D&D 5E Crawford on Stealth
Your perception checks can never be worse than your passive perception.
I am surprised that his comments on perception checks didn't light up the forum yet. At around 22:00 he starts talking about how passive perception is always working in the background to notice things. He goes on to say that your Passive Perception is always your floor for perception checks. If your passive perception is higher than the DC for noticing something, your passive perception always notices it. Perception checks are for noticing things that have a higher DC than your passive perception. He specifically says that if DM's are using passive perception correctly, then they will tell players about things that they would notice automatically, and use perception checks for a chance to roll higher than their passive perception. I have never played in a game that handled perception this way. It's always like this:
"I'm looking through the bookshelf for that book we were trying to find." [17 Passive Perception]
Give me a perception check.
"12"
You don't find it.
Then another character with a passive perception of 13 rolls a 15 and finds the book. What?
You know the general location of invisible creatures!
JC says that being invisible and being hidden are not the same thing. Invisible creatures give themselves away by making noise and interacting with the environment. Invisible creatures need to use stealth or have some other cover to be hidden. A monster or PC might be distracted or lose track of an invisible creature, but if you know someone is likely to be invisible and are trying to find it, you have a general idea where it is. He says that the game mechanics make invisibility awesome enough on their own - advantage on attacks, disadvantage on attacks against you, can't be targeted by spells that target "a creature you can see" - so invisibility does not need any additional benefits. I wish the DM who hammered away at us last weekend with the unseen, completely silent, unfindable shield guardian hadn't made us swing randomly at thin air until we got lucky and found it because he said invisibility made it impossible for us to know where it was.
I am surprised that his comments on perception checks didn't light up the forum yet. At around 22:00 he starts talking about how passive perception is always working in the background to notice things. He goes on to say that your Passive Perception is always your floor for perception checks. If your passive perception is higher than the DC for noticing something, your passive perception always notices it. Perception checks are for noticing things that have a higher DC than your passive perception. He specifically says that if DM's are using passive perception correctly, then they will tell players about things that they would notice automatically, and use perception checks for a chance to roll higher than their passive perception. I have never played in a game that handled perception this way. It's always like this:
"I'm looking through the bookshelf for that book we were trying to find." [17 Passive Perception]
Give me a perception check.
"12"
You don't find it.
Then another character with a passive perception of 13 rolls a 15 and finds the book. What?
You know the general location of invisible creatures!
JC says that being invisible and being hidden are not the same thing. Invisible creatures give themselves away by making noise and interacting with the environment. Invisible creatures need to use stealth or have some other cover to be hidden. A monster or PC might be distracted or lose track of an invisible creature, but if you know someone is likely to be invisible and are trying to find it, you have a general idea where it is. He says that the game mechanics make invisibility awesome enough on their own - advantage on attacks, disadvantage on attacks against you, can't be targeted by spells that target "a creature you can see" - so invisibility does not need any additional benefits. I wish the DM who hammered away at us last weekend with the unseen, completely silent, unfindable shield guardian hadn't made us swing randomly at thin air until we got lucky and found it because he said invisibility made it impossible for us to know where it was.
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UngeheuerLich
Legend
If passive scores are always the floor of rolls, rogue's reliable talent would be useless... trying to wrap my gead around that...
I am now thinking that I should maybe use passive perception only to notice general things and not specifically point out what exactly may be there.
I am now thinking that I should maybe use passive perception only to notice general things and not specifically point out what exactly may be there.
But the rogue with perception expertise and the observant feat could easily have a 26 passive perception at 10th level and notice everything. With a 16 Wis their passive perception would top out at 30, regularly noticing things that are "nearly impossible" to notice according to the DC scale.
Lucas Blackstone
Explorer
This makes perfect sense to me. People who have an issue with using passive perception will probably not like the idea, but if your passive perception is higher then the perception dc needed for a perception check I don't see why you wouldn't gleam the information the perception check provides. It's kind of the whole purpose of passive perception.
I'm not saying people need to use passive perception in their games, or like it even. But unless I am misunderstanding something I don't see why it wouldn't work.
I'm not saying people need to use passive perception in their games, or like it even. But unless I am misunderstanding something I don't see why it wouldn't work.
Passive Perception is a mess. It's always been a mess.
I understand how it makes the game make more "sense" but the DM sets the DCs so what is the point from a gameplay perspective? It's just an invisible switch I hit for the players. I just don't see how unlocking boxes text makes the game more fun.
Making it the "floor" of perception certainly adds an interesting dynamic. I would assume this also applies to Insight checks too...
But I dunno. It almost feels like a different system to me. I mean the "floor" of every other ability is the modifier you apply to a "2." What exactly makes smelling a zombie have a higher "floor" than say, what you can lift or how long you can run? That's a cool mechanic but it's a new one to me.
