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

[GMforPowergamers]

So there is so many assumptions I don't even know where to start.

But the most important assumption here that is just wrong is that it doesn't matter if you don't know how to describe it well. It doesn't matter if you stutter and stammer. It doesn't matter whether what you say is awkward and hesitant when you are trying to give a stirring speech along the lines of Henry V. That's not important about what you say because your character's skill matters the most. What's important about what you say in as much as is going to inform play is that your statements give me intent, and that it characterizes your character as something other than numbers on paper, and it tells me how to respond. It creates a concrete transcript of play so that when the warden asks the guard, "Why did you let the Scarlett Pimpernell pass?" he doesn't respond, "Because he fast talked me."

All the horror stories you've been through only prove that some GMs are bad, and every GM makes mistakes. That's all they prove.

these are not based on the assumptions of my bad 2e and 3e games. these are based on things said in this very thread... people who said that 2 different declarations can have automatic pass and automatic fail.

once you have that as the 3 options auto pass/roll check/auto fail you face this issue that again will break my immersion. the idea of player skill trumping character skill... now if you would ask "how do you calm the queen" and the player says he slaps her like what worked in that old movie the other night and you say 'well i doubt that will work but make your check' then see how the roll goes... or if YOUR idea...

lets say that the PC with high cha skills maybe even a feat or invocation to help cha skills, and he needs to get past the guards and you ask what he says, and I will let you pick... something YOU personally think is a dumb thing to say. Tell me what that player says and then how you react.

the example of the player with a high cha skill wanting to calm down a crying queen and

In our real world. Let me repeat that. In our real world. The character sheet is an abstraction of the character in the imagined universe. It's a very limited tool for interacting with that imagined character and some of the character's interactions with the imagined universe. But the character in the imagined universe is presumably real, and the character sheet only abstracts out some useful bits of him (or her).

correct... it's like having a psychological report, an athletic assessment, and and a list of all of there skills and school grades. it wont tell you everything, but it WILL tell you a lot. sometimes things can surprise you, and someone with weak muscles can lift that big boulder that one time, or sometimes a coward can gather some internal strength and stand up to the bully even though there psychological assessment says they wont.

now some of this is the fickle d20, some of this is the player choice as it spills into it, and some of it is just the way even our world works let alone theres...

I keep trying to tell you this. Player narration skill has very little impact on resolution.

again, then what happens when the player narrates something that his character should be good at, but he says something stupid or at least something you the DM thinks is stupid?

remember those 'bad dms' all think they are just making a real world. I doubt they think they are being unreasonable (even if I do). Heck some of them even have regular groups that made it work for years.

Player wisdom to choose a good move, like deciding to flatter a character known for vanity, and deciding to be up front and honest with a character known to hate toadies and yes men, might help a little bit but things like that can be discovered through play using character resources as well (like Investigation). And note, the most important aspect of this is not that it takes away from "the face man". The most important aspect of this is it allows social problems to be overcome if you don't have a face man in the party or allows "rerolls" or "do overs" if the dice cause you to flub a scene the first time. (Come back later with more ammunition and a better plan.) It's a primarily way to prevent social encounters from being a locked door you can't open and to add richness and team play to social challenges in the same way say combat has.

okay so again I will ask this now based on this even though i did just above... You say you will allow a non face rerolls... but what about when the face says something dumb, and someone with no skill and no stat worth talking about says something you think would work perfectly how do YOU rule it...

