You have to choose to alter the mindset of the PC to make such a ruling.
That's a crock for a few reasons.
First, its when you ARE in danger, not whether you FEEL like you're in danger. I do not have to tell the player they feel endangered by the sleeping red dragon. I just have to say it IS a danger.
You cannot simply declare your own mental state in the pursuit of a mechanical advantage.
Claiming this as a player freedom! issue is disingenuous.
Okay, let's go with this for a second. So if you can't T10 to sneak past the dragon, when can you T10 on Stealth?
Sneak out of bed with the bar maid.
If you can't T10 to disable the fireball trap, what can you T10 to disable?
The lock on the prison door.
As a DM interested in empowering player and letting them make informed risk assessments of their tactics, the take a 10 option has been a huge boon.
Situation #1: The trained PC assassin is sneaking past mook guards, this is as routine to him as a blacksmith making a plowshare. He and the guards take 10, he passes unless he tries to move full speed in borrowed full plate or there is a professional watcher that flat out outskills him.
Situation #2: the trained PC assassin is sneaking past mook guards while fighting off domination attempts by an intelligent magical item. Guards take 10,the PC rolls.
Situation #3: this is the most relevant one, the assassin is sneaking past the mooks while the Sergeant is doing his rounds. The Sergeant is spot checking on the chance of seeing something, he rolls perception while everyone else takes 10. Or, to put the dice in the hands of the player, let him roll his stealth against the guards ten.
tl;dr with opposed rolls the 40 point swing is too high for a player to consistently beat an opponent even if he has a ten point or better rank advantage. This discourages bold/skilled/precise tactics. This stops the blundering fool self image of the party when the bard fails bluff a beggar and the rogue can't sneak past a goblin.
As an aside, I think some GMs have a problem with take 10 because in their minds it reduces the risk of failure. Im really not sure where they get this.Because its largely true. DCs are not average or random.
If I'm setting a DC for the players I want it to be reasonable and doable. I don't want a disable device check of 25 at first level because the rogue is probably not going to make it. Setting a failure rate of over 50% as a dm or adventure designer is kind of a twit move, so setting the dc lower to give the pcs a good chance at the roll is standard practice. No problem, the rogue succeeds 75%ish of the time.
But then you add in the idea that you can take 10 on anything. All of a sudden my choices are to either set the failure rate so high you've pretty much wasted your investment in the skills, or i make it a 100% success rate because you're taking 10.
That is completely untrue. If the player has a 10 disable device in a skill and you set the DC at 20 yes he can just take 10. Setting the DC at 21 means the character cannot take 10 to succeed and must roll 11 or better to do so giving him a 50/50 chance of success. That is hardly making the investment in the skill wasted. The idea that you have to either make the difficulty impossible or irrelevant is ridiculous.
That is completely untrue.
you're making completely untrue out of a 5% difference.
If the player has a 10 disable device in a skill and you set the DC at 20 yes he can just take 10. Setting the DC at 21 means the character cannot take 10 to succeed and must roll 11 or better to do so giving him a 50/50 chance of success. That is hardly making the investment in the skill wasted. The idea that you have to either make the difficulty impossible or irrelevant is ridiculous.
Ok, and now what happens when the player gets his ioun stone with a competence bonus to disable device? He's at +11. Do i go back to take 10 being an automatic success, or do i negate his purchase and increase the DCs by 1?
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Okay, let's go with this for a second. So if you can't T10 to sneak past the dragon, when can you T10 on Stealth?Sneak out of bed with the bar maid.
If you can't T10 to disable the fireball trap, what can you T10 to disable?
The lock on the prison door.
So to you the difference is the severity of the consequences of failing the check?
So then when SKR says it doesn't matter whether he's jumping across a piece of tape on the floor or over a deep chasm, that means... what? And when he also says that you can T10 unless you're distracted by something "other than the task at hand", that means... what?
That is completely untrue.you're making completely untrue out of a 5% difference.
