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

[Charlaquin]

It was back in the example of the pit trap... here we go

Nowhere in that quote does it say the character doesn’t get a save.

 

[iserith]

I want to apologize to @Maxperson here. I forgot the first rule of D&D: specific trumps general.
While it is true that using Perception of find a thing requires searching, and that the passive use of a skill does not change that in general, the rules regarding secret doors are specific: you use your passive perception to notice them as you walk by "without actively searching for it." Previously I checked and quoted only the Perception and passive skill use rules and did not look at the specific secret doors, or even the traps section (which uses a similar rule). This actually feels contradictory to the intent of Perception and Passive use as described in the PHB, but there it is.

I addressed this seeming contradiction upthread in a way that makes the various rules make sense together:

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.

You're doing enough to notice them, according to the rules for secret doors and traps, with a penalty at a fast pace per the travel pace rules. Which is fine in my view as that's only the start of the exploration challenge. Now, if detected, it's on to figuring out how the secret door or trap works. Then, in the case of traps, disarming or circumventing them.

If a character doesn't notice a trap or secret door while traveling the adventure location (because their PP is lower than the DC for the secret door or trap), they can certainly stop, spend more time in a specific area, and potentially make an ability check which can exceed their passive score. Similar to a Search action during combat.

The travel rules refer to "hidden threats," which can certainly include traps. The travel rules do not mention searching for secret doors as an activity while traveling. This would fall under this rule: "However, a character not watching for danger can do one of the following activities instead, or some other activity with the DM's permission." So a DM can say "searching for secret doors" is at least as distracting as navigating, drawing a map, tracking, or foraging and you can't also notice hidden threats. That's certainly what I do. If you want the benefit of finding secret doors while traveling the adventure location, which are always great finds in my game, you're going to have to put yourself at some risk.

 

[Celebrim]

Also: I find it interesting that we stopped discussing the actual topic of this thread a LONG time ago.

I don't know that we did.

You introduced the topic by saying, ""I make a perception check" is not a valid action declaration in any version of D&D."

This actually is talking about the topic of proposition filters. Proposition filters are a process of play whereby the GM decides whether to treat a player's action declaration as a valid proposition to adjudicate. Proposition filters are usually poorly discussed in most RPGs, and especially in older RPGs, and even when they are discussed the implications of the rules may be overlooked because most games tend to start before all the rules have been read much less read and understood. Therefore, most tables end up making up their own set of processes of play to determine whether or not to validate a proposition.

It turns out that proposition filter procedures of play get really complicated. Probably the procedures of play at most tables are so complicated that they'd need pages and pages of rules to describe them, and yet they are so ubiquitous to play that most tables don't even realize they exist or think about them.

A lot of the wider ranging discussion is about proposition filters generally, which is I think still on topic for your specific example.

 

[Charlaquin]

And that all sounds perfectly fine. But the moment you ask "do you walk across the rug" I'm stopping what I was doing and trying to figure out what is up with the rug, because you have now indicated that there is something there that I missed, and needs to be figured out before I can get to the desk.

Likewise, if you ask "Do you search from in front of or behind the desk?" I now have a problem. To me, this question indicates there is a trap, I'm going to set it off, and I'm trying to guess which side is the safe side to stand on. Which is frustrating, because I would have imagined my searching the desk to give me a chance to notice any trap. Most likely though, considering I have no idea of knowing which side is safe and accepting I'm about to lose hit points, my answer would be "both, starting with the front" because my OTHER concern is, much like I have experienced in real play, searching one and not the other means I'm going to miss an important clue that could harm the party if missed.

And I know "why don't you trust the DM?" Because I've been burned in the past, and the way you phrase those questions, the way those factors didn't come up until after I made my declaration, locking me into my actions, signals to me "You messed up, you are going to get hurt". And you can state that you wouldn't do that til I'm blue in the face, but it doesn't change the fact that that is immediately where my mind goes, because that is exactly like the scenarios I faced that were done by the DMs who relished in that.

And the fact is, you recognize that, and that almost seems like your intent. Because you want the player to declare their actions so they DON'T "come back after something bad happens and say “But I didn’t mean I looked under the rug.“. or “I didn’t mean I opened the Armoire.” If you mean something, say it." So my instinct that something bad might happen if I say or do the "wrong thing" is 100% accurate, because the reason you want me to be specific is so that when something bad happens I can't blame you.


