D&D General "I make a perception check."

[Charlaquin]

except you know that is disingenuous... I have many times said what I am looking for 'danger'

Sorry, there’s a lot going on in the conversation, I forgot that you said you were looking for danger. Pretend I said “danger” instead of “whatever you’re looking for” and my answer remains the same.

my "I want to use my characters perception skill to look around and check for danger" in no way in something you can't understand the intent of...

and it's fine if your answer is 'no check needed it's safe' but if that's your answer then I get hit by a sneak attack I am going to call BS "you said no check needed"

My answer is “your passive Perception represents your character looking around for danger. If you want to do something else to try and determine if there’s danger you may have missed while looking around, you have to tell me what it is you’re doing to try and figure that out.”

again you are not getting it... you can understand this intent

No, I get it. You want to make a check, because you consider checks to be the way to accomplish goals. What I’m trying to express to you is I don’t use checks that way. I use action declarations to determine if a goal is accomplished, and if anything bad can happen as a result of trying and failing to accomplish it. In the latter case, and only in the latter case, I use ability checks to determine if that bad thing happens. So it’s weird to want to make a check, because it suggests you want a risk of a bad thing happening.

 

[DND_Reborn]

For context, this mini-rant is based on an event from my Iron Gods 5E conversion campaign last night, but goes beyond that. I am starting an OSE game soon with another group of folks and I expect similar issues there.

"I make a perception check" is not a valid action declaration in any version of D&D. One does not "make a perception check." One looks around, or stops and waits and listens at the door, or moves very carefully and slowly down the corridor while testing each flagstone, or runs their fingers along the edges of the old desk, or carefully pulls one book off the shelf after another. There is no "perception check" in the fiction of the game world. Stop doing that. Tell me what you DO.

I have had this argument with players constantly, and every time remind them that they need to explain what they are doing, how they are "making a perception" check. For a couple of them, itis just ingrained 3.x habits that they are working to shake. But for a couple others they just can't seem to grok that "I make a perception check" is not an actual thing.

::sigh:: /end rant

While I understand your rant, I don't really think it's fair.

::begin counter-rant::

A lot of people play in terms of expressing mechanics and systems, not just giving narratives. The general statement "I make a perception check" is just another way of saying "I look around and see what I see, hear what I hear, and so forth, to see if anything strikes me as odd or out of place." There is no need to declare that statement over and over again when they don't want something specific IMO. Now, if they want something specific, maybe explain that to them?

When describing an attack, you might say "I attack the chimera" but then are you going be nit-picky and say, "With what?" to which the player will respond, "Duh, with my longsword!" And then you continue, "How with your longsword?" And the player gets up and vents their frustration on you insisting that they expound on every action they want their character to take when their intent is obvious. You don't have to say, "I attack the chimera by swinging my longsword in a wide arc hoping to lob off one of its head."

However, players understand if you are attacking for a specific purpose, "I want to knock the guard prone," you have to state that is the intent of your attack. But IMO it is just as valid to say, "I want to take the Attack action and use my attack to try to knock the guard prone."

Now, back to the perception issue. With such a broad, non-specific action I am only going to reveal superficial information based on their ability check result. IF the player wants to be more specific, then that is great, and I will gear the results towards their specific action, such as "I look for a hidden latch in the bookcase".

Anyway, it really depends on the player IME. Some love to be descriptive in what they are doing, others prefer mechanic/system expressions. I often see it more in newer players, but even veterans can "short-hand" their actions from time to time. I explain to players that the more general their statements, the more general the response. If they want specifics, get specific.

::end counter-rant::

Finally, you can just stare at them blankly when they make such a statement as "I make a perception check" and wait for them to elaborate.

 

[Thomas Shey]

When players do this to me, I respond with: What are you doing? What does that look like? It wouldn’t be sufficient to declare “I make an attack roll” in combat without establishing the target(s), so the same should be the case for skill checks.

As long as "I look around and listen carefully" is an okay answer, but if it starts getting much farther down than that, unless there are different skills involved ("Spot" and "Search" in some games for example) it starts to smack too much of moving into pixelhunting territory for me.

 

[Celebrim]

This is a variation on an old debate that I have had many times at EnWorld.

"I search the room" in whatever form that proposition occurs is one of the most useful shorthands and simultaneously one of the most problematic propositions that a player can make. Consider the situation of the crime boss who has three paintings in his office. Behind one is the safe containing his valuables, and behind two others is an engraved symbol of death. What happens in this room after you've been validating "I search the room" as a GM and the player offers it?

That said, I think this particular case is less problematic because if I had to guess Perception checks are not short hand for an active proposition but something that occurs passively. And passive checks are IMO not the province of the player anyway, but something managed by the DM. A player never has to tell me specifically that they are listening or seeing or smelling the environment in a passive way. They may need to tell me that if they are focusing on a particular aspect of the environment like, "I motion everyone to silence while I put my ear to the door and listen" or "I visually inspect the stone sarcophagus" or "I unstopper the bottle and carefully sniff the contents, taking care to not touch or spill anything." But in general, no one has to walk into the room and say, "I try to see things." and telling me "I'm trying to see things." doesn't change the situation. I assume of course they are trying to see things.

 

[Charlaquin]

this seems so backwards to me.

if I run a rogue for 20 levels (say 2ish years) and have gotten real good at describing my huge stealth and huge search for trap checks, then we start a new campaign I start a 1st level wizard I the player get to port that out of game skill to a new character?!? that seems to be the opposite of role playing.

