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


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Maxperson

Morkus from Orkus
“Passive” checks in 5e are used to represent the character performing an action repeatedly over time. In other words, your character was already looking around, and didn’t notice the assassin; that’s what the passive perception check was for. To find her, you would need to try something else, possibly something more specific than looking around.
An average over time, meaning some times it's a 1 and sometimes it's a 20, and everything in-between, so they just set at a base of 10. However, if a PC is actively looking around right then due to a player declaration, I want to know whether that moment would be a 1 or 20 or something in-between. The declaration itself IS more specific.
 

Reynard

Legend
Supporter
That's fair, though I think it lands more in the "when the logical modifiers to a roll get big enough, there's no good reason to roll at all" (and yes, I know D&D 5e's approach here doesn't help, but then I've noted I'm no fan of 5e style advantage/disadvantage for a number of reasons).
It's not about modifiers in this example: you can't hide if you aren't concealed and the using the torch example will explicitly remove concealment.
 

iserith

Magic Wordsmith
I agree, but I'm also on the fence as a player and a DM about the second. How would I know I failed the check?
In situations like this, the DM is served well by ruling a failed check as progress combined with a setback instead of outright failure. "You found the trigger for a trap - in fact, you're partially standing on the pressure plate which lowers slightly into the floor. What do you do?"
 

Reynard

Legend
Supporter
Passive perception represents looking around without really trying. If a player actively declares that his PC is looking around, I would give him an active roll to see if he rolls higher than his passive score and potentially sees something that he would have missed.
No it doesn't. Per SRD.

Passive Checks

A passive check is a special kind of ability check that doesn’t involve any die rolls. Such a check can represent the average result for a task done repeatedly, such as searching for secret doors over and over again, or can be used when the GM wants to secretly determine whether the characters succeed at something without rolling dice, such as noticing a hidden monster.

There is no difference in the effort involved between an active and passive check. They are just different tools.
 

Reynard

Legend
Supporter
In situations like this, the DM is served well by ruling a failed check as progress combined with a setback instead of outright failure. "You found the trigger for a trap - in fact, you're partially standing on the pressure plate which lowers slightly into the floor. What do you do?"
It is amazing how many people don't realize that 5E is explicitly a fail forward game. Probably the same people that say the DMG isn't worth reading.
 

Without seeing your process of play directly, I can't really have an opinion on it. It's going to take a lot more description from you about a whole lot of scenarios before I even have a grip on what your process might. As a guess, I imagine you are pushing fortune to the beginning just as hard as you can to minimize the effect of the proposition and maximize the effect of the fortune, using heavy DM improvisation to justify the fortune retroactively. That's just a guess. And that is a valid way to play and have fun with it, but it doesn't get you as far as your extreme position that the game shouldn't be about player skills being tested at all. It just reduces to some extent the complexity of adjudicating propositions by simplifying it, though it will require good imagination to avoid straining credulity regularly.
I don't even understand what you are saying anymore...


On the other hand, that sounds like flat out railroading and playing characters for them. See my essay on Techniques for Railroading.
here is a good rule of thumb... if you don't understand a diffrent way to play but think that the best description is railroading you will almost always be wrong.
The point of the game has to do with the aesthetics of the players, that is, what they enjoy about the game. But it's impossible for the game to not test you if the game has consequences.
circles and circles we go around just see my last 3 replies about 100%/0%
I had this stance like 30 years ago and it doesn't work.
im sorry you can't make it work... we do.
The problem with trying to not use information you gained OOC is that you can't enter into a state where that information doesn't influence you.
again we are back to if you can't have 100% 0% you shouldn't try at all...
In your case for example, you can't know whether or not if you didn't have that knowledge whether you would have fallen for the trap.
but we can make a perception check to see if my character sees it weather I do or not...
But that isn't at all incompatible with what I'm telling you. You aren't refuting my point, you are just adding something tangential to it.
what you are doing is word games to me, and something I have no interest in... if you have interest in learning a different way to the game can work fine, if not fine but this is getting us nowhere
You've already admitted that you don't want to abstract the decisions in combat down to a tactics check.
when did anyone even bring this up?
because sometimes we do... to fast forward through fights we sometimes make single roll combats.
I can't know the full range of things that you're willing to decide are valid tests of player skill until we've talked more but I guarantee you it is a long list.
I don't know that it is.
 

Celebrim

Legend
no i'm not. I may not agree with you, you may not agree with me...but no I am not wrong all 6 stats are what my character is...whay I am roleplaying as

You are not wrong that you character is your character sheet. You are wrong that we can treat mental and social skills exactly the same as physical skills. That's impossible. Whether we think that's unfortunate or fortunate is a different matter.

but we can get close enough... and we do so by useing the numbers

I'm not opposed to that. I'm going to rearrange your response a bit to show this.

You wrote about your process of play:

"no I am saying "that's a great idea, lets roll to see how well it works"
a high roll it works as intended
a low roll it doesn't work as intended
having a better skill increases odds of high
having a bad skill and disadvantage makes odd of bad result more likely.."

Great. That is exactly the same as my process of play. You are describing exactly what happens at my table as well. So we can't be in as much disagreement as you think.

But there is something you left out of that description, and I'm going to try to get you to see it. And I hope when you see it you are going to see where I am coming from.

I can make a puzzel and watch someone larp beating it.. or I can set a DC and when people try have them roll

Yes, you can. There is nothing wrong with either one.

you can try at least

Oh you can try. There are a range of different play styles you can adopt that prioritize or depriotize a player's intelligence, judgement and social skills versus what's on the character sheet. But you can never get of them completely and it still be an RPG.

nope... and good rule of thumb don't tell people what they mean and what they don't

I hear you, but it's just a rule of thumb.

So let's get back to what you left out of your process of play.

Suppose the players come to a walled garden which you describe. One wall is smooth stone. Another wall has carved decorations on it. Another wall has ivy growing up it. A third wall has a tree that is growing near it which has a branch that overhangs the top of the wall.

Four players enter the garden. You ask them what they want to do? And it turns out that they all want to climb over the wall to see what is on the other side. Does it matter which side they use? That is to say in your game are all four of those walls equally easy to climb? Or to put it another way, do some choices that the players make earn them advantage and disadvantage? Because if choices the player can make, whether climbing the ivy or using a grappling hook can change the difficulty of a task, they you haven't taken the player from the equation. Because of choices a player can make do give advantage and disadvantage, sooner or later you are going to get into a situation where the character with weak climbing ability is succeeding more often than the character with good climbing ability.

How far do you really take this fortune at the beginning concept? You hinted that you railroad players in your prior posts using the "your character would know better" method. Do you make the player roll the climb check and then decide based on how well they did which wall and method they climbed up? Or is every wall the same difficulty and only the character skill matters such that the character skill describes the world?

infact if you did I would go out of my way to have creatures with scent and keen hearing all over the place just to show you how wrogn you are...

So, you are really upset by the idea that players might metagame the GM, but you are actually bragging about how you the GM might megagame against potential players?

You are more and more convincing me that your obsession with making sure player skill doesn't matter is actively adversarial GMing. Is that why players throw things at you? I hope that hasn't happened in the last 20 years or so.
 


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