D&D 5E Passive Perception better than Active Perception?

iserith · Oct 26, 2018

Psikerlord# said:
Not so. Good luck detecting that DC 18 trap with your PP 14. Bet you wish there was room for randomness then.

No worries - if I'm the designated trap-finder with that low of a passive Perception, I'll just ask another PC to Work Together with me on that for a passive Perception of 19.

Psikerlord# · Oct 26, 2018

iserith said:
No worries - if I'm the designated trap-finder with that low of a passive Perception, I'll just ask another PC to Work Together with me on that for a passive Perception of 19.

And when the DC is 20? How about then.

iserith · Oct 26, 2018

Psikerlord# said:
And when the DC is 20? How about then.

What if it's Infinity + 1? What're ya going to do then?!

daviddalbec · Oct 26, 2018

I think [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION] and I are on a side that says that PP is there to model... basically exactly what it says in the PHB, things done repeatedly or secretly, and we think it works fine to do that.
In my interpretation, which I think differs minorly from his, I DM such that there are things which PCs do as a matter of habit (repeatedly), and so the rogue rolling to check for traps every 5' would just use PP or PI, the druid smelling for orc every room would use passive, etc. It's up to the DM, judging partially from previous PC action, to decide what characters might sensibly be aware to detect using PP. Also asking if the conditions merit disadv, or if there is possibility of success in those conditions at all (in which case you don't call for a check at all, you don't call for a check if a PC is attempting to catch water in a net). I think a character could be aware of multiple factors at once, and iserith seems less willing to let characters be aware of "dangers" while doing something like navigating, but I think both are within RAW interpretations.

Then there are different arguments which have admitted that they do not follow RAW because they think they don't work fine. That's what I'm seeing, and that's fine, but I'm just saying that iserith seems to have the RAW down (whether or not RAW is good).

daviddalbec · Oct 26, 2018

iserith said:
There's no such thing as "active perception." I get that it's often offered as a shorthand to describe rolling a Wisdom (Perception) check but it needlessly confuses what a passive check is. Passive checks refer to there being no roll, not that the character is somehow "inactive."

When passive Perception applies, the character is staying alert to danger in an ongoing basis and the result of that effort is uncertain. A character is not alert to danger when he or she is performing an ongoing task like navigating, tracking, foraging, drawing a map or any task that is at least as distracting. So, a character that is doing those tasks is simply surprised, no check. The exception is a ranger in favored terrain who can stay alert to danger while doing other tasks. If you want the players to choose to do something other than have their characters stay alert for danger, the DM must either mandate certain tasks in particular situations (needing to navigate in a trackless wilderness, for example) or offer a significant enough benefit to risk automatic surprise when a lurking monster turns up (e.g. a source map is worth gold back in town).

In combat, most creatures remain alert to danger and so its passive Perception applies when trying to determine if a monster can hide or the character spots a trap or hazard. This effectively makes the passive Perception score a "floor" for the Search action.

Outside of combat, a player must be reasonably specific about where and how a search is conducted to have a chance to notice a hidden object. If the outcome of that search is uncertain and there's a meaningful consequence of failure, the DM may then call for a Wisdom (Perception) check.

Back to your first comment here, I think you have everything completely correct, except I think the staying alert to danger bits with the ranger have to do specifically with traveling (something with specific rules). So unless I'm not understanding where you're getting those rules, I don't see why by RAW a DM couldn't be considering PC PP for both dangers like monsters and also something like hidden doors at the same time.

iserith · Oct 26, 2018

daviddalbec said:
I think a character could be aware of multiple factors at once, and iserith seems less willing to let characters be aware of "dangers" while doing something like navigating, but I think both are within RAW interpretations.

The rules straight up say you don't get to apply passive Perception when Navigating and a few other tasks as well as any task the DM deems sufficiently distracting. From a game play perspective and given many, many hours of practical experience with it, it makes great sense to me: You get to choose one thing at the cost of not doing some other thing that may be useful or valuable. (Unless you're a ranger, sometimes.) That's a meaningful decision to make and, the more of those sorts of decisions the players get to make during the course of a session, the better in my opinion. A player seeing that decision pay off during play is like "Flumph yeah!"

daviddalbec said:
Then there are different arguments which have admitted that they do not follow RAW because they think they don't work fine. That's what I'm seeing, and that's fine, but I'm just saying that iserith seems to have the RAW down (whether or not RAW is good).

I'd say it's pretty good or at least consistent. And next to how I handle Inspiration, the way I present this aspect of the game to players who are also DMs, it's the most frequently adopted for their own games. And really, I'm not doing anything that isn't right in the rules.

daviddalbec · Oct 26, 2018

iserith said:
The rules straight up say you don't get to apply passive Perception when Navigating and a few other tasks as well as any task the DM deems sufficiently distracting. From a game play perspective and given many, many hours of practical experience with it, it makes great sense to me: You get to choose one thing at the cost of not doing some other thing that may be useful or valuable. (Unless you're a ranger, sometimes.) That's a meaningful decision to make and, the more of those sorts of decisions the players get to make during the course of a session, the better in my opinion. A player seeing that decision pay off during play is like "Flumph yeah!"

I'd say it's pretty good or at least consistent. And next to how I handle Inspiration, the way I present this aspect of the game to players who are also DMs, it's the most frequently adopted for their own games. And really, I'm not doing anything that isn't right in the rules.

Is that just from Natural Explorer? I cant find anywhere else that talks about passive perception and navigating.

iserith · Oct 26, 2018

daviddalbec said:
Back to your first comment here, I think you have everything completely correct, except I think the staying alert to danger bits with the ranger have to do specifically with traveling (something with specific rules). So unless I'm not understanding where you're getting those rules, I don't see why by RAW a DM couldn't be considering PC PP for both dangers like monsters and also something like hidden doors at the same time.

Yes, the ranger's ability I reference specifically requires an hour or more of traveling in favored terrain. Anything less than an hour and in anything other than favored terrain, it doesn't kick in.

But "traveling" in and of itself is not limited to a certain time, distance, or context in the rules. It can be dungeon or wilderness or anything from feet per minute to miles per day. Searching for secret doors isn't specifically called out in the Activities While Traveling section; however, I think it is reasonable to consider it to be at least as distracting as navigating, drawing a map, foraging, or tracking and thus can't be done while remaining alert to danger. That's the DM's call though: "However, a character not watching for danger can do one of the following activities instead, or some other activity with the DM's permission."

iserith · Oct 26, 2018

daviddalbec said:
Is that just from Natural Explorer? I cant find anywhere else that talks about passive perception and navigating.

Activities While Traveling, Basic Rules, pages 64 to 65. A section many people don't notice, forget, or ignore, which I think is a shame because it plays into these mechanics taken as a whole quite well. Really the whole Adventuring chapter is worth a read. As are any section in the DMG related to the activities (navigating, tracking, etc.).

daviddalbec · Oct 26, 2018

iserith said:
Activities While Traveling, Basic Rules, pages 64 to 65. A section many people don't notice, forget, or ignore, which I think is a shame because it plays into these mechanics taken as a whole quite well. Really the whole Adventuring chapter is worth a read. As are any section in the DMG related to the activities (navigating, tracking, etc.).

Yeah I think you're completely correct then. This section isn't on Roll20's database, and I use homebrew hex-based rules for traveling distances, so I overlooked it. I think you've got it pretty much precisely then.