If the player has a 10 disable device in a skill and you set the DC at 20 yes he can just take 10. Setting the DC at 21 means the character cannot take 10 to succeed and must roll 11 or better to do so giving him a 50/50 chance of success. That is hardly making the investment in the skill wasted. The idea that you have to either make the difficulty impossible or irrelevant is ridiculous.Ok, and now what happens when the player gets his ioun stone with a competence bonus to disable device? He's at +11. Do i go back to take 10 being an automatic success, or do i negate his purchase and increase the DCs by 1?
You set the DC at what is should be, irregardless of any one PC's abilities and skills.
So, now, yes, he can auto-succeed at that particular task.
You set the DC at what is should be, irregardless of any one PC's abilities and skills.
What the DC should be is a fair, level appropriate challenge. If you're first level thats an average lock. If you're 10th level thats some insanely calibrated clockworth deathtrap with mercury switches.
Someone with even slightly better than normal ability in a skill turns a fair challenge into auto success with take 10.
If you're going to tell me I'm absolutely wrong, you need to stop following that up with showing me why I'm right.
So to you the difference is the severity of the consequences of failing the check?
Mostly, for a few reasons.
Game balance: See above with Dr deth.
Story reasons: Take 10 (according to the skr post you keep under your pillow) is for skipping inconsequential things. Sneaking past the dragon or into the bandit camp is not inconsequential, its the entire story if you're doing a stealth mission.
Take your logic and reverse it. Is there any time out of combat that you CAN"T take 10? It doesn't just say in combat, it also says "in immediate danger". You've got the definition of immediate down to some non existant time 0 so that its a total null set.
So then when SKR says it doesn't matter whether he's jumping across a piece of tape on the floor or over a deep chasm, that means... what?
And when he also says that you can T10 unless you're distracted by something "other than the task at hand", that means... what?
The 5 foot jump IS the thing at hand. The dragon is not the stealth check.
you're making completely untrue out of a 5% difference.
That is completely untrue.
You stated that if players are allowed to take 10 the only choices you, as the GM, have are to either make it impossible or to make it 100% success. That is a false dilemma fallacy (https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/black-or-white). Fallacy = untrue.
If the player has a 10 disable device in a skill and you set the DC at 20 yes he can just take 10. Setting the DC at 21 means the character cannot take 10 to succeed and must roll 11 or better to do so giving him a 50/50 chance of success. That is hardly making the investment in the skill wasted. The idea that you have to either make the difficulty impossible or irrelevant is ridiculous.Ok, and now what happens when the player gets his ioun stone with a competence bonus to disable device? He's at +11. Do i go back to take 10 being an automatic success, or do i negate his purchase and increase the DCs by 1?
No you don't. You set the DC at what it would reasonably be and if that means autosuccess for the character then so be it. To take away the Take 10 is like video games that artificially inflate the "challenge" of the game by doing things like locking your camera in a terrible angle during a boss fight. No one likes those. That isn't fun. The players of your game don't like it either. Let the player Take 10 autosucceed and gloat about how his character is so good he doesn't even need to roll.
This is exactly what I was talking about with GMs equating "challenge" with "fun". Instead of setting DCs at what they should actually realistically be you are setting them to what is going to be more difficult for the players because you think that is adding to the fun somehow.
The 5 foot jump IS the thing at hand. The dragon is not the stealth check.
He is referring to the Lava/pit as the same as the dragon. The jump is to stealth, while Lava is to dragon.
You stated that if players are allowed to take 10 the only choices you, as the GM, have are to either make it impossible or to make it 100% success. That is a false dilemma fallacy (https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/black-or-white). Fallacy = untrue.
Quote me .
Of course, he doesn't know the DC. So if your traps aren't all the same DC, he'll succeed at some and fail others. Then maybe he'll start rolling. Or not, because he'll be in the same boat, disarming some and failing others
Or he'll boost his skill to the point where he succeeds most of the time with Take 10, because he doesn't want to have traps randomly blow up in his face.
Lets take say skill focus. That's supposed to be a 15% increase in effectiveness of the disable device skill.
Either i pull a twit move as a DM and negate his resource allocation by increasing the dcs, i set the dcs unfairly high too often, or he uses take 10 to garner a much higher than 15% increase in his success rate. The DCs should be on a bell curve hovering around an average for that level. Taking 10 with skill focus disable device gets him everything but the extreme outliers.
