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Message: <blockquote data-quote="ParanoydStyle" data-source="post: 7793604" data-attributes="member: 6984451">So, one of my very favorite features of my favorite RPG to come out in the last few years (Delta Green) was automatic success or failure. If a character has Biology 80%, he is going to automatically succeed at knowing virtually anything about biology that is relevant to the moment. If a character has Law 15% or less they aren't going to be coming up with any useful legal information. I was pleased with this because it saved so much time on unnecessary dice rolls. In Delta Green if you're in combat, you always have to roll for anything, even skills that would ordinarily be automatic success, because bullets and/or tentacles are flying and everything has become violently distracting, more unpredictable and suddenly deadly, which I also think is a good rule.I was pleased to see that D&D 5E had left at least a few areas where this could easily be installed into the game.In my current 9th level Greyhawk campaign, the Barbarian, an absurdly powerful character in a wide variety of ways (all of his physical stats are 20s; we rolled for stats and when you roll for stats, weird stuff can happen), has a Passive Perception of 21 (!) due to a feat or two he took that also gave him a whopping +10 Initiative Bonus. (He's also got an AC of around 20 buck naked.) Anyway, my interpretation of how a Passive Perception of 21 should work is that if there is something secret, concealed, or hiding, or any relevant sound or smell in his general vicinity, I just tell him about it. Usually in some detail, too, like "down the hall through the door at the end of it on the right you can hear what sounds like four humanoids moving around". I virtually never ask him to roll a Perception check. The only situation I would was if he was up against a Stealth or Sleight of Hand roll with a bonus in the neighborhood of +11 (so, a well-specced rogue of his level, for instance). But even then, I usually don't call for a Perception check either, since even if he fails the whole party will know something's up. If he thinks there's something he didn't notice, of course he can take the initiative (no pun) and roll his own Perception check, but this also rarely comes up since I give him so much information up front automatically.Instead, if it's actually possible for something to escape his notice, I basically treat his Passive Perception as his "AC". If I meet or beat it with an NPC's "Attack" (Stealth roll), he has failed to perceive that NPC, and so has the rest of the party. In a sense, in these scenarios he has "automatically" failed, although there's nothing automatic about it as the opposition needed to roll well to beat his obscene Passive Perception.       Does this seem reasonable to y'all? Does anyone else treat very high Passive Perception this way? Same question with "Passive Insight". If not, how do you treat it?Does anyone make even further use of automatic success/failure in D&D?</blockquote>

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