D&D 5E (2014) Is "perception" even a good concept?

[Tony Vargas]

This falls apart when, where your old power drill was small and compact and neatly fit into the tight spaces you sometimes had to use it

What baroque old mechanic was lighter and simpler than d20?

 

[KarinsDad]

The comedic irony of the tripwire comment appears to have been lost on you.

Yeah, no smiley. Without it, I missed my Insight roll.


But I am on board now.

Ha ha ha!


That's what happens when the DM hits you over the head with what he is thinking. You gave me a second roll.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Well, yes it is a constraint on DMing in that it makes us kitbashers either a) have to do a lot more work to un-shoehorn everything before we can bash on it, or b) accept a system that isn't going to give us what we want in a game...which will probably be different for everyone. And it's a constraint on play in that the players are stuck with using a less-than-perfect system.

There's no such thing as a perfect system, or even a perfect game mechanic. Everything involves some sort of trade-off. The trade-off for a unified core mechanic is that it may not model the desired outcomes as accurately as using specialized mechanics for each sub-system. Whether or not that trade-off is worthwhile is going to depend on particular preferences and priorities of the player.

Personally, I'm fine with the d20 core mechanic, because you gain a lot of simplicity and you don't lose that much accuracy (compared to any other mechanic I might invent for resolving specific tasks). I would definitely claim an over-reach of unified mechanics when it comes to the universal ability modifier, which applies equally to task resolution as well as combat, though; if the scale of the modifier is considered reasonable when applied to a d20 check, then it's vastly too influential when compared to the d6 or d8 rolls for weapon damage and HP per level.

 

[schnee]

Must have been more than 20 yrs, those exploits were gone by the end of the 80s...

Well, I *am* pretty damn old. And we weren't big on updating to new rulesets back then...

 

[Wiseblood]

What baroque old mechanic was lighter and simpler than d20?

Magic resistance. Roll d100 vs target number.

D20 roll number add modifiers compare target number.

There are so many more. You may think this is a bad example but roll+add+compare IS more complicated than roll+compare.

 

[iserith]

That's cool. You play by your interpretation of what is written. It's just not the style I prefer. And just because the game designers explained their reasoning a bit on this does not mean that I think it is a better system.

Like I said, I hate autofail and autosuccess and 5E (and to a lesser extent 4E) heads more and more in this direction.

The concept of "just say Yes" is not a concept that I endorse. Sometimes Yes, sometimes No. As DM, I prefer to often let the dice decide this and not my whims.

I think "whim" is a little insulting. The implication is that the DM is just making stuff up and changing his or her mind arbitrarily with no explanation when that is most certainly not the case. Perhaps you don't mean it that way, but that is what "whim" means in this context.

A fair and consistent DM that balances out deciding on success or failure and going to the dice is making decisions and rulings based on carefully considered criteria, preparation, internal logic, and established fiction. They are consciously telegraphing information via describing the environment to avoid gotchas. They are taking every action declared by the players into consideration to award success to players who have been paying attention, immersing themselves in the world, and coming up with appropriate ideas to overcome challenges while not overdoing it such that the mechanics are irrelevant and the DM can be "gamed." All while pursuing the goals of play, that is, everyone having a good time and creating an exciting, memorable story.

It is a careful and methodical balancing act which takes into account the player's natural desire to avoid randomness wherever possible by having control over outcomes. That is not whim and it's no small feat either.

As an example, we use a "High is good for the party" roll. As DM, I might ask a random player (or the player asking a question) to give me a HIGFTP roll.

Say a player asks: "Are there any goats in this town?"

I don't force the player to actually walk up to a townsperson and ask his question "in character". I don't bother to have them roleplay with townsfolk such a trivial and mundane question. Yes, if I did so, this might result in some "on the fly" inspiration on my part to impart more info, but meh. It's not on my list of fun roleplaying events. I also don't "just say Yes".

I set a DC. Say, 8. They roll the dice with no modifiers. If they get 8 or higher, they find at least one goat, maybe an entire herd. If they make the roll, or if I already knew there were goats in the town and did not ask for a roll, then I would say "You ask around and find out about a corral full of them on the east side of town".

I view a lot of the non-combat rules as guidelines. Like a buffet, I pick and choose what I like.

If a player asked me "Are there any goats in this town?" my response would be "What do you do to find out?" and "Stop asking me questions - do stuff by describing what you want to do." If a reasonable statement of goal and approach is offered, I will narrate the result of the adventurer's action based on the certainty of success. Because this is such a mundane action with likely no complicating factors, no dice will be used unless perhaps there is any negotiation on the goat's price. If it's my current campaign, buying a goat would be part of the town task of Supply and he or she would be able to choose a given location that sells Trade Goods (which may come with interesting trade-offs) as part of the three locations he or she will have time for in that given Supply task. Attempts at negotiation (which would again just be a statement of goal and approach, not a drawn out scene) would likely call for a Charisma check though it's a rare player in my games that will haggle over a 1-gp goat.

