D&D 5E Crawford on Stealth

[iserith]

I said everything "within line of sight". All the things you mention are not within line of sight since they are blocked by something. You are correct, if it is impossible to see something because it is under a carpet or in a desk or a cupboard, you can't see it with your PP.

But often, as people above have said, players will say "I search the room" and then you have to determine if that involves searching under the carpet or in the cupboard.

No - the players have to determine that. The DM should not assume in my view. "I search the room" is not reasonably specific enough for the DM to adjudicate the action properly. My recommendation is that when players say something vague like this that the DM ask them for reasonable specificity as to the things they are doing and how long they spend on the task. This will reveal whether the outcome of the task is uncertain and whether you need to engage the mechanics at all in order to narrate the results of the adventurers' actions. It will also help you avoid situations wherein you assume character action which has negative repercussions and the player objecting because he or she did not establish the character taking that action.

As a side note to this, remember that players shouldn't really want to have the DM ask for checks, passive or otherwise. Being specific means they are more likely to succeed without a check which is far more desirable than rolling or the DM using a passive score. So if players object to being reasonably specific with their actions, I suggest reminding them that the d20 is not their friend and that smart play means trying to succeed without a roll. When it comes to exploration, that means being reasonably specific.

Here's the problem: Some of the written adventures have sentences like "The PCs can find a chest hidden under the bed with a DC 14 Wisdom (Perception) check". In this situation, the chest may or may not be seen because it is under the bed(but part of it could be slightly visible) but the adventure lets Perception represent "how well you search the room" in addition to what you can see. This creates a weird situation where you have to determine whether each Perception check listed in an adventure is one that requires them to search the room or one they spot immediately.

Another good example is one that says "PCs examining the mural can see the following details with a DC 15 Wisdom (Perception) check..." If the PC can see the mural from across the room, does that mean they automatically spot the details or does "examining" require you to be closer or take more time, even with a high PP?

I find it's helpful to read those entries in adventures as trying to convey the uncertainty and difficulty of a specific task under specific circumstances.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

As a side note to this, remember that players shouldn't really want to have the DM ask for checks, passive or otherwise. Being specific means they are more likely to succeed without a check which is far more desirable than rolling or the DM using a passive score. So if players object to being reasonably specific with their actions, I suggest reminding them that the d20 is not their friend and that smart play means trying to succeed without a roll. When it comes to exploration, that means being reasonably specific.

When I used to play 2e, due to the lack of perception skills, every room became "I search behind the door. Nothing? Behind the curtains. Nothing? Under the rug. Still nothing?"

After skills were introduced in 3e and we allowed players to say "I search the room, I get a 20 on my search check, what do I find?" it felt like a weight was lifted our chests as we weren't constantly specifying every place we looked. We had a die roll that determined how good our character was at remembering to search behind the curtains. If we rolled low, our characters didn't think to do so or got impatient and stopped searching the room partway through, convinced there was nothing there.

It allowed us to easily search a room in 2 seconds: "I search the room...I get a 20." "You find nothing" rather than it taking 20 or 30 minutes sometimes to search one room.

But it's fairly obvious that among the designers there are some that prefer the older method of "You need to tell me exactly where you are searching" and some that prefer the newer method of "Your dice determine where you look". Because of that, the PHB treats perception and searching very vaguely in order for each DM to run it the way they want to.

Which is fine, but it does create a lot of confusion at tables when some players/DM think it works one way and some think it works the other. It creates even more confusion when the writers of adventures think it works one way and some think it works the other...without really specifying which way they are writing it for.

I find it's helpful to read those entries in adventures as trying to convey the uncertainty and difficulty of a specific task under specific circumstances.

These are good examples of what I talk about above. Some authors expect the players to specify "I look under the bed" and some expect that some players will say "I search the room" and give them a chance of finding something under the bed.

This is especially true in a couple of cases where I've seen text like "PCs can find a trap door under the rug in the middle of the room with a DC 10 Wisdom (Perception) check but it is plainly visible if the rug is moved."

Using one method of running the game, that Perception check means absolutely nothing. You can't see the trap door unless you move the rug. If you don't specify you are moving the rug, you can never succeed in that check. If you do move the rug, you see it without a check/high enough passive.

I've taken to running things like that by assuming the rug is slightly askew and part of the trap door is visible, but a small enough part that it takes a check to see it. Of course, often these checks are listed as DC 10, which means everyone who enters the room who doesn't have lower than 10 Wisdom immediately spots the trap door.

