As I said before, ask 5 DMs when they call for perception vs investigation and you’ll get 6 different answers. I don’t agree with your interpretation of perception vs investigation, but I stopped caring to litigate that particular bit of minutia a long time ago. Now I call for a Wisdom check if the action relies on intuition or sensory perception or an Intelligence check if it relies on memory or deduction, and let the player decide if they think one of their proficiencies is applicable. If you tell me you’re running your finger over the books on the bookshelf (for what purpose? You didn’t say. For the sake of expediency I’ll assume maybe you’re hoping to find a false book or hidden catch or something), I’m gonna call for a Wisdom check. If you’re proficient in Investigation and you think that seems appropriate to add your proficiency bonus for, be my guest.
I get that everyone has their own interpretations, but just dismissing that while at the same time doubling down on "you need an action" seems like it is ignoring the actual conflict here. Because many people have responded with an action, that you have since said is not an action.
And yes, again, I didn't say exactly what I am looking for... because why would I? What value do I get for saying that I'm looking for a hidden catch. instead of just asking about examining the books? By asking "do I find any hidden catches" I may get the answer of no, because the important clue on the bookshelf was the names of the titles of the books. Does looking for hidden catches also let me get that clue? Probably not in my experience, so by being more specific in what information I want, I'm doing nothing but ruining my chances of finding important information.
How is the goblin hidden in the corner? If it’s behind some cover or concealment, you’re not going to find it just by looking with your eyes. If it’s just hiding in the darkness, you’re not going to see it unless you have a light source or Darkvision… in which case it wouldn’t be hidden from you. So, I don’t see any way just looking at the corner could result in you noticing the goblin. You are going to have to do something to try and find it, and if that something has an uncertain outcome, I’ll call for an ability check to resolve that.
But this is 100% the problem. Perception is the skill to find a hidden creature. It is impossible to hide without concealment or cover. If they don't have cover, they cannot be hidden, period.
So, I have to do something, which isn't noticing, to use the skill for noticing. Do you see how this is a fundamental issue? You are completely cutting off the ability to utilizing the skill, by demanding a non-existent action.
“I look around” is good enough for a perception check, and since looking around is something a character is always doing (assuming they can see, I guess), they are performing that action continuously over time, so I use a passive check to resolve it, as per the rules. If you want to find out if there is something hidden in the environment that was not revealed by your passive perception check, you’ll need to take another action.
So, perception is a dead skill in your games, the only use of it is to increase your passive perception, because that is the only thing that ever matters. That's what I'm getting from this, because you are demanding an action, but you can't actually give any actions just "something other than trying to perceive"
Because, again, as was stated earlier, if you are just passively telling them everything their perception gets them, but they know that passive is only a 10+mod, then they may want to roll because there is something they could have missed. But they can't roll, because they need to determine some action other than perception to utilize their perception.
Yes, just like how if I’m trying to find my keys and I don’t know where they are, I will fail if I look in a place that isn’t where they are. That’s… how looking for stuff works.
Only if the DM doesn’t provide them any information they can use to inform their decisions. This is why telegraphing is important. Players need information to make informed decisions, they need to have a clear picture of the environment to interact with it in meaningful ways.
My keys are on my desk, if someone looked in my room, they might not see them, because while they are out in the open, my desk has a decent amount of clutter. But if they looked again, they might see them. The outcome is uncertain, but the action is the same.
And if you have described the scene in perfect detail, with every relevant thing, but the players think something is hidden or they missed something... they may want to attempt to see the thing they missed. But that isn't an action they can take, according to you.
Again, only if the DM doesn’t make good use of telegraphing, and ideally, time pressure. A source of pressure like regularly-timed checks for wandering monsters or other complications encourage players to be economical with how they decide to spend their characters’ precious time, and telegraphing enables them to do so by giving them enough information to determine what to prioritize.
So, punish people for declaring specific actions instead of general ones, after refusing them the chance to use general ones, to force them to keep moving. Telegraphing is important, but if you are describing an entire room in detail, they might miss you telegraphed something. They might think you telegraphed something that you didn't.
This is undesirable because it puts the burden of deciding what the character is actually doing in the fiction on the DM.
They've told you what they are wanting to do. You are just refusing to allow them to do it. Trying to push them to declare specific discrete actions, instead of allowing them to make general actions. And I don't understand why.
Look, you know what you hope will happen if you succeed on a Religion check or whatever, just tell me what that is. Otherwise, I won’t know if what you hope will happen is possible or not.
I want to know, what I don't know. How is that not clear? I, Chaosmancer the player, do not know anything about this idol beyond what you have described. Manser the Cleric of the Divine Light, probably knows a lot about religious idols. What does he know about this idol?
