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

[Maxperson]

No. That is not what the rule says. At all. It has been quoted many times in this thread-- by you even -- and the fact that you didn't quote it upon making that statement is telling.

Not really. Everything that I've quoted supports me. There was no "intention" behind not quoting it there. It was supportive anyway.

 

[Chaosmancer]

For me, more information would be to help establish positioning and, depending on the nature of a hidden threat, determine how precarious it might be. That's why "i try to perceive" isn't sufficient.

So, where they are standing already isn't good enough positioning information? Or are you trying to get them to declare they are walking into the room and which direction they are facing? Because that sounds to me like trying to figure out if you can stab them in the back or not.

It really feels like a lot of this "I don't have sufficient information" is predicated on "I don't have sufficient information to determine if you have made a mistake." I'm thinking of the earlier example of a player declaring they walk into the center of the room to make a perception check, then auto-failing to perceive the trap, because it was a pitfall in the center of the room. Why wouldn't they get to roll to perceive the trap before they trigger it? Their intent is clear, to spot traps, you've forced them to move around the room to allow them the chance to utilize their intent, why also punish them because the actions you are forcing to happen were bad luck guesses instead of letting them roll and not fall into the trap they are looking to avoid?

Of course it is contextual with the skill in question. With insight, for example, I would be more interested with your goal than approach. If a player is talking to an NPC and suddenly declares "I make an Insight check! ::clatter::" I am still going to stop them and ask what they are trying to do before I call for a roll or not.

The goal is to determine whether or not the NPC is hiding anything. You can't use insight for anything else, so what other goal could they possibly have?

 

[Reynard]

So, where they are standing already isn't good enough positioning information? Or are you trying to get them to declare they are walking into the room and which direction they are facing? Because that sounds to me like trying to figure out if you can stab them in the back or not.

Oh. You're afraid of the mean GM. Listen, if your GM is a jerk, no amount of vagueness is going to save you.

It really feels like a lot of this "I don't have sufficient information" is predicated on "I don't have sufficient information to determine if you have made a mistake." I'm thinking of the earlier example of a player declaring they walk into the center of the room to make a perception check, then auto-failing to perceive the trap, because it was a pitfall in the center of the room. Why wouldn't they get to roll to perceive the trap before they trigger it? Their intent is clear, to spot traps, you've forced them to move around the room to allow them the chance to utilize their intent, why also punish them because the actions you are forcing to happen were bad luck guesses instead of letting them roll and not fall into the trap they are looking to avoid?

I don't think.you are actually reading posts, and if you are you aren't responding in good faith.

The goal is to determine whether or not the NPC is hiding anything. You can't use insight for anything else, so what other goal could they possibly have?

Now I know you aren't reading posts or rulebooks.

 

[Charlaquin]

Even if the passive had already been performed in the area, I wouldn't go out of my way to gimp the PC out of potentially doing better than a 10 by disallowing an active roll.

Nor do I, but to resolve the action I need to know what they’re actually doing.

Also, there's a difference in my mind between a passive effort while you're walking around just kinda looking around as you go, and actively taking time to stop and look around an area. The latter involves more effort and deserves a roll.

I don’t see anything in the text that indicates a passive perception check represents “just kinda looking around as you go.” The text suggests it is exactly the same activity as an active search, just performed repeatedly.

 

[Charlaquin]

So, where they are standing already isn't good enough positioning information?

I can’t speak for @Reynard but I would already have described what they can perceive from where they’re standing. I would guess he would do the same.

Or are you trying to get them to declare they are walking into the room and which direction they are facing? Because that sounds to me like trying to figure out if you can stab them in the back or not.

Why the assumption of malicious intent?

It really feels like a lot of this "I don't have sufficient information" is predicated on "I don't have sufficient information to determine if you have made a mistake."

Well, yeah. If the player has made a mistake, that’s necessary information for the DM to have. If the player has not made a mistake, that is also necessary information for the DM to have. The entire game functions via verbal exchange of information.

I'm thinking of the earlier example of a player declaring they walk into the center of the room to make a perception check, then auto-failing to perceive the trap, because it was a pitfall in the center of the room. Why wouldn't they get to roll to perceive the trap before they trigger it?

They would have done, it’s called passive Perception.

Their intent is clear, to spot traps, you've forced them to move around the room to allow them the chance to utilize their intent, why also punish them because the actions you are forcing to happen were bad luck guesses instead of letting them roll and not fall into the trap they are looking to avoid?

If they could have spotted the trap without interacting with the environment in some way, they would have done so already. That’s how the conversation of the game works; if there was something the PC could have seen without having to interact with the environment, the DM should have included it in the description of the environment.

The goal is to determine whether or not the NPC is hiding anything. You can't use insight for anything else, so what other goal could they possibly have?

You can actually use insight to determine an NPC’s personality traits, ideals, bond, and flaw.

