Situation: I'm GMing, and have an NPC rogue who's been creating long-term trouble for the party. They've captured him and are interrogating him... and searching him for weapons and contraband, of course. They're going to take twenty on their searches. Is it legal/feasible for the rogue to have 'taken twenty' on his presumed sleight-of-hand checks to hide things on his person, earlier in the day?
I'm thinking yes. If you're a rogue, and you get up for the day and do your classic rogue-like thing of having lots of small pointy objects and emergency cash and whatever stowed in various clever locations... wouldn't you take the time to hide them as well as possible, since there's no 'possibility of failure' when you're just getting ready for the day? If your poison dart (or whatever) wasn't as well-hidden as you liked, you could take it out of the fake pocket and hide it again, until you had the best possible concealment for all of your secret items.
To me, this logic makes sense, but I'm open to dissenting opinions backed up by rules, before I decide to let the rogue manage to keep some items even through the search that is going to result.
(And yes, the rogue's Take 20 SOH is higher than the party's Take 20 Perception.)
Firstly this is well within the rules, but I question the motivation behind it.
As GM you don't need to justify PCs finding or not finding something. They simply do or don't. That is the power of rule 0.
If you really want to have the dice decide, have the rogue take 10 and have the PCs roll to find the stuff. Course remember you can add circumstance bonuses/penalties as well.
I respectfully disagree with that Rule 0 across the board. I get it when it's huge story stuff and you have to have something happen, but if I'm the player and I've rolled a 31 Perception check and then I find out an hour later that 'no, you didn't see the [item]', I'm going to feel pretty miffed, and feel like it was useless for me to bother having invested in a high Perception, if the GM can just decide what I find and don't find when searching an enemy.
I do take your point about the GM having fiat over story stuff, I just don't think it's always a great idea to take refuge in that.
Your point about circumstantial bonuses is well made, though.
Do you want them to find it? They find it.
Do you not want them to find it? They don't find it.
Do they strip search him? They find it unless he hid it somewhere uncomfortable.
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I don't see any reason in the rules to keep him from taking 20 on the Sleight-of-Hand check; it's not a secret roll, it doesn't carry penalties for failure, and he has all the time he wants when getting dressed in the morning.
But remember that your PCs get an automatic +4 to their Perception when searching him, and they could probably make Aid Another checks to boost it even further.
But I disagree with this:
As GM you don't need to justify PCs finding or not finding something. They simply do or don't. That is the power of rule 0.
If I've invested heavily in Perception, because I've decided I want my character to be good at finding things, but I fail because the GM simply declared that I can't win because he says so, then I'd feel cheated.
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well then... really anyone who takes the time to hide anything on themselves will of course take 20 on the slight of hand roll.
just like if you're setting up a blind for hunting, you're going to take time and take 20 on your stealth check.
question is: do you as the gm want this to happen?
do you want players ( and... do players want npcs... ) taking 20 on opposed checks?
well then... really anyone who takes the time to hide anything on themselves will of course take 20 on the slight of hand roll.
just like if you're setting up a blind for hunting, you're going to take time and take 20 on your stealth check.
question is: do you as the gm want this to happen?
do you want players ( and... do players want npcs... ) taking 20 on opposed checks?
Assuming a character heavily invested in Sleight-of-Hand will have a roughly equal bonus with another heavily invested in Perception, that gives a ~25% chance of the observer succeeding with a roll against the target taking 20 (or less for a dagger, or with baggy clothing). That seems pretty reasonable to me.
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To phrase Seraphimpunk's question another way, do you want PCs and NPCs acting like intelligent people who want to succeed and are aware that doing a good job of something usually takes more than 3-6 seconds, or do you want PCs and NPCs acting like they know they're in a game and so they see themselves as getting one shot at anything they do and then they try to ignore their own knowledge of when they know they've done a poor job?
