It doesn't remove the option to roll, though; if a player gets a "bad feeling" about a room, he can always roll to see if he picked up something he otherwise missed. You can always roll.
D&D 5E Passive perception Yay or Nay?
- Thread starter miniaturehoarder
- Start date
It doesn't remove the option to roll, though; if a player gets a "bad feeling" about a room, he can always roll to see if he picked up something he otherwise missed. You can always roll.
DracoSuave
First Post
Passive perception is for when the party isn't taking action. They're simply setting a bar for some other agent to take an action against.
"Depriving players of a roll" isn't a bad thing. So what? Player's shouldn't get to or HAVE to roll everything. The basic assumption with skills is the one taking the action gets to roll--if it's the player stealthing, they get to roll. If it's the monster, the player gets to defend.
The same goes for hidden doors, etc. The idea here is the DC is whatever the concealer "Rolled" on their door-concealing-tool roll. The players are not taking an action to notice--they're being tested against.
In fact, if there's no non-trivial penalty or cost for failure, there's no point wasting time by rolling at all--just use oldschool take-10/take-20 mechanics and be done with it.
"Depriving players of a roll" isn't a bad thing. So what? Player's shouldn't get to or HAVE to roll everything. The basic assumption with skills is the one taking the action gets to roll--if it's the player stealthing, they get to roll. If it's the monster, the player gets to defend.
The same goes for hidden doors, etc. The idea here is the DC is whatever the concealer "Rolled" on their door-concealing-tool roll. The players are not taking an action to notice--they're being tested against.
In fact, if there's no non-trivial penalty or cost for failure, there's no point wasting time by rolling at all--just use oldschool take-10/take-20 mechanics and be done with it.
Although it puts the onus on the DM, I prefer to use passive perception to award hints about the presence of something out of place, rather than directly revealing that something. If they are more than 5 above the DC for the check, then I'll give them a stronger hint.
If a PC passively perceives a secret door DC, I might tell the PC that there is a slight metallic taste in the air emanating from the south. If they have 5 more than the secret door DC, they notice there is a metallic seam on the southern cave wall, camouflaged to look like rock.
Basically the same thing for stealth: If a stealth check is 5+ less than a passive perception, then that PC / Creature is clearly noticed, "You see a humanoid shape moving in the shadows to the south." Close but doesn't beat the passive perception, then the perceiver notices something amiss, "A few loose rocks skitter in the darkness to the south..." or "You notice the glint of something shiny in the shadowy corridor to the south."
Use passive perception/skills to build tension, not as instant resolution.
If a PC passively perceives a secret door DC, I might tell the PC that there is a slight metallic taste in the air emanating from the south. If they have 5 more than the secret door DC, they notice there is a metallic seam on the southern cave wall, camouflaged to look like rock.
Basically the same thing for stealth: If a stealth check is 5+ less than a passive perception, then that PC / Creature is clearly noticed, "You see a humanoid shape moving in the shadows to the south." Close but doesn't beat the passive perception, then the perceiver notices something amiss, "A few loose rocks skitter in the darkness to the south..." or "You notice the glint of something shiny in the shadowy corridor to the south."
Use passive perception/skills to build tension, not as instant resolution.
As with everything, using Passives is just a tool. And as the DM, you decide if the tool is useful to you (in which case you use it), but if it isn't, you don't (and your particular game doesn't suffer because of it.)
Some tables enjoy rolling (for example) every 10 feet to search for traps and/or secret doors. There's player agency in that. Other tables find that takes too long, so the idea of using Passives speeds things up. Some tables like using Perception for all of these rolls. Others prefer a more equitable split between Perception and Investigation, so they institute different rules or decision points on when one is used versus the other. Some tables are okay with just assigning standard DCs to find secret doors or traps, and if they all are higher than a party's highest Passive, so be it. Others prefer more randomization, so the DM might roll "design" or "conceal" checks for the trap or door to determine how well or poor the trap/door was built and/or concealed at the time it was made, to create more random DCs to be noticed with PP.