 

[Chaosmancer]

As I said before, ask 5 DMs when they call for perception vs investigation and you’ll get 6 different answers. I don’t agree with your interpretation of perception vs investigation, but I stopped caring to litigate that particular bit of minutia a long time ago. Now I call for a Wisdom check if the action relies on intuition or sensory perception or an Intelligence check if it relies on memory or deduction, and let the player decide if they think one of their proficiencies is applicable. If you tell me you’re running your finger over the books on the bookshelf (for what purpose? You didn’t say. For the sake of expediency I’ll assume maybe you’re hoping to find a false book or hidden catch or something), I’m gonna call for a Wisdom check. If you’re proficient in Investigation and you think that seems appropriate to add your proficiency bonus for, be my guest.

I get that everyone has their own interpretations, but just dismissing that while at the same time doubling down on "you need an action" seems like it is ignoring the actual conflict here. Because many people have responded with an action, that you have since said is not an action.

And yes, again, I didn't say exactly what I am looking for... because why would I? What value do I get for saying that I'm looking for a hidden catch. instead of just asking about examining the books? By asking "do I find any hidden catches" I may get the answer of no, because the important clue on the bookshelf was the names of the titles of the books. Does looking for hidden catches also let me get that clue? Probably not in my experience, so by being more specific in what information I want, I'm doing nothing but ruining my chances of finding important information.

How is the goblin hidden in the corner? If it’s behind some cover or concealment, you’re not going to find it just by looking with your eyes. If it’s just hiding in the darkness, you’re not going to see it unless you have a light source or Darkvision… in which case it wouldn’t be hidden from you. So, I don’t see any way just looking at the corner could result in you noticing the goblin. You are going to have to do something to try and find it, and if that something has an uncertain outcome, I’ll call for an ability check to resolve that.

But this is 100% the problem. Perception is the skill to find a hidden creature. It is impossible to hide without concealment or cover. If they don't have cover, they cannot be hidden, period.

So, I have to do something, which isn't noticing, to use the skill for noticing. Do you see how this is a fundamental issue? You are completely cutting off the ability to utilizing the skill, by demanding a non-existent action.

“I look around” is good enough for a perception check, and since looking around is something a character is always doing (assuming they can see, I guess), they are performing that action continuously over time, so I use a passive check to resolve it, as per the rules. If you want to find out if there is something hidden in the environment that was not revealed by your passive perception check, you’ll need to take another action.

So, perception is a dead skill in your games, the only use of it is to increase your passive perception, because that is the only thing that ever matters. That's what I'm getting from this, because you are demanding an action, but you can't actually give any actions just "something other than trying to perceive"

Because, again, as was stated earlier, if you are just passively telling them everything their perception gets them, but they know that passive is only a 10+mod, then they may want to roll because there is something they could have missed. But they can't roll, because they need to determine some action other than perception to utilize their perception.

Yes, just like how if I’m trying to find my keys and I don’t know where they are, I will fail if I look in a place that isn’t where they are. That’s… how looking for stuff works.

Only if the DM doesn’t provide them any information they can use to inform their decisions. This is why telegraphing is important. Players need information to make informed decisions, they need to have a clear picture of the environment to interact with it in meaningful ways.

My keys are on my desk, if someone looked in my room, they might not see them, because while they are out in the open, my desk has a decent amount of clutter. But if they looked again, they might see them. The outcome is uncertain, but the action is the same.

And if you have described the scene in perfect detail, with every relevant thing, but the players think something is hidden or they missed something... they may want to attempt to see the thing they missed. But that isn't an action they can take, according to you.

Again, only if the DM doesn’t make good use of telegraphing, and ideally, time pressure. A source of pressure like regularly-timed checks for wandering monsters or other complications encourage players to be economical with how they decide to spend their characters’ precious time, and telegraphing enables them to do so by giving them enough information to determine what to prioritize.

So, punish people for declaring specific actions instead of general ones, after refusing them the chance to use general ones, to force them to keep moving. Telegraphing is important, but if you are describing an entire room in detail, they might miss you telegraphed something. They might think you telegraphed something that you didn't.

This is undesirable because it puts the burden of deciding what the character is actually doing in the fiction on the DM.

They've told you what they are wanting to do. You are just refusing to allow them to do it. Trying to push them to declare specific discrete actions, instead of allowing them to make general actions. And I don't understand why.

Look, you know what you hope will happen if you succeed on a Religion check or whatever, just tell me what that is. Otherwise, I won’t know if what you hope will happen is possible or not.

I want to know, what I don't know. How is that not clear? I, Chaosmancer the player, do not know anything about this idol beyond what you have described. Manser the Cleric of the Divine Light, probably knows a lot about religious idols. What does he know about this idol?

