When my PCs are searching an area and aren't under time constraint, they take 20. If there IS a time constraint, they'll take 20 later.
This means that generally, whomever has the highest perception check is the only searcher that matters, and if the DC is one higher than 20 + his check, then nothing gets found 100% of the time, and if it is equal to or less, then the secret gets located 100% of the time.
This means when I'm making secret stuff in a dungeon, the players will end up finding some of it or all of it, and anything with a DC higher than that magic number may as well not be generated.
Honestly, I'd like this to be a bit more random. Perhaps I could do this with dungeon design, but perhaps I need a house rule instead.
Any ideas so that I can generate loot that may or may not be found?
Think about discoveries the party can make about their environment. If they always immediately take 20, then give them a thorough description of the room. But if the DC to find some hidden object is higher than 20+ highest perception, give them the chance to further explore specific objects in the room. Such as, there’s a bag of goodies hidden inside the Ming Vase in the corner. You describe in intimate detail the Ming Vase, but don’t indicate anything being inside of it, you don’t mention the inside of it at all. The barbarian chooses to smash the vase. They've now discovered the treasure.
Worth noting the time it takes to take 20 on a room can be huge - they can take about 1 minute per 10ft square, plus 1 minute per area you think would be missed by a general search - e.g. A filing cabinet. Can easily be 10 to 20 minutes for a room - far longer than they can do if they're running 1 minute/level buffs, and even most 10 min/level buffs will run out. That's not to mention any plot reasons to rush. If they take 4 or 5 hours afterwards to search the entire dungeon, then they will find it - but if the item is useful for the dungeon, or info is useful in it, or it's a shortcut, etc, it'll be less useful. Hopefully that'll encourage them to roll when they first find a room, then move on before taking 20 :)
Situational search modifiers such as a hidden door that the DC is too high for the players to find normally but later on they find a clue that hints at the door’s location and grants enough of a bonus to find it.
Also find ways to make them Unable to take 20. Start having things ambush them while searching and taking advantage of their distraction to prep and surprise them. Digging through clutter to find anything useful usually takes a couple of minutes so it takes about 40 minutes to take 20 on it. That’s plenty of time for the other monsters to either get curious where their allies went and wander in. Also many of their buffs will wear out in only a few rooms if they keep taking so long. Four piles of refuse to sift through and that’s three hours of Mage Armor gone when taking 20.
Arcaian wrote: far longer than they can do if they're running 1 minute/level buffs, and even most 10 min/level buffs will run out. Sure, but if they clear a dungeon totally, then they spend this time.
Quote: That's not to mention any plot reasons to rush. It stretches belief if every dungeon always has a time limit. Some of them are just dungeons, right?
Certainly if the encounter is a slowly crashing airship, then they are much more limited in what happens. But that's not every place.
Quote: Hopefully that'll encourage them to roll when they first find a room, then move on before taking 20 :) They are pretty good about rolling search checks before they take all the time take 20, there's no player behavior I'm looking to correct- I'm looking to be able to make loot that they legitimately may or may not find, based on dice and their invested skills, instead of solely based on their invested skills.
The suggestions about the locations where they have to use reasoning to figure out what to do or where to search are great, but I'm already doing that here and there.
Maybe I'll do something where certain hidden things are somehow non-obvious, lower their DC by 10, and enforce rolling on just those things. I guess my request doesn't have existing houserules that anyone is using already.
Thanks very much for your suggestions everyone!
|
1 person marked this as a favorite.
|
Four PCs enter a room in a dungeon there is no time limit on. The one with the best Perception takes 20 and searches the room; this takes approximately 10 minutes.
1. What is the rest of the party doing? If they're just standing around, find something meaningful for them to do; random encounters, randomly generated noises, mundane dungeon features, a quick crafting check, etc.
2. Think about their environment: if your dungeon is, say, 12 rooms of an underground ruin and the PCs are taking 20 all over the place, this might be 2 hours of them poking and prodding around. This might cause structural damage; they could catch a cold from the damp; perhaps another group of adventurers finds them; a portal opens
3. This is the perfect place to add story elements: when the party kicks in the door and hacks apart a company of goblins and their bugbear guard, no one bothers to really look at the room. Taking 20 when they have the time later, they notice - there's a ripped tapestry on the wall; said tapestry tells the story of a fallen knight; this dungeon was once a secret redoubt for heresy; the tapestry actually reveals WHY the knight was tempted into said heresy in the first place
If you want to hide things in your dungeon, then hide them; utilize non-detection, invisibility, or other means to foil even a high Perception check. Otherwise, if you don't mind the PCs taking 20 and taking their time, reveal to them EVERYTHING they'd notice.