Again, most of your example sounds perfectly fine. But then I see these hidden shards of glass in the muffin and my only response is "this is why some players want to roll, instead of declaring an action" because the dice roll can give them more information so that they can make informed actions, instead of going in blind and trusting that they didn't make a mistake. Which, quite often, they did make a mistake.

Bad things can indeed happen to your character as a result of actions you take. This is true regardless of DMing technique. Either you’re ok with that risk or you aren’t.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

This is not something I have ever actually experienced. In real life, saying “I’m hearing that you want to find out if there’s anything hidden here. What is your character doing to try to find that out?” (or similar) has always resulted in the player describing an in-character action. But, I suppose, I would say something like “I’m not looking for some magic words that will let you make a perception check. I’m trying to form a clear picture of what is happening in the fiction so I can determine if you even need to make a check. Depending on what you do, you might just find whatever you’re looking for automatically.”

maybe Perception isn't working for you but "I don't have X skill" insert anything in x... "I don't know how to describe X because it isn't something I do"

 

[GMforPowergamers]

Ummm…am I missing something, I’ve read some but not all of the thread, why are we still on this question?

becuse it is the root... but only an example... I can't tell you how I disarm the trap, I can't tell you how I climb a sheer surface, I can't tell you everything... and I don't expect every player to be able to... and some people even lay traps "If you say you do X not only do you not get a check but a trap goes off"

if the player is looking for help I don''t understand why the DM (a friend at a table remember) wouldn't just give suggestions.

The standard request from DMs who IIke their player to not gameify their D&D is simply to say, “I search the room” rather than “I make a perception check”…and when I say, “ok, you want to search the room, make an investigation check”

except we already did that dance and got "I get that now how do you search" and "Where do you search"

they say, ”I’d rather use perception, I’m better at that“ I say “fine” because I’m not a rules monger, but if I am, I clarify “ok, but using perception rather than investigation means you just look closely at everything, don’t open the drawers and stuff.”

yeah... that seems fine to me.

And then they say, what if I open all the drawers and then do a perception check”. again, i say “fine…do it.“

yeah me too

And then when they do, I say the second drawer from the top explodes and ask for a dex save, 2 d6 damage on a fail, half on a success. And then they get pissed at me, and I say someone doing an investigation check would have noticed the trap before opening the drawer, and also, someone that just accepted the precondition of not touching things when they request to “search the room” with perception rather than investigation would have also noticed the trap.

I would most likely use the perception check against hte DC to notice the trap... but I am not telling you that you have to... I am saying you shouldn't be forceing people to give tons of exposition on how they do things...

But no, you opened the drawers before you searched, haha. I don’t do all that bs,

right... cause that is antagonistic and a way to have less friends.

but if you want to, perfectly fine. It all starts with, “tell me what your character wants to do, not what you want to do”. It’s pretty easy, only d-bags refuse to play along and discover the fun of how game works.

or people that litterally ask "I don't know how to do X... can someone tell me"

tonight we had a qustion come up about weapon smitting and we just all took turns giving what we knew and some of us googled it... a 10 second moment of game took like 10 minutes (not optimal) but at no point did we expect the player who had prof in like 4 tool kits to give even a slight explanation of how to use them.
since even I as a DM didn't know if the person could or could not do anything we had to figure that out.

 

[Charlaquin]

maybe Perception isn't working for you but "I don't have X skill" insert anything in x... "I don't know how to describe X because it isn't something I do"

This one I have actually had happen before. A player once said she wanted to check a door for traps and I said “I’m hearing that you want to find out if the door is trapped; what does your character do to try and find that out?” She kind of blinked and said “something my character would know to do because she’s trained at finding traps and I’m not?” I responded, “I recognize that you’re not an expert on traps, neither am I. I just need to be able to picture what’s happening in the fiction in order to adjudicate the result. So, just give me a reasonably specific description and I will do my best to interpret your intent generously, keeping your character’s specialized training in mind.” I don’t remember exactly what she described, I think she said something about looking all around the seams and the handle for any signs of mechanisms. Since there was indeed a lever on the other side that would be pushed triggering a simple bell alarm if opened, I determined that looking at the seams for a mechanism would indeed result in finding that mechanism, with no reasonable chance of failure or consequence, so I told her “oh, yeah, you don’t even need to roll for that,” and proceeded to describe the lever, and note that she could easily determine that opening the door would set off whatever the trap was. After that, she was consistently one of the most confident and creative players at the table when it came to action declarations, and frequently achieved her goals without needing to make checks as a result.