Again, it would be stupid of me say something like "I want to know if this idol is used in fertility rituals" because then you can say "No, it doesn't appear to be" and I've completely missed that the idol is a desecrated war idol, because I didn't ask about that. But also, why would I ask about that? I have no idea what this idol is, so I don't know what to ask.

You assume that there’s some hidden information I’m locking behind guessing the correct thing to ask for. This is not the case. I will include pertinent details in my description of the environment, because that’s my job as DM. If it’s unusual for an idol of Shar to be made of purple amethyst, and that’s something the character should know based on their background, I’m just going to tell them so. Asking them to roll a check for it would be silly, because checks can fail and if it’s something their character should know, they shouldn’t be able to fail at it. If they want to know something about it that I didn’t include in the description, they’re going to have to tell me what else they want to know because I can’t read their minds. And they’re going to have to tell me how their character might already know that or how they go about trying to learn it so I can determine if it can work or fail to work.

So, you have never included an item of which details you didn't immediately tell the party were important? Frankly, I have a hard time believing that. If the idol is important, it is important because it is a clue or something they were sent for, and you aren't going to just tell them what the clue is and what it means for the larger situation.

You keep saying you can't "read the player's mind" but it is really simple. They want to know what the important information is. You know what the important information is, because you placed that idol there for a reason. If you didn't and there is no important information, then you can just tell them "There is nothing special about the item, unless you want to know more about the deity/religion?"

So, either you are telling them everything they could possibly learn from a roll, because they should know it, or you know what information they are likely asking about, because it is the stuff you didn't tell them. And if it is something they can't possibly know, you tell them there is no need to roll, because they don't know anything about it. There is no 3-D chess here, the player's mind is not some unfathomable swamp you cannot possibly understand. Their intent is very clear.

Great, then they should say so. I can’t read their minds.

How is "I want to know everything I could possibly know about this idol." so fundamentally different than "Can I roll religion?" after you finish describing the idol. Those are the exact same statements.

Because maybe they could have picked that information up somewhere other than where they acquired their proficiency from. People pick up random bits of information from all over the place, not just formalized training. Heck, the character doesn’t even need to have had any formalized training to potentially know something. Saying “Oh, I had a cousin who was a cleric of Shar, do I remember anything else about idols from stories he told me,” even if it’s made up on the spot, provides a bit of fun roleplaying color and gives me something to latch onto to assess if a check is necessary and what the DC should be if it is.

And suddenly everyone's "friend's second-cousin's mother" gets randomly brought up because they happen to apply, to justify asking for information that they should just be able to ask for anyways.

I've seen people do this, everyone just starts spouting off nonsense they forget five minutes later to try and justify making the check. No thank you. I'd rather just let you make the check. Especially since, you probably don't know everything that your character could possibly know. After all, we pick up random knowledge from everywhere.

Well, again, I call for ability checks and let the player determine if they think one of their proficiencies is relevant. But, back when I would call for skills explicitly, I would generally call for Perception any time I would now call for Wisdom (which is to say. when success hinges on sensory awareness) and Investigation when I would now call for Intelligence (which is to say, when success hinges on deductive reasoning). I actually find myself calling for the former much more often than the latter.

Alright, so which action would get you to call for an ability check to notice hidden things in the room you just described?

I mean I try not to expect anything in particular and simply to respond to what the players do. But, if you want an example of something I as a player might do in response to an NPC being described as unusually sweaty, I might say, “I pay close attention to his body language to see if I can spot any notable tics or tells.” And if a player declared that action, I might have the NPC roll Deception against the PC’s passive Wisdom (Insight) if he lied.

So, the player doesn't roll. They just state the obvious thing they were already doing (paying attention to the NPCs body language) and you roll against a passive DC. That isn't allowing the player to roll a check.

And this is especially strange since, clearly the NPC should have rolled already, because you were accounting for the player's passive insight when they started talking to the person right? You aren't waiting for an action declaration for their passive score to be applied.

Alternatively, I might want to try to learn an NPC’s personality traits, ideal, bond, or flaws, which Insight is explicitly able to be used to do. So, I might say something like “I want to try and figure out this guy’s bond. I’ll start making small talk and try to steer the conversation towards his personal life, paying close attention for if he seems to show any particular attachment to someone or something.” If a player described an action like that, I would most likely ask them to make a Wisdom check, probably against a moderate DC (so 15) unless I had a good reason to go easier or harder, and say “on a failure he’ll catch on that you’re trying to get leverage on him.”

Okay, that's a decent usage of it. Never seen it, because nobody at my tables has ever once tried to figure out an NPC's trait, ideal, bond or flaw this way. But I could see the use case.

Question. If the PC said they wanted to get the lay of the land at a party, basically getting the traits, ideals, bonds and flaws of multiple people by repeating the action over the course of several minutes, would you have them roll, or take the passive?

 

[Chaosmancer]

Players have their PCs engage with the description the DM has given. That's exactly what How to Play states. It is that simple.

