D&D 5E I don't use Passive Perception

[Li Shenron]

Well.... personally I've never been fully convinced by the passive skills mechanics. Kind of the point is to avoid the situation when a player is paranoid about missing traps (perhaps because the DM has previously placed traps in random unguessable places ) and pretends to check everywhere, passive perception offers a way to tell them "don't worry, it's already covered".

The problem is that the player can still figure out it's convenient to keep rolling anyway *in addition* to passive perception.

A better solution to the paranoid player is turn-based exploration, meaning to roll for traps every exploration turn instead of every 5ft step. But unfortunately they dropped the idea in the middle of the playtest.

 

[iserith]

I'm annoyed that someone rated this thread 1 star. It's a DM looking to see if he can improve his game by asking other DMs how they run a part of their game.

Yeah, that's weird. There's nothing particularly controversial about this topic either. We can upvote it and change the average though.

 

[Satyrn]

Yeah, that's weird. There's nothing particularly controversial about this topic either. We can upvote it and change the average though.

It was my natural inclination to upvote right away, but I wanted to mention it and thought it'd be good to leave the evidence for now.

 

[Sunseeker]

In the end, I settled upon my preferred strategy: I build agnostic, and then adjust for party limitations (only). I make sure there will be no TPK because the party has a glaring weakness, but I check for that after just building an adventure I'd throw at any party of a given level.

You're more kind than I am. If a party has a glaring weakness, I put that in the "Not My Problem" category. It just becomes part of the challenge for them to allocate their resources and make choices accordingly.

I think I've always fallen somewhere between you two. I like a dungeon to have a specific "feel" to it's inner workings and that may favor certain elements and skills over others. A temple to the Frog God may lack stairs, so a party without good climbing or jumping or flight spells/skills may be screwed. But as a rule, I try to design every dungeon with at least 3 solutions to any problem. That may be alternate paths, different skills to use or potential combats. That is usually wide enough for at least one party member to be able to pick up on the alternate option.

 

[TheCosmicKid]

I just require Investigation to find traps and other things that couldn't reasonably be spotted without active searching.

 

[Shiroiken]

The only real downside to not using Passive checks is it reduces the value of certain feats that grant bonuses to Passive checks. Observant is the only one I know of in the PHB, but there may be more later.

I use the Mike Mearls method of Passive Perception, rather than rthe Chris Perkins. Perkins believes that you simply check your passive against the DC, thus you can never get less than your passive score (this was the method used in 4E, IIRC). Mearls uses a check against your passive score, so that even a high passive perception can fail, only to succeed on an active check. In essence, you get two chances to succeed, one passive and one active, but neither is really guaranteed.

 

[Satyrn]

The only real downside to not using Passive checks is it reduces the value of certain feats that grant bonuses to Passive checks. Observant is the only one I know of in the PHB, but there may be more later.

An excellent thing to point out.

 

[TheCosmicKid]

I use the Mike Mearls method of Passive Perception, rather than rthe Chris Perkins. Perkins believes that you simply check your passive against the DC, thus you can never get less than your passive score (this was the method used in 4E, IIRC). Mearls uses a check against your passive score, so that even a high passive perception can fail, only to succeed on an active check. In essence, you get two chances to succeed, one passive and one active, but neither is really guaranteed.

Can you expand on this a bit, or point me to where Mearls talks about his method? I'm not understanding the difference you're talking about. It sounds like you can never get less than your passive score with the Mearls method either, if you have "two chances to succeed".

 

[Shiroiken]

Can you expand on this a bit, or point me to where Mearls talks about his method? I'm not understanding the difference you're talking about. It sounds like you can never get less than your passive score with the Mearls method either, if you have "two chances to succeed".

Mearls discussed it in an article at/near release (possibly during the playtest, but I'm not sure). Instead of comparing a static DC against a static passive score, where you can't fail against any DC equal to or less than your passive score, the DM rolls a check instead of using the DC, and if the check is higher than the passive score, the passive check fails. This means if you have a 17 Passive Perception you can fail against a DC: 15 if the DM rolls high, but will probably succeed. I did the math at one point (which Mearls didn't provide), and found that a check with a modifier equal to the DC -12 is exactly the same chance as an active check.

By Perkins method, you would always succeed against a 15, so the DM should never bother using any DC less than your passive value. I think this is boring and creates a situation where the DM keeps using higher and higher DC, which kinda goes against the point of bounded accuracy.

I'll give an example: an elf and human walk past a secret door. The DC to find the secret door is a 15, the elf has a passive perception of a 16 and the human a passive perception of 11. The DM rolls 1d20+3, and an 11+ means the human doesn't see it, while a 16+ means the elf doesn't either. If neither find it, they can still find it with an active roll. Thus they have a free passive attempt, plus they may make an active attempt if they fail.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

I only use passive perception or investigation in two variants:

Noticing general features or the lack thereoff. Passive perception is only used if you are doing extended tasks like standing watch and is never used in situations when an opposed check is more appropriate.
Sneaking up from the front to get into a position to attack for example is an opposed check rather than a passive check. While being generally quiet will use passive stealth instead of an actual roll as soon as an opponent is in sight you may roll to stay hidden if you do aomething. That may be your action in the surprise round if you just stumble over each other.