The rules are broad and flexible enough that every table can determine for themselves how wide open or narrow they want their rules for these things to be... and they hammer the rules into the shape they ultimate are happy with.
Some tables enjoy rolling (for example) every 10 feet to search for traps and/or secret doors. There's player agency in that. Other tables find that takes too long, so the idea of using Passives speeds things up. Some tables like using Perception for all of these rolls. Others prefer a more equitable split between Perception and Investigation, so they institute different rules or decision points on when one is used versus the other. Some tables are okay with just assigning standard DCs to find secret doors or traps, and if they all are higher than a party's highest Passive, so be it. Others prefer more randomization, so the DM might roll "design" or "conceal" checks for the trap or door to determine how well or poor the trap/door was built and/or concealed at the time it was made, to create more random DCs to be noticed with PP.
The rules are broad and flexible enough that every table can determine for themselves how wide open or narrow they want their rules for these things to be... and they hammer the rules into the shape they ultimate are happy with.
DracoSuave
First Post
If their passive perception is equal to the DC, then you have a skill that has more than a 50% chance to succeed, so unless there are other circumstances such as kobolds shooting them in the kidneys or their cleric-statue being moved on from by a satisfied looking medusa. there's not really a lot to build that tension up to. There's no point requiring that extra roll that's already likely to succeed.
Tension requires high stakes of failure. In the case of the secret door, if that secret door is just leading to some stuff, it's not really a high stakes of failure door. They don't know what's on the other side, so they can't and shouldn't know they lost out on a vorpal blade. They don't feel the loss--especially if they don't know it was there.
On the other hand, your approach works very well when there ARE high stakes--for example, Fredgard the Fighter and Crissygill the Cleric are holding a door closed that's being bashed down by angry angry orcs, while Wesleyhammer the wizard and Rogerhampton rogue puzzle over the outline of a secret door they haven't found a switch for. What is Randykillgoremaim the Ranger doing? He's stitching up his wounds, those orcs almost killed him. The party knows the dwarven designers of this place they're in designed all sorts of secret passages in case of incursion, so that they can do skirmishing and guerilla-tactics.
Now perception rolls have stakes attached--too much time searching and the party's going to be overrun with orcs and likely blood will be spilled. If they search, then they find the trigger, they may need to figure out how to work it--damaging it means this way is barred forever.
Of course, once they open the secret door they might decide to use it to stage an ambush. Or they might circumvent the encounter entirely. Or they could leave it open, and hide somewhere else.
Or the rogue could fake tracks to the outline the orcs might see, hide somewhere else, and have the orcs distracted trying to figure out the door.
That's how you build tension.
AmerginLiath
Adventurer
Essenti's point is apt. One thing that DM's need to remember is that they are the player's sensory access to the world. Very often a player will simply not know or realize that they're "supposed" to be actively searching or detecting something in a given space (where their character would know*), even if they're an experienced and skilled roleplayer. There's often simple miscommunication – a DM might miscue a note or the players might be distracted by checking something on the sheet, or the people at the table may simply interpret the signals differently. The mechanics of something like Passive Perception (cueing that the PC characters versus the PC players notice something from the world versus from the DM) is an objective notion available to make up for these very human issues. As Essenti notes, if one scores high enough on PP, that doesn't have to mean that everything is revealed – even a score versus a Stealth roll could result in "you hear a rustle in the bushes and think you see a shadow go by" sort of response from the DM that would require more active responses from the players in determining what was there.
*Much as knowledge skills represent world-knowledge that a character would know or have access to that a player either does not or wouldn't conceivably think to (given that they come from Earth and not that campaign setting) without being in the DM's mind.
*Much as knowledge skills represent world-knowledge that a character would know or have access to that a player either does not or wouldn't conceivably think to (given that they come from Earth and not that campaign setting) without being in the DM's mind.
DracoSuave
First Post
I challenge that assertion, actually.
