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

[GMforPowergamers]

Remember in the example given the only two party members were a fighter and a bard. Neither are wisdom based characters, and having a 14 wisdom for both of them is actually pretty decent I'd say.

and bards are a skill class... one that gets expertise... and the common uses of it are to pump the skills most used (and perception is AWAYS the hightest used in my games)

Sure, maybe they could have a 16 but... it really doesn't help them with anything OTHER than perception.

and a super important save.

I will agree, if there was a cleric or a druid you'd be looking at a 15, and if I was playing multiple characters in a game like this I'd pretty much never make someone who wasn't a V. Human Cleric with Alert so I had 20, but I don't think it is fair to alter the example mid-way through

 

[Chaosmancer]

and bards are a skill class... one that gets expertise... and the common uses of it are to pump the skills most used (and perception is AWAYS the hightest used in my games)

and a super important save.

Sure, but I've also seen people make Wis 8 bards because a bard without common sense is funny.

14 is a respectable number for both of them, good enough to see a whole lotta stuff, just not goblins who get expertise in stealth.

 

[Charlaquin]

They were the only ones in the example, so it would be entirely unfair of me to add more.

Then it was their decision not to bring a more perceptive character with them when looking for a hiding goblin.

So now I should assume Variant humans? Maybe assume we are playing in Dragonlance? I can assume the DM homebrewed them to give them all expertise in Perception too, but that wasn't part of the original example, so it would be entirely unfair of me to shift the example like that.

Variant humans are pretty common. Dragonlance is not the only setting to have free feats with backgrounds, it seems to be becoming the standard. And I notice you ignored the possibility of a mixed-level group or just a group of 4th+ level characters who want to avoid getting stabbed by a goblin. My point is, you are making assumptions in order to force the example to make my position look weaker, which is disingenuous.

No. The GOBLIN succeeds 60% of the time. That is a 40% chance of success for Passive Perception (+6 mod vs DC 14).

Ok, I misread you there. My bad.

That's like saying it is a choice to breath. Looking for danger while in the dungeon is the default stance. And there is NOTHING in the rules that says you can use the help action for passive checks. And maybe you homebrew it that way, but this is literally the first I'm hearing about it.

The help action is a combat action. Working Together is what you do outside of combat, and the effect is granting advantage to any checks the character leading the effort has to make to complete the task. Passive checks are a kind of check, which the DM can use for tasks performed repeatedly, and they can benefit from advantage. Nothing suggests these things shouldn’t be compatible.

Sure, you'll tell me how you do things, then the moment I challenge that way you'll disengage. I'm not interested in bickering or mud-slinging either (though I'm getting very annoyed with this conversation) but if I can't challenge your assumptions, then what is the point of the discussion? "Here is why I do things goodbye" would have finished this entire conversation days ago, because it isn't a conversation, it is an informational pamphlet.

We can discuss how we do things and why we do them, without trying to “prove” the way the other person does them is wrong, can’t we? I thought accusations of “badwrongfun” were looked down on around here.

So counter-ambushes are impossible in your games, because no one ever spots an ambush before it is sprung, and warns their side?

No, but a well-set ambush is quite hard to spot before it’s sprung. Usually doing so requires being stealthy, and probably scouting ahead. But none of this makes a secret door a hazard, any more than a normal door is a hazard, or a blind corner is a hazard, or darkness is a hazard.

I don't even know what to do with this. You arbitrarily decide that looking for secret doors is different than looking for traps, hazards, and ambushes, then decide that it is impossible to spot an ambush before it happens.

The decision isn’t arbitrary, and I have made no decision that ambushes are impossible to spot before they happen.

I guess the passive perception for traps just gives advantage on the roll to avoid them, since they would still go off?

No.

I have been saying they walk to the center of the room looking for traps this entire time. That was why we had that ENTIRE conversation about intent, because the intent was they were looking for traps.

Looking for traps was what you were saying was the goal, not the approach. Now, granted, “I look for traps by looking for traps” would have been redundant; that’s why I say it’s not a specific enough approach.

