D&D 5E Crawford on Stealth

[Quickleaf]

One thing I try to do in my games is preserve a sense of "PC niche" with passive Perception.

For example, a dwarven wizard and human paladin might have identical passive Perception scores, but what they notice – that is, the information I give to each – depends on their characters.

Perception, like the various knowledge skills, benefits from this individualized approach at the table.

 

[Rya.Reisender]

I really like your approach, and I think that's the direction I lean as well.

Do you have a concrete example you could share?

Low passive perception: "You move through the hallway, you have a bad feeling."
Good passive perception: "You move through the hallway, you notice some holes in the walls."
Good active roll: "You notice that one of the plates on the floor has more dust on it than all the others."
Very good active roll: "You notice a pressure plate on the floor that could activate some mechanism if stepped on."

I mean that's a very simplified example, usually you would include a lot information in the descriptions of which only some is relevant. Like additionally describing signs at the walls or cobwebs and stuff. Rather than saying "you have a bad feeling" you can also design a description that makes players get a bad feeling without you having to spell it out actually (but it's hard to come up with that on the fly, if anything, that's the boxes text in the official adventure paths for me).

Edit: Result of the active roll of course also depends on what the player actually wants to check. If he wants to look into the holes for example, I wouldn't give any information on the pressure plate, but rather tell them how they are sized, like e.g. that they are so small only projectiles could fit through them. Or there's some bad smell coming from them.

 

[Flamestrike]

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.

Surely this makes Observant (advantage to passive perception) OP.

I house ruled this a while back to go half way there:

Observant
Change the third dot point of Observant to read: ‘When you are required to make a Wisdom (Perception or Insight) or Intelligence (Investigation) check, you can choose to forgo rolling the the d20 and instead add 10 to your check result.’

Basically taking the Observant feat lets you take 10 on perception, insight and investigation checks meaning you never get less than your Passive scores unless you really want to roll (risking a crap roll for chance at finding something really hard to find).

I kept finding it weird when I would ask our Warlock for a perception check (he has Observant, and thus advantage on passive perception checks) and he was like: 'I'll just... casually look about... passively'

 

[Li Shenron]

...when you're in a stressful, unique, and/or time sensitive situation where passive skills are inappropriate.

Well I am not sure, but I think 5e "passive skills" are not exactly the same as 3e Take 10.

IIUC the 5e "passive skills" are suggested for things you are doing repeatedly i.e. continuously all the time, for example being alert for any possible hidden monster or trap along the way.

There's nothing about "passive skills" that explicitly requires to have plenty of time or be relaxed, although naturally the DM can always decide when a passive skill is inappropriate.

And in addition (not related to your post), "repeatedly" should not be confused with "something I've been doing many times before", it refers to your current activity not to your past. The latter is already represented by proficiency, level and possibly expertise, which together already set a minimum autosuccess.

 

[Flamestrike]

There are some..."controversial" statements here. Wow.

Thats not controversial at all. Its literally exactly how Ive been saying it works for years now.

To all you doubters, I told you so!

The one thing that tripped me out was the passive perception being the floor of your perception checks.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

I kept finding it weird when I would ask our Warlock for a perception check (he has Observant, and thus advantage on passive perception checks) and he was like: 'I'll just... casually look about... passively'

I more and more believe I would never allow you to see a hidden person directly with the passive check. Instead I will only tell that you notice something is around.

 

[CapnZapp]

His take leads to an utterly broken game where everything is always noticed.

I will be ignoring him completely.

Sent from my C6603 using EN World mobile app

 

[machineelf]

His take leads to an utterly broken game where everything is always noticed.

I will be ignoring him completely.

Sent from my C6603 using EN World mobile app

I am confused why you believe this. Do you use passive perception at all? If so, do you allow active perception rolls to be worse than what a passive perception would have been?

 

[CapnZapp]

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.

Or we can just ignore him ☺

Way too many DMs confusion Perception with Investigation.

Way too many forumists place the blame for poorly written explanations on DMs instead of the rules designers.



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[Flamestrike]

I more and more believe I would never allow you to see a hidden person directly with the passive check. Instead I will only tell that you notice something is around.

A hidden creature in combat is rarely totally unsee-able. They'll often be peeking around a pillar or tree, or around the corner ready to attack from hiding.

There are other visual clues as well; a shadow sticking out around the corner, a scabbard poking out from behind a rock, bushes or long grass moving as they sneak around, puddles splashing as they step in them, their outline in smoke, fog or rain, the fog of their breath, thier footprints in the carpet, mud or snow, blood dripping from their wounds et etc.

There is also other senses. You can hear the creaking of their armor, the jangling of those thousands of coins they like to carry around with them, or hear them let out an accidental stifled cough.

You might even be able to smell them. Check your players inventories. I bet you most of them dont have 'soap' listed on their character sheet, and when was the last time one of them told you he was having a bath?