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

[GMforPowergamers]

That's exactly the point. Neither does your character! What does your character do with the scene in front of them to find it? "I roll perception" expecting the GM to decide what your character does for you on top of running the game

no, there either is or is not a DC for finding the clue... I am WAY closer to inspector gadget in real life but I might play sherlock homes... and I will count on sherlock having high skill checks to cover for thing I can not even think of

should never be the answer for many of the GMs active in this thread. If your chararacter knew where the "clue" was it would have been an obvious thing in the room description like a dead body blood puddle pile of treasure or a slumbering monster rather than a clue.

 

[Mort]

This is a fantastic way to express the level of specificity I mean when I say “reasonably specific!” I don’t need to know every little detail of what your character is doing. I just need to know enough to translate the words you say into a little movie in my head. Like a director imagining a scene from its description in the script. Magnificent!

A question, how does "I make a perception check..." NOT qualify under this exact circumstance?

Translated from the jargon it means " I use every resource available to me under the circumstances, to perceive what is around me." It is EXPRESSLY asking for an active surveillance of the area. And can be pictured easily by the DM as such.

Sure, the player is technically asking for a roll, but really they are asking for the DM to provide all available information the character (at whatever level of perception he is capable of) can glean. So the DM may not actually require one.

It's a perfectly fine, if general, action declaration.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

So how do I ask to find a clue I don't know what it is? I'm not a car mechanic, but if I had a skill called "repair" I'd expect my character can repair a car, it falls under the purview of that skill.

yeah 'how do you search' can be phrased to sound okay.... 'what do you say to persuade them' not only can be but is it's own subthread about if cha skills should even be in the game... 'how do you repair the car' and 'how do you pick the lock' are WELL outside the bounds... but they are all skill checks. If I tell you the outcome I want (or it is able to be figured out in the context) and I tell you a skill my character has that I in real life do not asking me to explain it is being a bit of a jerk.

We have skills that let the character notice clues for a reason, and that reason isn't so we have to run down a list of SOP's to find the clues by asking the right question. Why is it I must figure out the correct way to ask for the clue before I can roll to see if I find the clue? Especially if I don't even know the clue is really there?

and the fact that "I look for danger" isn't enough in some games to trigger an active perception check shows that we can't even agree on what action declaration is

 

[GMforPowergamers]

You say that they have to do something that would change things in some way that they'd get a better take on the situation, like shining a bull's eye lantern into the corners of the room, casting dancing lights, getting out a spyglass, holding a listening cone up to the door, moving to a different vantage to get a closer look, etc. as is appropriate to the situation.

I just can't... I can't anymore with this... so some of these actions are okay and will give a check, and some will get an assassin to stab my character and you wont let me know that...

 

[GMforPowergamers]

This one I have actually had happen before. A player once said she wanted to check a door for traps and I said “I’m hearing that you want to find out if the door is trapped; what does your character do to try and find that out?” She kind of blinked and said “something my character would know to do because she’s trained at finding traps and I’m not?” I responded, “I recognize that you’re not an expert on traps, neither am I. I just need to be able to picture what’s happening in the fiction in order to adjudicate the result. So, just give me a reasonably specific description and I will do my best to interpret your intent generously, keeping your character’s specialized training in mind.” I don’t remember exactly what she described, I think she said something about looking all around the seams and the handle for any signs of mechanisms. Since there was indeed a lever on the other side that would be pushed triggering a simple bell alarm if opened, I determined that looking at the seams for a mechanism would indeed result in finding that mechanism, with no reasonable chance of failure or consequence, so I told her “oh, yeah, you don’t even need to roll for that,” and proceeded to describe the lever, and note that she could easily determine that opening the door would set off whatever the trap was. After that, she was consistently one of the most confident and creative players at the table when it came to action declarations, and frequently achieved her goals without needing to make checks as a result.

yeah... once apon a time I would have played that... today I would thank you for your time and leave teh campaign

 

[iserith]

yeah 'how do you search' can be phrased to sound okay.... 'what do you say to persuade them' not only can be but is it's own subthread about if cha skills should even be in the game... 'how do you repair the car' and 'how do you pick the lock' are WELL outside the bounds... but they are all skill checks. If I tell you the outcome I want (or it is able to be figured out in the context) and I tell you a skill my character has that I in real life do not asking me to explain it is being a bit of a jerk.

and the fact that "I look for danger" isn't enough in some games to trigger an active perception check shows that we can't even agree on what action declaration is

"I try to persuade the king to throw his weight behind our cause by reminding him of his ancestors' bravery."

"I try to pick the lock with my thieves' tools."

 

[Charlaquin]

A question, how does "I make a perception check..." NOT qualify under this exact circumstance?

I don’t know how to answer that. It is self-evident to me that this is not enough information about in-fiction activity to translate into a visual medium like film.

Translated from the jargon it means " I use every resource available to me under the circumstances, to perceive what is around me." It is EXPRESSLY asking for an active surveillance of the area. And can be pictured easily by the DM as such.

That’s far too vague. If this was the direction in a script, how would one depict it in film?

Sure, the player is technically asking for a roll, but really they are asking for the DM to provide all available information the character (at whatever level of perception he is capable of) can glean. So the DM may not actually require one.

And here we seem to have arrived back at “the player is asking for information the DM (should have) already given them as part of the description of the environment.

It's a perfectly fine, if general, action declaration.

I disagree. It does not tell me anything substantive about what the character is actually doing. It gives me nothing to visualize.

 

[Charlaquin]

yeah... once apon a time I would have played that... today I would thank you for your time and leave teh campaign

That’s your prerogative, I guess.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

Generally speaking, as a DM I rarely need to know the exact things the PC's hands are doing, only the fictional positioning. Where is the character? What are they touching? What are they concentrating on. I'll assume they are expertly doing whatever it is that they do provided I know where they are in the fictional space.

okay... the example many pages ago was

My character was warned there may be danger. I go to the bed room and open the door and you describe the room to me. So I ask to make a perception check. I am told that isn't clear enough so I say "I don't know I look around" and I was told that would bring no new info until I do something and I asked "like what"

I was also given the example that was given had an assassine jump me if I describe the wrong way of searching

 

[Charlaquin]

"I try to persuade the king to throw his weight behind our cause by reminding him of his ancestors' bravery."

"I try to pick the lock with my thieves' tools."

Yes. This. Both of these sentences contain both what the player hopes to achieve and what the character is doing to try to make it happen. This is all I’m asking for.