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Ability Checks and Caster Level Checks: The normal take 10 and take 20 rules apply for ability checks.
I don't know of any specific rules for dealing with aid-another on a Take 20. If there's no rule against it, you probably can.
Taking 10 should not be an issue, but with taking 20 it assumes that you try 20 times, and some of those will be failures. So there is no way to know if a failure or success would happen when the primary roller rolled high. GM's will likely not allow taking 20 for that reason.
Not sure what you mean by 'it'. (There is a rule against taking 10 when you Aid Another.)
If you're aiding another when they're taking 20, then we only care about the primary roller's 'best' attempt. So the helpers can roll one Aid Another check to see how they did then, and we can ignore what they'd have got on any other attempt.
Not sure what you mean by 'it'. (There is a rule against taking 10 when you Aid Another.)
If you're aiding another when they're taking 20, then we only care about the primary roller's 'best' attempt. So the helpers can roll one Aid Another check to see how they did then, and we can ignore what they'd have got on any other attempt.
I completely misread the question. I thought the "aider" was taking 20.
I'd say he should allow it IF the Aid Another makes sense. The whole point of Take 20 is "Hey GM, you haven't provided us any impetus to move forward in a timely fashion and we want to see if we can get through this thing"
and the only reason GM's get upset at Take 20 is because they designed the area badly. Literally. If they provided impetus, punished the players for taking all day, or a true failure condition then they'd have a reason not to just give it to you.
Instead, it sounds like your GM wants you to roll until you give up. IMO, if you want to change his GMing for the better, literally just roll until he changes the situation so that you can't or until you get a nat 20 successfully with Aid Another (average: 40 rolls without modifiers.) He will learn to either design better areas or to let you take 20 with Aid Another the whole time.
Note: This ends up being the rule answer pretty quickly when practicality and "boring-ness" come into play. Your party and your GM do not want to wait for 20-40+ rolls to occur just right to find out if a thing can be opened. So if he wants you to *real bad*, go ahead and just keep rolling.
If you want to do it "by the book" AND not waste time, just roll 100 D20's on a computer, find a pair of them that are 20/10+ next to eachother, point to the screen, and open the door. This is entirely the fault of bad design/GMing and is entirely circumventable by generated or spammed d20 rolls.
Thusly, unless he's looking for that nat 1 to matter, he should just allow it; because not allowing it just means a computer generated sheet of D20s that inevitably shows the same result.
The standard rules for taking 20 allow you to do so when there are no consequences for failure -- so, for example, if there are potential enemies on the other side of the door, it could become a matter of importance just how many times the party tried and failed to open the door. Of course, there could eventually come a point where further failures don't matter -- the enemies know you are there, have no intention of coming out to face you, and are fully prepared to "welcome" you as you come through the door, so you can fast forward to whenever you finally do get the door open since the only remaining consequence for further failures is lost time, which the take 20 rules cover.
Another rule that might be relevant in situations where the party can only succeed at a roll by 'taking 22' (i.e. take 20 + Aid Another):
In cases where the skill restricts who can achieve certain results, such as trying to open a lock using Disable Device, you can't aid another to grant a bonus to a task that your character couldn't achieve alone.
Another rule that might be relevant in situations where the party can only succeed at a roll by 'taking 22' (i.e. take 20 + Aid Another):
In cases where the skill restricts who can achieve certain results, such as trying to open a lock using Disable Device, you can't aid another to grant a bonus to a task that your character couldn't achieve alone.
Interpreting that rule to mean that you cannot aid another on a check where you could not reach the required DC on your own leads to absurdities, as pointed out in at least two other threads.
It is far more likely that this rule is meant to refer to whether the aider can even attempt the check -- for example, if the main person on the task is using a "trained only" skill and the aider has no ranks in the skill, or if the main person is attempting to disable a magical trap and the aider does not have the Trapfinding class feature.
Yeah, makes sense.
Another rule that might be relevant in situations where the party can only succeed at a roll by 'taking 22' (i.e. take 20 + Aid Another):
In cases where the skill restricts who can achieve certain results, such as trying to open a lock using Disable Device, you can't aid another to grant a bonus to a task that your character couldn't achieve alone.
In this case, you could allow the party to take 40. That is to say, 40 times the normal amount of time to perform the task.
The primary takes 20, and the person doing the aiding needs to roll 10 on the same check where the primary got their 20. Since you have a 50% chance of rolling 1-10 on a d20, it would presumably require twice as many take 20 efforts for them to synchronize. Some GMs might decide to make it take 50 or 60 to be extra judicious. This is pure houseruling, of course, but for the case where time isn't a factor and the only way to get that door knocked down is a perfectly coordinated effort...
Another rule that might be relevant in situations where the party can only succeed at a roll by 'taking 22' (i.e. take 20 + Aid Another):
In cases where the skill restricts who can achieve certain results, such as trying to open a lock using Disable Device, you can't aid another to grant a bonus to a task that your character couldn't achieve alone.
Depends on the GM of course. If you read TheAngryGM (and basically how liberal the rules are for GMing in general), it's quite possible they'll give you a +1, +2, or +5 in an aid another depending on what/how they do it. (The +1 and +5 are not standard/rules based of course, IIRC)
Let's say you want to pick the lock and you suck at it, but your buddy is a pro; him giving guidance is certainly a worthy Aid Another IMO. Someone holding up a relevant lockpick schematic* also seems pretty fair.
*[Note sure where he got it but.. meh]
Either way, Ultrace and David basically point out the same thing I did. If there's no consequences for repeatedly trying, it doesn't really make a difference if it takes double the number of rolls (on average.)
Interesting to note:
The rules for Aid Another are
(You can't take 10 on a skill check to aid another.)
but it says nothing about taking 20. This may be was Matthew was pointing out.
If the entire party is taking the time of the main person's flat Take 20, the allies should all be able to roll Aid Another [as if they were doing an Aid Another in that 20th occurrence of the attempt] [the allies do not get to Take 10 or Take 20 on the assists].
Note however that any buffs in the attempt would not work, unless they were up for the duration of the Take 20 attempt. Consequently, buffs like Guidance [10 rounds maximum] and Inspire Competence [less than 20 rounds of performance spent] won't work.
Good Hope + Moment of Greatness would be particularly effective though [assuming the caster is at least level 3 to grant the 1 round for casting and 20 rounds of the attempt [including the caster's own attempt], granting the main person + all allies each a +4.
I assume that if the best person's Take 20 is insufficient, the entire party may need to get involved in the assist, and with a +4 to all rolls, the assisters only need roll a 6 [assuming they all each have a +0 in their own attempt].