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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 8150894" data-attributes="member: 82106">Well, the whole concept of 'Perception as a skill' is IMHO problematic. That is, if something is worthwhile to interact with in the story, then gating its appearance on a random check, with the result essentially being a 'change of game state' (IE the narrative goes 'left' or 'right' at this point, figuratively) seems like a very odd idea. I mean, its fine to have an indicator that some characters are 'perceptive' and others are not so perceptive. I can then narrate "As you walk down the corridor, Joe (the perceptive one) spots some odd scrape marks on the floor." Now we have spotlighted this aspect of that character, and that's cool. Joe would also be likely to take an action like "I look for something I can make a torch out of in this area." or "I search for another exit from this room." where success is going to produce the desired result. The problem is, how perception is used in say, 5e, seems unrewarding. "Oh, you go down the corridor, sorry you take 10 points of damage because you can't see the trap." Huh, yeah, wow. Even if I get a check, the results of failure aren't really interesting. I mean, the cool part is interacting with, and overcoming, the trap, not just being told you were too much of a dolt to even see it, please bandage yourself. This is also what leads to the dull vanilla sorts of traps I see these days. Its just a toll bridge, you pay to walk here. No skill is involved at all! No interesting story is generated, at all. At least in the old old days before thief skills appeared (or at least before they were interpreted like Perception) you looked carefully at everything (it was assumed in the exploration movement rate). There was no such thing as "not finding the trap." You saw SOMETHING. Now, what is it? How does it work? Can I fiddle with it and make it so I'm safe from it? If it was a small mechanical/magical mechanism, THEN 'remove traps' could be engaged to figure it out and disarm it. The exact wording in Greyhawk is: "remove small trap devices (such as poisoned needles)" So, basically it was just a test of dexterity mixed with some very specific experience with this sort of thing. You couldn't just roll dice to disarm a large mechanical/magical trap, and such things were almost invariably 'puzzles' to at least some degree, requiring reasoning power and several steps in order to overcome. The terminology reflected this, as all types of "puzzle, trick, or trap" were lumped together in terms of their role in the game as challenges.So, I guess it isn't bad to have "Perceptive" be a trait, and it can have a 'degree of ability' associated with it, call it training or whatnot if you will, but it would be intended to flag how the narrative could proceed, not as a 'gate' that your character had to pass through to get a preset 'reward'.</blockquote>

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