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Message: <blockquote data-quote="iserith" data-source="post: 6842051" data-attributes="member: 97077">I consider the fiction first. There's a little girl in the dungeon. She has some information to share, but she's scared of the croaking monster at the top of the slope. She cries and asks for help. What do you do? I'm not making a Deception check for a slaad yet. I'm just describing the environment (step 1 of the basic conversation of the game). At this point, it's on the players to tell me what they want to do (step 2). Once they tell me, I'm going to decide if what they want to do is successful, unsuccessful, or has an uncertain outcome. In the latter case, I'm going to ask for a roll. If a player says they examine her body language and mannerisms to determine her true intentions or nature, I'm going to ask, "Okay, that's going to take some time interacting with her and there's a monster in the room - do you want to spend that time?" If yes, I will resolve by advancing time as appropriate and having the player make a check against a DC set by the slaad's Charisma check result before narrating a result (step 3). If no, then the player can choose to do something else e.g. push her out of the portal as [MENTION=31754]Lord Twig[/MENTION] suggested.I'm less concerned about how things work in real life and more concerned with the conversation of the game and adjudicating fairly. A passive check is for when a task is being performed repeatedly yet has an uncertain outcome. Passive Insight doesn't apply to this scene in my view. That's more for when someone is observing an interrogation from behind the two-way mirror or hanging back and people-watching at the masquerade ball. They spend time on it, more than is safely available in this scene.The DM describes the environment, then the players describe what they want to do. Your method strikes me as performing that role for the player because you're presuming character action. I endeavor to avoid this. I've already got control over two-thirds of the conversation of the game by design - I don't want to intrude upon the players' third, you know?In my game, you can be the guy or gal with the great bonus to Insight or Perception, but if you haven't put yourself in the fictional position to fall back on those bonuses to succeed, then they are no good. Thus, it's not enough to have the greatest Perception score. You also need to be constantly on alert at the expense of doing just about anything else. Want to track the slaad that ran away? Okay, but you're no longer keeping watch (unless you're a ranger in favored terrain). Someone else on your team is going to have to keep watch.This also addresses the common complaints about passive Perception being too strong. Or the Observant feat being broken. If it's a trade-off, it brings Perception down to a level that is useful, but not many times more useful than other proficiencies.The decision in your game happens largely, and perhaps in some cases solely, at character creation or advancement and naturally leads to pumping those skills. It's too powerful an option not to choose in your game. That's always the case in my experience with DMs who treat it as "always on" radar instead of the trade-off I believe it's meant to be.My guess is not that I don't apply "biological principles," but rather how you handle ability checks in your game. It sounds like you run them more like D&D 3e and 4e where players have an expectation of making checks upon request and passive checks are "always on." That's not how I do things in D&D 5e. I don't think it's a fit, given the rules and paradigm. We can discontinue this line of discussion though as it is not particularly relevant to the topic at hand. Good chat.</blockquote>

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