Basic Competencies

From: Steve Lieb <steve_at_...>
Date: Fri, 1 Sep 2000 12:33:11 -0500


In the stealing-a-good-idea dept:

Anyone consider stealing the "take 10" and "take 20" mechanics from D&D3e for HW?

In short, they are mechanics for resolving actions that are basically no challenge for the skill user.
For example as I understand them, a "take 10" is that the character can always choose to "take 10" instead of rolling, the presumption being that a character would do so when such a roll would be an automatic success for the character (i.e. if they had a skill of modifier of +6 for some reason against a difficulty 15 challenge, they could "take 10" giving them a 16, or automatic success.
"Take 20" is for things that have no consequence of failure, and the player is trading time for a (relative certainty of success). Time wise, it takes 20 times as long as a normal check. The example they give is if someone with a crappy "spot hidden" skill is searhcing something. If they have all the time in the world, they can take time to go over it again and again to be sure they haven't missed anything. (The mechanical logic behind it is that the character effectively rolls a 1 on the first try, a 2 on the second, and so forth, so obviously anything with a consequence of failure would be bad news for the character, because they effectively fumble immediately).

I actually thought this was a clever idea, and will adopt is as far as possible for HW.

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