 

[Celebrim]

maybe Perception isn't working for you but "I don't have X skill" insert anything in x... "I don't know how to describe X because it isn't something I do"

Generally speaking, as a DM I rarely need to know the exact things the PC's hands are doing, only the fictional positioning. Where is the character? What are they touching? What are they concentrating on. I'll assume they are expertly doing whatever it is that they do provided I know where they are in the fictional space.

Imagine it as if I needed them to be a script writer and I'm the movie director, and they need to provide me only with enough details that I can imagine and film the scene. The player is narrating something here that I and everyone at the table can then see and imagine. Ideally, we create a shared imaginary space where everyone's picture of what is going on is very similar, and it's in that shared space that the game is taking place.

One disadvantage of Moves (propositions which are stated only as rules actions rather than imagined actions) is that a Move typically leaves it entirely up to the GM to narrate and describe what the character is doing as a result of a Move. This can become rather sterile in that if the GM doesn't narrate that action and all the interaction is with the rules you end up with a very vague, little shared, and perhaps absent imaginary space. And if the GM does do all the narration, then the players are reduced to a level of interaction with the imaginary space that is only a little different than a Choose Your Own Adventure Book.

Which is why games that do prioritize Moves over players narrating what they do (PbtA games for example) still strongly encourage the player declaring the Move to declare exactly what it is they do just for the purposes of adding color and participating in the game. It's just stronger play as a player to do so and it's more broadly useful to different types of games to learn to do it, even if you can in theory get away with just offering up a Move.

 

[Charlaquin]

Imagine it as if I needed them to be a script writer and I'm the movie director, and the need to provide me only with enough details that I can imagine and film the scene.

This is a fantastic way to express the level of specificity I mean when I say “reasonably specific!” I don’t need to know every little detail of what your character is doing. I just need to know enough to translate the words you say into a little movie in my head. Like a director imagining a scene from its description in the script. Magnificent!

 

[GMforPowergamers]

It's railroading precisely because you are asking for clarification because someone chose "a harder way". You aren't seeking clarification because you don't know the specific intent. You are seeking clarification because you are surprised by or skeptical of the stated intent. This seems innocuous and can have very good motives, but it is a form of railroading.

See a description of railroading here:

Techniques for Railroading

Railroading refers to a variety of techniques use to limit player freedom of choice. Some distinction should be made in my opinion between the act of limiting player choice (“railroading”) and a game which has limited or no player choice as its most salient feature (a “railroad”). Virtually...

www.enworld.org

i disagree with your use of the term railroad... and I disagree entirely on you version of what I said...

in my mind when given 2 paths most people will most times (unless there is a good reason not to) do things the easiest way... now sometimes people (both in and out of game) don't know the easy way.
a character sees 2 doors, the DM knows 1 leads to the treasure and the other to a trapped room and then a big fight with little reward... no matter what one the character (or player out of game) chooses they don't have information to really base it on.

on the other hand if last session the PCs got the zelda style map, and the player holding it forgot (cause D&D is not even close to the most important thing that happened in there stressful week) and the player said they had no way of knowing... I would remind them. Cause that's what friends do.

I will also sometimes build pages of lore on my world. And I NEVER require players to read it all even once let alone commit the parts to memory that may come up. So someone trained in religion that sees a holy symbol of Dr Doom and doesn't remember reading all 17 gods and what the symbols are can make a religion check... and if they ARE a priest of Dr Doom, i will just remind them (although I may be a jerk and be like 'it looks familiar... kinda like the one on the chain on your neck that is the exact same thing")

As I outline in the above essay, one of the ways of keeping players on the "right path" is hint to them that they are making the "wrong" choices by saying things like, "Are you sure you want to do that?"

except there is no right or wrong path in my games... so I can't hint at a right path. I can only give them the information they would have.