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So to you the difference is the severity of the consequences of failing the check?Mostly, for a few reasons.
Game balance: See above with Dr deth.
Story reasons: Take 10 (according to the skr post you keep under your pillow)
Pffft, it's not under my pillow, that would be ridiculous and creepy.
It's a poster on the ceiling above my bed.
is for skipping inconsequential things. Sneaking past the dragon or into the bandit camp is not inconsequential, its the entire story if you're doing a stealth mission.
He also talks about taking 10 to sneak past guards. I'm curious how you reconcile that with your above statement.
Take your logic and reverse it. Is there any time out of combat that you CAN"T take 10? It doesn't just say in combat, it also says "in immediate danger". You've got the definition of immediate down to some non existant time 0 so that its a total null set.
That's easy!
Not in danger: disabling a trap while your party waits around.
In danger: the fighter already blundered into the trap and now the doors are sealed and you have to disable it while the room is filling up with water.
Not in danger: stealthing into the bandit camp.
In danger: stealthing out of the bandit camp after they've noticed the theft and the alarms are blaring and guards are scrambling.
I could go on. Shall I?
The 5 foot jump IS the thing at hand. The dragon is not the stealth check.So then when SKR says it doesn't matter whether he's jumping across a piece of tape on the floor or over a deep chasm, that means... what?
And when he also says that you can T10 unless you're distracted by something "other than the task at hand", that means... what?
You know better than to call that a fair comparison. The dragon's relationship to the stealth check is exactly the same as the deep, deadly-to-fall-into chasm's relationship to the jump check.
If it doesn't matter how dangerous the thing you're jumping over is, it's nonsense to suggest that it matters how dangerous the thing you're sneaking past is. It's the same relationship.
You set the DC at what is should be, irregardless of any one PC's abilities and skills.
What the DC should be is a fair, level appropriate challenge. If you're first level thats an average lock. If you're 10th level thats some insanely calibrated clockworth deathtrap with mercury switches.
Someone with even slightly better than normal ability in a skill turns a fair challenge into auto success with take 10.
If you're going to tell me I'm absolutely wrong, you need to stop following that up with showing me why I'm right.
Indeed, the challenges get harder as one Advances in level .
But not as one adds a new item, adds a feat, etc.
Perfectly fair to add harder traps as the party gets higher level. But not to increase the DC just because the rogue found a IOUN stone.
You stated that if players are allowed to take 10 the only choices you, as the GM, have are to either make it impossible or to make it 100% success. That is a false dilemma fallacy (https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/black-or-white). Fallacy = untrue.
Quote me .
As you wish. Posted yesterday at 5:04pm
But then you add in the idea that you can take 10 on anything. All of a sudden my choices are to either set the failure rate so high you've pretty much wasted your investment in the skills, or i make it a 100% success rate because you're taking 10.
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Lets take say skill focus. That's supposed to be a 15% increase in effectiveness of the disable device skill.
Either i pull a twit move as a DM and negate his resource allocation by increasing the dcs, i set the dcs unfairly high too often, or he uses take 10 to garner a much higher than 15% increase in his success rate. The DCs should be on a bell curve hovering around an average for that level. Taking 10 with skill focus disable device gets him everything but the extreme outliers.
BNW I think you are operating under the assumption that everyone will take 10 all the time.
Using your example, your player takes skill focus (disable device), so now 80% of the traps/locks he comes across he can just take 10. Thats ok! Because you know what? He doesn't know which traps are the other 20%. If he goes around taking 10 on all traps then he is guaranteed to fail 1 out of 5 and have them go off in his face. This should be the effect dedicating a feat to a skill gives you.
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Of course, he doesn't know the DC. So if your traps aren't all the same DC, he'll succeed at some and fail others. Then maybe he'll start rolling. Or not, because he'll be in the same boat, disarming some and failing others
Or he'll boost his skill to the point where he succeeds most of the time with Take 10, because he doesn't want to have traps randomly blow up in his face.
Lets take say skill focus. That's supposed to be a 15% increase in effectiveness of the disable device skill.
Either i pull a twit move as a DM and negate his resource allocation by increasing the dcs, i set the dcs unfairly high too often, or he uses take 10 to garner a much higher than 15% increase in his success rate. The DCs should be on a bell curve hovering around an average for that level. Taking 10 with skill focus disable device gets him everything but the extreme outliers.
