Passive observation may include stuff that’s obvious to everybody (like walking into a room with a giant ball of flame hovering in the middle of it), but it might also include reactive mechanics for determining whether or not characters notice something that isn’t automatically apparent.
TAKE 1 / 10 / 20 ROLLS.
When considering skill difficulty, there are three metrics I find useful.
- TAKE 20: When you Take 20, the result is calculated as if you had rolled a natural 20 on a d20. In other words, it’s the best possible success that the character is capable of achieving. It’s used in situations when the character is free to repeatedly attempt the task until they succeed, which means that we can just check the Take 20 to see if it’s a success or not.
- TAKE 10: Any PC can Take 10 when they’re not under any pressure. It’s the average result possible if you were rolling the dice, but the mechanic basically says “this is the level of success the character can achieve if they’re not under pressure or pushing themselves”.
- TAKE 1: This concept is not labeled as such but it flows naturally out of the mechanic. If you Take 1 on your roll, then it’s the worst result the character can have. If the difficulty of the task is equal to or less than the character’s Take 1, then the character will automatically succeed on that task.
Basically, these concepts break tasks down into three states:
- What characters succeed at without evening trying (Take 1).
- What they always succeed at if they make the effort (Take 10).
- And what they will eventually succeed at if given enough time (Take 20).
These concepts are generally useful for streamlining action resolution.
But they can ALSO be specifically useful when setting difficulty by considering the type of person who would be attempting such actions and then using them as the analogy.
TAKE 10 TRAINING: Ask yourself, “How much training would it take for someone to be able to succeed at this task as a matter of routine?” Find that level of training on the table and then add 10 to determine the DC of the check (as summarized on the Generic Difficulty Class table).