D&D 5E Is "Passive" (for Passive Perception) really the right term??

[DEFCON 1]

So, you never use it for routine tasks performed over and over?? That is the first use of passive scores, after all.

Nope. Cause I don't care what the book actually says, the entire game is me taking what is in the books and then making rulings for how I want to run them at my table. RAW is dumb.

 

[Laurefindel]

How is that???

Every player I played with assumed that if you had to “concentrate” on a spell, you wouldn’t be able to do anything that requires focused attention, like making an attack, sprinting, trying hard to remember something, or casting another spell, etc.

Similar to what @Bill Zebub mentioned, I much prefer the terms “worn” and “held” to differentiate lasting spells that don’t require concentration and those that do. One can “wear” many spells, but can only “hold” only one at a time and could even drop it if shaken hard enough.

 

[James Gasik]

So, do you have:

Passive Acrobatics?
Passive Animal Handling?
Passive Arcana?
Passive Athletics?
and so on?

If not, why does Perception deserve a "floor" and not the others?

I mean, if you want to use passive scores, there's no reason not to have them universally, just like the old "take 10". If there's no real risk and you're not distracted by combat, inclement weather, or what have you, sure you can swim or effortlessly recall certain facts without needing a die roll.

 

[DND_Reborn]

Every player I played with assumed that if you had to “concentrate” on a spell, you wouldn’t be able to do anything that requires focused attention, like making an attack, sprinting, trying hard to remember something, or casting another spell, etc.

Similar to what @Bill Zebub mentioned, I much prefer the terms “worn” and “held” to differentiate lasting spells that don’t require concentration and those that do. One can “wear” many spells, but can only “hold” only one at a time and could even drop it if shaken hard enough.

Oh, got it, thanks for the clarifcation.

Yeah, "held" or something might be better. Maybe "focused", but that still has too much of the "concentration" connotation IMO.

 

[DND_Reborn]

I mean, if you want to use passive scores, there's no reason not to have them universally, just like the old "take 10". If there's no real risk and you're not distracted by combat, inclement weather, or what have you, sure you can swim or effortlessly recall certain facts without needing a die roll.

True, and we already have the Take 10 option in 5E, even if not explicitly called that.

Those examples were more about the routine use of a skill over and over instead of making dozens of rolls.

Swimming is a strange case. There is always the case of cramping or drowning, but that is more due to being tired (CON) than lack of skill (STR).

 

[Bill Zebub]

Maybe a better analogy for concentration is listening: in a crowded, noisy room it’s easy to listen to one person talking, and you can “concentrate” on other tasks (cooking, for example) while doing so, as long as none of those other tasks are trying to pay attention to a second voice. If you do you’ll discover you missed what the first person was saying.

I think concentration is a great word for it.

 

[Bill Zebub]

TBH I wasn’t aware passive was also meant to be used for routine/repetitive tasks.

Like, if you are going to pick 100 locks as a challenge, use “passive Thieves’ Tools”? That would be weird because if they all had the same DC you would open either 100% or 0%.

“Passive Athletics” for running hurdles? Same thing.

No thanks. I’ll use it the way I have been using it: to avoid signaling to players that an ability check is needed.

 

[DND_Reborn]

TBH I wasn’t aware passive was also meant to be used for routine/repetitive tasks.

Like, if you are going to pick 100 locks as a challenge, use “passive Thieves’ Tools”? That would be weird because if they all had the same DC you would open either 100% or 0%.

“Passive Athletics” for running hurdles? Same thing.

No thanks. I’ll use it the way I have been using it: to avoid signaling to players that an ability check is needed.

Which is cool, of course!

90%+ of the time, I use it for routine checks. When a secret check is required, I just have the player roll behind the DM screen so only I see the result.

But the idea of routine checks is why a lot of new players think of it as "passive" (as in "always on"). Someone upthread even described it as "passive sonar"...

I don't mind the idea of passive (always on but in the background) perception, but in that use, 10+modifier is too high IMO and 5+ makes more sense it is in the background, you are focused on other things, but your perception (hearing/sight/etc.) is still working--even if you aren't paying as much attention to what stimuli you take in.

Now, as was mentioned, is 5+ even worth having? Sure. If I have 3-4 bandits sneaking up, there is a good chance one at least will roll low and might be noticed even "passively".

 

[EzekielRaiden]

What bothers me is calling something "passive" when it isn't "passive" by any definition I know of. "Standard, typical, or routine" would all be better choices for the terminology.

