D&D General "I make a perception check."

[GMforPowergamers]

I know it does, and what I'm telling you is that your argument is just wrong

no i'm not. I may not agree with you, you may not agree with me...but no I am not wrong all 6 stats are what my character is...whay I am roleplaying as

because not only are the 6 skills not the same they cannot be made to be the same and it still be a game. I know why you want to see perfect equality between the skills, but I'm telling you that no matter how much you desire it, it's impossible.

but we can get close enough... and we do so by useing the numbers

Assuming we are playing a typical "theater of the mind" tabletop RPG instead of a LARP, it's impossible to make a player's physical ability intrude into the game world.

I have had players throw things at me I know this is false.
I had a player jump over a chair once too to 'prove how easy it was' so againfase,,, WE CAN we just choose not to (and for good reason)

My physical ability can only inform play if I'm able to act it out in a LARP, and a LARP will introduce other restrictions on what I can act out owing to inability to create any physical location we can imagine and the danger of doing so if we could.

hence why the larps I loved when I was young and healthy I could not play today on a bet.

On the other hand, in the same situation it is impossible to not have the mind of the player intrude into the game.

but you CAN say 'that is great, now make an X mental check to see how well your character does it'

There is no wall of separation that we can erect between the mind of the player and the game world.

I can make a puzzel and watch someone larp beating it.. or I can set a DC and when people try have them roll

The player's mind always extends into the game world. It's how the player can interact with the game world. And as long as the player can interact with the game world, some aspects of his judgement, his intelligence and his charisma will extend into the game world. This not only can't be avoided, if we did try to avoid it then the player couldn't interact with his character and it would cease to be a player character.

you can try at least

No, it is what you are arguing.

nope... and good rule of thumb don't tell people what they mean and what they don't

It's just a subset of your larger argument that you don't want to engage with because you are so angry because you had a bad DM that ignored your invested character building resources unfairly.

but I also am happy with how things have gone in the 20ish years since we changed

I don't think you really do. I think you just want to be justly rewarded for investing character building resources in mental or social skills.

okay please keep reading my mind it is way easier if you assume you know what I want more then I do

Sure. Absolutely you can.

done, you are okay with google/text book knowladge... so can I read your notes or the adventure ahead too?

Absolutely. If your character can achieve 100% concealment or cover, your are hidden regardless of anything else. And I'm sorry, but that is true of everyone's game.

please come to one of mine... you would be suprised... infact if you did I would go out of my way to have creatures with scent and keen hearing all over the place just to show you how wrogn you are... never mind I don't want you at my table

If your character is on the other side of a wall or door from an NPC, you don't expect me to make you roll a Hide check unless the NPC has X-ray vision.

or scemt or if you were moving there as they came in good hearing...

So yeah, anyone can hide in the Armoire and hope no one opens it.

and a stealth check is a great way to check to see if you get it closed.

Are you literally trying to tell me that a character that hides in a chest or armoire ought to be visible to a guard that enters the room because they don't have a lot of hide skill?

yes

Are you literally telling me that a GM ought to say "No" to that proposition because in his opinion the character didn't have enough hide skill to think to do that.

no I am saying "that's a great idea, lets roll to see how well it works"
a high roll it works as intended
a low roll it doesn't work as intended
having a better skill increases odds of high
having a bad skill and disadvantage makes odd of bad result more likely..

At my table, one of the meta-rules is called the Kindergartener rule.

great...

 

[GMforPowergamers]

On this thing in particular, what I think @GMforPowergamers is suggesting is that the poor skill roll represents the clumsy, heavily armored paladin not fully closing the lid or something similar. If so, i don't really have a problem with that, assuming this was a hurried "oh crap!" moment where everyone scrambled for hiding places with seconds to spare.

exactly

 

[Cruentus]

Yup. There's a certain element of "learning to play the GM" which I think people are in too big a hurry to write off, and as you say, it becomes more profound when you move into intellectual tasks, and more yet when you move into social ones.

That may be true in some games, or some GMs, but that's not what I try to do. I'm not looking for someone to describe every step, action, and interaction, I'm not looking for someone to find the magic pixel. I want them to interact beyond the simple mechanics of their sheet.