So now we are back at the frickin beginning of the conversation. "I move to the center of the room looking for traps" isn't specific enough. Because using your eyes isn't specific enough. So, let's just take this to the logical conclusion.

"I carefully crawl towards the center of the room, 1 inch at a time, tapping my 10 ft pole on every surface while jerking back in case I activate a trap." That's specifc enough, and I'll do that in every room and hallway now, because that's what it seems to take to not just automatically be hit by a trap.

There are many other ways you could avoid automatically getting hit by traps, but that’s a perfectly acceptable way to do it. I don’t know how the crawling part is supposed to help, but your call I guess.

I'm sure I'll be impaled by the spikes that shoot from the floor for being on the ground for too long, but I'm going to fail no matter what I do it seems.

That’s a silly assumption to make. No, that won’t happen. You seem to have gotten the idea in your head that I’m actively trying to “gotcha” players, but I can assure you that is not the case.

Well, at least until I make my new character who has mage hand and a stick and can carefully poke everything in the room from 30 ft away.

Also perfectly fine.

Then why are you bothering to post in a thread talking to me about the rules if you don't actually care to converse about them?

I started this conversation to explain why players act the way they do. Why claiming that they aren't telling you what actions they take isn't true from their perspective, and that in their minds they are doing exactly what you are asking for. Why your and other peoples claims of "it isn't that hard" misses that it seems to be far harder than you think.

Doesn’t seem to be that hard for the people I have actually played with in real life. These protestations you and a few others keep making seem to be a uniquely online phenomenon. As I’ve said, my actual experience has been that occasionally players will be a little hesitant about the style, but after seeing it in action quickly catch on to how well it works and end up enjoying it a lot.

If you don't care about any of that, why even bother pretending to have a conversation?

I’m advocating for what I do and why I do it. If you don’t think what I do sounds like fun, or you think my understanding of the rules is wrong, I can’t really do much about that. Feel free to not run the game the way I do if you don’t want to. Frankly, I don’t know what’s in it for you to try and argue my positions away. What I do doesn’t affect you, unless you play at my table, or you want to try it out yourself.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

Doesn’t seem to be that hard for the people I have actually played with in real life.

t occasionally players will be a little hesitant about the style, but

yes... you force your style on others got it

 

[Charlaquin]

yes... you force your style on others got it

I run the game the way I run it. I am up front about how I run the game, and people are free to decide not to play in my game if they think the way I run it won’t be enjoyable for them, though that has never actually happened. If a player comes to me with a concern - they think I have made a ruling in error, or they feel the way I’m running things is making the game not fun for them, I will take that concern seriously, and try to address it. The former has happened, the latter has not.

I don’t know why you think a little hesitance means I have to force people. People willingly take a chance on things they’re a little hesitant about all the time. Often, they find their hesitance was unwarranted, and are glad to have tried. This has generally been the case with players who aren’t sure about my DMimg style.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

I run the game the way I run it. I am up front about how I run the game, and people are free to decide not to play in my game if they think the way I run it won’t be enjoyable for them

do you understand that any argument about how you don't run into this problem IRL only on here could stem from you being

up front about how I run the game, and people are free to decide not to play

I assume that the fact that no one tells me IRL how great 3e 3.5 OGL or PF is comes from the fact that I do not hide my distaste for 3e and related products.
I would not assume that people that eat at my house would ask for seafood eithere... cause anyone that knows me well enough to be invited into my home should know I do not like seafood.

 

[Charlaquin]

do you understand that any argument about how you don't run into this problem IRL only on here could stem from you being

I assume that the fact that no one tells me IRL how great 3e 3.5 OGL or PF is comes from the fact that I do not hide my distaste for 3e and related products.
I would not assume that people that eat at my house would ask for seafood eithere... cause anyone that knows me well enough to be invited into my home should know I do not like seafood.

Except, again, I haven’t actually had the experience of telling someone about how I run the game and having them decide not to play because of it. Nor have I had the experience of someone who was hesitant about it but decided to try anyway deciding that they were right to be hesitant and leaving the game.