To phrase Seraphimpunk's question another way, do you want PCs and NPCs acting like intelligent people who want to succeed and are aware that doing a good job of something usually takes more than 3-6 seconds, or do you want PCs and NPCs acting like they know they're in a game and so they see themselves as getting one shot at anything they do and then they try to ignore their own knowledge of when they know they've done a poor job?
Bolded section is key. How does the rogue know he did well/poorly? He does not know what he rolled, he only has his senses to tell him. What senses, why that's his Perception score.
Essentially, he could/would keep 're-hiding' the items until he didn't spot them (beat his Sleight of Hand check with his Perception check). Of course, that could be fairly low with random chance. If he took 20 on his Perception check, he'd establish a minimum threshold (except of course, he might never be able to beat his own Perception score).
If he can always beat his Sleight of Hand, you could allow "Taking 400" (ensuring the maximum on two separate skills) - about 40 minutes of work.
If he can beat his own Perception check, you might roll random for the range above it (e.g., if his Take 20 Perception is 30, and his maximum Sleight is 36, roll a d6 for 31-36 for the actual result).
That's all assuming you are able to evaluate your own Sleight of Hand (since there really is no check when you know where you hid it).
How does the rogue know he did well/poorly?
The Disguise and Linguistics (for making forgeries) skills specify that the rolls are made secretly, to reflect the fact that the user doesn't know how well they did. Sleight-of-Hand does not require a secret roll, so that implies you do know how well or poorly you did with a given roll.
How does the rogue know he did well/poorly?The Disguise and Linguistics (for making forgeries) skills specify that the rolls are made secretly, to reflect the fact that the user doesn't know how well they did. Sleight-of-Hand does not require a secret roll, so that implies you do know how well or poorly you did with a given roll.
That's a point, but the most common use of Sleight of Hand is to pick pockets, and that is resolved immediately (thus no need to be secret). There's also no need to roll a Sleight of Hand check when you actually hide the item - you can roll it when you are being checked, and again, no secrecy needed.
In general, I would differentiate between checks where it is *important* for you not to know how successful you were (e.g. chances of getting wrong information with Linguistics), vs. potential meta-gaming if you know how successful you were (vs. obvious results such as jumping checks).
Jiggy: I would pretty strongly disagree that being very good at something automatically tells you how well you did at a particular exercise. If so I'd know ahead of time when my SQL queries would fail to run. :) In game, you'd know when you didn't make a high enough knowledge to learn everything applicable about a creature, or
Hiding (yourself or an item) seems like about the worst case for knowing whether you did well or not - just ask ostriches with their heads in the ground, or babies playing peek-a-boo. I do agree, being adult/sentient, a rogue could certainly be *aware* of the potential for failure, but the ability to ascertain failure seems lacking in general. For example, you hide a dagger in the small of your back inside - it's quite hard to tell that it shows up as a dark spot in bright sunlight, or bulges when you twist that way.
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Situation: I'm GMing, and have an NPC rogue who's been creating long-term trouble for the party. They've captured him and are interrogating him... and searching him for weapons and contraband, of course. They're going to take twenty on their searches. Is it legal/feasible for the rogue to have 'taken twenty' on his presumed sleight-of-hand checks to hide things on his person, earlier in the day?
I'm thinking yes. If you're a rogue, and you get up for the day and do your classic rogue-like thing of having lots of small pointy objects and emergency cash and whatever stowed in various clever locations... wouldn't you take the time to hide them as well as possible, since there's no 'possibility of failure' when you're just getting ready for the day? If your poison dart (or whatever) wasn't as well-hidden as you liked, you could take it out of the fake pocket and hide it again, until you had the best possible concealment for all of your secret items.
To me, this logic makes sense, but I'm open to dissenting opinions backed up by rules, before I decide to let the rogue manage to keep some items even through the search that is going to result.
(And yes, the rogue's Take 20 SOH is higher than the party's Take 20 Perception.)