Particularly after I've described:

The party opens the door and finds a wooden floor, a frayed rug covering the middle of the floor, an armoire (wood, closed), a desk (heavy looking, well made) with papers, inkwells, writing implements, and several small boxes on it, and two chests in the corner (one large, one small on top of the larger, both bound in metal, with locks). There are no windows, the walls are made of wood, and a half consumed candelabra sits on the corner of the desk, candle wax dripping onto the surface.

What do you do?

And there is no magic answer, but for me, it has to be more than "I make a perception check".

Pretend you're playing Basic, and there is no Perception skill, actually, no skills on your sheet, then what?

 

[Reynard]

I agree, but I'm also on the fence as a player and a DM about the second. How would I know I failed the check?

That depends on what "failure" means, I guess.

Going back to the assassin in the room example way upthread, ostensibly if the player starts searching the dark corners of the room because they think their might be hidden danger, the GM should call for a Perception roll IF their actions wouldn't automatically reveal the assassin. This is where specificity comes in, because I am more inclined to force a roll with "I look around in the darkness for anyone" and more inclined to just reveal the assassin with "I grab a flaming brand from the fireplace and use it as a torch in the dark corners and under the bed." In the latter case, there is no way for the assassin to remain hidden per the stealth rules, but it the former case there is more room for interpretation and the assassin might slip from one shadow to another while the PC looks.

 

[Mannahnin]

You describe what you do and how you do it. I respond with information, and maybe require a roll. Generally speaking, things that are easily perceived don't require a roll and things that are hidden might, depending on how you detailed your actions.

And very importantly, in telling the DM what my character does, where he stands, what he touches and interacts with, I establish what RISKS I'm taking.

Just rolling a die doesn't give the DM any useful info about when to spring a trap, or about where the character is standing and when a bad guy might spot them.

 

[Mannahnin]

Agreed. And as pointed out earlier in the thread, actually telling the DM what your character is doing allows them to adjudicate the action better and any risks.

If from the doorway my character can't see the assassin hiding in the alcove to my left, then what I declare next makes a big difference. If I say "I want to make a perception check" that's unhelpful to the DM. If I say "I toss my torch into the middle of the room to try to light the place up better" then the DM knows I still can't see the assassin because he's not in LOS. But maybe the assassin will react in some way to that torch. If I say "I move into the middle of the room and look in all directions" I may just AUTOMATICALLY see the assassin because I now have direct LOS into the alcove where he was hidden.

OTOH, say there was no assassin, but instead a pit trap concealed under the rug in the middle of the room. If I threw my torch onto the rug, there's a good chance I just revealed the trap! Whereas if I instead walked into the middle of the room and looked in all directions, I've walked into the trap!

If I just want to roll dice and expect the DM to explain what's actually happening in the fiction, am I going to be happy if I roll low in the second situation, and he interprets that as me walking right into the trap?

If I know there's a safe hidden behind a painting on the wall, and my player says "I check behind the painting" there's no roll needed. Similarly, if I know there's a trap on the painting, and my player says "I check behind the painting" I now know they've actually interacted with the painting and may have triggered the trap.

We can also discuss shorthand and abstractions and come to agreement, say something like...

Players: "We want to search this room thoroughly from top to bottom."
DM: "Ok, it's a well-furnished room with a fair amount of junk in it; if you want to go through all the junk, inspect the furniture and walls for hollow spaces, etc. that's going to involve touching everything, and will take about thirty minutes. If anything is dangerous to touch, I'll randomize which one of you was searching it. Is that ok?"
Players: "Yes, that's fine. Except none of us want to touch that demon statue you described earlier, and Mig the Mage is going to wait out in the hall on watch while we do it; he's low on HP."
DM: "Ok, fair enough. Since there are only three of you searching instead of four, we'll call it forty minutes, cool?"
Players: "Cool."

And then the DM calls for any rolls or automatically reveals anything he thinks would automatically be found with that kind of search.

@GMforPowergamers Does this post make any more sense to you?

 

[Swarmkeeper]

No, I'm talking about taking more time. There are things I might (and have) missed if I only spent ten seconds look around and listening for that I might not (and sometimes haven't) if I took the time to take a couple minutes.

