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

[Hex08]

Mt point was already made so I deleted this post

 

[GMforPowergamers]

If I set a scene like, "The Queen is weaping bitter tears", and the player says, "I use Persuasion on her." and I say, "Role play that out." If then the player player decides that because the Queen is bawling he should go up and slap her like this is some 1920's movie where if a woman is hysterical she needs a good slap, I'm not going to roll that as having the same chance of successfully socially interacting with the Queen as a more reasonable proposition regardless of how high the Charisma and social skills of the player are.

this is what I hate...

I want to use my character skill
no tell me how
I will duplicate what worked in a movie
no you dummy that wont work that is the wrong kind of move for my game

At some point, "Your character is too Wise and too Charismatic to act that way" becomes railroading and becomes taking the character from the player.

maybe at somepoint... but not at "My wise and charismatic character knows how to do this but I the player does not"

You have said what you won't tolerate. Fine. I won't tolerate a game that the player isn't contributing to the transcript of play. I won't tolerate a game where the player goes "I use Persuasion on the Queen to calm her down"

funny thing and I brought it up earlier as table jargon...

this is were we get the table joke "Diplomancy"

about a year or 2 after we started doing it this way a long time player who always made barbarians and fighters said he wanted to try sorcerer...and to be the face of the party. He admited he always thought he was too dumb to play that kind of character... and 2 or 3 sessions in he had been doing great when we ran into something that was a social issue and he froze. Like this kid (at the time a teenager) looked like he might cry. I as the DM reasured him that no matter what he said next how smart how swave or how perfect we were all going to make fun of him just as much as ever anyway..,. that got him to laugh but he said something akin to 'I don't have spell that would help but could my diplomacy?' and when he rolled he got a nat 20... so he joked 'look at that I did have a spell, it was the school of Diplomancy'

all these years later even if there is no skill called diplomacy we still joke 'time to cast diplomancy' from time to time

btw that guy plays bards all the time now and talks peoples ears off...he even does cool things out of game like at work and at bars becuse having a few trys that it didn't matter what he said taught him it didn't hurt to try.

and then expects me to tell them how they did it as if I was the only one making up this story. You tell me what you do, and then your characters skill comes into play.

you have missed the entire point of playing a character that is good at something you are not.

I'm not being insulting.

you are

I'm in this field. Yes, a modern RPG simulation would require behind the scenes all choices be predefined in terms that the characters could understand so it would work a bit more like a complicated Choose Your Own adventure book, but we could in fact make it so that the character turned it's own pages (as it were). And the more we learn about creating AI the closer we'll get to having a video game that acts like a GM, even though we aren't quite there yet.

then program a DMless game and make a fourtion... heck just automate a player missing a week due to real life would make you money

And what I am saying is that in the more extreme versions of what you claim your position are, you are literally asking for your ability to choose things as a player to be removed because that's the only way we can take player skill out of the equation for mental and social skills.

you don't understand at all

 

[Thomas Shey]

That may be true in some games, or some GMs, but that's not what I try to do.

While I acknowledge the rest of this statement, there's two things here: 1. What you try to do and what you succeed at are not necessarily the same things, and 2. You're not everyone.

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.

If you note, I'm not intrinsically hostile to that. But there are some posters in this thread who absolutely want to throw the majority of the result to the narrative ability of the player and the minority to the character skill, and that's not a route I can support.

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?

Well, to be blunt, I play a different game. OD&D's schematic mechanical structure was not a virtue from where I sat even then. There's reasons I wandered off into RuneQuest for a number of years, and that wasn't a small one.

 

[Thomas Shey]

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.

That's fair, though I think it lands more in the "when the logical modifiers to a roll get big enough, there's no good reason to roll at all" (and yes, I know D&D 5e's approach here doesn't help, but then I've noted I'm no fan of 5e style advantage/disadvantage for a number of reasons).

 

[Thomas Shey]

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.

A lot obviously depends on the scale of the area being examined, too. But even if you've got something like a closet, a casual look is pretty likely to fail to notice the hidden release for the secret door in the back (even with someone with good Perception) but a more extensive look for detail might not. Its hard to one-size-fits-all these kinds of things.

 

[Thomas Shey]

* 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.

Paranoia about triggering traps, I'd guess.

 

[Maxperson]

Emphasis mine.

Not to quibble, but "I look around" shouldn't trigger a perception check. it should provide all the information someone would gain from looking around, without a roll.

Depends. MANY times in my life I've been looking for something small and after not seeing it the first few times I look around a room, finding it sitting top of something out in the open the third time. A look around should reveal the couch and other very obvious things without a roll, and small stuff that don't have a meaningful consequence attached for failure to see them, but other small stuff with meaningful consequences attached should take some sort of roll, even if it's DC 10.

 

[Maxperson]

This is specifically what passive perception is for (in 5E at least).

Passive perception represents looking around without really trying. If a player actively declares that his PC is looking around, I would give him an active roll to see if he rolls higher than his passive score and potentially sees something that he would have missed.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

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

I ask what game this is in 2022 that doesn't have skills

 

[Swarmkeeper]

What we usually see is player facing dice, because somewhere it was decided that its unfair if the player doesn't roll the dice, and now if I fail the roll, I "know" I failed. So then do I look again? I should, because I failed the roll. I'll keep looking (and rolling) until I succeed, then if the DM says "you find nothing", then I know its true. That seems a bit absurd of a play loop, even if the extra search time is tracked and might cause greater risk.

I liked your post, especially the play example from the book. I just wanted to focus on this part of your post for discussion purposes.

With rolling in the open, a great tool is "success with a setback". A player declares that their PC wants to achieve A by doing B. The DM, recognizing there is some uncertainty with the task and a meaningful consequence for failure, tells the player that the DC is X. On a success, you achieve A. On a failure you achieve A but C happens!

Or, if an approach to a task reveals "you find nothing" on a failed ability check, the DM can simply rule that trying that same approach will continue to find nothing in that scene. This keeps the cascading roll (from the same player or from the entire party) at bay. A new approach could be tried, though, with the possibility of different results. Of course, "you find nothing" is not my idea of a meaningful consequence - "you find nothing and... something else happens", would be better, IMO.