From Dictionary.com:
6. influenced, acted upon, or affected by some external force, cause, or agency; being the object of action rather than causing action (opposed to active def. 6). Related to the grammatical definition, that is, the "passive voice": a passive verb describes being acted upon or receiving the action rather than the thing doing the action.

In that sense, "Passive Perception" reflects being acted upon by the world around you. As I said above: you literally cannot choose not to observe things while conscious. Hence, even if you aren't looking for anything, even if you are putting out zero effort whatsoever, you are still looking at things and hearing things etc. You just aren't listening intently for whatever might come up or carefully scrutinizing for a specific detail.

Now, it may be the case that you think it's dumb that passive observation gives that much of a bonus. That's your prerogative, you can do what you like. But the term "Passive Perception" is perfectly in keeping with the way the word "passive" is used to describe a variety of things, including the literal actual scientific practice called "passive observation."

Someone upthread even described it as "passive sonar"...

Because that is an actual IRL thing. Passive sonar does not emit any pulses; it simply waits for ocean sounds to come to it. It's still listening, it's just not doing anything active to create sound patterns that can then be observed. That's why it's passive, as opposed to active sonar.

(You could think of ordinary human hearing as a form of passive sonar, while bat or dolphin echolocation is very much active sonar.)

 

[iserith]

I've spent a lot of time on figuring out how this all works because it actually requires pulling a lot of rules together from different places that can sometimes seem at odds with each other. And the designers don't help because what they say they do is actually not something you can actually derive from the words on the page. Jeremy "Shield Master" Crawford, for example, sometimes refers to "active checks" when those don't actually exist in the rules. Nor does "passive" refer to the characters acting in a way that is not active, since passive checks are used when the characters when the characters are performing a task repeatedly (or when the DM wants a secret roll for some reason).

To make it work with all rules that connect with passive Perception, the players establish when appropriate what the characters are doing while they are traveling through an adventure area - keeping watch for threats, foraging, tracking, drawing a map, or navigating. These are in the Activities While Traveling rules, and "travel" spans the scale of minutes to hours to days. They only get to do one of these things unless they are a ranger in favored terrain (for an hour or more) in which case they can keep watch for threats and one other task. The DM can add more tasks to this list as well e.g. searching for secret doors or searching for traps. The characters also need to be in the right position in the marching order to have a chance of success - a character in the back of the party might not notice the trap the group is approaching. If the DM needs to resolve the task because there's an uncertain outcome and a meaningful consequence for failure, they can use a passive check.

If a character is not keeping watch for threats, their passive Perception does not apply to detecting any hidden threats that may arise. So in comes the Surprise rules: If your PP can't apply, then by the rules, you're automatically surprised. Players who want to forage, track, draw a map, navigate, or do any other task the DM deems sufficiently distracting from keeping watch for threats, then they are making a meaningful choice here: Do I gain whatever potential benefit from doing this task and risk surprise or do I want to have a shot at avoiding surprise?

Now comes stuff like the Observant feat which used to be much maligned on forums for being too strong. In the context of the above rules, however, what we see is that Observant is going to help, but you must be in the right position keeping watch (or searching for secret doors or traps, if the DM says those tasks are distracting) and you can't do anything else. That may mean being in the front rank of the marching order to notice monsters and traps the party is approaching, which is dangerous, and passing up opportunities to gain useful benefits from other tasks. If the DM lumps monster, trap, and secret door detection into one activity while traveling, however, without regard to position in the marching order, plus allows for them to do other activities, then yeah Observant starts to look overpowered to some DMs. (So don't do that.)

In the DMG, it looks like many traps can be detected through Intelligence (Investigation) in addition to Wisdom (Perception), so either of those might apply to resolving that task. So Observant helps here, too. Again, if the character is looking for traps and is in the right position of the marching order to notice them before it is too late. For secret doors, it's Perception to find them, Investigation to figure out how they work (if that's in doubt and there's a meaningful consequence for failure).

That's basically all the applicable rules here that are likely to come up in a game outside of initiative and how they work together as I see it. In combat, sure, passive Perception is a "floor" for detecting a hidden creature because, per the rules, you're always alert to danger when in combat so passive applies and rolling under that number means nothing during a Search action since your passive already failed to detect the hidden creature. Outside of combat, I don't see the "floor" ruling applying at all.