Rules on skills can be highly ambiguous. What makes logical sense to one player or GM may be quite different to another. You are going to find many "backed by the rules" arguments. By its definition, "Slight of Hand" is not how good you are at hiding things in hidey holes when you are alone, it is the art of diversion and manipulation while being observed. This makes the whole hiding things beforehand a little shaky from a logic standpoint.
From a roleplay standpoint, depending on the level of importance of this item(s), they degree of frisking/searching may give much greater bonuses to their "take 20" perceptions.
If he really thought ahead, he might even have hired a tailor to sew a spare set of lock picks into the cuff of his sleeve or something. His cuffs might be designed with hard ridges going all the way around in order to hold their shape so the picks just blend right in. Lock picks are pretty small already. Arguably, a little creativity like that could give him bonuses.
This is why prisons strip people completely nekkid and then do some really intrusive and uncomfortable searches. You can always have them specify what they're actually searching and if you know where he hid it and they fail to search a, uhm... *blush* particular place, it doesn't matter how high they roll.
Oh, and if the players specify that they take and swap out all of his clothes, and he hid something in a fold somewhere, now he has to make a sleight of hand to get it out as they're stripping him and he might have even made it harder to do by hiding it so well in the first place.
Whether the story is contingent on the outcome of the check is immaterial to the question and is more of an Advice topic than a Rules Question. The question asked was, can you take 20 on Sleight of Hand checks to hide an item? I believe not, since you can't reliably test your results, and a failure is supposed to incur a penalty on further checks against the same target--and a Take 20 is supposed to imply failures. Others, including SKR, believe otherwise, and it's certainly not a dealbreaker to go with that interpretation.
Stowing a lot of items in this manner would take a somewhat nontrivial amount of time when "getting ready for the day"--two minutes per item. Keep that in mind.
I wouldn't allow him to take 20 with sleight of hand to hide something. The assumption with taking 20 is that failure occurs sometime along the way before achieving that best possible result. And with using sleight of hand to hide something, failure is determined when someone else gets a matching or better result. That's also why I don't allow taking 20 on stealth checks even if setting up an ambush site. I think allowing it would be contrary to the spirit of taking 20.
A circumstance modifier to raise the DC for a particularly good hiding place or well-constructed hidden sheath or whatever is a better alternative.
Thank you for all the discussion and advice, everyone.
It's not really a big plot-centric thing either way: it just influences the fun-rivalry aspects between the party and the NPC, to me, but in the big scheme of things it's not a huge issue.
What Majuba said. Also, the objects might have been well hidden originally, but they moved. Presumably, when the party captured him, there was a fight of some nature. The objects are likely to move quite a lot.
Also, did the rogue have some reason to believe he'd be captured today? If not, would he really have spent all that effort on the off-chance?
A circumstance modifier to raise the DC for a particularly good hiding place or well-constructed hidden sheath or whatever is a better alternative.
Exactly. The GM is allowed (and encouraged) to apply circumstantial modifiers when appropriate. Taking extra time to do something right when extra time taken should have a positive effect is certainly appropriate.
Here's my spin:
If you do not know if you failed, you cannot Take-20.
Opposed checks mean that the check can fail. Thus you cannot Take-20 if the opposed check is not knowable at the time you make your check.
Sleight of Hand (SOH) is opposed by Perception. If the opposed Perception result is unknown, then SOH can not Take-20. On the other hand, if you can find a way to finesse the opposed Perception check, you can Take-20 against it. For example, say your SOH skill is 17. If you can find someone with Perception 16, then their Take-20 against your SOH will show you when you fail, so that you can then Take-20 on SOH. This works with a larger range, but you only guarantees your SOH is greater than the other's Perception.
/cevah
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i *would* probably let him try taking 20, if he had someone helping him out: patting him down, eyeing his wardrobe to see if he can spot it
[player rolls 12 sleight of hand]
[assisting player]: no, i can see it. try over there.
i wouldn't call it assisting, for a +2. since its untrained, but i would kind of let it happen, since it makes sense.
but if he's just hiding something on himself alone? mmh.
what's the disguise skill say about taking 20?