Help Needed - Perception Puzzles.

[Scud.NZ]

Flat field, no obstacles to vision, no attempts at stealth by either side? You can make out a dot on the horizon.

Agreed, if you are actively looking for it. But if you've been walking for 6 hours are you that focused? If we consider a different environment altogether, the city, it has been shown that we tend to have a small zone around us where we are aware of things happening, and unless something exceptional happens (a car backfires, a gun shot) we stay focused in that zone. I'd make the case that after 6 hours of walking through farmland, no-one, hero or not, would give a damn about what's happening on the horizon.

"Surprise should only be possible when something is suddenly revealed within combat range."

Why? If I spot a troop of goblin warriors in the far distance I am surely going to do something different [set an ambush, ride to warn the outpost without the goblins being aware that I had done so] than if I spotted them within combat range [charge, hide, negotiate]

The 3rd edition DMG summed up the difference nicely. It talks about encounters where immediate interaction is possible and encounters where immediate interaction is not possible. It talks about encounters where both sides are aware of each other, and where one side has an advantage because it has not been spotted. All this seems to have been removed in 4ed, because the fundamental philosophy seems to have shifted to the game taking place on the battleboard rather than in our minds.

Your example of "bad old 1st edition" is flawed. Not wrong, I might add, just flawed. Rotten mechanisms like that were dropped in later editions, because they were bad. My argument for a mechanism that allows player choice is not that simplistic. As a direct rebuttal of your example perhaps a homonculus spotted the party earlier on in the adventure from a distance, without being seen itself. The reason the players were surprised when they burst in the door was that the homonculus forewarned the necromancer, who prepared several buffs and cast darkness within the room. "Hell", he thinks, "when those intruders bust down the door, I bet they'll be surprised!" Stumbling into a prepared trap does tend to throw you off a little.

 

[yu gnomi]

Double posted by mistake

 

[yu gnomi]

The rules don't seem to cover encounters at greater than 100'. As much as it defies common sense and real life experience, by 4ed logic, monsters are simply unseen and unheard at greater distances.

I would recommend using hooks to lure the PCs into long range encounters. For example, a lone surviving peasant might run up to the PCs and tell them about a marauding ogre, who is busy feasting on the bodies of his friends.

Since one hook probably won't cover all random encounters, I would design a set of potential encounters (including the hook as part of the design), or develop a set of stock hooks and then decide which one applies best when I randomly determined what monsters they come across (by maybe opening the MM to random pages, until I found a good encounter).

Part of the hook should specify, or at least give guidelines, for details like when PCs start making perception rolls to spot the foes and whether the monsters are likely to be distracted.

 

[ExploderWizard]

Flat field, no obstacles to vision, no attempts at stealth by either side?

You can make out a dot on the horizon. As you get to within 60 squares or so (an American football field) you can tell that it's an ogre and that it sees you as well, though it seems to be busy with some object. By the time you are in bowshot range (assuming it isn't trying to get away) you can identify it as an ogre, and tell that it is chewing on what might be a haunch of meat or something. You also see what might be a humanoid corpse at its feet.

No perception rolls needed unless something is "non-obvious" because it is hiding, in the dark, small and easy to miss, or otherwise obscured. Surprise should only be possible when something is suddenly revealed within combat range.

This sounds like the way to go. Unless there is a big difference in passive perception scores between the party and the ogre then you can just rule that the both parties notice each other at a decent distance.

1st Edtion began every encounter with a d6 roll, 1 or 2 meant you were surprised no matter how ready, careful or forewarned you were. It didn't improve the game. "OK, we've followed the map to the necromancer's lair. Here's a skull-shaped door with a sign saying "NECROMANCER AT WORK, DO NOT DISTURB." We ready our weapons and bash in the door. 1, 2, 3, GO!.....What do you mean, surprised? We KNEW he was in there...."

Not really. The surprise roll was not used if one side were aware of the other. In a situation where two parties noticed each other at the same time, then yes either or both could be surprised. In the example you provided above only the necromancer had a chance of being surprised.