Holmes in my D&D: dealing with Perception+Insight optimization?

[TheFindus]

I do not think that this is much of a problem on a challenge level.

So the player plays a PC that has a very high Passive Perception and Passive Insight value. His PC detects hidden things and detects lies and motivations.

Now, in the novels, the reader is amazed by what Holmes detects that others cannot detect. Holmes himself, however, is not amazed by this at all. It is normal for him. Instead, the challenge for him lies in having to identify the meaning of what he detects and how it all fits together.
And this is the shift you should make in the game. Detecting itself does not become the challenge, identifying the meaning is.

A few examples: a thug is hiding. What do we do about it? The minister is lying. Why? There is a trap. How can I communicate this fast enough to the party? How do I deal with the trap? Etc.

The real problem in my opinion could be with other players at the table. Because if they do not want that shift but want instead to be challenged by stuff, the cannot detect, than this becomes a problem. But this is nothing you have to deal with while conceptualizing a scene. Instead, you need to talk to the players about this. If they are ok with it, then this thing is resolved. If not, will the player of Holmes want to change the PC? That is the real problem, IMO.

 

[hirou]

Thanks for all the replies! Implementing all the advice won't be trivial, but I think I'll manage at least some of them. I think my main problem is that I need to change the results of successful checks a bit, but without making it tiresome or irritating for the player. Exaggerating, instead of "I roll Perception to check for traps->You see a dwarven-made spear trap with pressure plate activation mechanism, Hard DC of level 11 to disable", I should go for "Your trained eye automatically notice the suspicious round holes in the wall... and part of the floor just besides it is slightly higher than normal... Would you like to roll for Common Sense?"

On partially-related note, last session I tried to integrate some open-worded skill-challenge into the combat encounter. During the fight with ancient Chtulhu-like... demon-like... dragon-like... thingie, the party was plunged into his consciousness (it makes sense, I promise), which then started to dissipate around them, sapping their life in process. Players were a bit confused when I asked them "The world starts to crumble around you, but you know, it's just a dream... Any actions?" as it was far from their usual application of skills, but I think it worked out in the end. Some tried to discern dream from reality, some prayed for assistance, some literally punched the reality in the face. I definitely need to work more on this, but I hope to match the effect of abnormally-high skill numbers with just creative moves.

 

[iserith]

Thanks for all the replies! Implementing all the advice won't be trivial, but I think I'll manage at least some of them. I think my main problem is that I need to change the results of successful checks a bit, but without making it tiresome or irritating for the player. Exaggerating, instead of "I roll Perception to check for traps->You see a dwarven-made spear trap with pressure plate activation mechanism, Hard DC of level 11 to disable", I should go for "Your trained eye automatically notice the suspicious round holes in the wall... and part of the floor just besides it is slightly higher than normal... Would you like to roll for Common Sense?"

On partially-related note, last session I tried to integrate some open-worded skill-challenge into the combat encounter. During the fight with ancient Chtulhu-like... demon-like... dragon-like... thingie, the party was plunged into his consciousness (it makes sense, I promise), which then started to dissipate around them, sapping their life in process. Players were a bit confused when I asked them "The world starts to crumble around you, but you know, it's just a dream... Any actions?" as it was far from their usual application of skills, but I think it worked out in the end. Some tried to discern dream from reality, some prayed for assistance, some literally punched the reality in the face. I definitely need to work more on this, but I hope to match the effect of abnormally-high skill numbers with just creative moves.

I've found that skill challenges work best when the players are presented with specific complications they can choose to overcome (and how) rather than leave it open-ended. And of course I think the Rules Compendium has the most complete rules for skill challenges - I don't even use any other guide for this. If you need some advice on creating and running skill challenges, please let me know. I'm happy to help.

As an aside, when the game has plenty of skill challenges in it, one tends to see less specialization in skills among PCs, at least in my experience. It's quite dangerous to be highly specialized to the exclusion of a more well-rounded skills base because you risk never being able to hit the high DCs for skill challenges of Complexity 2 or higher. The character starts to become a liability unless the skill challenge touches on what they're good at, so what I see is players going for a wider range of skills with "decent" bonuses rather than just a few with "great" bonuses. This is something to consider if you don't tend to run many skill challenges or don't run them "by the book." Ol' Holmes here might be struggling in any skill challenges that don't involve Arcana.

 

[Tony Vargas]

the combo he was building: by taking Arcana prodigy feat (sorcerer multiclass) and then Sorcerous vision (roll Arcana instead of Perception and Insight) he now has passive 40 in both Perception and Insight.

I have a nagging feeling that there's something off there. :shrug: But...

I've extensively checked the build, it is legal, skill substitutions apply to passive checks according to WotC forums consensus and RC definition of "passive check value";

OK, we'll go on that assumption.

the rest of the party is not heavily optimized; we have tiefling feylock, changeling psion, eladrin fighter and elf avenger;
the player explicitly skipped some damage optimization in favor on Arcana and Perception stuff, and he's heavily invested in his character flavor, and I definitely don't want to punish him for this;
I don't think I have a Stealth or Bluff DC 41 written anywhere for the next 4 adventures at least (we're playing Zeitgeist adventure path BTW).