Now, I suspect this is in part because I run games in-person, and in-person, people are generally more accommodating than they are online. I imagine if I did an LFG type thing for an online game, I would get a lot of people passing just based on reading the table rules and thinking that didn’t sound fun for them, or joining and then deciding later that they don’t like it and leaving. But I think those people would be missing out, because my in-person players who have been willing to try have all found themselves enjoying it.

 

[SteveC]

This issue can be a number of different things. The biggest thing that I have found is that the GM needs to establish good conversation skills with players. What do you want to do? How are you going to do it? What are the expectations of how the characters behave when in a dangerous situation?

There's a term from old adventure games called "pixelbitching" where you need to click on a very small part of the screen to trigger the interactive elements. Many times this is very hard to actually do and it results in player frustration in extreme.

The tabletop version of this is when the GM wants a specific way of phrasing the process or the location that players want their characters to explore. And then hits them with a gotcha: either nothing is found until the keyphrase is said, or a trap is triggered that an experienced adventurer would have known what to do about.

What's more, there is a certain part of the gaming culture that just has problems visualizing and describing these sorts of things. I played with a lot of people like that as I was growing up, and these days we would think of them as being somewhere on the spectrum. You will never get a high level of detail with people who are liked that, yet they can still be great players.

The key is finding the sweet spot between "roll perception" and describing in-depth every aspect of a search. Here's how I do it:

I start of by being a fan of the characters. That means I treat them as trained professionals in a dangerous situation. The characters can see, hear, smell ... you name it in ways that I am going to have to reflect with words and descriptions. When I describe something, did I bury the lede on an issue and cause them to miss something obvious?

I start by looking at the skills they have and assume they are using them all the time without having to tell me. Perceptive, intuitive, investigative characters just get information and can ask questions at a glance. Someone who knows about traps is looking for them in a dangerous situation. That's the starting point.

Then I let the players ask clarifying questions to make sure they are on the same page as I am. Did you miss the pit in the center of the room in my description? As funny as it would be, no, I'm not going to have you fall in if you just missed it.

At that point, I ask them what they want to do. When we continue the conversation it eventually becomes "I want to do <a thing> by using <a method>." I interpret that through the lens of what skills and abilities the characters have. A trained thief knows how to search a room even if the player might not.

What I end up doing is having a conversation to keep the players on the same page as I am about what they see and what they want to do.

That has been an effective way of handling this situation with players of just about every level of skill, and I mean both player and character skill.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

There's a term from old adventure games called "pixelbitching" where you need to click on a very small part of the screen to trigger the interactive elements. Many times this is very hard to actually do and it results in player frustration in extreme.

I couldn't think of the term... but the 'if you move the (tapesty or bookcase) it is clear no roll but if you don't move it you don't find it no roll' argument... THANK YOU...

I had a Star Trek game like this where you end up on a dark borg ship... and you have to just keep looking for things to click on before they come get you and Q insults you and sends you back in time and back to the start of the level...

The tabletop version of this is when the GM wants a specific way of phrasing the process or the location that players want their characters to explore. And then hits them with a gotcha: either nothing is found until the keyphrase is said, or a trap is triggered that an experienced adventurer would have known what to do about.

going back and forth about this we keep coming across people that would phrase it (something) more like they are making the world react and they need the postion of the PC... but I agree it in every case seems to have a gotcha build in.

What's more, there is a certain part of the gaming culture that just has problems visualizing and describing these sorts of things. I played with a lot of people like that as I was growing up, and these days we would think of them as being somewhere on the spectrum. You will never get a high level of detail with people who are liked that, yet they can still be great players.

I am no expert on the spectrum but I often wonder if there is a overlap with the average gamer.

The key is finding the sweet spot between "roll perception" and describing in-depth every aspect of a search. Here's how I do it:

I start of by being a fan of the characters. That means I treat them as trained professionals in a dangerous situation. The characters can see, hear, smell ... you name it in ways that I am going to have to reflect with words and descriptions. When I describe something, did I bury the lede on an issue and cause them to miss something obvious?