This can also have a downside. Some players might not want to wade through the smells, sounds, backstory, and so on for EVERY room in the dungeon. If they take the time though, they get it all.
Typically, if the party has cleared the dungeon, let them find the stuff. That's not a problem. Even taking 20 isn't so bad, since it's really fast and either they pass and find it or they don't. Other than that, unless you're placing some specific situation that alters the chance to find something every 20 minutes, that's how it should work.
If they're constantly doing this and wasting time while in still in a dangerous environment, that's where random encounters and events should come into play. There's no real way to otherwise make it so they have to rely on a dice roll when you allow them to use a mechanic intended to remove the need for dice rolls.
Otherwise, make rooms have time-delayed hazards, maybe a slow build up of gas or poor ventilation, that requires a save every 10 or even 5 minutes that pass. I suppose if your secret door or hidden object teleported or shifted to a different hiding spot or location in the room every 5 or 10 minutes (which would be weird for a secret door) then they'd probably need a % roll (like concealment) to determine if they 'hit the 20' at the right point in their search... but that's almost being more spiteful than just saying they can't Take 20 (though a fun idea for one specific magical secret door).
cfalcon wrote: This means that generally, whomever has the highest perception check is the only searcher that matters, and if the DC is one higher than 20 + his check, then nothing gets found 100% of the time, and if it is equal to or less, then the secret gets located 100% of the time. If the party is taking 20, might as well have the best searcher take 20 and the others Aid Another. They're going to find pretty much everything at that point, and that's okay--they spent a long time searching carefully.
> Typically, if the party has cleared the dungeon, let them find the stuff. That's not a problem.
> They're going to find pretty much everything at that point, and that's okay--
I mean, the entire point of this thread was, my intention is that is NOT what happens. I want to make things random, in that they can miss stuff, or find stuff, no matter how long they spend searching.
The existing rules have plenty of cases for when the PCs can't find something. For instance, if the entire party is able to muster up a DC of, say, 35 at the peak (or like 45 if I house rule in assists on perception, which I don't), then everything below that will be found, and everything about that will not be found.
The default rules have plenty of things that can never be found by PCs because they are hidden too well, right? And other things that will always be found.
Anyway, I'm well aware that I can light the dungeon on fire, figuratively or literally. I'm aware that by the stock rules, they find everything that they can, and nothing that they can't.
I was hoping to find some tested house rule for when I can make the PCs all roll some dice, and if they get above a DC, then they find a thing, and if they don't get above a DC, then they don't. But it doesn't look like anyone is running stuff this way right now.
|
1 person marked this as a favorite.
|
The best house rule to force more dice rolling is to simply remove the options to Take 20 (and Take 10, if you so desire). It's a simple change, and it adds more randomness.
It decreases the chances of PC success in this case, but the intent is to replace a certain success with an uncertain challenge.
If you have multiple things to find then you could reasonably assume thet find the lower DC stuff first and if the neglect to keep looking then it's on them. For instance, if there's a DC 25 secret door and a DC 30 concealed floor panel. You could say one of them finds the door. If they alert everyone else, and they stop searching and leave, that could do it. So in other words, putsomething interesting to find that makes something happen to draw away their attention.
What are you trying to accomplish with this? Discourage the behaviour, or give them more?
If you want to discourage it, taking implies you have received all results, including the negative. If they're going to take 20 on everything you need to enforce the result of 1, so they will likely set off traps or other such defenses. It also takes ten minutes which means they're likely to be ambushed by creatures hiding behind secret doors or other such things, which grants the enemies a surprise round.
If you want to give them more, they can get more aiding another for a single roll (since you can't take 10 on an aide check). All the lower perception characters can aid another on the search, granting +2-10, but they have to roll and can only take the given result. However they aren't dealing with the penalties or time sinks.
End result if you really wanna just give them treasures or plot hooks, as the GM just give it to them. They don't need to know they failed the DC by one or two. If you want to give them something, whether a fudged enemy attack roll to avoid a player death, or an artificially low DC because you really wanna send them down a specific path... Just do it. The players never need to know. Your job as the GM is to guide and entertain.
I think what the OP is asking for is a way to not have foregone conclusions about what the party does and does not find in a dungeon. For a party that just takes 20, every secret is automatically sorted into piles of "does find" and "does not find". The OP is asking for ways to make these piles more random.