If I miss read you if the 8cha barbarian with 0 social skills can't just perfectly calm the queen or get the princes's help, or haggle down the price because they the player is good and gives a good argument/narration and the 20 cha skills and feat warlock can't automatically botch it by saying or narrating something you think is stupid then I will admit we actually are more alike and I did miss judge you... I await YOUR example

Only if talking your way into the palace is so trivial for you that you can't fail, or the consequences of failure so low that they don't matter.

even if failure gets you arrested and you have only a 75% chance... the difference (IMO) between a detailed RP session of how it happened or skipping to the next part is entirely up to the players and the energy they bring.

maybe there are 4 different things they plan on doing, and 2 of them seem boaring and 2 exciting... and for this I will use like to like

talk past guard, fight the pack of wolves, convince the prince, and fight the demons...

if the players are not into talking past the guards but are really into convincing the prince I see no reason to not let them just roll flat for the one they don't want to and let them go into an entire RP session with the next (backed with rolls)

if the players say "Look at level 4 we killed 3 wolves, we are level 15 and there are 5 wolves can we just hand wave this" I say sure

by the sound of it (and please correct me if I am wrong) you would not let them because even though you know they will most assuredly win with bounded accuracy and pact tactics those wolves can do some damage before the big fight (or at least eat resources) as such as I understand it you would make them play it as it has consequences.

now I don't let them hand wave everything. Where an easy to light moderate threat I will let them either auto win or make a single roll each at a DC i make up to see if it cost them something... but no I wont let them end the big bad or a full threat that way (and that is entirely my opion... because I have TPKed on easy encounters and watched my party slam through deadly ones like coolaid man through a wall)

But even then, I'd still like some idea how the player did it in case it comes up in the fiction. Beyond that, the player himself doesn't necessarily know how easy it is to talk his way into the palace, so he still needs some sort of plan. But even beyond that, "I talk my way into the palace" does nothing to characterize a scene (and make everyone laugh) quite like, "I pretend to be a fruit seller and in disguise get into the kitchens" or "I pretend to be an officious and important noble and intimidate my way through the guards." That's entertainment.

it is... and as long as the players are interested I will 100% match there energy... but what if the players want to skip that and get to the next part because they (in this hypothetical all players agree) just don't care about the little problem and want to spend more time that night on the bigger one?

 

[GMforPowergamers]

Well, let me help you. The rest of us assumed a hostile creature hiding in a room will attack when it has advantage and will deal massive damage from sneak attack (it is an assassin after all). We finished your encounter writing to help demonstrate why we felt that forcing the PC to move and then acting to that move and their intended roll feels bad (Edit: And NOT their intended roll). If you want to say that the assassin is totally friendly and would rather hug the PCs, that's great, but I'm sure you can imagine a scenario where they stab instead, and can use that to understand our context for why we feel like "right position" and "wrong position" shouldn't matter more than the stated intent of the PC to find hidden threats.

so I sometimes talk about an early 5e game where I had a PC assassin (and like 2 other multi class rogues) and we had a whole spy vs spy thing going with multi (3 mostly but at 1 point 4) assassin guilds at war. I actually had something like this happen...

If you want to say that the assassin is totally friendly and would rather hug the PCs

i had a super tense moment at the table where the players out of game knew an unknown assassin was in the room, and we had our normal perception and SOP/Paranoia against there stealth/prep and I had the suprise... the PCs talked for a moment expecting a autocrit sneak attack and got "I heard you were good, I am disappointed that I got this close"
it was me introducing a new potental alley... not a hug per say but it broke up the moment with some laughter

 

[GMforPowergamers]

Immersion is something that's probably based on the group's collective feeling.

yeah in my mind it is doing things as much as possible in character with as little as possible of out of character slipping in

hence why if 1 player gets to 20th level as a rogue and gets good at narrating doing the rogue things... then we start a new campaign as a level 1 wizard with no skills and no background experience with those rogue things... if that player can narrate the wizard to success then that breaks my immersion everytime

 

[Swarmkeeper]

So there is so many assumptions I don't even know where to start.

The first is you are stuck in this paradigm of fear where the problem is the characters are really good, or really smart, or really charismatic or something, but the players aren't and the if the players have to role play their characters they will mess up and fail. Let's just let go of that insecurity as having no place at a table of friends who are all rooting for you to succeed.