Which is my problem with PP being always on. You might as well not have hidden items at all since 90% of parties have at least one PC with a PP of 13 or higher. So, when an adventure says DC 13 or below, it will be found almost 100% of the time. If it says 14, it'll be found about 75% of the time. If it says 15, it'll be found about 50% of the time. If it says over 15, it'll be found almost never. The other numbers don't matter.

Which is why I liked Mike Mearls solution of having the DM roll stealth checks for things like traps and hidden doors to provide the variability of making rolls while still allowing the DM to avoid the players metagaming by having them make the roles.

The only way around this is to cover everything so that the PCs don't see anything at all unless they look in or behind everything. Then we are back to the "Gotcha!" style of play where you can say "Sorry, you didn't find the key because you said you were searching the cupboard but no one said they looked BEHIND the jar in the cupboard."

I tend to prefer a balance between the two where if the players say "I search the room", they get rolls to determine which places they may have looked and how thoroughly they've searched the room but if they say "I search behind the jar in the cupboard" they succeed with no rolls required.

But PP prevents this from working because it removes the randomness of the roll and makes them automatically find almost everything in the room by saying "I search the room", making specifying where you are searching completely pointless.

Also, if you can make active rolls, it removes the benefit of having PP by having players say "I find nothing in the cupboard? I search again. I rolled a 12. I search again. I get a 15. I search again..." until they roll a natural 20.

So now, you have the worst of all worlds: Players have incentive to specify that they are searching everywhere, since being specific means possibly guaranteed success. Players have incentive to keep rolling over and over again when the DM tells them they don't see anything. Also, all DCs 13 or below are completely useless.

 

[iserith]

When I used to play 2e, due to the lack of perception skills, every room became "I search behind the door. Nothing? Behind the curtains. Nothing? Under the rug. Still nothing?"

After skills were introduced in 3e and we allowed players to say "I search the room, I get a 20 on my search check, what do I find?" it felt like a weight was lifted our chests as we weren't constantly specifying every place we looked. We had a die roll that determined how good our character was at remembering to search behind the curtains. If we rolled low, our characters didn't think to do so or got impatient and stopped searching the room partway through, convinced there was nothing there.

It allowed us to easily search a room in 2 seconds: "I search the room...I get a 20." "You find nothing" rather than it taking 20 or 30 minutes sometimes to search one room.

But it's fairly obvious that among the designers there are some that prefer the older method of "You need to tell me exactly where you are searching" and some that prefer the newer method of "Your dice determine where you look". Because of that, the PHB treats perception and searching very vaguely in order for each DM to run it the way they want to.

Which is fine, but it does create a lot of confusion at tables when some players/DM think it works one way and some think it works the other. It creates even more confusion when the writers of adventures think it works one way and some think it works the other...without really specifying which way they are writing it for.

To me this looks like you swung between two extremes - too much specificity and not enough. I suggest a reasonable standard of specificity, that is, enough where the DM doesn't have to assume what the characters are actually doing, but not so much that the game is bogged down. That reasonable specificity is incentivized with automatic success where applicable. Because if you don't have to roll to find the treasure or whatever, that's way better than leaving it to the dice.

These are good examples of what I talk about above. Some authors expect the players to specify "I look under the bed" and some expect that some players will say "I search the room" and give them a chance of finding something under the bed.

This is especially true in a couple of cases where I've seen text like "PCs can find a trap door under the rug in the middle of the room with a DC 10 Wisdom (Perception) check but it is plainly visible if the rug is moved."

Using one method of running the game, that Perception check means absolutely nothing. You can't see the trap door unless you move the rug. If you don't specify you are moving the rug, you can never succeed in that check. If you do move the rug, you see it without a check/high enough passive.

I've taken to running things like that by assuming the rug is slightly askew and part of the trap door is visible, but a small enough part that it takes a check to see it. Of course, often these checks are listed as DC 10, which means everyone who enters the room who doesn't have lower than 10 Wisdom immediately spots the trap door.

Which is my problem with PP being always on. You might as well not have hidden items at all since 90% of parties have at least one PC with a PP of 13 or higher. So, when an adventure says DC 13 or below, it will be found almost 100% of the time. If it says 14, it'll be found about 75% of the time. If it says 15, it'll be found about 50% of the time. If it says over 15, it'll be found almost never. The other numbers don't matter.