OK. Doesn't sound too unreasonable. I ran a game where one of the characters (a pre-gen, no less, so I brought it on myself!) was described as having Sherlock-Holmes like deductive abilities. I just described things to that player differently than everyone else. Not just a matter of you 'you see an ambush ahead,' but "the ground ahead has been recently and very diligently swept of footprints and other traces by 4 lightly-armored men using freshly-cut branches from the nearby trees, those men are presumably hiding behind said branches, which they have set up on either side of the road positioned to look like bushes, an elementary mistake when you consider that none of the local undergrowth has leaves shaped quite like those of the trees..." That is, if you're feeling inspired.

I'm mostly troubled that this removes a whole layer of the game; basically, no hiding monsters, no surprise traps, no Bluffing evil guys, no illusions. Any advice on how to deal with this? How would you challenge Holmes?

One thing I've found, particularly from running M:tA (in which supernatural senses were the lowest level powers, every mage started with several), is that you can create more and deeper mysteries by giving out all sorts of information than by successfully hiding things (which tends to lead to dead ends, anyway). You can positively jam the PCs with loads of information, much of it red herrings, or you can pull them into adventures with 'hooks' that no one else would even notice.

 

[hirou]

Ol' Holmes here might be struggling in any skill challenges that don't involve Arcana.

He's using Arcana in place of Dimplomacy/Intimidate when interacting with non-natural creatures (Binding mastery, with +2 check), in place of Insight/Perception as I said, once per encounter in place of Stealth (Chameleon's Mask) or in place of Bluff/Intimidate/Diplomacy (Arcane Mutterings). He has +21 History, + 16 Nature, +10 Dungeoneering, +13 Religion, +16 Heal (on level 10). Sure, he lack physical skills, but everything else is covered. He's the build: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5F8v4MM-paoZkZIQ0NzYkpqQjQ/view?usp=sharing

 

[hirou]

you can create more and deeper mysteries by giving out all sorts of information than by successfully hiding things (which tends to lead to dead ends, anyway). You can positively jam the PCs with loads of information, much of it red herrings, or you can pull them into adventures with 'hooks' that no one else would even notice.

This is an interesting take, thanks! Also, here's his build, for your curiosity: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5F8v4MM-paoZkZIQ0NzYkpqQjQ/view?usp=sharing

 

[iserith]

He's using Arcana in place of Dimplomacy/Intimidate when interacting with non-natural creatures (Binding mastery, with +2 check)

That's pretty situational, unless your skill challenges will feature a lot of social interaction with non-natural creatures.

in place of Insight/Perception as I said

Yep, he auto-succeeds here.

once per encounter in place of Stealth (Chameleon's Mask)

So once per skill challenge generally. If it's a 4-PC party, he's likely to be on the hook to make some kind of check two to four times depending on the skill challenge's Complexity.

or in place of Bluff/Intimidate/Diplomacy (Arcane Mutterings).

Same as above.

He has +21 History, + 16 Nature, +10 Dungeoneering, +13 Religion, +16 Heal (on level 10).

The DCs at 10th level are 13, 18, 26. So he's somewhat weak on Nature, Dungeoneering, Religion, and Heal when it comes to a hard DC. If you're building skill challenges according to the Rules Compendium, typically making the same check more than once means doing it at a hard DC (assuming it's not a hard DC to begin with). The same DC may apply to using Secondary Skills.

And as you say, he's weak on physical skills to boot. So I wouldn't worry about this too much. He's going to shine sometime and struggle in others, if you're building solid skill challenges. And I think key to that - other than using the RC rules - is to present specific complications with set DCs to specific characters via initiative order and have a list of Primary and Secondary skills rather than leave it wide open and allow players to "push" skill use by focusing on whatever his or her character is good at.

 

[hirou]

And as you say, he's weak on physical skills to boot. So I wouldn't worry about this too much. He's going to shine sometime and struggle in others, if you're building solid skill challenges. And I think key to that - other than using the RC rules - is to present specific complications with set DCs to specific characters via initiative order and have a list of Primary and Secondary skills rather than leave it wide open and allow players to "push" skill use by focusing on whatever his or her character is good at.

You're actually quite reassuring I admit that I've been neglecting SC a bit, I'll reread that section of RC.

 

[iserith]

You're actually quite reassuring I admit that I've been neglecting SC a bit, I'll reread that section of RC.

Haha, cool. If you want to workshop a skill challenge for an upcoming adventure on the forums, just let me know. (Send a PM or do a mention as I don't frequently check this particular sub-forum.)

 

[MoutonRustique]

An approach that's been said before (but I'll add my 2cp) is to "shift" the focus from "finding stuff out" to a more "what should we do with all this info"?

Since in Zeitgeist, the nature of who the "real" good guys are is a very up-in-the-air question, you can use throw all the available information you can think of at the players and still have meaningful discourse going on. The game can also promote some very involved role-play as the players have access to a lot of in-game information on which they can rely. If they are "note-takers" this can lead to incredible sessions of roleplay and "strategising".

2nd option:
Don't do this often (very, very rarely in fact) but you can also set up "wrong info" situations where the information they get leads them to make a very bad decision (and they will follow this correct information with great certainty, since they "know" they can't fail) - this can be very good for the game, but the timing and the frequency must be very precise.

But, and I can't stress this enough - don't do this often!