And the second problem is that I don't know what they say will not be as good as what the character would do. The character might have a 6 Charisma, and the player might be somewhat charismatic. So equally you have to worry that someone will dump stat Charisma and then pretend to be super-charismatic.

But the most important assumption here that is just wrong is that it doesn't matter if you don't know how to describe it well. It doesn't matter if you stutter and stammer. It doesn't matter whether what you say is awkward and hesitant when you are trying to give a stirring speech along the lines of Henry V. That's not important about what you say because your character's skill matters the most. What's important about what you say in as much as is going to inform play is that your statements give me intent, and that it characterizes your character as something other than numbers on paper, and it tells me how to respond. It creates a concrete transcript of play so that when the warden asks the guard, "Why did you let the Scarlett Pimpernell pass?" he doesn't respond, "Because he fast talked me."

How you say it or whether you say it well has very little impact on the difficulty of what you say. The content of what you say can radically alter the difficulty depending on whether you have figured out clues elsewhere that might unlock secrets of the NPCs heart. But I assure you, if you play a high charisma character you won't get outshown in tests of charisma by a low charisma character very often because ultimately what we are going to test when we test fortune is going to be that character's charisma and not the players.

But let's just stop with the whole "The GM's out to get me", or bad experiences from GM's who learned how to play in skill-less systems who then adopted skilled systems but refused to engage with them and kept playing as if the skills didn't inform play. Because while those things can happen, they aren't the sole alternative to how you play.



Dude, in my game stealthy players can hide in the shadows of the corner of the room, and the NPC isn't going to see them unless they shine a bright light into the corner and stare there. In my game you can treat the difference between being stealthy and not being stealthy as there is no dumb place a stealthy player can hide because he can hide almost anywhere. Heck, by high level it's possible literally can hide anywhere, including in the open in the middle of the room. Anyone can hide in box, even a kindergartener. If a stealthy character hides in a box, there is a good chance the guard won't see him even if he looks in the box. You have got to get over this idea that I'm just trying to play "gotcha" and make you lose.

(When I was 5 I slept over at a cousin's house and as a prank I hid in the bed that I was sleeping in so that when my aunt came in to wake me she couldn't find me and freaked out. Half of stealth is misdirection.)



All the horror stories you've been through only prove that some GMs are bad, and every GM makes mistakes. That's all they prove.



In our real world. Let me repeat that. In our real world. The character sheet is an abstraction of the character in the imagined universe. It's a very limited tool for interacting with that imagined character and some of the character's interactions with the imagined universe. But the character in the imagined universe is presumably real, and the character sheet only abstracts out some useful bits of him (or her).



I keep trying to tell you this. Player narration skill has very little impact on resolution. Player wisdom to choose a good move, like deciding to flatter a character known for vanity, and deciding to be up front and honest with a character known to hate toadies and yes men, might help a little bit but things like that can be discovered through play using character resources as well (like Investigation). And note, the most important aspect of this is not that it takes away from "the face man". The most important aspect of this is it allows social problems to be overcome if you don't have a face man in the party or allows "rerolls" or "do overs" if the dice cause you to flub a scene the first time. (Come back later with more ammunition and a better plan.) It's a primarily way to prevent social encounters from being a locked door you can't open and to add richness and team play to social challenges in the same way say combat has.



Only if talking your way into the palace is so trivial for you that you can't fail, or the consequences of failure so low that they don't matter. But even then, I'd still like some idea how the player did it in case it comes up in the fiction. Beyond that, the player himself doesn't necessarily know how easy it is to talk his way into the palace, so he still needs some sort of plan. But even beyond that, "I talk my way into the palace" does nothing to characterize a scene (and make everyone laugh) quite like, "I pretend to be a fruit seller and in disguise get into the kitchens" or "I pretend to be an officious and important noble and intimidate my way through the guards." That's entertainment.

Well said.