It will be found if the PC is engaged in that task. Passive Perception doesn't capture everything all the time - just those tasks with an uncertain outcome where a passive Perception check would apply. If they are not engaged in that task, then passive Perception isn't used to resolve any uncertainty as to the outcome of said task. The trick is to make those tasks be legit trade-offs. "You can do X, but you can't also do Y at the same time which could mean Z." One task at a time, generally speaking (unless you're a ranger in favored terrain).

Which is why I liked Mike Mearls solution of having the DM roll stealth checks for things like traps and hidden doors to provide the variability of making rolls while still allowing the DM to avoid the players metagaming by having them make the roles.

I don't really see the upside to this approach. More process for what gain?

The only way around this is to cover everything so that the PCs don't see anything at all unless they look in or behind everything. Then we are back to the "Gotcha!" style of play where you can say "Sorry, you didn't find the key because you said you were searching the cupboard but no one said they looked BEHIND the jar in the cupboard."

I tend to prefer a balance between the two where if the players say "I search the room", they get rolls to determine which places they may have looked and how thoroughly they've searched the room but if they say "I search behind the jar in the cupboard" they succeed with no rolls required.

But PP prevents this from working because it removes the randomness of the roll and makes them automatically find almost everything in the room by saying "I search the room", making specifying where you are searching completely pointless.

Also, if you can make active rolls, it removes the benefit of having PP by having players say "I find nothing in the cupboard? I search again. I rolled a 12. I search again. I get a 15. I search again..." until they roll a natural 20.

So now, you have the worst of all worlds: Players have incentive to specify that they are searching everywhere, since being specific means possibly guaranteed success. Players have incentive to keep rolling over and over again when the DM tells them they don't see anything. Also, all DCs 13 or below are completely useless.

There's a lot to unpack in what you're saying here. So please bear with me.

First, players don't get to choose to make checks. They can only describe what they want to do. The DM takes it from there, narrating the results. Sometimes the DM is uncertain as to the result, so a check is required. Whether that's a passive check or a regular ability check (notice I don't say "active check" or "active roll" because that is misleading) depends on whether it's a task the PC is performing repetitively or "in general" while traveling the adventure location.

So that deals with the issue of players rolling repeatedly "until they roll a natural 20."

Further, if there's no time pressure or other meaningful consequence of failure (or there is time pressure but the PCs don't care), then the rules state that the PCs just succeed in the task they're attempting. So if the players say something reasonably specific along the lines of "We exhaustively toss this room floor to ceiling for anything notable, poking around every nook and cranny, taking whatever time we need to be thorough..." then you just tell them what they find without a check, passive or otherwise. I suggest making time or making noise matter with wandering monster checks, of course, but that's a separate matter.

So that shows an example of reasonable specificity obviating the necessity to go to the mechanics to resolve the action.

The issue with just letting the roll determine what the PCs actually did as you suggest is that this is in my view the DM overstepping his or her role in the game by establishing what the characters are doing rather than simply narrating the results of what the players say they try to do. You can run into a lot of problems by doing this if the players aren't onboard with what the DM establishes their characters as doing (that usually comes up when something bad happens e.g. "I didn't say I looked under the bed!").

 

[dco]

Which is my problem with PP being always on. You might as well not have hidden items at all since 90% of parties have at least one PC with a PP of 13 or higher. So, when an adventure says DC 13 or below, it will be found almost 100% of the time. If it says 14, it'll be found about 75% of the time. If it says 15, it'll be found about 50% of the time. If it says over 15, it'll be found almost never. The other numbers don't matter.

Which is why I liked Mike Mearls solution of having the DM roll stealth checks for things like traps and hidden doors to provide the variability of making rolls while still allowing the DM to avoid the players metagaming by having them make the roles.

The only way around this is to cover everything so that the PCs don't see anything at all unless they look in or behind everything. Then we are back to the "Gotcha!" style of play where you can say "Sorry, you didn't find the key because you said you were searching the cupboard but no one said they looked BEHIND the jar in the cupboard."

I tend to prefer a balance between the two where if the players say "I search the room", they get rolls to determine which places they may have looked and how thoroughly they've searched the room but if they say "I search behind the jar in the cupboard" they succeed with no rolls required.

But PP prevents this from working because it removes the randomness of the roll and makes them automatically find almost everything in the room by saying "I search the room", making specifying where you are searching completely pointless.

Also, if you can make active rolls, it removes the benefit of having PP by having players say "I find nothing in the cupboard? I search again. I rolled a 12. I search again. I get a 15. I search again..." until they roll a natural 20.

