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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Chaosmancer" data-source="post: 8719097" data-attributes="member: 6801228">I have been seeing a lot of clarification as the thread moved on, but I think it also highlights the reasons why the players may absolutely say "I make a perception check." If I tell the DM "I look around the room" I am describing only part of what a perception check is. I have described what my character is doing, but there are suddenly holes. For example, is my character also listening? Right now I am typing this post, but I also can hear Brooklyn-99 playing in the other room. They are having some scene going on, the captain is talking. I wasn't "actively" listening to it, I just heard it because the room is quiet. Additionally, quite a few people have said that "I look around the room" isn't enough to even trigger a visual perception check. Because they already did look around the room. And in fact, they must declare an even more specific set of actions, such as "I look in the shadowy corners" or "I look for the cup", which again, leads straight into the question. Since they didn't say they are looking for the scrape marks on the floor, do they not even have a chance of seeing them? And so the player is declaring an action that covers their bases. They are rolling perception, to engage four or five of their senses, to attempt to find something out of the ordinary. This is the safe option, because they don't only want the the visual information, they want the auditory and olfactory information as well. They don't only want to look for hidden enemies, but also secret doors, hidden treasure, and clues to what is further in the dungeon. But rather than list off everything individually, they are making a declaration that sums all of that action into a single sentence. And frankly, other than limiting my visual information to "I am looking for only X" I don't know how else to make looking an action, other than to say "I look"///////////////////////////////////////Additionally, I have seen some conversation about hiding spots guaranteeing success. A particular example was the Paladin hiding in a pantry, and auto-succeeding because they are completely concealed. However, I can say with a lot of certainty, that isn't how the rules work. Because if you are invisible, you are completely concealed, yet you are not hidden until you make a stealth check. And blindsense stills "sees" you because you cannot be hidden if they have a "clear line of sight" to you. A high degree of concealment is required to even make a stealth roll, and rewarding a character with a low stealth while penalizing a character with a high stealth, based on decisions that have nothing to do with how good their characters can hide, seems counter-intuitive. It makes it seem like the skills shouldn't even be a thing, because they aren't what is determining my success and failure. The skills are there because they should drive success and failure, and it is a balancing act, between player engagement in the narrative and the character's skills, but auto-passes end up being dangerous the more often they can happen because the player knows how the DM designs.</blockquote>

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