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

[billd91]

To be clear, are you saying that players don't want to decide what their characters think, do, or say? I'm not sure how they're even playing the game if this is the case.

How about we can the badwrongfunisms?
Having a preference is one thing, telling someone they're not playing the game is pretty crappy.

 

[Thomas Shey]

True, to some extent. What I've been describing is the play loop from 5e. The DM describes what's obvious about an environment and then the player decides what their PC wants to do next. It scales just fine. Larger areas might have more stuff to examine or simply take more time to fully search, which could have its own complications (e.g. wandering monster checks).

Whether 5e recognizes it or not, a larger area is intrinsically more likely to have you miss things just from sensory clutter. But its not a simple relationship.

Sure, just looking into the closet might not reveal anything but a more thorough search of the closet might auto-succeed in finding the secret door. Perhaps the release is not as obvious and so we get to an Int(Investigation) check to figure out how the secret door works.

Even an extensive search might not find it. After all, its presumably designed to make you think its something else (the more complicated case is when you know there's a secret door there or suspect it strongly and just need to find it, but if you don't know its entirely possible you just won't realize it depending on your particular skills).

I think the 5e play loop description actually does cover all these kinds of things rather elegantly.

Based on some of your other comments, do you perchance mainly play a different edition?

I'm not actually much of a D&D player (yes, I know where this thread is, but the actual question Reynald was asking has significance well outside of D&D). I dislike enough things about 5e specifically I have not extensively engaged with the details.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Maybe? I pinged him on our Slack to see if he remembers. I’m curious because it was Pathfinder 1e, and I was running official adventures at the time. Paizo doesn’t really do gotcha stuff with Perception checks. digs through old modules

Yes, but if he had bad previously experiences elsewhere, that sort of thing tends to stick with you.

I think it was Dragon’s Demand area A4. There are a couple of mithral daggers hidden in the rubble. The party completely missed them. I can’t remember if/how they got access to the treasury in A12, which requires using the daggers as keys.

Sidestepped it in some fashion I'd assume.

 

[iserith]

How about we can the badwrongfunisms?
Having a preference is one thing, telling someone they're not playing the game is pretty crappy.

That was an honest question based on the previous question and response. It was not a judgment. I don't understand how the game can be played without deciding what the character does. The poster subsequently replied that they decide the ability check being rolled. It would be great if we could all just discuss things without people assuming something is a criticism.

 

[billd91]

When my nephew was little, he would tell me we need to look under the bed and in the closet for monsters.

That's great. Did your nephew also remember to check behind the dresser, open each of the drawers to measure for secret compartments, pull the bedding away from the wall, lift up the mattress, rap on walls for hollow spots, etc?
No?
Then I doubt he was a rogue with trained investigation, perception, expertise in both, and reliable talent. And neither are you.

That's the difference here with some of this discussion. A skilled adventurer probably has techniques a middle aged D&D hobbyist, much less your little nephew, doesn't have when it comes to finding traps, disarming them, effectively searching a room for valuables, and many more. Is it wrong for a player to want to leverage those rather than their own?

 

[Thomas Shey]

In my experience that approach just leads to the player getting even more frustrated.

Or outright irritable. Its basically a passive-aggressive approach to a problem that, if its going to actually be solved, should be solved more directly.

 

[iserith]

That's great. Did your nephew also remember to check behind the dresser, open each of the drawers to measure for secret compartments, pull the bedding away from the wall, lift up the mattress, rap on walls for hollow spots, etc?
No?
Then I doubt he was a rogue with trained investigation, perception, expertise in both, and reliable talent. And neither are you.

That's the difference here with some of this discussion. A skilled adventurer probably has techniques a middle aged D&D hobbyist, much less your little nephew, doesn't have when it comes to finding traps, disarming them, effectively searching a room for valuables, and many more. Is it wrong for a player to want to leverage those rather than their own?

Sadly, my nephew did search the dresser and it turns out it was a mimic.

 

[Shiroiken]

if you don't let me roll then attack me with a hidden threat I am going to ask why I couldn't get a chance to see them

It depends on the situation. Often Passive Perception is used when determining surprise (per the traveling and hidden rules), so no roll is made. If you want to take an action to search for a hidden threat, that's a specific reason, not "because I want to be sure." Also, if there's no hidden threat I often don't bother with a roll, since the outcome is not in question.

 

[Maxperson]

That's great. Did your nephew also remember to check behind the dresser, open each of the drawers to measure for secret compartments, pull the bedding away from the wall, lift up the mattress, rap on walls for hollow spots, etc?
No?
Then I doubt he was a rogue with trained investigation, perception, expertise in both, and reliable talent. And neither are you.

Sure, and I'm sure if your nephew were in @iserith's game and said, "I am searching the room." he would either automatically tell your nephew the result or call for a check if the outcome is in doubt.

Specificity helps with the automatic yeses, but isn't required. If there's something hidden behind the dresser and your nephew says he looks there, he finds it without a roll. If he's just generally searching the room, a roll will likely be called for if the thing behind the dresser is meaningful in some way, or result in a "You found X" if it isn't.

 

[Charlaquin]

okay...

what do I want to accomplish: My character was warned of danger and I want to check out the room to make sure it is safe
What do I do to try and accomplish it: I look for danger...

the problem is "How do you look?" "I don't know...need some help here, my character has skills can I fall back on those"

But I’m not asking “how do you look.” I’m applying the rules for determining what you perceive when you look for danger (a passive Perception check) and narrating the results. This is something that it’s assumed your character is doing all the time, so I would have included that narration in my description of the environment. If for some reason you suspect there may be danger beyond what you already noticed with your passive perception, and you want to do something to try to find it, you’ll need to tell me what that is. You already tried looking around. It’s up to you to come up with something else if you want to do something else.