Agency requires meaningful decisions, and if a tactic is always optimal in every situation, such that you'd be a fool not to, you're not making a choice by doing that tactic.
Back in 1st edition, I found thieves to be the most dull class, because you existed because the party needed someone to roll that die every 10 feet. Then if there was a lock, you picked it. You basically existed because the party's random chance of finding doors and picking locks needed to be on some character sheet somewhere, and you volunteered to be the guy with that piece of paper this time. You weren't an agent--you didn't make any choices, and you were NEVER designed to make those choices.
Eventually, clever DMs and later edition designers abandoned the idea of the non-encounter skill cruft, and moved to enabling a sense of play where real choice and agency could be enjoyed. Picking a lock on some random door is low agency. Picking a lock on the chains and muzzle that are keeping the party's captured wizard trapped in a dungeon cell that also has a triggered alarm trap that floods it with water you can possibly deactivate is high agency.
Agency requires meaningful choice and meaningful choice requires meaningful conseequence.
Ultimately you got my point. I guess I left a lot unspoken which you filled in nicely. Of course *meaningful* tension requires high stakes. Building tension around those high stakes is obviously what the DM would want to do to create a memorable and enjoyable session of play. When I used the word *build* I meant it in the context of incrementally adding to, rather than instantly creating. I use tools like passive perception to add to the atmosphere of the game, rather than to instantly overcome an otherwise superfluous obstacle like finding a secret door. I often require my players to describe the actions they take when revealing a secret door, so that it feels like a meaningful discovery, rather than a bag of numbers. But I only do that with players who enjoy the exploration pillar of play. If none of my players seem to enjoy the exploration pillar, then I would switch to using passives and knowledge skills as instant reveals, to get to the action faster.
At any rate, I was describing how I treat passive perception when I have players who like exploration, which seemed to be were some other posters were seeing passive perception as an obstacle to exploration play. For either style of play, I find that passive perception is a useful tool.
No, the thing is that if you roll active perception, stealth becomes.
This is simple math, and has nothing to do with drama, suspense or good role playing.
If you allow the party to roll, somebody is bound to roll high. This means your stealth check becomes worthless.
So passive perception is good practice. If you roll, you should probably add +5 to all stealth checks.
The same is true in the opposite direction.
5 NPCs are hiding. One is bound to roll low stealth against the passive perception of the PCs and alert them.
This is why group stealth checks were invented. Because the problem exists in both directions.
The problem with this system is that if anyone spots the NPCs, it is always the PC(s) with the best passive perception(s). There is no randomness.
The only solution that I can think of to add randomness is to have a group perception check versus a group stealth check and use the median stealth check as the DC that a given individual needs to roll to determine who gets to act in the surprise round.
For example:
5 NPCs are sneaking up on a party of 5 PCs who are just starting to camp out for the night.
The NPCs roll Stealth rolls of: 5, 7, 11, 12, and 15
The PCs roll Perception rolls of: 2, 5, 9, 13, and 18
The median Stealth is 11. Any PC with a Perception equal to or higher than 11 get to act during the surprise round. If there are an even number of NPCs (e.g. 5, 7, 12, and 15), use the average between the two middle NPCs, in this case 9.
This type of system does have another advantage. Total surprise in 5E is devastating. The minimum number of surprising foes that get to attack is equal to the number of foes and the maximum number is that number times two (if all of the foes won initiative). So with 5 foes, anywhere from 5 to 10 turns by foes before the other side even gets a single character to act.
In the opposite direction (PCs sneaking up on NPCs), then there is no need for the NPCs to roll a group perception roll. Just use the passive perception of the NPCs versus the group stealth of the PCs. Any NPC whose passive perception is equal to or higher than the median roll is not surprised.
The reason to roll group perception for PCs when they are being surprised is that it is fun for players to roll perception and it allows for the rare randomness of the non-perceptive PC to roll higher than the super perceptive PC once in a while.
I think, by the rules in the PHB, only the one who failed his stealth check doesn't get the surprise round. Don't the others still get it?
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