I am still a somewhat baffled why some here are projecting malicious intent on the DM for expecting players to engage a bit more with a basic component of the play loop: The players describe what they want to do

DM: [describes environment in several sentences then...] "What do you do?"
Player (in direct response to the environment described):

"My PC steps into the shadows and remains still until the on-duty guard walks past"
or
"My PC digs out her cartographer's tools to help her examine the map. She's looking for any hidden symbols or alterations..."
or
"I pick the lock with my thieves' tools"
or
"'Step back I got this!' and, with a running start, I'm going to shoulder bash the stuck door"
or
"I listen carefully to the diplomat's words to deduce if he has some hidden agenda"
or
"I'm a bit worried here - I'll stand guard while you two (points to the wizard and rogue) do your thing"
or
"My PC wants to take a closer look at the desk for anything interesting"
or... etc

It doesn't require any professional knowledge, it doesn't require flowery prose, it doesn't even require speaking in first person as the character. To describe what you, the player, wants to do, you just need to indicate how your PC is interacting with the environment the DM just described. Tell us the PC's goal and the approach they are taking to try to achieve that goal. Don't self-call for a roll at our table, just describe what the PC is doing in the fiction. There are millions of possibilities and none of them are wrong - because the player decides how their character thinks, feels, and acts.

The DM, in response to the players' declarations, then can adjudicate those specific actions that have been declared by the players. Note, the DM is not looking for any special or correct words here - the DM is simply asking how the players want to handle a situation.

Very often, the PC will auto-succeed at what they were trying to do, because the outcome was certain.

Occasionally, the PC will fail to achieve what they were trying to do, because there simply was no possibility of success.

Occasionally, the player will need to make an Ability Check for their PC, because the outcome is not only uncertain, but there is also a meaningful consequence for failure. When an Ability Check is appropriate, my preference as DM is to tell the player the DC and the stakes (sometimes detailed, sometime vague) for success and failure - that assumes the PC is a capable adventurer who has a sense of the difficulty of what they are about to try. And, when the d20 comes out, that PC with the +17 Insight and an unused Inspiration is going to feel pretty good about her chances here. Meanwhile the PC with the -1 Stealth and clattering armor might be rethinking their approach to a particular challenge or may boldly proceed anyway. It's all part of the story - success can be very rewarding but failure also has its place in creating a fun, memorable experience at the table.


At this point, I'm not sure paraphrasing these concepts yet again is going to do any good to achieve understanding but thought I'd give it another try to see where it takes the conversation. It feels to me that some posters here are reading and interpreting from a perspective of fear. Fear for their character (a character, mind you, that will likely never play at our table) at the mercy of a hand wringing, cackling, killer DM. (I am truly sorry if that's been an experience for you in the past.) IMO, it would be nice if posters could let go of that pretense, however, and replace it with curiosity. Instead of staunch objections, ask probing questions. At the end of the day, this is just another playstyle in which all participants are actually playing in good faith and looking to create a fun, exciting story together.

 

[Mannahnin]

I have a player who, when I mention something that seems suspicious about an area, will exclaim “I search for traps!” but also sometimes simply “Perception!”

As I am familiar with the player, I know that when they say “Perception!” they very likely mean they carefully investigate the area, hoping to avoid falling into any traps. So instead of having an argument, I just ask for confirmation. “Do you want to search the room?”

90% of the time, they say “yes”, I describe how the character is carefully moving through the room, investigating the flagstones and walls, and, assuming no objection, I secretly roll the d20. If one of the flagstones is trapped, they might trigger it if their roll is too low.

If there are no traps, but the southwest corner has some loose floorboards with treasure hidden, they will find it if their roll was high enough, even though it isn’t a trap.

If there is an alcove with treasure hidden behind a tapestry, they will find it if they roll high enough. However, if they say “I look behind the tapestry”, they will automatically find the alcove, assuming the tapestry is the only thing preventing them from seeing the alcove.

So while I would prefer the player says “I search the room” to “Perception!”, I can usually infer the former from the latter. I also don’t require as precise a description as “I look behind the tapestry,” but specificity can in some instances be advantageous to the players.