Again, it would be stupid of me say something like "I want to know if this idol is used in fertility rituals" because then you can say "No, it doesn't appear to be" and I've completely missed that the idol is a desecrated war idol, because I didn't ask about that. But also, why would I ask about that? I have no idea what this idol is, so I don't know what to ask.
You assume that there’s some hidden information I’m locking behind guessing the correct thing to ask for. This is not the case. I will include pertinent details in my description of the environment, because that’s my job as DM. If it’s unusual for an idol of Shar to be made of purple amethyst, and that’s something the character should know based on their background, I’m just going to tell them so. Asking them to roll a check for it would be silly, because checks can fail and if it’s something their character should know, they shouldn’t be able to fail at it. If they want to know something about it that I didn’t include in the description, they’re going to have to tell me what else they want to know because I can’t read their minds. And they’re going to have to tell me how their character might already know that or how they go about trying to learn it so I can determine if it can work or fail to work.
So, you have never included an item of which details you didn't immediately tell the party were important? Frankly, I have a hard time believing that. If the idol is important, it is important because it is a clue or something they were sent for, and you aren't going to just tell them what the clue is and what it means for the larger situation.
You keep saying you can't "read the player's mind" but it is really simple. They want to know what the important information is. You know what the important information is, because you placed that idol there for a reason. If you didn't and there is no important information, then you can just tell them "There is nothing special about the item, unless you want to know more about the deity/religion?"
So, either you are telling them everything they could possibly learn from a roll, because they should know it, or you know what information they are likely asking about, because it is the stuff you didn't tell them. And if it is something they can't possibly know, you tell them there is no need to roll, because they don't know anything about it. There is no 3-D chess here, the player's mind is not some unfathomable swamp you cannot possibly understand. Their intent is very clear.
Great, then they should say so. I can’t read their minds.
How is "I want to know everything I could possibly know about this idol." so fundamentally different than "Can I roll religion?" after you finish describing the idol. Those are the exact same statements.
Because maybe they could have picked that information up somewhere other than where they acquired their proficiency from. People pick up random bits of information from all over the place, not just formalized training. Heck, the character doesn’t even need to have had any formalized training to potentially know something. Saying “Oh, I had a cousin who was a cleric of Shar, do I remember anything else about idols from stories he told me,” even if it’s made up on the spot, provides a bit of fun roleplaying color and gives me something to latch onto to assess if a check is necessary and what the DC should be if it is.
And suddenly everyone's "friend's second-cousin's mother" gets randomly brought up because they happen to apply, to justify asking for information that they should just be able to ask for anyways.
I've seen people do this, everyone just starts spouting off nonsense they forget five minutes later to try and justify making the check. No thank you. I'd rather just let you make the check. Especially since, you probably don't know everything that your character could possibly know. After all, we pick up random knowledge from everywhere.
Well, again, I call for ability checks and let the player determine if they think one of their proficiencies is relevant. But, back when I would call for skills explicitly, I would generally call for Perception any time I would now call for Wisdom (which is to say. when success hinges on sensory awareness) and Investigation when I would now call for Intelligence (which is to say, when success hinges on deductive reasoning). I actually find myself calling for the former much more often than the latter.
Alright, so which action would get you to call for an ability check to notice hidden things in the room you just described?
I mean I try not to expect anything in particular and simply to respond to what the players do. But, if you want an example of something I as a player might do in response to an NPC being described as unusually sweaty, I might say, “I pay close attention to his body language to see if I can spot any notable tics or tells.” And if a player declared that action, I might have the NPC roll Deception against the PC’s passive Wisdom (Insight) if he lied.
So, the player doesn't roll. They just state the obvious thing they were already doing (paying attention to the NPCs body language) and you roll against a passive DC. That isn't allowing the player to roll a check.
And this is especially strange since, clearly the NPC should have rolled already, because you were accounting for the player's passive insight when they started talking to the person right? You aren't waiting for an action declaration for their passive score to be applied.
Alternatively, I might want to try to learn an NPC’s personality traits, ideal, bond, or flaws, which Insight is explicitly able to be used to do. So, I might say something like “I want to try and figure out this guy’s bond. I’ll start making small talk and try to steer the conversation towards his personal life, paying close attention for if he seems to show any particular attachment to someone or something.” If a player described an action like that, I would most likely ask them to make a Wisdom check, probably against a moderate DC (so 15) unless I had a good reason to go easier or harder, and say “on a failure he’ll catch on that you’re trying to get leverage on him.”
Okay, that's a decent usage of it. Never seen it, because nobody at my tables has ever once tried to figure out an NPC's trait, ideal, bond or flaw this way. But I could see the use case.
Question. If the PC said they wanted to get the lay of the land at a party, basically getting the traits, ideals, bonds and flaws of multiple people by repeating the action over the course of several minutes, would you have them roll, or take the passive?