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Message: <blockquote data-quote="mneme" data-source="post: 5114747" data-attributes="member: 59248">No, thats taking 20 (taking 20 standard actions rolling a d20, with no failure result).  Taking 10 means you're taking a slightly worse than average result in an unstressed situation in one action.But passive perception, while it derives from that, is actually somewhat different, as I mention upthread--the real reason it exists at all is so you don't have to roll two opposed d20s when the probability of success if you just roll one d20 for the "attack" is more or less equivalent.  The fact that stealth rolls actively against passive perception, and similarly for bluff vs passive insight makes those skills more reliable while keeping the overall 2 person reliability the same.The problem, of course, comes when you then try to use passive perception/insight to solve the age-old question if "how do you handle someone's character not noticing something without the player knowing it".  (not to mention "how do we stop a game from turning into "take 5 steps, make a perception roll" snoozefest").  The -best- solution to that problem is to make it an active check and have good enough players that they don't metagame it (thus letting them spend encounter-level or daily level resources to boost the check if they want--at a cost of denying the players clue-based retries as they either succeed or fail).  Failing that, KD's solution of circumstance bonuses based on player actions is actually pretty good; it rewards good play (and playing to a character's strengths) rather than good die rolling; one can enhance it by having different decriptions depending on the highest passive perception--no perception lets you get all the info, but the better your perception is, the better a clue you get that there's something to see here.</blockquote>

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