In the end though, from the players point of view, it really doesn't make a difference, does it? They know the things they find. They don't know about the things they don't find. They have no clue how random that is or not.
Agreed, if you're going to allow them to use a mechanic that removes the random happenstance of a roll, you can't expect the results to be random.
The only thing you can do is just decide you don't want them to find something. It sounds shady, but it's not unfair if you're doing it for story or balance purposes... but if that's the case you need to own it and just do it (you don't need to tell the player's you're doing it, but if they realize it themselves it might hurt their faith in your impartiality), but trying to come up with a fair way to completely undermine the purpose of a mechanic rather than just not allowing the mechanic is shadier.
I am not saying this to discourage the attempt, it's just that most people who would bother to try and come up with a fair, balanced workaround will eventually come to the same conclusion and realize it's just better to tell your players you are not going to allow Take 20 on Search checks, for your own in campaign reasons. It would be much faster, but then there's nothing stopping them from just searching and over until they feel satisfied they must have rolled a 20 by then (since you should be rolling and they wouldn't know, it could have been 10 ones in a row), which is the reason Take 10 and Take 20 exist.
If you don't want them to take 20, don't let them take 20. One justification for this is always "... no penalties for failure..." in that the skill they're attempting carries no inherent penalties for failure and you can try it again and again. While you can re-try any Perception check, you could easily say that because the PC might miss something on a check and get caught by a trap, there's a potential for failure.
Also, if you're looking for a clever houserule to govern the randomness of what the PCs notice, that's what GMing is. Say they take 20, have a combined Perception check of 37, and would thus find the insanely well-hidden DC 30 secret door you didn't want them to find... they don't find it. Period. You simply omit that from this dungeon and put it somewhere else.
It is a regrettably binary system, especially with skill checks. You see, there's no auto-fail on a "1" so a PC with +11 Perception looking for a foe with a Stealth check of 12 auto-succeeds, no matter what unless the foe moves further than ten feet away.
If on the other hand you're looking for partial successes, consider stealing the mechanics from 4e or other skill-challenge type games. In other words, in order for the PCs to succeed on a skill challenge the party needs to yield so many successes before so many failures.
Calling for a skill challenge would 1. eliminate their use of Take 20 since there's a consequence for failure and 2. potentially result in either nothing being found or enforce said consequence.
So for example the PCs clear a dungeon then go back and search a 30' x 40' Chapel of Evil Chaos. In a reliquary compartment you've hidden The Book of All Evil Knowledge but you don't necessarily want the PCs to find it now. You set a challenge: four successes before 3 failures. If the PCs succeed they find the book; if they fail then when they finally pry open the secret cabinet they find that a vial of Profane acid has eaten away the book's contents.
Finally a question to the OP: why put stuff in your dungeon you don't want the PCs to find? I mean, the impetus for this thread seemed to be that you don't want them to take 20 and just find EVERYTHING, so you were seeking a way to randomize what they find (which could be solved by you deciding what, if anything they find and not telling them the rest).
Well, if there's something you decide you don't want them to find after they clear a dungeon, don't tell them. Just because they take 20 and just because the AP or module or your notes say "hidden in a secret compartment in the base of the statue (DC 20 Perception check) is a ring of the ram" if you don't want the party to find it, don't put it there.
Even better, have them find the compartment empty, with a ring-shaped occlusion in the dust inside. They know a ring WAS there but don't know what it was. Later, have the party encounter a rival party; one of the NPCs in said party is boasting about having beaten a bunch of fools into a nearby dungeon and showing off his cool ring. Now the PCs can decide just how loot-happy they are.
cfalcon wrote: > Typically, if the party has cleared the dungeon, let them find the stuff. That's not a problem.
> They're going to find pretty much everything at that point, and that's okay--
I mean, the entire point of this thread was, my intention is that is NOT what happens. I want to make things random, in that they can miss stuff, or find stuff, no matter how long they spend searching.
The existing rules have plenty of cases for when the PCs can't find something. For instance, if the entire party is able to muster up a DC of, say, 35 at the peak (or like 45 if I house rule in assists on perception, which I don't), then everything below that will be found, and everything about that will not be found.
The default rules have plenty of things that can never be found by PCs because they are hidden too well, right? And other things that will always be found.
Anyway, I'm well aware that I can light the dungeon on fire, figuratively or literally. I'm aware that by the stock rules, they find everything that they can, and nothing that they can't.