So anyway, I am gonna steal this idea, and use it for my new game FUNgeons and Dragons. It's basically D&D except Perception is an ability score like it should be and saves are replaced with defenses like 4e. These defenses are also the "floor" of your ability checks... speaking of checks, where should I post my mailing address for the first print run? Shipping is cheap since it's just a sticker that goes inside the 5e Player's Handbook.
I understand how it makes the game make more "sense" but the DM sets the DCs so what is the point from a gameplay perspective? It's just an invisible switch I hit for the players. I just don't see how unlocking boxes text makes the game more fun.
Making it the "floor" of perception certainly adds an interesting dynamic. I would assume this also applies to Insight checks too...
But I dunno. It almost feels like a different system to me. I mean the "floor" of every other ability is the modifier you apply to a "2." What exactly makes smelling a zombie have a higher "floor" than say, what you can lift or how long you can run? That's a cool mechanic but it's a new one to me.
So anyway, I am gonna steal this idea, and use it for my new game FUNgeons and Dragons. It's basically D&D except Perception is an ability score like it should be and saves are replaced with defenses like 4e. These defenses are also the "floor" of your ability checks... speaking of checks, where should I post my mailing address for the first print run? Shipping is cheap since it's just a sticker that goes inside the 5e Player's Handbook.
I could see this being a decent rule, but now DMs MUST keep track of Lighting rules. Anything in darkness (underground etc) is an automatic -5 to Passive Perceptions because it's in Dim Light.
Way too many DMs confusion Perception with Investigation. Also, read the "Finding a Hidden Object" description in the PHB for extra guidance on why Perception, run completely RAW, isn't that big of an issue for DMs wanting to hide things from the party.
Way too many DMs confusion Perception with Investigation. Also, read the "Finding a Hidden Object" description in the PHB for extra guidance on why Perception, run completely RAW, isn't that big of an issue for DMs wanting to hide things from the party.
Rya.Reisender
Explorer
Too bad this isn't in written form. Stealth is like the most important Sage Advice topic.
But from the reply on forums, seems like it's nothing new for me. I always agreed with Jeremy on the stealth rules and still do. It's what I was always telling everyone here as well.
Regarding the passive perception, first you should realize the only reason it even exists is to prevent players from constantly saying "I check everything in the room". Of course that can also be achieved by the DM just rolling perception for every PC every time something noticable comes near, but that would be more of a hassle.
If you want to make active rolls matter, what I do is that there is no simple "success / fail" but there's actually different levels of information I can give to the player. Then I make passive perception always only give the first level of information on success, regardless on how high it is. This information is sufficient for figuring out the "puzzle", but still requires the players to use their brain. Only when active rolls are done and have a good result, I will include the extra information.
Also as DM I'm quite flexible with the DCs in the first place. So what I do is more or less see if someone in my group cares about having high passive perception. If everybody in my group has passive perception below 15, then it's still all active rolls pretty much except the general room description. If one of my PCs gets feats to get real high passive perception, then I want to reward that by giving him slightly more info than the other PCs. The actual score doesn't matter too much for me, it's more a decision on how much to tell additionally so that the group has the most fun.
Even on active rolls I'm like "Well, below 10 I won't tell them anything. 10-14, I'll point out things that were already in the room description, and give a slight hint and what of that could be relevant. 15-19, I'll give some additional info that is not in the general room description. 20+, I pretty much tell them anything they could possibly notice by just looking and listening."
So there's no real concrete DC for success.
But from the reply on forums, seems like it's nothing new for me. I always agreed with Jeremy on the stealth rules and still do. It's what I was always telling everyone here as well.
Regarding the passive perception, first you should realize the only reason it even exists is to prevent players from constantly saying "I check everything in the room". Of course that can also be achieved by the DM just rolling perception for every PC every time something noticable comes near, but that would be more of a hassle.
If you want to make active rolls matter, what I do is that there is no simple "success / fail" but there's actually different levels of information I can give to the player. Then I make passive perception always only give the first level of information on success, regardless on how high it is. This information is sufficient for figuring out the "puzzle", but still requires the players to use their brain. Only when active rolls are done and have a good result, I will include the extra information.
Also as DM I'm quite flexible with the DCs in the first place. So what I do is more or less see if someone in my group cares about having high passive perception. If everybody in my group has passive perception below 15, then it's still all active rolls pretty much except the general room description. If one of my PCs gets feats to get real high passive perception, then I want to reward that by giving him slightly more info than the other PCs. The actual score doesn't matter too much for me, it's more a decision on how much to tell additionally so that the group has the most fun.
Even on active rolls I'm like "Well, below 10 I won't tell them anything. 10-14, I'll point out things that were already in the room description, and give a slight hint and what of that could be relevant. 15-19, I'll give some additional info that is not in the general room description. 20+, I pretty much tell them anything they could possibly notice by just looking and listening."
So there's no real concrete DC for success.
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