So now, you have the worst of all worlds: Players have incentive to specify that they are searching everywhere, since being specific means possibly guaranteed success. Players have incentive to keep rolling over and over again when the DM tells them they don't see anything. Also, all DCs 13 or below are completely useless.

I'm not preocuppied with the average and lack of randomness, if I rolled 4-5 D20 statistically I should get far more than 10 for one player, depending on the difficulty it can be better or worse than rolling dice. In any case it's only a tool, I try not to use it very much, only when they are being followed or if there are details they could see when they are walking, talking to someone, etc. For example if they could see a hidden door while they walk through a corridor I use passive perception with disadvantage, I consider they need more time studing that part of the wall, a writting on the wall or if someone says he is searching actively for secret doors while they walk then I use their passive perception without modifiers. It saves suspicious rolls behind the DM screen and fake rolls to avoid the suspicion, a great tool for that.

When my players stay in a place and tell me they search I roll behind the DM screen. I also ask them how they search (silently, exhaustively moving things, etc) and what they try to find, if they specify they search below the carpet then they automatically find what was there below the carpet, the same way they don't roll perception when they open a chest without anything hidden.
If the players are going to be attacked by hidden enemies I let them roll perception to see who gets surprised, if someone is searching for traps he rolls to see if he saw the trap before he activated it, etc because those rolls could have important consequences for the character.

What I really think it's absurd and laughable is that non sense about passive perception being the floor for perception rolls.

 

[Caliban]

What I really think it's absurd and laughable is that non sense about passive perception being the floor for perception rolls.

Yeah, if I don't do it, it's automatically absurd and laughable! What are these morons thinking, not playing the game the way I do?

 

[iserith]

I think folks are reading too much into the "floor" comment, especially where exploration is concerned. In my view, it's just shorthand to say that, since you're assumed to be alert for signs of danger all around in combat, rolling lower than your passive Perception score is basically irrelevant when you take the Search action.

 

[Arial Black]

You guys keep trying to change this into something that it isn't. I'm talking specifically about DCs of 20 or less. Once again, because you can't seem to get it, I'm not saying that there will never be a DC of 21+ or other penalties at times. I'm saying that a passive perception of 20 is perfect 1 million times out of 1 million at detecting a DC of 20 or less. That would be impossible for anything humanoid.

And a passive score of 12 will detect a Stealth roll of 12 or less 1 million times out of a million. What's your point?

A skill check roll result of 20 will detect DC 20 or less 1 million times out of a million. What's your point?

This phantom 'perfection' doesn't exist in actual games. The static score is compared to a random roll, just like the rest of the game system!

I cast a spell, the save DC is 20 (level 13, casting stat 20). Oh no! This means that my spells (with saves) affect creatures who roll 19 or less on their saves 1 million times out of a million! The game is broken! Passive DCs for spells have ruined the game!

 

[KahlessNestor]

Actually isn't it the case that in 5e an ability check opposed roll tie (Perception vs Stealth), tie reverts to the status quo? So wouldn't you need a 21 to find a DC 20 stealth npc?

Sent from my SM-G900P using EN World mobile app

 

[Maxperson]

And a passive score of 12 will detect a Stealth roll of 12 or less 1 million times out of a million. What's your point?

That it's impossible for that to happen to mere mortals.

A skill check roll result of 20 will detect DC 20 or less 1 million times out of a million. What's your point?

It won't happen without fail like the passive perception. When you have to roll to hit, you can fail like normal. When you have passive perception of 20, you are quasi-godlike in your ability to ALWAYS hit that number. Circumstances that alter your number no longer leave you with a 20.

This phantom 'perfection' doesn't exist in actual games. The static score is compared to a random roll, just like the rest of the game system!

It exists in every game that uses passive perception. Those random rolls will be detected by a passive 20 100% of the time that they are 20 or under. That's perfection.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I didn't hear anything particularly controversial in his interpretation. I will have to correct some rulings with regard to attacking from hidden, as I tended to rule that if you pop out to attack, you're no longer hidden. So that will please all the multiclass rogues in my current campaign. I've been handling invisibility and hidden the same way he said to do it.

OUt of curiosity, what in the rules had you running it this way? I thought the rules were fairly, though not explicitly, clear that you are hidden while doing the thing that breaks hidden, but not after.


I hadn't even actively thought about the passive perception thing, but it is how I was running it anyway, so...cool? Seems pretty natural to me. How could you ever be less able to see something when actively looking than when just staying alert?

Then again, I also don't understand why people consider Perception the uber skill.