Indeed, if a skill class does dump a lot of resources into a given skill, the chance should then be 100% on the standard DC for that level. You have now understood the idea behind "take 10". It makes trivial tasks trivial and it rewards the super-skill focused PC by allowing him to have a "I WIN!" button against normal encounters of that type at that CR level. Exactly.
Indeed, if a skill class does dump a lot of resources into a given skill, the chance should then be 100% on the standard DC for that level. You have now understood the idea behind "take 10". It makes trivial tasks trivial and it rewards the super-skill focused PC by allowing him to have a "I WIN!" button against normal encounters of that type at that CR level. Exactly.
They key here, how do they know its a trivial task they can take 10? What if that trap looks easy but was cleverly done so that your average pickpocket would spring it?
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Indeed, if a skill class does dump a lot of resources into a given skill, the chance should then be 100% on the standard DC for that level. You have now understood the idea behind "take 10". It makes trivial tasks trivial and it rewards the super-skill focused PC by allowing him to have a "I WIN!" button against normal encounters of that type at that CR level. Exactly.They key here, how do they know its a trivial task they can take 10? What if that trap looks easy but was cleverly done so that your average pickpocket would spring it?
You mean sort of like SKR's example about a PC with +9 Stealth taking 10 to get past a guard that he's assumed is "just a +2 Spot loser", but it turns out the guard is an important NPC with a high enough Perception that he beats the PC's T10?
Then, just like in SKR's example, the PC can still T10, and then fail.
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You stated that if players are allowed to take 10 the only choices you, as the GM, have are to either make it impossible or to make it 100% success. That is a false dilemma fallacy (https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/black-or-white). Fallacy = untrue.
If we're going to be logically pedantic, a fallacious argument doesn't mean the conclusion is untrue, just that the conclusion doesn't follow from the premises.
Lets take say skill focus. That's supposed to be a 15% increase in effectiveness of the disable device skill.
Actually Skill Focus adds +3 or +6 to your skill. That could be a change in the chances of success of 15%, 100%, or 0%. Modifiers to d20 rolls don't translate that linearly into percentages when you look at the actual outcomes.
Heck the most direct way to look at it is now the skill focused character can autosucceed at 15%/30% more challenges than before.
Pffft, it's not under my pillow, that would be ridiculous and creepy.It's a poster on the ceiling above my bed.
Dammit. I owe someone at the comic store a drink...
He also talks about taking 10 to sneak past guards. I'm curious how you reconcile that with your above statement.
The guards aren't all that threatening.
Not in danger: stealthing into the bandit camp.
In danger: stealthing out of the bandit camp after they've noticed the theft and the alarms are blaring and guards are scrambling.
Whats the difference? You're stealthed so you're not in danger right?
You know better than to call that a fair comparison.
How about you see the explanation and THEN question my honesty?
The dragon's relationship to the stealth check is exactly the same as the deep, deadly-to-fall-into chasm's relationship to the jump check.
Its not. The jump check is a static thing. Its you and the ground. The dragon is a living, breathing, and ultimate unpredictable thing. You can make the exact same jump 100 times. You can walk accross the stone floor 100 times and make the exact same level of noise. But that's not the same as sneaking past the dragon. You can't sneak past the same dragon 100 times.
It COULD wake up at any moment to devour you for reasons completely unrelated to your stealth check. It could have a fly land on its nose, it could have a bat drop something on its head, it could have a bad dream, it could suddenly remember that it forgot to carry the 2 when it was converting its gold into electrum pieces and need to count its hoard again. In fact, if you stand there long enough one of those IS going to happen eventually. A 5 foot chunk of space to jump is static and predictable. Living things are not.
While it would be an unbelievably twit move by the DM to have any of those happen (at least without a little foreshadowing...) your character doesn't know that. He's in danger of that happening to him unless you want to give him plot armor.
You stated that if players are allowed to take 10 the only choices you, as the GM, have are to either make it impossible or to make it 100% success. That is a false dilemma fallacy (https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/black-or-white). Fallacy = untrue.
Quote me .
