I try 'til I succeed

[weby]

Originally Posted by Ghostdancer

Ha! I like it. I think you could create an advantage that lets you do this for all abilities using Modular Abilities...

The character in question will fairly soon buy following as demigod power:
Unwavering Skill mastery: You can always take 11 instead of rolling a skill check when used outside of combat and not used at reduced time as long as you have at least 4 points in the skill.[5]

[Christopher R. Rice]

Originally Posted by weby

The character in question will fairly soon buy following as demigod power:
Unwavering Skill mastery: You can always take 11 instead of rolling a skill check when used outside of combat and not used at reduced time as long as you have at least 4 points in the skill.[5]

I likes it. A lot. :-)

[Anaraxes]

Originally Posted by Nereidalbel

Why would searching multiple times give a penalty for spending more time on it? Double-checking and triple-checking make you BETTER at spotting where you went wrong, not increasingly worse.

But not necessarily as effective as simply re-rolling against the same target number would be. You've already exhausted your good ideas; mechanically repeating yourself, even with small variations, isn't as likely to succeed as the first time you approach the problem. But rolling against the same target value will rapidly converge on a high probability of success. (For example, if you have only a 10% chance of success on one roll, rolling ten times against that chance means you have a 65% chance of success. That's a huge improvement just by insisting on re-rolling. The point of the stacking penalty is to reduce the incentive to waste game time by endlessly rolling for everything, forcing the GM to throw in artificial time pressure and "wandering monsters" in every situation to prevent that.)

Spending extra time might be worth a small bonus, but re-rolling is not a small bonus.

[RobKamm]

I allow Extra Time/Haste for a bonus/penalty to skill as RAW. Players declare that before rolling. I then look at the Margin of Success and reduce actual time use by 5% per point of success. I don't tell the players how long their actual effort will take. Failure takes the full time (usual task time plus Extra Time if taken).

So, if a character wants to hurry through picking a lock (normally 1 minute per attempt) by taking a -5 penalty to reduce the time by 50% (30 seconds). I then reduce the actual time taken by 5% (1.5 seconds) per point of margin of success. If the roll fails, it takes 30 seconds but they can try again. In the case of picking locks I've usually allowed Critical Successes to halve the time needed (after the Margin of Success reduction); Critical Failures have resulted in picks broken off inside of locks -- thus losing the equipment bonus (until replaced) and adding an additional penalty to all subsequent attempts.

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by Nereidalbel

Why would searching multiple times give a penalty for spending more time on it? Double-checking and triple-checking make you BETTER at spotting where you went wrong, not increasingly worse.

IME IRL trying to search quickly (hoping to find the thing any second now), again and again and again, is less likely to produces a success than searching slowly and deliberately (with an expectation to spend quite a bit more of time on a full cycle).