It’s not a matter of “describing huge [whatever] checks.” It’s a matter of paying attention to the description of the environment and describing actions you think are likely to lead to accomplishing your goals.

 

[Mannahnin]

No, I get it. You want to make a check, because you consider checks to be the way to accomplish goals. What I’m trying to express to you is I don’t use checks that way. I use action declarations to determine if a goal is accomplished, and if anything bad can happen as a result of trying and failing to accomplish it. In the latter case, and only in the latter case, I use ability checks to determine if that bad thing happens. So it’s weird to want to make a check, because it suggests you want a risk of a bad thing happening.

Agreed. And as pointed out earlier in the thread, actually telling the DM what your character is doing allows them to adjudicate the action better and any risks.

If from the doorway my character can't see the assassin hiding in the alcove to my left, then what I declare next makes a big difference. If I say "I want to make a perception check" that's unhelpful to the DM. If I say "I toss my torch into the middle of the room to try to light the place up better" then the DM knows I still can't see the assassin because he's not in LOS. But maybe the assassin will react in some way to that torch. If I say "I move into the middle of the room and look in all directions" I may just AUTOMATICALLY see the assassin because I now have direct LOS into the alcove where he was hidden.

OTOH, say there was no assassin, but instead a pit trap concealed under the rug in the middle of the room. If I threw my torch onto the rug, there's a good chance I just revealed the trap! Whereas if I instead walked into the middle of the room and looked in all directions, I've walked into the trap!

If I just want to roll dice and expect the DM to explain what's actually happening in the fiction, am I going to be happy if I roll low in the second situation, and he interprets that as me walking right into the trap?

If I know there's a safe hidden behind a painting on the wall, and my player says "I check behind the painting" there's no roll needed. Similarly, if I know there's a trap on the painting, and my player says "I check behind the painting" I now know they've actually interacted with the painting and may have triggered the trap.

We can also discuss shorthand and abstractions and come to agreement, say something like...

Players: "We want to search this room thoroughly from top to bottom."
DM: "Ok, it's a well-furnished room with a fair amount of junk in it; if you want to go through all the junk, inspect the furniture and walls for hollow spaces, etc. that's going to involve touching everything, and will take about thirty minutes. If anything is dangerous to touch, I'll randomize which one of you was searching it. Is that ok?"
Players: "Yes, that's fine. Except none of us want to touch that demon statue you described earlier, and Mig the Mage is going to wait out in the hall on watch while we do it; he's low on HP."
DM: "Ok, fair enough. Since there are only three of you searching instead of four, we'll call it forty minutes, cool?"
Players: "Cool."

And then the DM calls for any rolls or automatically reveals anything he thinks would automatically be found with that kind of search.

 

[Swarmkeeper]

but does your determination of if there is a chance take the character skill into account? does the same declaration (as detailed or not) have the exact same 'chance of failure' i the roll would be at +17 as if it is at -1?

If a player invokes some specific class or racial ability or something from their PC's background or backstory that helps with the approach to a particular action, that might grant auto-success.

If an ability check is warranted, however, the DC for a given challenge will be adjusted based on the goal and approach of the character (or it could be an opposed roll). DC is not set based on class or level.

In the case of sneaking past the guard by crawling through some shadows, the rogue with +17 stealth is going to succeed more often than the wizard with -1 stealth (barring some magical or other intervention, I suppose).

 

[Charlaquin]

your not?!?!?!

Not last time I checked

but I also can only describe how I try to hide not if you see me or not... there is nothing about an attack roll that doesn't translate to stealth/perception

Right, the DM determines whether the other creature sees you or not. And to make that determination, it’s important for them to know how you try to hide. If you put a box over your head, that’s probably going to fail. If you stand behind the curtains, that might succeed or fail, so a check is probably in order. There might be a case where, based on how you hid, the DM determines the other creature has no reasonable chance of finding you.

 

[Celebrim]

this seems so backwards to me.

if I run a rogue for 20 levels (say 2ish years) and have gotten real good at describing my huge stealth and huge search for trap checks, then we start a new campaign I start a 1st level wizard I the player get to port that out of game skill to a new character?!? that seems to be the opposite of role playing.

Oh, look, it's the old "Mental skills are exactly the same as physical skills" fallacy this time in the form of, "It's metagaming to use your skills as a player!"

Except that it isn't. Because no one says that a player with 20 years experience at D&D should just forget everything he knows about good combat tactics and pretend he is a complete noob and split the party, place unarmed characters on the front line, failure to focus fire down targets, waste multiple actions trying to gain small advantages, leave gaps in the line for enemies to exploit, give up the high ground and so forth.

It is not only impossible to separate the player's mental abilities from the character's mental abilities, it's not even desirable. Because even if you could separate them such the character is only being role-played on the basis of the character's own mental abilities, then the player would then be reduced to an observer of the character and not a participant in the game. You would no longer have a role playing game: you'd have a role playing simulation.

 

[Reynard]

"I search the room" in whatever form that proposition occurs is one of the most useful shorthands and simultaneously one of the most problematic propositions that a player can make. Consider the situation of the crime boss who has three paintings in his office. Behind one is the safe containing his valuables, and behind two others is an engraved symbol of death. What happens in this room after you've been validating "I search the room" as a GM and the player offers it?

To be clear "I search the room" is not a point of contention (for me anyway). It might require some additional information depending on the context, but it is still an action performed by the character in the world, so it is at least a good start. My problem was with "I make a perception roll ::clatter::".