The reason why I prefer natural language to game mechanical lamguage is that it makes the experience more immersive to me and (as far as I can tell) my players.

Imagine if the DM was equally lazy in their narrative.

DM: “You are in a room.”
Players: “Perception.”
DM: rolls
DM: “You gain 187 gold pieces and a dagger.”

That would make for an immensely boring game, I think.

Good post. I would likely ask them for a little more description of how they search the room, such as where they check first, any specific areas they avoid or focus on, which would help me adjudicate positioning if there are any hazards, or avoid telegraphing a lack of hazards if there aren't any.

i can understand why in some rare corner cases you might need more information, i cna not imagine it coming up often though.

maybe i don't run enough traps?

again this seems like such a corner case to me...

even in the spy vs spy style game I ran with 2 assassins trying to one up each other we rarely NEEDED details like that... but I mean we give them when we feel like it.

okay I missed this... what do YOU use to climb?

The person I was replying to quoted the rule for climbing. If it's a climbable surface, you just move half speed up it (1/3 speed if it's difficult terrain). At the GM's option, a particularly slippery surface or one with few handholds may require a Strength (Athletics) check. But that's optional, for particularly difficult surfaces.

As a brief aside, it's happened a few times in this thread that someone has quoted the PH or DMG or directly referenced a rule from them, and you've attributed it to it being that person's house rule or subjective preference. All respect for house rules, but it's definitely hindered the discussion a little bit and created additional confusion a few times when someone's answer to a question was based on the written rule, and you've attributed it to being that person's idiosyncratic ruling.

I don't know what to tell you about "corner case". Probably it comes up more in my last couple of years of playing because I'm playing in and running a lot of old school dungeon crawls. Traps and lurking monsters are a regular feature of play, and it is a high priority for me to adjudicate them fairly, give clues and telegraph a bit, and let the players choose where they go and what they touch, so as NOT to "gotcha" them. And similarly, I hope for the same courtesy and treatment from my DMs in such games, and usually get it.

Also, it's part of the original point of the thread, which is about players using Perception (and Investigation), though it's obviously wandered a bit. Detecting traps and hidden hazards are some of the main active uses of perception, so naturally that's what I'm talking about in this thread. The big chunks of my game where people just see stuff and nothing's hidden from them aren't relevant to the discussion.

If I am a player and in a circumstance that feel precarious, my first instinct is to declare something like, "I draw my weapons and prepare for anything." If I am being honest, that's pretty vague (except the weapons part).

Hard to make a good ruling on out of the context of a game. I would say if you did this during travel or exploration, it sounds to me like a declaration that you want to keep watch for danger, which would mean until you shift focus to some other task, any creatures attempting to ambush you would need to beat your passive Wis (Perception) with a Dex (Stealth) check to surprise you. As well, you would have your weapons drawn at the start of combat if it were to break out.

Absent an additional context about this precarious circumstance, I would just say "Okay, great, sounds like you're keeping watch..." or, if I'm a couple drinks in, "The rasp of cold steel! Shounds like you're keeping wash..." Then ask what the next character is doing, if I need to.

From a rules perspective, whatever task they were doing before stops and they are alert to threats. If I decide to have monsters attack the party from hiding, this character's passive Perception applies when determining surprise. They also don't have to use any actions or object interactions to have their weapons at the ready in the first round, should a combat break out.

Edit: YIKES, this post is eerily similar to @Charlaquin's!

Same.

 

[Maxperson]

these are not based on the assumptions of my bad 2e and 3e games. these are based on things said in this very thread... people who said that 2 different declarations can have automatic pass and automatic fail.

once you have that as the 3 options auto pass/roll check/auto fail you face this issue that again will break my immersion. the idea of player skill trumping character skill... now if you would ask "how do you calm the queen" and the player says he slaps her like what worked in that old movie the other night and you say 'well i doubt that will work but make your check' then see how the roll goes... or if YOUR idea...

