D&D 5E How to Play: Exploration (Stealth and Perception)

Gargoyle · Mar 25, 2013

Questions about these rules...

When you try to hide from one or more creatures, your Dexterity check is contested by the Wisdom check of any creature who might notice you or the Intelligence check of a creature that is actively searching for signs of your presence.

Unless I'm missing something, there seems to be an obvious flaw: What if my Intelligence is lower than my Wisdom? It seems weird that a high Wis, low Int character has a better chance of finding someone by not looking for them.

Maybe it gives searchers too high a bonus, but I'm inclined to say that you add both your Int and Wis bonuses when actively searching for someone hidden. By doing so, does that make it too easy to find hidden opponents? And is combining ability score bonuses a good idea in general? I could see other situations where you might be tempted to do so. For instance, the classic, though perhaps stereotypical "I want to jump up and grab the chandelier and swing across the room to kick the guy" stunt could use both Strength and Dexterity bonuses.

Or maybe the best approach is to let characters use either Wisdom or Intelligence, rather than dictating one or the other. This is how the Grapple action is handled, with Strength or Dexterity, reflecting two different approaches to the same problem...how to get that bugbear into an arm bar.

Blackwarder · Mar 25, 2013

I always had problem is wisdom being the state that is related to all the perception checks, especially condifering that it's also the one used by divine spell casters, suddenly your cleric is also your best detector...

Warder

Chris_Nightwing · Mar 25, 2013

If only Clerics used Charisma, then we could leave Wisdom to Druids and Rangers, whom we expect to have good senses.

Blackwarder · Mar 25, 2013

Agreed.

Warder

Dausuul · Mar 25, 2013

Gargoyle said:
Unless I'm missing something, there seems to be an obvious flaw: What if my Intelligence is lower than my Wisdom? It seems weird that a high Wis, low Int character has a better chance of finding someone by not looking for them.

I would say that the rolls are separate. You always get a Wisdom check to notice a hidden creature. If you are actively searching, you also get an Intelligence check. Thus, active searching always improves your odds.

DEFCON 1 · Mar 25, 2013

Gargoyle said:
Unless I'm missing something, there seems to be an obvious flaw: What if my Intelligence is lower than my Wisdom? It seems weird that a high Wis, low Int character has a better chance of finding someone by not looking for them.

Why is that necessarily a flaw?

Some people have just really good instincts. They just have that "danger sense" that gives them a tingling sensation when something doesn't seem right. It doesn't follow though that those same people can in any way intellectually identify problems they see in front of them. By the same token, there are people that if you handed them a Where's Waldo book and told them to find Waldo in a particular picture, they could do so... but wouldn't necessarily realize that he could be found in EVERY picture of the book (if he wasn't told it was a Where's Waldo book to begin with.)

And each character probably knows what kind of person they are and what kind of perception they're good at (whether they're strong at actively finding stuff that are hidden, or just good at sensing when things seem wrong). And thus those who want to get better at one or both of those ways just train themselves to do so by taking those particular skills to help.

If you're someone who knows you just sense things better on instinct... there's nothing wrong with just doing that (when you can). You're not "penalized" for going the other way, so much as you are just going against your particular strengths.

Sadrik · Mar 25, 2013

Chris_Nightwing said:
If only Clerics used Charisma, then we could leave Wisdom to Druids and Rangers, whom we expect to have good senses.

Rangers and druids should be INT based... For searching really good, tracking and all. Clerics and paladins CHA based, tending to their flock, leadership and all. For WIS... reserve for psionics... innate perception and insight seems their hallmark. I am also fine with WIS not relating to any caster... CON is good for all classes solely based on HP bonus. WIS for all characters solely based on innate perception. Perfectly fine with that approach.

Oh and move "Willpower" saves over to CHA...

am181d · Mar 25, 2013

I don't necessarily see a problem:

If your INT is higher than your WIS, then you have a motivation to search for things.

If your WIS is higher than your INT, then you should just wait to notice things.

If you're actively searching with a lot INT, it's probably because you're not very INTelligent.

Li Shenron · Mar 25, 2013

am181d said:
If your INT is higher than your WIS, then you have a motivation to search for things.

If your WIS is higher than your INT, then you should just wait to notice things.

I would just say that if WIS > INT, then you've probably noticed things before starting to search for them.

But overall, I wouldn't mind to see Search (Int) simply be removed completely from the game, i.e. merged with Spot (Wis) into a single skill e.g. Search (Wis).

I think Search (Int) historically has a couple of reasons for being in the game.

One of them is because presumably it should help Rogues, assuming they already have high Int for other tasks (disable traps and open lock mostly).

The second is because of famous literature characters such as Sherlock Holmes, which is supposed to be very intelligent and use his Int for searching for clues. But he could just as well be both a high-Int and high-Wis character, using Wis for observations and Int for deductions.

Fact is, the more I think about it, the more Search (Int) feels a bit wrong... it's just a habit after decades of D&D to assume it makes sense, but personally I know a lot of very intelligent educated people (high Int) who are otherwise absent-minded (low Wis) and who are not good at searching things, or noticing them when they are actively searching and they happen to be under their nose!

Chris_Nightwing · Mar 25, 2013

Sadrik said:
Rangers and druids should be INT based... For searching really good, tracking and all. Clerics and paladins CHA based, tending to their flock, leadership and all. For WIS... reserve for psionics... innate perception and insight seems their hallmark. I am also fine with WIS not relating to any caster... CON is good for all classes solely based on HP bonus. WIS for all characters solely based on innate perception. Perfectly fine with that approach.

Oh and move "Willpower" saves over to CHA...

That's an interesting approach, but excludes where to put Wizards. They're supposed to be the analytical, knowledgable type, so it seems to me that that's what Intelligence represents, memory and processing. Wisdom is something else, it's a sense of the external, making sense of things around you without knowing anything. If you come across some pictographs in an ancient tomb, Intelligence would help you identify the period and culture, possibly even transliterate what's there, whereas Wisdom would let you understand the pictures, who put them there, and why.

So that's why I'd remove this dichotomy on perception, the active/inactive, Int vs. Wis, by making it clear that Wisdom is perception, and perceptive casters such as Rangers and Druids use that ability. Guys who study books or formulae, that's Intelligence, and those who are chosen or innately powerful, they use Charisma.

D&D 5E How to Play: Exploration (Stealth and Perception)

Gargoyle

Adventurer

Blackwarder

Adventurer

Chris_Nightwing

First Post

Blackwarder

Adventurer

Dausuul

Legend

DEFCON 1

Legend

Sadrik

First Post

am181d

Adventurer

Li Shenron

Legend

Chris_Nightwing

First Post

Similar Threads