D&D 5E Beast master wants to use pet to get +5 to passive perception

[eyeheartawk]

Yeah OP, so I guess, you know, to just address your initial question. Just show this thread to your player and have them read it. I'm sure it'll clear things right up.

 

[billd91]

According to JC, it's always on, which is more than often, but I will grant that this is an exception-based system, so there will be exception, therefore rare, and therefore not a reason to make general changes.

That's open to agreement or disagreement. I can get behind passive perception always being on (unless specific distraction suggests it shouldn't) but I don't agree with all of his interpretations of what that implies - such as passive perception being the lowest result you can get. That, I believe, is a misconception of what passive perception is supposed to be.

 

[Vaalingrade]

D&D Players seriously arguing about whether or not it is reasonable to use a dog as a guard animal.

 

[eyeheartawk]

D&D Players seriously arguing about whether or not it is reasonable to use a dog as a guard animal.

Twist: What if the player characters were also dogs?

 

[DEFCON 1]

D&D Players seriously arguing about whether or not it is reasonable to use a dog as a guard animal.

Some folks just care about game rules ALOT!

 

[billd91]

You are asleep. Someone tries to break into your house. The dog barks.

Sounds like advantage to me.

Sounds like the dog using his own perception to detect a threat and then waking you up to me.

 

[DEFCON 1]

"Read what I said! I'm giving you the rules!"

"I am. But your reading is flawed. What it is is this..."

"YOUR reading is flawed! The rule actually says this!"

"That's based on how you are interpreting the rules and thus how your table plays it. But I read it as this..."

"You aren't reading what I said!"

 

[Vaalingrade]

Ruling over rules until there's half an excuse to scream in someone's face.

Over dogs.

 

[iserith]

According to JC, it's always on, which is more than often, but I will grant that this is an exception-based system, so there will be exception, therefore rare, and therefore not a reason to make general changes.



Once more, no, they don't. You insist on reading them in a specific way, but I have shown you that they say nothing of the kind. I have demonstrated this to you, and once more, you choose to ignore it. Simply read the rules and see that it's not because you are mapping now and then that you lose your passive perception. Nothing says this. Otherwise, once more, prove it, but I remind you that, so far, you have been wrong 100% of the time on rule interpretation and on the RAI.



I am ignoring this because not only as these rare cases and exceptions, but on top of it, your reading of the rule is flawed. So yes, I am ignoring an improper evaluation of the the value of perception.



They don't because even with the value of perception described by the rules, it's not that critical in the type of adventures that we run. A clever player will not be surprised just because his perception is low, because he will get advantage or even automatic success for immersing himself in the world, anticipating what is going to happen in the world and taking the appropriate (counter)measures.



And sometimes, you will be surprised because some adversaries are good at that.



No. Once more, this is not the way the section reads. You absolutely want it to read that way, but please give me the sentence that says that if one is doing a bit of mapping along the way, he forsakes all rights to passive perception. It simply does not exist.



And once more, you are confusing deliberate searching (which for me is more investigation) with simple passive perception.



You do what you want in your campaigns, I will roleplay the monsters in my campaign the way I want. Unless a monster is extremely stupid, achieving surprise is actually the base technique in most of the animal kingdom. I have even personally tried (and succeeded) in achieving surprise while wearing full scale armor at night, just needed to prevent some banging between my hauberk and my leg armor. Some might be more successful than others, but once more, you are reading the section on surprise wrong. It's a dangerous world out there, and by default, even more than being trained in perception, creatures will try to be quiet unless they are very stupid, and the surprise rules reflect this. By default, surprise is checked as perception vs. stealth in EVERY combat. In some combats, obviously, there will be auto-success and failure, but it's not optional.

COMBAT STEP-BY-STEP
1. Determine surprise. The DM determines whether anyone involved in the combat encounter is surprised.



I never said that, actually. I just said that it's always on. After that, of course, nothing prevents you from being clever.



Once more, where is the rule on this. I'm sorry, but as usual, you are interpreting things, and that is just totally inappropriate. SOME traps, in SOME circumstances, might only be noticed by the characters in front, but that is a purely local ruling from the DM based on circumstances. It's not a rule. And when people are 5 feet apart, it certainly, on average, gives enough visibility for people to notice things in front, and even more to the side or up. Once more, the advice is only "The DM might decide that a threat can be noticed only by characters in a particular rank." It's not even the front rank, and the general rule just says "Use the passive Wisdom (Perception) scores of the characters to determine whether anyone in the group notices a hidden threat.". So once, more, it's always on, for everyone unless the DM makes a specific ruling. And although you seem to absolutely want to have these restrictions in your campaign:

1. Don't tell anyone that they're not playing by the rules if they don't.
2. Don't tell anyone that they are doing things wrong if they dont't.