As you wish. Posted yesterday at 5:04pm
But then you add in the idea that you can take 10 on anything. All of a sudden my choices are to either set the failure rate so high you've pretty much wasted your investment in the skills, or i make it a 100% success rate because you're taking 10.
Not seeing impossible there. "Pretty much wasted" isn't a number, but waste is a value judgement and "pretty much" explicitly says that the skill will still garner SOME use.
Actually Skill Focus adds +3 or +6 to your skill.
Do I really need to start tacking on asterixing every statement and putting a warning label that ends with "if symptoms persist for more than four hours.." at the end of every statement?
That could be a change in the chances of success of 15%, 100%, or 0%. Modifiers to d20 rolls don't translate that linearly into percentages when you look at the actual outcomes.
This is my point. See above with the bell curve.
Heck the most direct way to look at it is now the skill focused character can autosucceed at 15%/30% more challenges than before.
That this ISN"T what happens if i'm being fair is my point (see above with the bellcurve)
I'd kill to be able to draw pictures on this thing..
How many of my traps should i set so that the rogue would have a greater than 50 50 % chance of failure ? Less than half I'd imagine. How many should he fail by 5 or more? 1 in 10 ? By 10 or more? 1 in 100 ? (a one time campaign thing) add 5 to your skill and take 10 then you're succeeding 90% of the time.
This is a personal thing, but I think that most of the time you can get an idea about the DC of something. A rogue should know the difference between a beartrap and the Handchopper 6382 dash B with the flame thrower attachment.
BNW I think you are operating under the assumption that everyone will take 10 all the time.
Because it becomes the optimal strategy.
Using your example, your player takes skill focus (disable device), so now 80% of the traps/locks he comes across he can just take 10. Thats ok! Because you know what? He doesn't know which traps are the other 20%. If he goes around taking 10 on all traps then he is guaranteed to fail 1 out of 5 and have them go off in his face. This should be the effect dedicating a feat to a skill gives you.
What was supposed to be a 15% increase in effectiveness just became a 30% increase in effectiveness.
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I want to reiterate an earlier point:
For many routine tasks, taking 10 makes them automatically successful.
This isn't a bug, it's a feature.
Indeed, if a skill class does dump a lot of resources into a given skill, the chance should then be 100% on the standard DC for that level. You have now understood the idea behind "take 10". It makes trivial tasks trivial and it rewards the super-skill focused PC by allowing him to have a "I WIN!" button against normal encounters of that type at that CR level. Exactly.They key here, how do they know its a trivial task they can take 10? What if that trap looks easy but was cleverly done so that your average pickpocket would spring it?
Then the trap goes off (if "taking 10" actually results in a result so low it results if setting the trap off, rather than a simple "no harm" fail). This is one reason why Disable Device is a skill few try Taking 10 in.
I want to reiterate an earlier point:
For many routine tasks, taking 10 makes them automatically successful.This isn't a bug, it's a feature.
Games aren't about routine activities they're supposed to be about pulse pounding obscenely dangerous
Games aren't about routine activities they're supposed to be about pulse pounding obscenely dangerousI want to reiterate an earlier point:
For many routine tasks, taking 10 makes them automatically successful.This isn't a bug, it's a feature.
Mathematical!
Games aren't about routine activities they're supposed to be about pulse pounding obscenely dangerous
Don't kid yourself. Pathfinder is not about dangerous adventure. At least not particularly dangerous for the PCs in them.
Old editions of DnD were dangerous. You could randomly face challenges far above your level, with no chance of success.
But Pathfinder is a different game. Let's be honest, character death is infrequent, and it's supposed to be. It's not really a high risk "all the marbles" game. Players are supposed to succeed the majority of the time.
If you want a game where players are supposed to die, or a merely staving off their inevitable destruction I suggest you take up Call of Cthulhu. Or you can have a discussion with your players about the level of challenge and life expectancy for your games. With it you can include how you don't allow take 10.
If your players are okay with that, then so be it.
Meanwhile, as a player I like knowing that when my character is attempting to swim through some rough water at level 1 with a +8 swim bonus that I don't have to worry about it. What I don't like is failing and drowning because of a string of unlucky rolls, while the 10 strength wizard with no ranks gets lucky and easily makes it to shore.