I have also had Players zone out, get texts, not hear things. "I open the door on the left and go in"
"Um, the door on the left is the one mike just said was a fake door are you sure"

It's not wrong to say to players, "Are you sure you want to do that?", but it is railroading.

I disagree with your premise of railroading.

One thing you have to understand is that I'm not saying that railroading the players is wrong.

i agree here. I even sometimes DO railroad. (it just came up in another thread about invisable rails)

if I have a PC die and the new PC ready to come in from that same player... no matter where the other PCs go that is where the new PC is... you go north he is in the north. You stay put he comes to you. You plane shift to the shadowfel...hey look he is in the shadowfel.

some people call this type of railroad quantum oger, and I do it.

But that position isn't rational, because all games depend on at least a little bit of railroading. Player just except that "coincidentally" things happen to them, the way if you are Batman watching a dark alley there will be a mugging in it while you happen to be watching it.

yeah... I mean the game is boaring if batman goes on patrol and misses all the crimes.

You think I'm mainly criticizing like you think I think you are "doing it wrong". Mostly, I'm just trying to understand how your game works.

but it seems you are more intrested in making assumtions then reading what I wrote.

I do however have a strong preference for stating propositions in the form of fictional positioning rather than Moves, even when the fictional positioning is mostly color. It's just good narration and story building, something all table participants should be doing. And concrete fictional positioning is almost always good.

I only half get this...

me and 4 friends sit down 4 players 1 DM... but all 5 of us HAVE and will in the future DM. all 5 of us have a range of system mastery... some of us are real good at homebrew and some not. some like some optional rules others don't... but over all we are more or less on the same page.

the DM will pitch a world (sometimes 1 DM pitches a few, sometimes a few DMs each pitch) and we agree to it. We have some rules on what does or doesn't have to be in the pitch but for the most part it is pretty simple and I am sure not that dissimilar then most... we mostly run homebrew campaigns not preset worlds and not preset adventures (I say mostly as right now I am both playing in and running Curse of Strahd)

once the DM has pitched it he will take a week or two to draw some maps and handouts (or I normally already have some ready for my pitch) and people will start pitching character concepts.

Here is the imporant part about pitching world and characters... everyone does NOT have to 100% agree... majority rule BUT anyone can veto something. (sometimes we all veto something... looking at you The halfing that thinks he is a giant) and where we normally will give a reason for the veto we don't have to.

but we get all 4 PCs pitched for the world that was pitched... now we will all take a week to write a small (god it better be small) background and share it... and everyone can help work on add to or make suggestions... by the time session 0 happens 1-2 months normally but sometimes 5-6 months from that original pitch we all have given suggestions and made the world OURs not MINE and might even have intertwined our backstories.

session 0 will set up where game 1 starts and why and will normally give a bit of insight into what to expect...

session 1 starts with us normally 2nd or 3rd (sometimes up to 5th) level and most times already knowing each other at least in passing but sometimes we grew up together or what ever... we also already know in general what the theme and style the game is supposed to be (I say supposed to cause sometimes hard core sword and sorcery turns into comedy and sometimes Mercenaries set root game 3 and start a business half the fun is even the DM never knows)

at some point we end up in a situation (often of the PCs own fault) and we need to roll some dice to get out of it... I would say half the time give or take that is combat and of the other half more often it is social and less often exploration but that can change up from campaign to campaign.

when dice are needed all we care about is that we understand each other. So if someone wants to call perception or investigate or even forget and call search we don't care... as long as we understand the intent.

sometimes we feel like useing super detail flower prose, and some times we just grunt and roll dice... and EVERYTHING inbetween.

I do have a strong preference for demanding social interactions be done in the form of in character role play, but even then I don't think it's necessarily wrong not to do those things just less... skillful, and I try to push players and GMs toward more skillful play because it's more entertaining ultimately for everyone involved.

i found the reverse... we used to do that. and what we always got was the same players being the face. the same players avoiding it (and hey look at that it's the ones that are good at talking vs those not so much). once we started useing cha skills more we found that players that used to avoid the face role took it... and after a little bit (in some cases really little like one or two times) of rolling dice and realizing that it didn't matter what they said, they were willing to try to say things... and the more they tried the better they got.

also as a side effect when a person has an off night but is out of game good at talking but just isn't up to it... this helps them too.

our games became more varied and more entertaining (for us) when we STOPPED useing out of game skill as a judge...