While it's a silly example, you can substitute basically anything in for the goal and approach of finding a goat and the same adjudication process applies. Again, not whim, not random. Consistent, balanced, fair. Bringing this all the way back around to the thread topic, the same goes for players describing actions to keep watch for danger or find the trap or search for secret doors. They state a goal and approach, I decide on success, failure, or uncertainty based on consistent factors and apply mechanics in the latter case. Balancing out granting success and going to the dice, in combination with other approaches, contributes to my players taking the Perception skill a lot less than some folks are reporting in this thread.

 

[guachi]

1) What if Perception had some codified uses that it doesn't currently have? Like using a Perception check or group Perception check to determine starting encounter distance.

I actually did this in my last game session. Great minds think alike! I rolled Stealth (one roll) for a group of undead - skeletons, zombies, and 2 wights. The roll, despite including low Dex zombies still beat all the PCs. This was for an outdoor encounter and, rather than have the PCs surprised (in a 5e sense) I had the encounter occur at 15-20 feet, zombie movement range distance.

While it wasn't surprise in a 5e mechanical sense it was surprise in a general sense. "You round the corner and ... OMGZombies!!!

 

[Tony Vargas]

Magic resistance. Roll d100 vs target number.

You missed the DMG notation, there were adjustments up or down for the level of the caster (and they weren't +/- 5%, it was 3% one way, something else the other - can't remember, right now, it's been a while). Then there were items and spells that affected magic resistance, as well.

D20 roll number add modifiers compare target number.

At least the modifiers were consistently +/- on a d20 roll.

There are so many more. You may think this is a bad example but roll+add+compare IS more complicated than roll+compare.

Slightly, but the AD&D systems was actually add/subtract from the target, roll-under. Neither of us could quite remember the AD&D system, too, that's illustrative.

I think "whim" is a little insulting. The implication is that the DM is just making stuff up and changing his or her mind arbitrarily with no explanation

'Whim' is a little dismissive of the seriousness and intensity of our magic-elf game.

A fair and consistent DM that balances out deciding on success or failure and going to the dice is making decisions and rulings based on carefully considered criteria, preparation, internal logic, and established fiction.

Maybe not consciously taking all those into account quantitatively, but the art of DMing includes awareness of all those factors on some level, certainly.

...while not overdoing it such that the mechanics are irrelevant and the DM can be "gamed."

Not exactly a clear line, but it's good to be on your guard - but not overdo that, either.

 

[Wiseblood]

You missed the DMG notation, there were adjustments up or down for the level of the caster (and they weren't +/- 5%, it was 3% one way, something else the other - can't remember, right now, it's been a while). Then there were items and spells that affected magic resistance, as well.

What page was that on? I don't doubt you. I pored over those books for 30 minutes looking for what to roll for surprise IIRC a d10 never found it in print though. The layout (if that is what you call it) was nigh indecipherable so I can understand not knowing that and mistaking the mechanic for a simple,one.

I retract my previous assertion.

 

[KarinsDad]

I think "whim" is a little insulting. The implication is that the DM is just making stuff up and changing his or her mind arbitrarily with no explanation when that is most certainly not the case. Perhaps you don't mean it that way, but that is what "whim" means in this context.

I did not mean it to be insulting. But to be totally honest here, aren't all DMs making stuff up on the spur of the moment a LOT? The game goes off into so many directions, the players come up with so many different ideas that the DM really is telling a morphing story, one that is morphing at the table as the game is played. By whim, I mean that if I as DM decide on the fly today that there are Hill Giants in the nearby hills, there is no guarantee that if we started the game at 1 PM today instead of 2 PM today, that with that totally different change of start time, that an idea wouldn't have occurred to me (possibly triggered by something a player said) instead that there are no Hill Giants in the nearby hills because a historical event wiped them all out and if the PCs want to know more, they will have to do some investigating.

That is what I mean by whim. The "Say Yes" philosophy (or possibly better expressed as "Ignoring the Dice" DMG philosophy) espoused by 5E removes some types of whim by trying to get the DM to always say Yes. I like to remove some of that whim by rolling the dice. I think that both DMing styles are perfectly reasonable. In the DMG terms, it's leaning more towards the "Rolling with It" philosophy than "The Middle Path" philosophy.

And one of the reasons that I like rolling dice is because it shows fairness as a DM and it shows that no, the game world does not just revolve around the PCs. Their goals will not automatically eventually be successful just because they stated a goal and a reasonable approach to attain that goal, rather things may or may not work out as they envision. Some of the more fun gaming sessions occur because the players wanted to do A, but that way was blocked (maybe just by a random die roll), so they went off and did B instead. "When the DM shuts a door, he opens a window".

However to be fair, using this approach might lead players to optimize their PCs a bit. As an example, they sometimes purposely take skills that match up with their ability scores, rather than taking skills that they think would be fun for their PC concept. Or alternatively, they take skills that they think will be needed by their PC (or used a lot by the DM), but ones that their ability score do not match up with. Neither of these reasons for skill selection derive directly from the history and background of the PC, rather the skill selections dictate changes to the background (or they influence the background after the fact).