I start by looking at the skills they have and assume they are using them all the time without having to tell me. Perceptive, intuitive, investigative characters just get information and can ask questions at a glance. Someone who knows about traps is looking for them in a dangerous situation. That's the starting point.

I do this too... my notes for Tuesday night's game (that totally didn't get used since they didn't do what I expected) had notes like "__ sees this but __ and ___ see that"

Then I let the players ask clarifying questions to make sure they are on the same page as I am. Did you miss the pit in the center of the room in my description? As funny as it would be, no, I'm not going to have you fall in if you just missed it.

becareful I was told I was taking away agency by clairfying before dropping them in the pit

What I end up doing is having a conversation to keep the players on the same page as I am about what they see and what they want to do.

That has been an effective way of handling this situation with players of just about every level of skill, and I mean both player and character skill.

I keep saying this isn't just a bunch of coversations... it's an ongoing vonversation with some of my best friends for years

 

[Chaosmancer]

Then it was their decision not to bring a more perceptive character with them when looking for a hiding goblin.

And it is your decision to make up a new character to shore up a weakness simply because you don't like the example. But I'm not doing that. Maybe it is a two person DnD game. I'm currently running a game with only a single PC via Dischord. It happens. Declaring the party make up HAS to have a perception expert is ludicrous, especially since, again, 14 wisdom and proficiency is far from bad.

Variant humans are pretty common. Dragonlance is not the only setting to have free feats with backgrounds, it seems to be becoming the standard. And I notice you ignored the possibility of a mixed-level group or just a group of 4th+ level characters who want to avoid getting stabbed by a goblin. My point is, you are making assumptions in order to force the example to make my position look weaker, which is disingenuous.

Right, sticking to the original parameters is disingenuous. Adding new elements of design, new party members, specific race combos, and mixed-level parties (a thing that never happens at the majority of tables) is perfectly reasonable.

Well, since that's the case we can give the goblin a cloak of invisibility and purple worm poison too, right? If we are just going to go about changing the parameters to suite our argument.

The help action is a combat action. Working Together is what you do outside of combat, and the effect is granting advantage to any checks the character leading the effort has to make to complete the task. Passive checks are a kind of check, which the DM can use for tasks performed repeatedly, and they can benefit from advantage. Nothing suggests these things shouldn’t be compatible.

And nothing says that working together gives advantage on Passive Perception, after all, I know I often rule that you can't Work Together or take the Help action with perception, because it is all about what you see or what you smell or what you hear. No one can help you smell something, this isn't something that people can work together to achieve.

But even if we assume it does apply... that doesn't change my overall point? There isn't a decision to look for danger. It is a default state. And if you want to rule that you can grant +5 Passive perception to someone... then it is even less of a choice. Person with the highest modifer looks, other person helps, because you both seeing the same thing doesn't do anything different. And since they are helping, and not providing their own passive perception, they are now vulnerable, but hey, at least they won't have to worry about traps.

We can discuss how we do things and why we do them, without trying to “prove” the way the other person does them is wrong, can’t we? I thought accusations of “badwrongfun” were looked down on around here.

Critique isn't Badwrongfun. I've never accused you of Badwrongfun. Not even trying to prove you are "wrong". But since any all things that challenge your position are ignored, I can't really have a discussion either. Because your consider your ideas impossible to challenge or critique.

No, but a well-set ambush is quite hard to spot before it’s sprung. Usually doing so requires being stealthy, and probably scouting ahead. But none of this makes a secret door a hazard, any more than a normal door is a hazard, or a blind corner is a hazard, or darkness is a hazard.

Normal doors are absolutely something you pay attention to when looking for an ambush.
Blind corners are absolutely something you pay attention to when looking for an ambush.
Darkness is absolutely something you pay attention to when looking for an ambush.

Why aren't secret doors? What makes them so special? They are hidden from view? So are traps. You don't build a trap with a sign that says "Trap here!". You hide it, sometimes really well, sometimes not so well. And since you'd be looking at the floor and walls for signs of traps, things like scrape marks that could be caused by moving stones... you'd also see the signs of a secret door.