Ah, yeah, I get what you are saying now. As DM, I'm not going to hide anything that is otherwise obvious in my initial description, hence my thinking that "I take a second look around" was not worthwhile on its own to reveal something new as a declared PC action. I also will telegraph dangers in my descriptions so as to avoid gotchas. If the player, in response to my description says something along the lines of "something seems off, I signal to the group to be quiet and listen", that would be reasonably specific as a next action and possibly reveal something new about the scene.

 

[kenada]

As long as "I look around and listen carefully" is an okay answer, but if it starts getting much farther down than that, unless there are different skills involved ("Spot" and "Search" in some games for example) it starts to smack too much of moving into pixelhunting territory for me.

The goal is to get the intent of declaring the skill use. Are they looking out for danger? Trying to find hidden treasure or traps? It’s a conversation, so there may be some back and forth clarifying the intent. I think your example should be fine, but I’d likely follow up for clarification to make sure everyone shares an understanding of intent.

What I’m not seeking is very specific action declarations. You can tell me how you’re searching a specific area as part of establishing the intent that you are looking for hidden compartments, but unless you disclaim* looking anywhere else, then I think it would be fair that you find the hidden compartment in another part of the room.

---

* I once had a player do this, so you never know. I was going to give him the treasure that was buried hidden in some rubble, but when I asked for clarification, he said specifically he was not doing anything other than stand there and scan the room.

 

[Reynard]

* I once had a player do this, so you never know. I was going to give him the treasure that was buried hidden in some rubble, but when I asked for clarification, he said specifically he was not doing anything other than stand there and scan the room.

THAT's a player expecting a trap!

 

[Celebrim]

at first... these ways of doing things were reactions to bad actors (both DM and Players) none of those are with us anymore and have not been in editions and over a decade BUT what we found was doing it this way opened up new doors and ways to play and in general made the game more fun for us all.

Without seeing your process of play directly, I can't really have an opinion on it. It's going to take a lot more description from you about a whole lot of scenarios before I even have a grip on what your process might. As a guess, I imagine you are pushing fortune to the beginning just as hard as you can to minimize the effect of the proposition and maximize the effect of the fortune, using heavy DM improvisation to justify the fortune retroactively. That's just a guess. And that is a valid way to play and have fun with it, but it doesn't get you as far as your extreme position that the game shouldn't be about player skills being tested at all. It just reduces to some extent the complexity of adjudicating propositions by simplifying it, though it will require good imagination to avoid straining credulity regularly.

So even when teaching new players 5e I default to 'your character knows better'

On the other hand, that sounds like flat out railroading and playing characters for them. See my essay on Techniques for Railroading.

wrong...the point of the game is not to test me...

The point of the game has to do with the aesthetics of the players, that is, what they enjoy about the game. But it's impossible for the game to not test you if the game has consequences.

lets say I know that (out of game me the player) there is poison on the door knob... but my character doesn't. I would fall for the trap than use my out of game knowledge.

I had this stance like 30 years ago and it doesn't work. The problem with trying to not use information you gained OOC is that you can't enter into a state where that information doesn't influence you. In your case for example, you can't know whether or not if you didn't have that knowledge whether you would have fallen for the trap. It could be the case that if you didn't know that there was poison on the door knob, you would have still avoided the trap. So now in fact you are deciding to fall for the trap because you know that it is a trap, which is still metagaming. So then, having realized this I decided to start rolling a dice or flipping a coin "to see what my character would do", and that gets us back to my point that if we perfectly divorced player knowledge from the game we would cease to make meaningful choices. At that point, I stepped back from my assumptions (which were similar to the ones you have now) and started reevaluating things.

no what makes it a role playing game is trying my best to play the role of someone that could be very alien to me.

But that isn't at all incompatible with what I'm telling you. You aren't refuting my point, you are just adding something tangential to it.

what part do YOU think i want to test me?

You've already admitted that you don't want to abstract the decisions in combat down to a tactics check. I can't know the full range of things that you're willing to decide are valid tests of player skill until we've talked more but I guarantee you it is a long list.