"Okay cool that all makes sense now roll a cha skill to see how well your character said it" made people more willing to try not less.

Like when I go to a con and there is a guy there that clearly has been gaming for 30 years or something and he literally can't Role Play in character, he's always in pawn stance and he's only focused on "winning", that makes me sad both because it detracts from my experience and because he's devoted his life to a hobby he's not actually very good at. (And if he's also a jerk to the GM and my daughter, well that's even worse.)

I mean as long as he isn't a jerk I am happy if he is happy... and I don't get not being.

Depends on how long they've been playing with me. If they've never fallen before and they try to jump off a great height, I'll remind them that in the real-world heights are dangerous. My expectation is that my players will make propositions based off casual understanding of realism.

this is important (and one of those things all us DMs in my group don't all run the same)
in my game a fall of 200ft is 20d6, if I roll low and deal 45 damage and you have 70hps you land and get up and dust yourself off (and most likely need to heal)
in matt's game a fall of 200ft is dead... yeah even if you half bludgoning damage and are a barbarian with 174hp that the fall can't kill by the rules.

If the player really doesn't seem to understand the consequences of their proposition and they are new, I might in fact railroad them a bit by saying things like, "You think a 40-foot fall will probably kill you."

oh... oh wow 40ft... that is low even most of teh 'realistic' DMs in my group don't start that till 100ft.

or explaining to them the rules for falling in my game if they've never encountered them before. But ultimately, if you don't let the players choose freely to do things that are unwise, then you aren't really letting them play the game. At some point they have to learn not to push the Red Buttons, even if it takes losing a few characters.

I look at it like this... if I in real life look at a fall and assume most people would not survive it, I have a reason to understand that. If someone hears "50ft down" and then says "Um okay I jump down" it is kind of on me to let them know if there character that grew up in these rules would know or atleast be able to suspect that is suicidal.

I've got one kid (he's like 25 at this point, so not really a kid)

oour youngest is early 30's and has a 2 year old... he is still the kid

in my current group that has never quite learned that. He's lost more characters than the rest of the group combined. It seems like every few sessions he does something despite the warnings of everyone else in the group, and then he goes, "I didn't think it would be THAT bad." But, maybe he just likes dying spectacular deaths and making new characters.

yeah, and I would not take that choice away from him. I just would make sure it was an informed choice

An experienced player tells me that he wants to jump off or into something, well, hopefully he has a plan.

or maybe he miss heard or miss understood something...

"The this 15 kilometere drop"
"Okay 15 meters is like 15 feet right, I just jump down"
"okay first no... 15 meters is not 15 feet, but I guess close enough, but I said Kilo that means thousands... your character is looking down a 15 thousand meter drop not a 15 foot one"

or sometimes people just have different styles in mind.

I am pretty lianant. But I have tropes I like and ones I don't... I wont pretend that there are not some bias in that. Up thread someone had someone want to use persuasion or diplomacy (cant remember edition of example) to calm down a crying queen and when pressed for how said "Oh i saw this old movie last night where a woman was crying and the man slapped her and brought her out of it, can I try that" and the DM auto failed him...

now I am going to tell you my funny jedi story (not D&D but TTRPG) It is old legends era and I am a student just graduated from luke's jedi academy... another player went to the shadow academy and is a dark jedi (I know this out of game but not in game) and we ended up becomeing best friends... The GM started the first game at a museum /theme park about the rebeal alliance and I bought a toy red light saber and he bought a blue one and we were having mock battles (remember he has a red one hidden and I have a blue one that really works) and my character I am playing up as shy around women... and the DM has a holonet actress/singer that my character has a crush on show up... and the dark side player decided to play a joke on his friend and tell me to try a pick up line that never failes... and basicly gave me a bad would never work raunchy I am not sure I could type it on enworld pick up line... and I went with it (fully expecting out of gamem that my character would get slapped) and I walked up and said it... and the DM called for a social challange (something I not only wasn't good at but activly shose to dump) and I got a MASSIVE critical success... and the dark side character (and out of game all of us at the tables) jaws hit the floor as she said okay and we went back to her room....