DM Question: How can I keep my players from taking 3 days to check a room?

[Tzarevitch]

Several people have mentioned good solutions to your problem. Most of these center on making time pass for everything if PCs are going to check inch by inch.

Make sure the PCs can demonstrate that they have sufficient supplies and make sure that spell durations expire.

Also, attack them! If the dungeon is an active one and the PCs have the wandering monsters/patrols interrupt the PCs from time to time. I

f they are meticulously searching for secret doors, they will have a hard time spotting or hearing people sneaking up on them. I assume in these situations that the best the PCs can do is "Take 0" to spot and listen checks while conducting a thorough search. If the search is interrupted they loose the time they spent on that section of wall.

Tzarevitch

 

[Chimera]

I think everyone has pretty much covered all the bases.

As above, in an active dungeon (or really, anywhere with monsters nearby), the baddies aren't going to sit still and wait for those pesky adventurers to spend 12 hours in the room down the hall searching every nook and cranny. They're going to organize a nice ambush and hit the party (surprise!) when they least expect it. And it will be a tough, bloody fight that the party probably cannot win. Not being the vengeful evil DM here, just being realistic about the self-preservation skills and interests of the monsters involved.

Another possibility: Spend an entire session doing a bit of "reverse psychology" and player baiting. Have them find trap after trap after trap. Every freaking square inch of the place. Tough Search rolls (letting them know it) and tough Disarm rolls. Nasty traps full of poison and consequences to those nearby when the Disarm fails. ("Oops! a huge cloud of poison gas fills the room. Everyone make a Fort Save, DC 20...")

Then innocently proclaim "but you keep spending so much time on this that I figured it must be the kind of game you wanted to play!"

+++
The real question is: what have you done to provoke this kind of over-cautious behavior from your players? Have you bitten them with nasty traps, then chastised them (or called them "stupid") for not taking the time to search?

 

[Chimera]

Or: False Traps, if they really push the issue. After all, at that point, one can assume that they are being unreasonably paranoid. (Assuming that you have warned them, begged them and made whimpering noises about their overly cautious searches and how much game time they're wasting.)

"You think you detect a trap in the floor tile."
"I attempt to disable it. I rolled a 14, +10, that's a 24."
"You pry loose the tile, only to find that the 'trap' was really just a piece of lint. Suspicious lint, but nothing dangerous. You think..."

"Oh crap. That other tile looks suspicious too. Could be a pressure trap."
"I'll check that one out too. I roll a 27."
"Nope, sorry, just loose. There appears to be a stray piece of gravel under one edge. You wanna Search the piece of gravel?"

+++
But again, if you have conditioned your players into this behavior, then it's up to you to stop doing whatever you're doing that makes them behave like this before you can begin working with them on it.

 

[Pielorinho]

Another option:

Allow up to three people to use the "aid another" action on a search roll. One holds the lantern, one hands the primary searcher whatever tools are needed and/or picks up carpets, debris, etc. for the primary searcher, and one looks over the primary searcher's shoulder for details the primary searcher misses.

Assuming all the aiders have no penalty on their search rolls, they can take ten on searching. If the primary searcher also takes ten, it's equivalent to taking 16.

It's still not as good as taking 20, but it happens much, much faster, so the searchers may be willing to use this alternative.

I agree that it oughtta be fatiguing to take 20 for too long. I think I'd impose a -2 cumulative penalty for each hour after the first that's spent searching. An hour's rest will reset the penalty.

Daniel

 

[kreynolds]

Another option:

Allow up to three people to use the "aid another" action on a search roll.

I don't see how that would help, as the rogue would need to first search the two squares that his comrades are going to stand in while they help him. I think they would be more of a hinderence (sp?) than a help.

 

[IceBear]

Remember, you don't have to be "right there" to search something. You can search something from up to 10ft away.

From the SRD:

(*)Search (INT)
Check: The character generally must be within 10 feet of the object or surface to be searched. It takes 1 round to search a 5-foot-by-5-foot area or a volume of goods 5 feet on a side; doing so is a full-round action.

 

[Don21584]

Tell them if they keep taking so long to search rooms, that you'll take away their search roll privelages. Each PC picks ONE or TWO places in the room to search and You roll for them, then they must move on.

 

[kreynolds]

Actually, the reason players will search every inch of a room for traps is usually because DMs tend to place traps all over their dungeons, but the placement of the traps doesn't follow any logical or tactical patter. You'll find the most traps in narrow corriders (where there's little room to maneuver), stairwells (nice place for a rough fall), etc. A 40 foot x 40 foot room that has 15 randomly place traps kinda sucks, especially if there are 3 to 10 other rooms just like it.

Trap placement, like magic item creation, is an art.

 

[Umbran]

deleted for security reasons...

 

[kreynolds]

Remember, you don't have to be "right there" to search something. You can search something from up to 10ft away.

True, but you can't search a space that is two-diagonal squares away from you, as that is 15 feet, not 10 feet, so your friends will still probably hamper you at least half the time.