Looking for clues

Never design a mystery adventure with only one clue. Come up with a couple, each of which leads to a couple more, which lead to the solution. That way if they don't discover one clue they can still find the others.

Anyone else up for hijacking this thread to talk about mystery design?

It's a system built from the bottom up for mystery games, so it has a lot of ideas that directly support that style of games. The simplest one is that you don't roll to find necessary clues- As soon as PC declares an appropriate skill, they find it.

What a stupid post, because THIS CAN HAPPEN IN EVERY SINGLE GAME EVER.

You're not even trying

I always try to take 20 or 10, most GMs hate that shit though because "muh rolls" and don't allow it.

I lost a couple of chars for shit like that
>Have to climb a wall
>Literally only fail with nat1
>GM doesn't let me take 10
>Roll
>Roll nat1 almost at the end
>"Lol, you char is dead because of the fall"
>Similar with balance and swim
Fuck this shit

Can you take 10 or 20 in 5e?

General rule for me is that taking 10 is "spending 5 minutes making sure everything you do is about right" and taking 20 is "spending an hour making sure you're 100% right."

Climbing would not be something I would allow taking 10 on because it's not really practical. Spending longer on each grip wouldn't really improve your odds. Same thing with making a jump, you can't spend 5 minutes just jumping. Doesn't make sense.

I don't recall it being in the actual rulebook, but it's a good concept to make players feel like they're accomplishing something rather than having you fudge all the "important" stuff that they don't care about, like progressing the story you so graciously wrote for them.

>Trying to sneak past enemies
>"Roll Stealth."
>High rolls
>succeed
>the encounter the GM prepared for doesn't take place because of one roll

What a great game.

Of all the bad things about D&D you pick the one that's literally just a shit GM and has nothing to do with the system itself.

That seems really arbitrary and kinda missing the point

All your problems can be fixed by not playing with shitty DM's

How did you just describe D&D's skill system in one sentence?

Knowing when to apply rules is "missing the point?"

>Anyone else up for hijacking this thread to talk about mystery design?

I tend to simulate environment and support it by improvisation based on player's input instead of making specific clues. Kind of like creating natural barriers instead of crafted puzzles.

Maybe I'm lucky with gaming groups, but in my experience players tend to come up with more creative solutions and observations than the ones that could be predetermined by GM.

>good concept
I __agree__

When you refuse to apply a rule in appropriate situations for arbitrary reasons, yes.

I don't know, that kind of defeats the whole point. You might be running a game that feels like a mystery, but really it's a game of convincing you to let them win.

Why not using climbing gear. If you fall you only fall 20 feet dealing 12 damage max.

There is a rule for that in there that's optional.

For take 10, there exist passive ability checks. For take 20, the books suggest the DM just let the player automatically succeed if there's no consequence for failure.

>take 10
>To reduce the chances of failure on certain skill checks by assuming an average die roll result (10 on a d20 roll). You can't take 10 if distracted or threatened, such as during combat.

>Source: PHB

>take 20
>To assume that a character makes sufficient retries to obtain the maximum possible check result (as if a 20 were rolled on d20). Taking 20 takes as much time as making twenty separate skill checks (usually at least 2 minutes). Taking 20 assumes that the character fails many times before succeeding, and thus can't be used if failure carries negative consequences.

>Source: PHB

>Taking 20 assumes that the character fails many times before succeeding, and thus can't be used if failure carries negative consequences.
>can't be used if failure carries negative consequences.

None of which has any relationship to the arbitrary question you originally posed.

It's a mechanic designed to reduce unnecessary rolling. So use it to reduce unnecessary rolling. Any extra quibbling is pointless.

I'll give you this. Nat 1 making your character fall and die is stupid.

That said, judging from this entire argument, DM was probably looking for a good reason to kick you from the table.

Passive checks are for things you aren't actively doing.

Actively climbing requires a roll.
Get over yourself.

The original editions of the game didn't have this problem. You described what you were doing and the GM told you if you saw anything. It's really that fucking simple.

But that isn't the key distinction. It's whether or not there are consequences for failure or time pressure that makes taking such risks necessary. Anything else is arbitrary and pointless.

You don't roll for everything you're actively doing, you roll for things that might result in interesting failure.

If you're climbing a fortress wall to sneak past the sentries, there's plenty that could go wrong if you fail, so you'd roll for it.

If you're just climbing a random wall and the consequence of failure is simply "you fall, try again", then rolling is unnecessary and detrimental to the pacing of the game.

In 5e there is a distinction between active and passive skill checks.

A passive check is something that you can do without thinking.
>Guldluk the halfling rogue has enough in athletics to be able to pass the check for climbing a cobblestone wall with his passive check.
>The DM doesn't make him roll, he just hops up there.

Active checks require you to actively work on a problem.
>Bradluk, the dwarf cleric, is an old fat drunk. He couldn't climb shit if you put a pike to his asshole.
>He comes across the same wall, but has to roll to climb because his negative modifier puts his passive check lower than the required DC.
>He fails and falls.

The distinction is between the amount of effort that's being put into something. And that's just the 5e difference. The same works for the 3.5 distinction between taking 10 and taking 20. Those imply putting time and effort into your check.

see

>When did you realize OP sucks massive cocks?

When he repost the same garbage with little anecdotes that never happened.

If only it was just the sixth time...

Ignore threads with this op picture.
Hide threads with this op picture.
If you absolutely positively have to post, use sage.

Why obsess over the OP? We're having a decent discussion of the problem in mystery focused games and when you should avoid rolling in RPGs.

Well yeah. I'm assuming that's the case, otherwise the DM in question wouldn't have made him roll.

I'm on board with you, I just figure there's a time limit or something that's providing some sort of narrative pressure to succeed. Otherwise yeah, skip the rolls entirely.

You can't take 10 if the task is not easy or presents a risk. You know, like climbing a wall.

see

Don't forget that "might result in interesting failure" is a two-part question. "Can what you're doing result in failure" is just as important as "is failure interesting," and possibly moreso. After all, it might be interesting if the master thief failed to sneak past the sentries, but if the master thief is so good at climbing that neither the wall nor the sentries pose a challenge for them, there's no reason to call for a roll either. That's reserved for their less skilled companions.

That really depends on execution. Also you could say that "convincing GM to let us win" is one of basics of roleplaying, definitely when you are not rolling any dice (discussions with NPCs, for example).