&D, because the players should be a cooperative team and not squabbling to all be the first person to do something. If timing does become really important, roll initiative and treat it like combat until the action-by-action details become less important again.
1. Up the GM. Sometimes I will call a "soft initiative" in order The GM decides how fast things happen, but a round is about 6 seconds. This means the average character can walk about 10 feet per second on a double move.
By the way, "reading between the lines" on the normal marching rules, the default assumption is that characters are only using a single move action per round. "Hustling" is what happens when you try to do a double move per round.
So a good rule of thumb is that if someone is trying to keep up more than a single move action per round (either standard actions or both move actions) over a long period of time, consider invoking the Hustle rules to start dealing nonlethal damage from exertion. This will reinforce that combat is a special time when you're "going all-out," and most people just can't keep up that level of activity indefinitely.
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Outside of combat the party will move as one. Each person will say i'm doing this or just keep doing what they were doing like walking or searching. You do that until someone causes somthing to react, say an ambush or a trap. They move as one so you dont have one person 30 ft away from everyone else when something happens. As far as an "Order" for actions goes its probably best to go around the table stating on one side of you and going around until everyone has gone. Usually when someone tells you their action try to keep it so a standard number of actions for a round like one move and one standard. Something like I go here and do this. That way everyone else has a chance to act as well.
Knowledge checks cannot be rerolled, so in your example, lets say the wall writing has some significance to the party. DC 15 to see it was done by the XYZ religion, DC 20 to identify it was about such-and-such religious myth, and DC 25 to figure it has an odd discrepancy (like it involves praying to the Moon god when the normal story always involves praying to the Sun god, which the players may mess up if they don't know this tidbit).
The player rolls once and get a result of 21. You explain the religion and the story, but don't mention the odd discrepancy. The player cannot roll another check to try and get a higher result. Another player may try (so long as they weren't involved in the first check via aid another).
If the player instead rolled a result of 12, he gets nothing beyond the simple story.
Also, lets say the players run around doing knowledge checks on everything. How sturdy is the wall, how old is the moss, etc. Most checks won't mean anything and you can just give them useless information. They may thing the wall being built in 1400AD means something because they rolled a 35 on knowledge history, but it doesn't. Eventually the players will stop trying to knowledge everything in sight.
They are also prone to being surprised by monsters if they are busy studying everything around them. Knowledge checks are rarely free actions.
Each skill lists the conditions under which you may retry the roll.
You may also want to look at the Take 10 and Take 20 rules. They don't answer your question, but they are relevant to the flow of time outside of combat.
Take 10 means you can treat a roll as a "10 + modifiers" if you aren't in combat or spooked or threatened, etc. It takes the same amount of time as normal. It's a way of saying "I should be able to do this most of the time, if I'm careful, so why roll?"
Take 20 means you can treat the roll as a "20 + modifiers" but only if there is no consequence for failure. This takes 20 times as long, and basically means your character keeps rolling until he rolls a 20, because nothing is stopping him. You can't use this to climb a cliff, because you might fall. You can use this to pick a lock.
Taking 20 really addresses your question of "how can the players lose"? The real challenging situations in Pathfinder are the ones that are sheerly beyond your ability (a DC 40 roll against a bonus of +19) or things within your ability but with "action" or "combat" raging around you.
In general, most groups get a sense for when it is even fun to bother rolling. As you play the game, or GM, you'll realize that it isn't always worth rolling, for instance, when a character tries to break down a door outside of a combat round. If nobody is going to react to it, or try to stop it, and there's no other reason to measure time, you can assume that a person who can break down a door, does.
Knowledge checks are rarely free actions.
Knowledge "Action: Usually none. In most cases, a Knowledge check doesn't take an action (but see “Untrained,” below).
Untrained: You cannot make an untrained Knowledge check with a DC higher than 10. If you have access to an extensive library that covers a specific skill, this limit is removed. The time to make checks using a library, however, increases to 1d4 hours. Particularly complete libraries might even grant a bonus on Knowledge checks in the fields that they cover."
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OK, this is helpful...so let me play out a scenario:
3 PC's (Bob, Joe, Tina) just finished defeating a goblin and walk into a room with a large statue at the center and some ancient words inscribed on the walls
1. GM - "What do you guys want to do...Bob?"
2. Bob - "I would like to roll knowledge religion on the writing"
3. GM - "OK, you cant quite make it out."
4. Bob - I would like to roll detect magic on the wall"
5. GM - You can't detect anything in particular
6. Bob - "I would like to roll knowledge history on the wall"
7. GM - you can tell that the wall was built in 1400AD, meaning it probably has such and such a meaning to the group.Is this type of thing possible...if so, how can the PC's ever lose?
Joe and Tina should get actions after Bob's first couple of responses, especially once he starts doing something that takes game time (three rounds) to complete.
The PCs can quite easily not have the necessary Knowledge skill among the group or draw the wrong conclusion from the facts their characters know.
Knowledge checks are rarely free actions.Knowledge "Action: Usually none. In most cases, a Knowledge check doesn't take an action (but see “Untrained,” below).
I suppose I meant more that studying something is rarely a free action.
Knowledge free action check covers remembering things such as a statue or symbol or person or city name. Determining what the religious writing on a wall means is more than a free action, just as determining the age of a milled stone wall or the quality of engineering for the rope bridge. These require time to study. So I suppose the check is free but the study / examination time is not.