There's no such thing being talked about, though.

Player 1: "I'm going to look behind the bookcase for the concealed door we were told was in this house and leads to the treasure."
Player 2: "Good idea. I'm going to look under the big rug in the middle of the floor for it."
Dave: "I investigation!"
DM: ":sigh: Looks like Dave is high again. Okay. Player 1, you move the bookcase and you see a concealed door behind it(auto success!). Player 2, there is nothing under the rug(autofail)."

Nothing there had player skill trumping character skill. All of those characters are skilled enough to both look behind the bookcase and see the door, and look under the rug and fail to find it. Now, player 1 could have said, "I search the room for concealed doors." and then the outcome would be in doubt and it would have come down to a roll that he could have failed. While it's not behind the PC's skill to look behind the bookcase, it's also not beyond his skill to mess up and not move it, but peer behind and due to the bad angle, miss the door.

lets say that the PC with high cha skills maybe even a feat or invocation to help cha skills, and he needs to get past the guards and you ask what he says, and I will let you pick... something YOU personally think is a dumb thing to say. Tell me what that player says and then how you react.

This again is not something that puts player skill above(or in this case below) PC skill. Let's say he does say something dumb. Well, even high charisma people sometimes say dumb things. That's real life. Nobody is perfect.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I see this a puzzle/challenge design issue.

Is the challenge in finding the THING (valuable, clue, etc.) or in what the what to DO with the THING once it's found?

The older I get, the less interested or perhaps able I am to describe the physical details in an imaginary space. At least with the particular rigor required to make them a kind of puzzle to solve.

Or perhaps I've spent too much time doing this in media better suited to the task, ie the dreaded 'video game', where exploring complex 3D spaces is more interesting & rewarding.

But when the 3D space and objects therein are rendered using language... eh... that's tough. And not especially fun to run, especially in a long-running campaign. Even when playing old school-style my groups eventually stopped checking inch of flooring with our trusty 10 ft. poles and resorted to scripts of 'standard' procedures.

More power to people who can keep that interesting. But for me, skill checks are fine for most things until the players encounter a special environment or object they need to figure out by hand.

My happy medium for this is give players the information if they specifically look where something is, otherwise allow for perception checks to see if they notice.

 

[Maxperson]

yeah in my mind it is doing things as much as possible in character with as little as possible of out of character slipping in

hence why if 1 player gets to 20th level as a rogue and gets good at narrating doing the rogue things... then we start a new campaign as a level 1 wizard with no skills and no background experience with those rogue things... if that player can narrate the wizard to success then that breaks my immersion everytime

Is there any reason at all that the 1st level wizard couldn't or wouldn't think to look behind a bookshelf?

 

[Mannahnin]

Is there any reason at all that the 1st level wizard couldn't or wouldn't think to look behind a bookshelf?

Right. This comes off as the "please pretend that you're totally ignorant" school of play, which I don't think works well.

 

[Maxperson]

Right. This comes off as the "please pretend that you're totally ignorant" school of play, which I don't think works well.

I'm a member of that school of play, but within reason. Simply looking behind something or searching through a room is pretty basic and anyone can come up with things like that. Let's say that the 1st level wizard, with nothing in his background that indicates skill with searching and no proficiency in perception or investigation, pulls out a dagger and uses the pommel to lightly tap the bottom of the chest in the room looking for hidden compartments. That's pretty metagamey as it goes beyond basic knowledge and he has nothing to indicate why or where he would have learned such a thing. This of course is where I lose @iserith and some others, since I play with more realism than they do.

On the other hand, it doesn't take much for me to just say yes. If said wizard had a twin brother who disappointed their parents by becoming a rogue instead of learning the family magical trade, he could very easily have learned to do that from the brother. Or hell, if there was a 1st level rogue in the group, he could have seen his companion do it. It just needs to be reasonably plausible for me to say yes.