I was hoping to find some tested house rule for when I can make the PCs all roll some dice, and if they get above a DC, then they find a thing, and if they don't get above a DC, then they don't. But it doesn't look like anyone is running stuff this way right now.
Hopefully your players know you intend to devalue the Perception skill before they allocate their skill ranks. : / The entire point of the skill is to make finding things easier, and the entire point of taking 20 on Perception checks is to take sufficient time to make sure you find everything you're capable of finding.
Taking the "why" up a level: In what way would making the discovery of hidden things more random improve your game?
Maybe give them more things to find to add some flavor. It gives others an incentive to check, too, since you can hand out some of the lower results to the people without maxed Perception.
For example, searching an office:
A 30+ is finding the super important clue you were looking for.
A 25+ is finding some hidden love letters inside a book on the shelf.
A 20+ is finding the small stash of coins hidden behind a desk drawer.
A 15+ is noticing their plants need watering so maybe they haven't been here recently.
etc.
They don't have to be magic, valuable, or even necessarily useful, but if they found _something_ it should be more engaging than 'We'll stand in the hallway while they take a 20'. If there's something too well hidden for the highest Perception party member to find, one of the lower difficulty things could give a hint and the others can then Aid Another, or just give a Circumstance bonus to the check.
Let them take 20 and find something trapped with Weird.
Reverse wrote: The best house rule to force more dice rolling is to simply remove the options to Take 20 (and Take 10, if you so desire). It's a simple change, and it adds more randomness. Yes, this would give me what I want. It makes searching for anything but loot reasonably lame and unrealistic though. I specifically want some loot that they may or may not find based on a dice roll: I'm not sure if I want this desire to map into all of search in general.
Pizza Lord wrote: you could reasonably assume thet find the lower DC stuff first and if the neglect to keep looking then it's on them Eh, I'm not trying to trick them into not finding stuff. I can (and do) sometimes put something with an unreasonably high search DC into a description, and if they do a certain action then they find the thing, but I don't want that to always have to happen in that way- that's more of a puzzle.
Isaac wrote: What are you trying to accomplish with this? Discourage the behaviour, or give them more? Neither. I'm actually puzzled at how hard it has been to get across the message of "I want them to roll and have a chance to succeed or fail to find something".
Quote: End result if you really wanna just give them treasures or plot hooks, as the GM just give it to them This isn't about that though.
djdust wrote: I think what the OP is asking for is a way to not have foregone conclusions about what the party does and does not find in a dungeon. For a party that just takes 20, every secret is automatically sorted into piles of "does find" and "does not find". The OP is asking for ways to make these piles more random. Yes, exactly. Or really any degree of random at all. Even a little random.
Quote: In the end though, from the players point of view, it really doesn't make a difference, does it? They know the things they find. They don't know about the things they don't find. They have no clue how random that is or not. If I rolled their checks in secret, sure. But if I ask them to roll and they get a meaningful roll which sometimes results in loot and othertimes doesn't, then they will definitely have a die roll that they are super into, right? However it boils down to, if they nail a search and they find a cool thing, there's no way that won't have been an enjoyable experience, because they could have actually failed. Similarly, the party flubbing these rolls will have an impact as well.
Pizza Lord wrote: it's just better to tell your players you are not going to allow Take 20 on Search checks Maybe, but I don't really want to have to destroy Search checks just to be able to put some random loot in my dungeons. It seems like I'm throwing out the entire restroom with the bathwater.
Honestly, I already have enough custom stuff. I could probably figure out some stupid subsystem or whatever, I was just hoping that someone had came to a similar conclusion to me, and had solved it in their game. Instead, well, pretty much nobody even wants this in their games, so obviously it isn't a "problem" that they needed to "solve".
Quote: If the PCs succeed they find the book; if they fail then when they finally pry open the secret cabinet they find that a vial of Profane acid has eaten away the book's contents I like that this works within the system. I'm not a huge fan that this kind of mechanic will get reasonably unbelievable if used over and over, with increasingly odd limitations (plus each of these mechanisms will ultimately be a puzzle unless I want to get really tyrannical: I'm sure someone will have a *Scroll Of Acid Doesn't Work For Some Reason And Remember When I Researched This LOL*. Again, that stuff is great: I just want to be able to have them roll and some loot pops out sometimes.
