D&D 5E Is "perception" even a good concept?

KarinsDad said:

Actually, the game is more fun with your definition of gotchas and those sometimes being in the game. IMO. The occasional pit trap that nobody has a clue about and there was no warning for is just one such simple example.

We'll just have to agree to disagree. You don't seem to understand my POV and I sure as heck see your POV more as the DM being controlling or overindulgent than the DM being consistent. Yes, he is being consistent, but in a repetitive sort of way. If it were most of the time, fine. But all of the time? It's kind of like a DM who never puts traps in his games, or never has an encounter CR higher than medium.

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I'm not sure you quite understand the definition of the word "consistent." Of course it's "repetitive." You're doing the something the same way over time in order to be fair and accurate. You're advocating for inconsistency. Which is fine if that's what you like. I prefer a DM that is consistent though (obviously).

KarinsDad said:

Getting back to the thread, in the adjudicating system that you are discussing, there doesn't seem to be much of a reason to take perception or insight at all. If one PC in the group has those, great. Otherwise, it's all still good. The DM has your back, at least if you hang on his every word.

And I am not trying to be too critical of your system here (even though it probably seems that way), I just find it uncomfortable as a DMing style. I cannot even understand why a player would want every threat telegraphed. It basically doesn't make sense. And I did mention that I once had a DM who did throw out a ton of clues and I didn't like it.

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No, the DM does not "have your back." Paying attention is a good idea in both life and in D&D though because it keeps you out of trouble, right?

There are plenty of good reasons to take Perception or Insight in a game where the DM fairly telegraphs threats. For any action a character takes, the DM has to decide if the outcome is successful, fails, or is uncertain. If you take Perception or Insight, you're investing in insurance for those times when you fall short of automatic success when undertaking tasks related to Perception or Insight. Those proficiencies might also apply to your character concept. They might also be fun for you because you like to undertake particular exploration tasks during play more than others. And so on.

What this approach does do is not make Perception (or to a lesser extent Insight) such an "obvious" choice - as the OP put it - that passing it up is setting your character back in some way. It is therefore a solution, in part, to that problem, assuming it's seen as a problem.

KarinsDad said:

I am all for foreshadowing and giving some hints in the game. But as a player, I just don't want every single threat telegraphed. I want to be in the dark at times. Shy of obvious stuff in the environment, hints should be primarily handed out when the players take actions that leads to them earning those hints. A reward for being cautious or taking their time. A reward for them asking around town about the farmer and not just dropping a hint that he is an enemy spy because he is a threat. Risk and reward. The PCs make good decisions and THEN they get the reward of getting hints. Not the other way around: the DM just hands out hints so that the players can always make informed decisions.

I'm glad this works for you, but it feels uncomfortable to me. Course, a player who comes to the game solely to be a thespian (and hence often the center of attention) is uncomfortable to me as well. We all have things that bug us. Good luck with your game.

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Again, you make more assumptions here. The DM puts some clues in the description of the environment. You engage with the environment and make good decisions and get more. And the reason you do that is because if you get a clue in the description of the environment, the smart play is to verify your assumptions, right? Because if you just assume, you might be wrong and that can be catastrophic depending on the circumstances.

KarinsDad said:

Edit: One other thing about this. Why bother to take divination spells like Find Traps (or at least take them as often) if the DM is going to always telegraph information about threats? The PCs already have a built in Find Traps called the DM.

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Because you're trading the resource of a 2nd-level spell slot for certainty about finding traps. Again, you appear to assume that the players will always pick up on the clues, always make an effort to verify assumptions about those clues, and succeed on verifying those assumptions. (And that's not even getting into the fact that just finding a trap is only the beginning of the challenge, not the end.) That's a lot of points of failure there. Or you can trade a spell slot in exchange for certainty on all of those points. It's a good spell, even with the DM is setting up fair challenges by telegraphing threats.

Lanefan said:

Though the information you give, even if complete, give can still subvert their choices depending on how it's presented/worded.

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Subverting choice is the horror of illusionism, though it's doing so without letting on that it's happening, so to the player, it feels like the choice really mattered. Telegraphing is almost the opposite, it's giving the player's ability to spot the significance of your descriptions every possible impact on the outcome.

The PC's abilities, OTOH, could fade into the background. That's why Perception is a good concept, it models the PC's ability to notice things.

You can put them together, gating the telegram behind a perception check, or delivering it to the PC that's the most perceptive. It's an added step that adds nothing to the challenge of Gygaxian Skilled Play, but it does add support for characterization of the PCs.

I think several people in this thread are mistaking telegraphing for telling players where the traps are. These two things could not be more different. The goal of telegraphing, is to make a challenge fair, to allow your players to make informed decisions, and to limit the classic "search for traps at every step" kind of gameplay. Just because a player is given a hint to pay attention, does not mean he is told a trap is present, nor where it is.

A good example of this would be the following scenario (which occurred in the campaign I am currently running):

"The players crawl through a network of narrow tunnels, with the floors littered with human bones. But one tunnel surprisingly has no bones on the floor. It is oddly clean, with barely even any sand on it. What do you do?"

You might presume there's a trap in this hallway, and you would be right. But even then, how you go about confirming your suspicions is critical. Poking the floor for a trapdoor, reveals nothing. But this floor trap is specifically designed to tilt down under the weight of 2 or more individuals, sliding them straight into a pit trap that is hidden underneath the floor. The description of the environment gives a clue towards the tilting nature of the floor, without explicitly explaining how it works. It is just enough for the players to be weary and proceed with caution. There is no guarantee that the players will figure out the trap without triggering it by accident, but the DM is not dropping them into a spike trap out of nowhere, and THAT's the difference.

If I wanted my players to fall into a deadly spike trap, I could simply make it happen. But that creates zero tension, and in the worst case, it creates frustration. Telegraphing a danger, how ever subtle, creates suspense. All of a sudden the players are on high alert, which is way for exciting than actually falling into the pit. And as Iserith explained earlier, it also feels rewarding to discover a trap by paying attention to the hints that the DM gives in his description. It gives the players a feeling that the world behaves to logical rules, that they can make clever use of, if they pay attention.

And this need not apply only to traps. I had a combat encounter in my campaign, where I described an interesting terrain feature: An old stone bridge that looked feeble. The players asked: "Could we blow up the bridge, and separate the enemy forces that way?". "Well, you could sure as heck try", I replied. In this case I had deliberately designed the encounter to include such strategic elements. But it feels rewarding for both the players and the DM when they pick up on that.

It's a good concept because it heads off a lot of arguments at the table. And I don't mind if a whole party is full of perceptive people; it helps drive the story.