A fair and consistent DM that balances out deciding on success or failure and going to the dice is making decisions and rulings based on carefully considered criteria, preparation, internal logic, and established fiction. They are consciously telegraphing information via describing the environment to avoid gotchas. They are taking every action declared by the players into consideration to award success to players who have been paying attention, immersing themselves in the world, and coming up with appropriate ideas to overcome challenges while not overdoing it such that the mechanics are irrelevant and the DM can be "gamed." All while pursuing the goals of play, that is, everyone having a good time and creating an exciting, memorable story.

It is a careful and methodical balancing act which takes into account the player's natural desire to avoid randomness wherever possible by having control over outcomes. That is not whim and it's no small feat either.

That sounds like a lot of work. Whew!

It also isn't required to be a good DM. Both styles, in fact thousands of styles, are all ok. There is no "one good style" including the style suggestions in the DMG or here on the forum.

As both a DM and a player, my criteria leans more towards having fun, but not at the expense of not having a plausible and consistent game world. A random great idea by a player does not mean a good idea for the campaign setting. This means that the DM shouldn't necessarily give in to player desires. The more a DM gives in to "the player's natural desire to avoid randomness wherever possible by having control over outcomes", the more he is making that player's choices not about what can the PC do, but more what the player can get away with (to some extent). People are people. None of us are totally altruistic and many of us are more competitive than we care to admit, so when given the opportunity, many of us will take advantage of a system or a DM. It's in our nature. Again, I'm not trying to say this in an insulting way (but I suck at sometimes expressing my ideas). I'm saying that boundaries are often good and saying No is sometimes ok. As a DM, I just let the dice tell the players No for me sometimes. And sometimes the dice say yes, so if it is something I am not ready for or something that I prefer not happen, I just suck it up. But I just say No (not out loud, but in a variety of other ways) when I really do not want the campaign heading off into some undesirable direction.

If a player asked me "Are there any goats in this town?" my response would be "What do you do to find out?" and "Stop asking me questions - do stuff by describing what you want to do." If a reasonable statement of goal and approach is offered, I will narrate the result of the adventurer's action based on the certainty of success. Because this is such a mundane action with likely no complicating factors, no dice will be used unless perhaps there is any negotiation on the goat's price.

Yes. I used to try to play that way. "Stop asking me questions, tell me where your PC is going and what your PC is doing". This is a DM style preference which is why I used the goat example. My group currently consists of 4 players in their mid to late 50s and 3 players in their early to late 20s. I have not played these older players for 25 years while living elsewhere and as a group, they acquired a lot of gaming habits that were different than mine. So when I moved back 5 years ago, I spent the first few years trying to get them to adjust their playing style somewhat towards mine. And some aspects of it was like pulling teeth. So, I decided that wasn't fun for the players or the DM, so I adjusted my DMing style to match the players, not the other way around. And guess what? It's still fun. It's a lot of fun.

Note: Course, I'm not DM at the moment and probably won't be again for at least another year or more, so I now have time to think more about these types of concepts.

While it's a silly example, you can substitute basically anything in for the goal and approach of finding a goat and the same adjudication process applies. Again, not whim, not random. Consistent, balanced, fair. Bringing this all the way back around to the thread topic, the same goes for players describing actions to keep watch for danger or find the trap or search for secret doors. They state a goal and approach, I decide on success, failure, or uncertainty based on consistent factors and apply mechanics in the latter case. Balancing out granting success and going to the dice, in combination with other approaches, contributes to my players taking the Perception skill a lot less than some folks are reporting in this thread.

As I think it would. However, your style (from what I understand) means that some player HAS to be standing guard, some player HAS to be searching for secret doors, some player HAS to be searching for traps, etc. for them to minimize the gotchas. Each or most players HAVE to be telling you their PCs' goals. In other words, if no player explicitly declares that they are standing guard, then the party will have a much higher chance of being surprised if a monster shows up. My style is that I just assume that the PCs are doing SOP delving actions and if I need to know if someone is doing something specific, I might ask each player what his/her PC is doing. Generally, that is not an issue because a few players speak up and tell me what they are doing. I have to actually go out of my way to try to get the spotlight to shine on some of the other players who are more content to go with the flow by sometimes asking them what they are doing. The downside of this approach might be that if nobody states that they are standing guard and I am assuming SOP, then I go back to the Perception roll to determine if they are surprised if a monster shows up. I don't necessarily know which PC is actually doing it, so everyone gets to roll.


My players probably take the perception skill more than other groups because they want to avoid the gotchas. But, both play styles are fine (and yes, the goat example was purposely silly to highlight the playstyle differences). And to be fair, I am lazy as a DM and probably play the Roll the Dice play style a bit more because it is faster and easier and keeps the adventure moving. There isn't a 10 minute roleplaying session with the innkeeper as often (that being interesting to 2 players, but the other 4 players might get a bit bored if the conversation does not concern their PCs), we just cut to the chase and move on. I have 2 players who could care less about what the adventure is, they just want to get to it right away (and the in town prep work is a necessary evil to them ).