Quote: why put stuff in your dungeon you don't want the PCs to find? Say I want the PCs to find 10,000 gp worth of gear over some span of rooms or space or time. I could put exactly that amount in, or I could put in 8,000 gp worth of loot that they will definitely find, and 4,000 gp worth of loot that they have a roughly 50/50 shot at finding. I believe this will be more fun. Hence, I'd be creating some loot, not that I don't WANT them to find, but that I want them to find roughly half of, unbeknownst to me or them. I'd like to do this without blowing up core rules about searching, or routinely ending up with silly things like the highly perceptive barbarian not being able to nail a roll above 3 or whatever.
blahpers wrote: Hopefully your players know you intend to devalue the Perception skill before they allocate their skill ranks. Doing what I talk about would not devalue Perception at all. You'd still want every plus available. It's in part because these guys are all putting one rank per level in there that I want it to have some other effect. If anything, it will be rewarding for the guys without decent Wisdom or class skill to sometimes be the guy that yanks a ring out, through the strength of his roll. Ideally, without it becoming just a festival of dice rolls that screws the guy who has more than just ranks invested.
Quote: Taking the "why" up a level: In what way would making the discovery of hidden things more random improve your game? "Roll a die well to win a small prize" is a mechanic I dare anyone to imply would not be enjoyable. How do I get there without it becoming "Roll a die excellently or be penalized"?
VoodistMonk wrote: Let them take 20 and find something trapped with Weird. I'm not trying to punish them for searching.
Punish them for searching?! It's just a little scare, nothing to be afraid of.
Weird might be a tad excessive, I admit.
But traps can be used to at least force another roll, which they may or may not have time to take 20 on this time around.
In Morrowind the trick to make sure you were paying attention was to trap unlocked doors. If you were in a hurry and didn't disarm it you got paralyzed or shocked just to remind you.
They take 20 and find a hidden door. Do they open it immediately or ask to roll a Perception check? No second check, ZAP!
If they start asking for a second check and take 20 on it... Start raising DC's or reducing the time they have available. Have Carrion Claws show up to eat the dead halfway through their search. And then more Carrion Claws show up to eat the Carrion Claws you stopped searching to kill. And a third group to eat the bodies of the second group. Pretty soon the whole dungeon is literally full of Carrion Claws. Everyone is trying not to get paralyzed or eaten, and having way too much fun killing infinite bugs to take 20 on their searching efforts.
> Pretty soon the whole dungeon is literally full of Carrion Claws
I mean, this is hilarious and I may heed this advice at some point, but I don't want to have to put a monster generator in every dungeon. After awhile, I suspect Blue Wizard may Need Food Badly.
Oh, they learned to fear dungeons after that... Fought a dragon, killed it, went it in the cave. Got landed on by three Bulettes, initial damage combined with low resources from killing a dragon meant the party had to retreat after killing one or two of the Bulettes. Go back to town and resupply. Come back to the cave ready for war... What is that eating the dead Bulettes?
The ranger shot first, asked questions later. A rare miss pops a bloated rotting Bulette showering everyone with 1D6 acid damage and out come 1D6 Carrion Claws. Each round 1D6 Carrion Claws would spawn because of the deathly putrid smell.
After multiple rounds, it quickly became apparent that the first one to actually fail the save against paralysis would surely be devoured without the possibility of rescue, so they had to leave again, outnumbered easily 10:1.
They went back to town, resupplied, again. Went back to the cave, again. This time everyone had bandoliers of alchemist fire or oil flasks. They were so ready for battling bugs this time, but the Carrion Claws were all gone because they had eaten everything there was to eat. The party walked through that part of the cave untouched, but still terrified that Bulettes would fall from the ceiling or hordes of bugs would show up at a moment's notice.
And every time they entered another cave, they remembered.
cfalcon wrote: Reverse wrote: The best house rule to force more dice rolling is to simply remove the options to Take 20 (and Take 10, if you so desire). It's a simple change, and it adds more randomness. Yes, this would give me what I want. It makes searching for anything but loot reasonably lame and unrealistic though. I specifically want some loot that they may or may not find based on a dice roll: I'm not sure if I want this desire to map into all of search in general. We've had this problem ("Find All The Things Or None Of The Things") We removed this problem by disallowing Take 20s on Search checks.
It sounds like you want to be more specific, and it sounds like you have your answer already. House Rule: Take 20 is not allowed on checks to Search rooms for loot specifically. Searching a room for traps or secret doors, etc, you can Take 20 on, but a Take 20 result will not find loot, you must roll separately.
Recent threads in Homebrew and House Rules
|
