AmandaBarbarian
Explorer
here is an example from a few weeks ago.Well, here comes the pushback. You're already using some more immersive and clearer language here than alternatives. Consider "I look around the room, Perception 18" vs "I use my Perception. 18." The former IS better than the latter because, as a DM, I have to do less guessing what "I use Perception" means. It isn't exactly a deal-breaker for me to ask the player "OK, what do you mean by that?"
We were in a cave not a room, and something was off and we all knew it. The rogue/Druid asked to use perception or insight, the DM said use perception... he made a high roll but not like a nat 20 or anything. The DM told him "You smell something that at first you can't place, but then realize is a highly flammable gas, and as you do you notice the click click click of what you think is water, but is sol liquid near by"
If the player said "I look around" that isn't using his full perception of scent and sound. If he said "I want to feel around this wall and look for hidden passage ways" again he would be calling on the wrong senses.
on the other hand we are all breathing. If we really were concentrating on finding something we MIGHT be able to pick up those scents and noises... the might in this case is the roll.
People keep saying things like "Oh you enter a room with a desk and a rug and a bed and a dresser and a throw rug" then the player has to pick out what to search and how they do it. Yup that is great for room 1... but in our last campaign we found an old manor/keep with most of it still intact, and a GM created race of hobgoblin/kobold hybrids living under it... one of them was a necromancer so there were undead around, but they didn't live in the main house itself, so it was still mostly 'as is' somewhere about 30ish rooms each with nice descriptions that took between 1 and 3 minutes for the DM to describe... a handful of them had undead in them. It took us 2 sessions on the house and 1 on the caves under it (where most the fighting took place). I can't imagine if we went into detail on every room search "I want to look under the bed, she wants to look at the book case, he wants to look at the fireplace" how many more weeks of game it would have taken.