D&D 5E Does anyone play 5e Perception rules as written?

[Seramus]

I have. It resulted in the players yelling at me for doing it wrong. I pointed out the rules in the book and they didn't care. It was still wrong. Somehow. After that I started listing the RAW for perception as a house rule. That weeded out quite a few players. They felt the need to get mad and tell me about it.

To be fair, I handle most of it on my side of the fence. Their passive is 20? I count it as 15.

 

[Charlaquin]

I do. Everyone and their mother having Darkvision isn’t nearly the problem it’s made out to be when relying on Darkvision to see means having -5 to passive perception and disadvantage on perception checks.

 

[Rabulias]

My point is if an all darkvision party walk around with no light sources, everything outside their darkvision range is practically invisible to them.

So a bunch of orcs can go from invisible to in your face with no chance to see them.

A bunch of goblin archers can wildly shoot in your direction and you'd be blind to them.

How is this different for parties with a light source? Most light sources have a smaller radius than darkvision. Remember that monsters using darkvision also have disadvantage to see the party if the party is not using a light source.

 

[Argyle King]

Party pairs up in teams, with one person doing the passive perception and one taking the help action to gain advantage. Advantage and disadvantage cancel out, so the scouts are all full passive perception in the dark.

 

[Minigiant]

How is this different for parties with a light source? Most light sources have a smaller radius than darkvision. Remember that monsters using darkvision also have disadvantage to see the party if the party is not using a light source.

The monsters are more likely to be stationary and making Perception checks based on sound.

The players are usually always moving except when resting.

 

[Minigiant]

Party pairs up in teams, with one person doing the passive perception and one taking the help action to gain advantage. Advantage and disadvantage cancel out, so the scouts are all full passive perception in the dark.

That's usually ruled as active perception

Aka searching.

 

[ezo]

Party pairs up in teams, with one person doing the passive perception and one taking the help action to gain advantage. Advantage and disadvantage cancel out, so the scouts are all full passive perception in the dark.

Except the person "helping" ALSO has disadvantage...

So, I'm not sure how much "help" they'll actually be.

 

[James Gasik]

My group runs Perception by the book and it's never been a problem. There's always at least 1 PC without darkvision, so the party always has a light source. Even in a recent campaign when we had everyone with it, we still kept using a light source normally.


Technically the bolded part isn't RAW, but a carryover from 4E. It is Jeremy Crawfords' interpretation, but the books never actually detail how to use Passive Checks.

I use the Mike Mearls method, where the DM rolls against the Passive Score, using 1d20+DC-11 when no modifier is given. It avoids the problem of comparing static scores against each other (meaning the DM determines success/failure during the adventure writing stage) and prevents characters with high Passive scores from automatically succeeding every time (even though they will succeed most of the time).

Well he said it in a Sage Advice podcast, so if not RAW, it's apparently RAI?

 

[James Gasik]

I have. It resulted in the players yelling at me for doing it wrong. I pointed out the rules in the book and they didn't care. It was still wrong. Somehow. After that I started listing the RAW for perception as a house rule. That weeded out quite a few players. They felt the need to get mad and tell me about it.

I had a similar reaction when I started using the RAW rules. I started playing 5e in Adventure League, and everyone was running darkvision as it was in 3e and 4e- having come from those games, I didn't question it at first. But then when I was preparing to take a swing at DMing 5e, one player with more 5e experience (who "knew all the rules") was bragging about how his Rogue with Observant and Darkvision was going to ambush all the monsters with ease and I got to thinking "is it really that easy?".

So I read darkvision, saw the dim light thing, found dim light (as well as the -5 to passive Perception rule) and quietly implemented it. It didn't take long before the player was accusing me of cheating or increasing DC's to foil him. I pointed him at the rules in question, right in the PHB. "I'm sorry, but since you've been playing 5e longer than I have, I thought you "knew all the rules".

Petty of me, yes, but satisfying. Since then, I noticed that most of the complaints about darkvision generally come down to one of two things- not using these penalties (or not making them matter) or over-optimized PC's who have decided to opt out of seeing things being an issue (which is a whole other kettle of fish).

 

[FitzTheRuke]

You might be surprised to hear, @Kobold Stew, but I take RAW into account on my side of the screen. It just doesn't come up all that often.