Let's say there's a desk as part of the description of the room. If the player says "I look around" it is redundant. I've already described the room, including the desk, and telegraphed any threats. If the player says "I want to inspect the desk more closely by doing X, Y, and Z." Ok, now I have something to adjudicate.

You seem to want "I look around" to be enough as a PC's action. Since the room description already gave you everything you could possible glean from looking around, I'm going to give you a chance to try something else.

Right, but this doesn't allow you, as the player, to do anything except look at the desk. So any other hidden features of the room are excluded. And if you look at everything, one by one, down the list, what do you do then?

In addition to "seeing through deception", Wis(Insight) also comes into play for "predicting someone's next move" (PHB p178) or to "uncover one of the creature's characteristics." (DMG p 244).

After listening to an NPC, a player might tell the DM that their PC is:

• Watching for tell tale signs this NPC is lying
• Trying to figure out what this NPC might do next
• Wanting to deduce what's most important to this NPC (i.e. their bond or ideal perhaps)

These are all reasonably specific for a DM to adjudicate and may (or may not) result in a DM calling for an ability check.

I've never seen anyone try or allow insight to predict a person's next move. In fact, I've repeatedly had DMs who have told me that "insight isn't mind-reading" and refuse to allow me to even determine if someone is lying or not because "you don't know them well enough to tell."

If you allow these other uses, then sure, maybe the player needs to specify they are trying to figure out if the person is hiding anything, but that is a goal, not an action. So, as long as you have an idea of the player's goal, is it fine for them to say "Insight, what's he hiding?" or are you going to demand further information from the player?

Did you miss the part where I explained that a DM can let all the players tell them what their PC is doing in a scene before the DM adjudicates, which gives the party time to hash these conflicts out (or not) as they see fit?

Not to mention, as there will not always be an optimal hiding spot in a given scene, going "first" guarantees nothing.

Are you missing that the conflict wouldn't even exist if you had the paladin roll, the same as the rogue? You have set up a system that allows them to "hash out conflicts" created by the system you are using. If everyone has to roll, then it doesn't matter who goes first, because there is no advantage in picking an "ideal" hiding spot. It is only when certain actions they can take guarantee success for them, and lock out other players from getting their own auto-success that any conflict is even possible in this scenario.

So what value are you getting from enforcing auto-successes that is worth potential conflict?

 

[Maxperson]

I don’t see anything in the text that indicates a passive perception check represents “just kinda looking around as you go.” The text suggests it is exactly the same activity as an active search, just performed repeatedly.

Were that true, it would take hours to go 100 feet in a dungeon.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Oh. You're afraid of the mean GM. Listen, if your GM is a jerk, no amount of vagueness is going to save you.

But past actions of jerk GMs teach future actions of players. You keep acting like the players are doing something wrong, trying to force you to read their minds, or acting poorly by not engaging in the game, however, in my experience, a lot of this comes back to the player being screwed over by other GM's in the past and are now terrified of declaring "the wrong action".

And, frankly, nothing you've said is something that would put them at ease, because it seems like the goal is to get them to be specific enough to determine if they have fallen into a trap. I'm not saying that is your intent, but as a player who has had a GM like that, I'm not seeing anything other than your insistence that you aren't to show that isn't the goal.

I don't think.you are actually reading posts, and if you are you aren't responding in good faith.

Now I know you aren't reading posts or rulebooks.

Oh wonderful, we are at the part of the conversation where I get accused of being a bad-faith actor who doesn't read people's posts. Or the rules of the game!

You know, I was getting sad. It'd been nearly 24 hours since I started having a discussion on Enworld and no one had accused me or trolling or illiteracy. I was almost thinking this site might be getting less insulting and I could have an actual conversation about the game. Good to know I was wrong and I'll get to spend however long I can stand it now defending myself instead of my points. Keep those ad hominems coming, I'm sure you can accuse me of a child-like demeanor and flat out lying too. Stretch those muscles.

 

[iserith]

Even if the passive had already been performed in the area, I wouldn't go out of my way to gimp the PC out of potentially doing better than a 10 by disallowing an active roll.

Also, there's a difference in my mind between a passive effort while you're walking around just kinda looking around as you go, and actively taking time to stop and look around an area. The latter involves more effort and deserves a roll.

@Charlaquin's point is that they are happy to resolve the player's action declaration, but that the action declaration is going to produce no different result than what was already offered since nothing has changed about what the PC is doing. The player needs to do a better job at being reasonably specific in the face of the description of the environment just given to them.

A passive check doesn't necessarily indicate a passive amount of effort, but there's certainly a distinction that can be drawn between checking stuff out while you're walking around and doing a much more in-depth search which may indeed cost time and call for an ability check. It's just in this specific case, the player hasn't offered anything for the DM to resolve in that fashion.