Neither is justified, and it starts smelling a bit too much of badwrongfun.



Don't worry, most players are not stupid, and they are able to make such judgment calls, including sending scouts, having someone up ahead which is probably not the most armoured for stealth purpose, etc.

And also, despite what you might think, in a dangerous environment, people don't just walk there with their head in the cloud, or reading a book, or writing in it. Even the mapper will only do that in secure locations, for example.

Now, for long overland exploration, as mentioned, we have used the rules for hexcrawling, resource gathering, mapping, etc. But once more, these have been used ONCE in what, 8 years of campaigning 2 campaigns in parallel. So it's hardly a common case.



And I thought they were underpowered, now I'm reassured.



Never said it was, but for me it's way easier to control the fact that bonuses stay within a reasonable range, especially in 5e because of bounded accuracy. That way, people who have it have an edge, but it's NOT an autowin button. Whereas allowing the use of a wolf to get a constant +5 on top of observant IS an autowin button, and that causes problems.



And I find your solution useless, as my expectation is that characters are seasoned adventurers and not idiots, who would not walk down a dungeon corridor doing anything else than being aware of danger and taking precautions. And probably being generally stealthy too. I have done hundreds of LARPs, and I can tell you that unless you're relaxing in a tavern, your passive perception is always on, and you are always trying to be stealthy. Whether you succeed or not depends on your actual capabilities, but it's always better than not being careful, which only idiots do.

And once more supposing that characters are idiots and that they would be doing activities that would prevent them from noticing threats as best as they can in a dangerous situation is not only derogatory for the players, but it's also extremely biased towards certain profiles. That's not my preferred way of running campaigns.

Although I'm flattered someone would take the time to parse out so many individual statements and respond to each of them, I think your method causes you to miss vital context in what I'm saying. I encourage you to do less of that.

To address some of your points:

• Here's the rule you requested: "Character who turn their attention to other tasks as the group travels are not focused on watching for danger. These characters don't contribute their passive Wisdom (Perception) scores to the group's chance of noticing hidden threats." (Basic Rules, p. 68, also in PHB Ch. 8) It then goes on to say what tasks it's referring to and suggests the DM may establish that other tasks have the same trade-off. So yeah, draw a map and you risk being automatically surprised. That is the trade-off for creating a navigational tool for advantage later (and potentially something valuable to sell, if there's a market for maps at the DM's discretion). In my game, Search for Secret Doors is on par with these tasks. To get the benefit of finding secret chambers with treasure in them or shortcuts around dangerous areas, you need to put yourself at risk of automatic surprise.
• The above rule is in the context of Activity While Traveling - itself in the context of Movement - which can be at the dungeon scale of feet and minutes or the wilderness scale of feet miles, hours, and days.
• Your position on having all monsters attempt to surprise the PCs makes Perception even more valuable to have in your game than may be intended. Every time you give us details about your game, it should be easy for everyone to see how way, way overvalued this skill is based on how you run things. You're not alone here though. Lots of DMs do this and then wonder why passive Perception is so strong.
• I'm not sure your LARP experience is relevant to what the rules of passive Perception are in D&D 5e. You seem to be making some kind of case for realism here to justify your interpretations, but I don't find that useful when discussing what the rules say.

 

[Lyxen]

That's open to agreement or disagreement. I can get behind passive perception always being on (unless specific distraction suggests it shouldn't) but I don't agree with all of his interpretations of what that implies - such as passive perception being the lowest result you can get. That, I believe, is a misconception of what passive perception is supposed to be.

Hmmm... I actually agree there. Let's see...

The first point is that passive perception being always on (barring exceptional cases) is actually supported by actual rules in the game, whether it's about stealth, surprise, etc. so I think that one is clear. So in that case, the RAI is in line with the RAW, which was my main argument.

However, about it being the floor, I actually agree with you, and there is a simple example about this, the Observant feat. It only applies to passive, not active, so there is no reason for the passive being the floor on active, since the passive gets a +5 that the active does not get.

But note that, in this case, neither are there rules in the game that support "the passive is the floor for the active"...