Games aren't about routine activities they're supposed to be about pulse pounding obscenely dangerousDon't kid yourself. Pathfinder is not about dangerous adventure. At least not particularly dangerous for the PCs in them.
But you don't let them know that!
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Because it becomes the optimal strategy.
A strategy in which you can expect to do as well or better 55% of the time and give it up isn't one I would call optimal. Taking 10 isn't optimal in any sense except for one - it saves the game time which allows players to get more done while still having their PCs do things that are time consuming. Take the case of carefully making your way through a dungeon - wary of traps. Without Taking 10, you could have the trap-searching PCs make a perception check every 5 feet - that would be a very slow moving game. Or the trap-searcher could say "I'm Taking 10 as we're going along. My trapfinding modifier is a +13."
No muss. No fuss. The GM reveals anything to be found by a DC 23 or lower, springs anything with a DC 24 or higher. And, best of all, the game flows.But really, if I Take 10, I'm mitigating the risk of failing at relatively routine and easy tasks for my skill level by positively inviting failure against anything significantly challenging. That's no optimal strategy unless I'm always slumming in adventures well below my level.
Not seeing impossible there. "Pretty much wasted" isn't a number, but waste is a value judgement and "pretty much" explicitly says that the skill will still garner SOME use.
This is distracting from the fact that your argument, whether you used the words "impossible" or "pretty much wasted", was a false dilemma. You claimed that there were only two choices open to the GM if take 10 is allowed any time. The choices you listed were "pretty much wasting" the character's skills or giving automatic success. Those are not the only alternatives. So your argument was fallacious, i.e. untrue, but you took offense at me saying it was completely untrue.
I was not saying that to offend or cast aspersions on you, everyone (including me) has at one time or another made an argument that was wrong. Allowing players to take 10 at any time does not mean assigning absurdly high DCs or allowing automatic successes.
Games aren't about routine activities they're supposed to be about pulse pounding obscenely dangerousI want to reiterate an earlier point:
For many routine tasks, taking 10 makes them automatically successful.This isn't a bug, it's a feature.
That isn't entirely correct either. If every single obstacle, every single encounter, every single puzzle, is obscenely pulse poundingly intense then it is going to get old after a while. Yes some activities should be that way but not all of them. There should be some routine tasks that characters are able to accomplish routinely so that they actually get the feeling that their characters are good at what they do. In fact allowing characters to routinely accomplish a task really drives home the danger when they encounter one that they can't accomplish easily. It creates a since of "Wow, it just got real in here" instead of creating a sense that the extraordinary is just ordinary.
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Games aren't about routine activities they're supposed to be about pulse pounding obscenely dangerousI want to reiterate an earlier point:
For many routine tasks, taking 10 makes them automatically successful.This isn't a bug, it's a feature.
Like sneaking out of bed with the barmaid?
Because I'm pretty sure the T10 mechanics were written for use with things that are part of the game, not things the game's not about.
A strategy in which you can expect to do as well or better 55% of the time and give it up isn't one I would call optimal.
This isn't what happens. Your average result is irrelevant, only the succeed/fail dichotomy.
But really, if I Take 10, I'm mitigating the risk of failing at relatively routine and easy tasks for my skill level by positively inviting failure against anything significantly challenging. That's no optimal strategy unless I'm always slumming in adventures well below my level.
I've already outlined why this isn't the case.
Like sneaking out of bed with the barmaid?Because I'm pretty sure the T10 mechanics were written for use with things that are part of the game, not things the game's not about.
It's just there to make the game proceed faster so you don't have big damn heroes failing to accomplish inconsequential things. Sneaking past the barmaid seems to fit the bill. Sneaking past the dragon seems pretty damned consequential.
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It's just there to make the game proceed faster so you don't have big damn heroes failing to accomplish inconsequential things. Sneaking past the barmaid seems to fit the bill. Sneaking past the dragon seems pretty damned consequential.
Like sneaking out of bed with the barmaid?Because I'm pretty sure the T10 mechanics were written for use with things that are part of the game, not things the game's not about.
And jumping over a dangerously deep chasm? Consequential or inconsequential? And the stuff about "other than the task at hand"...?