The decision isn’t arbitrary, and I have made no decision that ambushes are impossible to spot before they happen.

Well then why are secret doors different than traps and ambushes?

And, since you have made anyone looking for ambushes unable to find secret doors, then ambushes that happen behind secret doors are utterly impossible to stop before the ambush happens, because the player has zero chance of spotting it. They'd need to find the secret door to suspect there is something behind the secret door after all.

Looking for traps was what you were saying was the goal, not the approach. Now, granted, “I look for traps by looking for traps” would have been redundant; that’s why I say it’s not a specific enough approach.

Seriously. You have never once until right now said that the approach was not specific enough. Only once I pointed out that there was completely and totally a way to move towards the center of the room where the trap was AND reasonably have a chance to spot the trap do we suddenly have that the approach was not specific enough.

So, I guess "I go to the East Wall and look for traps" is equally not specific enough. What you mean by specific is you want me to describe the method of looking for traps. Something that I don't actually know how to do, because just like I'm not a auto-mechanic, I'm not a trap-smith. And since my method can fail simply by describing something that wouldn't work to locate that specific trap, I'm utterly without options.

There are many other ways you could avoid automatically getting hit by traps, but that’s a perfectly acceptable way to do it. I don’t know how the crawling part is supposed to help, but your call I guess.

That’s a silly assumption to make. No, that won’t happen. You seem to have gotten the idea in your head that I’m actively trying to “gotcha” players, but I can assure you that is not the case.

Really? Because all I was asking for before was a chance to roll when moving to look for traps.

Now I've got two different SOP's that I'll just read to you every single room, every single time, until they don't work and I get smashed. Because you won't allow the same thing to work every single time. I know plenty of DMs who have decided that since their players insist on using mage hand to interact to avoid traps, that they specifically build the traps to trigger in ways that hit you for not being near the trigger. The logic being that "of course" trap builders would know of mage hand and build traps to counter it.

It's just a matter of time until my bored, droning reading of the same list of specific actions gets me in trouble.

Doesn’t seem to be that hard for the people I have actually played with in real life. These protestations you and a few others keep making seem to be a uniquely online phenomenon. As I’ve said, my actual experience has been that occasionally players will be a little hesitant about the style, but after seeing it in action quickly catch on to how well it works and end up enjoying it a lot.

Right, because all of us who say we've tried it, didn't like it , and had bad expeirences with it are either just wrong or were traumatized to fear success by Bad DMs. That's why you feel no need to defend your practices, because you are obviously right and your approach can have no problems or pitfalls.

I’m advocating for what I do and why I do it. If you don’t think what I do sounds like fun, or you think my understanding of the rules is wrong, I can’t really do much about that. Feel free to not run the game the way I do if you don’t want to. Frankly, I don’t know what’s in it for you to try and argue my positions away. What I do doesn’t affect you, unless you play at my table, or you want to try it out yourself.

Because, again, I came into this thread that was explicitly a rant about bad players doing bad things (declaring they use their skills ) and my initial goal was and has continued to be, explaining why you don't need to "train" these players to be "better" (as many posters early on talked about doing) because what was happening was mostly a breakdown of communication and this bizarre fixation on the player's needing to be hyper specific so they can't complain when something bad happens. Which still seems rather crappy, since the ENTIRE POINT is this fear of the players getting upset when something bad happens, because you don't give them a chance to roll if their declared action MIGHT set off the hazard.

And again and again, the same arguments repeat. "Well it isn't hard, so I don't understand why you won't do it" (Weird when you spent multiple days saying an approach was fine only to backpedal the second you realized it wasn't) or "You just are so scared of failure you can't seek success" or "The players just had a bad DM" or "This would never happen at MY table" or or or or or

What hasn't happened? Someone saying "You know, I can see why players might feel that way, that's a valid point." or "I can see how that is specific enough to narrate"

And since this conversation happens every few months, with people complaining about the exact same things, maybe I'm feeling like it would be useful to actually attempt to reach some sort of real understanding instead of platitudes.