Interestingly enough, you get a very different picture of the intent of T10 if you read all the commentary I linked and try to understand the "big picture" that SKR is trying to communicate, than if you just pick out single lines that when taken out of context can seem to support what you already believe.
But the decision to shift mindsets like that and go back and re-read isn't something I can argue anyone into doing, but seems to be the only solution here, so I guess it's time to bow out and hide the thread.
Not seeing impossible there. "Pretty much wasted" isn't a number, but waste is a value judgement and "pretty much" explicitly says that the skill will still garner SOME use.This is distracting from the fact that your argument, whether you used the words "impossible" or "pretty much wasted", was a false dilemma. You claimed that there were only two choices open to the GM if take 10 is allowed any time. The choices you listed were "pretty much wasting" the character's skills or giving automatic success.
AHEM...Either i pull a twit move as a DM and negate his resource allocation by increasing the dcs, i set the dcs unfairly high too often, or he uses take 10 to garner a much higher than 15% increase in his success rate.
THREE options. Count em. Give me another option if you think there is one.
Those are not the only alternatives. So your argument was fallacious, i.e. untrue, but you took offense at me saying it was completely untrue.
I took offense at you saying i said something that I did not. Twice.
In fact allowing characters to routinely accomplish a task really drives home the danger when they encounter one that they can't accomplish easily. It creates a since of "Wow, it just got real in here" instead of creating a sense that the extraordinary is just ordinary.
I don't bother with a mechanic for that stuff, at all.
And jumping over a dangerously deep chasm? Consequential or inconsequential? And the stuff about "other than the task at hand"...?
Inconsequential. Its a 5 foot gap. You're adventurers, you'll get over it somehow. Excitement thataway.
Interestingly enough, you get a very different picture of the intent of T10 if you read all the commentary I linked and try to understand the "big picture" that SKR is trying to communicate, than if you just pick out single lines that when taken out of context can seem to support what you already believe.
And the same to you.
But the decision to shift mindsets like that and go back and re-read isn't something I can argue anyone into doing, but seems to be the only solution here, so I guess it's time to bow out and hide the thread.
It was done. People disagree on this. I think I've outlined why people don't like your interpretation, to the point of your position being the minority one.
THREE options. Count em. Give me another option if you think there is one.
Set a DC that is only very slightly higher and a Take 10 won't cut it. You don't have set the DC unfairly high. If traps, locks, encounters, etc...that you intend to be a minor challenge are routinely too easy then you need to just very slightly shift your DC not set them unfairly high. Which is what I posted before.
I took offense at you saying i said something that I did not. Twice.
Your first response to my post was "Really an extra 5% is completely untrue?". No mention of me misquoting you. Also I did not intentionally misrepresent what you were saying. What I posted was what I was getting from what you were saying. When you clarified it still did not improve your argument. Anyway, I will bow out of the conversation since at this point anything I say is only going to further aggravate and we will get nowhere.
Set a DC that is only very slightly higher and a Take 10 won't cut it.
THREE options. Count em. Give me another option if you think there is one.
That would be "i pull a twit move as a DM and negate his resource allocation by increasing the dcs" which explains both the mechanism you've outlined and my disdain for that option.
What I posted was what I was getting from what you were saying.
If you're going to accuse someone of a logical fallacy you need to do it off of what they said, not your feelings.
When you clarified it still did not improve your argument.
You couldn't recognize that there were three choices despite them clearly being separated by , s and your addition to the list to demonstrate the false dilemma is already the first item on it.
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What if the Barmaid is a polymorphed Dragon?
What if the Dragon is just a Silent Image?
Are you going to create a situation, where if anyone wants to know the extent of the danger, they just attempt to take 10?
Can take 10? Must be no hidden danger.
Can't take 10? Must be some kind of hidden danger.
You've outlined why you don't like it, but that doesn't make it a minority position.
It was done. People disagree on this. I think I've outlined why people don't like your interpretation, to the point of your position being the minority one.
correct, but I don't see it used that often and the pro take 10's crowd rather frequent beating their heads against the wall (music to my ears, thump thump thump thump...:) ) makes me think this isn't just a local thing.