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

[Imaculata]

In cases like this, why not just kinda mush the two skills together?

As in, if something's reasonably easy to grok then the roll can use the higher of the character's two skills, but if it's particularly difficult (like trying to discern one trog's scent from another - how does one tell awful from awful anyway) it could be using the lower. In other cases, just use the average of the two skills.

Lanefan

Yeah, I agree. I think a lot of DM's that play 3rd edition make the mistake of basically lumping the two skills together (which is the reason why 5e has just one Perception skill). Its a bit silly in my opinion to make two skill checks for something. For example, suppose a bandit is sneaking up on the camp of the players. Do you let the character who is on watch make both a spot AND a listen check? If so, you might as well have one perception check. I tend to lean towards less checks, rather than more. I determine what is the most important factor in a scenario, and thats what I let my players roll for. I think you are more likely to hear a bandit sneaking through a forest at night, than to see him. So I let the player make a Listen check, and thats all.

Notice a vampire hiding among the rafters of a dark barn? Obvious a spot.

Notice some giant spiders crawling on a wall in the dark? If you have a light source, its a spot check. Otherwise, its a listen check.

The down side of letting the players roll twice, is that it can make sneaking almost impossible, because the players get two attempts to notice the sneaking character. It also works the other way; if the players want to sneak up on some bad guys, and they get two checks, the players might as well not bother sneaking at all. Especially if each character gets these two checks (its a lot of rolling too), the players are almost guaranteed to be noticed by the bad guys. So I assume there's usually just one person that needs to roll, and that only one check is relevant or dominant.

A while ago we had a scene where the players were sneaking into a warehouse at night, while guards with guarddogs were patrolling the place. Nearby guards would make only spot checks, because I presume the stone floor produces no noticeable sounds when the players are sneaking. I also presumed that whenever the guard dog crossed a path that the players had crossed, it would automatically smell them (no check), and sound alarm. The guard would then perform a search (with a +4 bonus because of the dog) to find the intruders, and warn his colleagues.

 

[KarinsDad]

The first round takes 20 minutes? Even with some participants (including you) not doing anything?

It can. Easily. We have 6 PCs which means that the DM has to throw either tough foes with a lot of abilities or a bunch of foes to challenge us. Say he throws 6 foes at us.

If the monsters ambush the PCs and only half of the PCs make the perception check and a given player misses the check and rolls the lowest init, that's 12 monster inits and 8 PC inits before that PC gets to go.

Each monster/PC attacking takes at least a minute, usually more. There are a lot of time killers in a game: people going slow, players cross table talking tactics, players counting hexes to determine range (I personally hate that one with a passion), monsters having more than one attack per round, the DM re-reading a monster ability, players deciding on which spell to cast, people telling jokes, etc. There are groups with mostly really super efficient players, but for every one group like that, there are at least 10 groups where at least half of the players are slow. And the worst thing ever is when the DM is slow. That can be agonizing.


And even in a 4 party group with 4 foes, your PC could be going 14th (15th worse case scenario).


Our group plays for about 6 to 8 hours and we typically only get in 2 encounters per session (sometimes 3) while off "in a dungeon". Course, our DMs rarely throw easy encounters at us because most of the players consider them to be a waste of gaming time. We tend to do 3 harder encounters per adventuring day instead of 6 easy to medium with 1 or 2 hard ones thrown in. So, there tend to be more foes and hence more time between turns, and hence fewer encounters per session.

 

[KarinsDad]

My issue with perception (like other skills) is that I don't want every single player at the table rolling for it. If that is done, I have to up the DC a lot to have some chance of nobody making the roll.

Granted, this is perception not used for surprise. For surprise, everyone gets to roll and you either beat the average DC of the hiding monsters, or you did not.

But when I want them to just notice or know something, I usually ask for a skill roll for the PCs trained in a given skill, perception included. Or in the case of perception, I often have the front 2 or 3 party members roll for it, trained or not at the first moment that the front PCs are able to notice something (it comes into view, or they are about to step on a trap or whatever).

The generic problem of everyone rolling the skill is that someone is bound to roll high and make the DC. If that is the case, why bother rolling the dice at all?

 

[schnee]

Now that we have the 'people who compulsively read about D&D on the Internet and are self-selectively biased towards being optimizers', how about the rest?

I've seen the presentation the two D&D main designers did at a design school, and it turned out that message board users are not representative. Quite a few things that caused uproar online didn't register in their extensive user research.

I wonder if it's really that big of a deal?

 

[Fanaelialae]

But if that's the approach you take (and it's a sensible one), Perception can start to encroach onto Investigation's territory... For example, if a player says "I smell the rags from the troglodyte we chased away. Is this troglodyte's smell similar to the one that stabbed Durkin? The DM needs to decide if this is the PC perceiving through their senses OR if it's the PC deducing a clue. This case feels like a 50/50 toss-up to me.

IMO this is clearly Investigation. Perception is whether you can perceive something (given that we're dealing with trog stench, it's a certainty) while investigation is interested in whether you can determine it's significance (telling the stench of one trog from another).

Now that we have the 'people who compulsively read about D&D on the Internet and are self-selectively biased towards being optimizers', how about the rest?

I've seen the presentation the two D&D main designers did at a design school, and it turned out that message board users are not representative. Quite a few things that caused uproar online didn't register in their extensive user research.

I wonder if it's really that big of a deal?

Yeah, as with most things on ENWorld, you have to take it with a grain of salt. In my group that is mostly made up of players with not much 5e experience, most of them have not taken perception.

 

[KarinsDad]

Yeah, as with most things on ENWorld, you have to take it with a grain of salt. In my group that is mostly made up of players with not much 5e experience, most of them have not taken perception.

Weird. We have 4 players (used to be 5) in our group that never check the Internet and nearly every one of them took Perception for nearly every PC. Out of about 25 PCs since the game came out, I would guess that about 21 or 22 of them took Perception.

 

[Fanaelialae]

Weird. We have 4 players (used to be 5) in our group that never check the Internet and nearly every one of them took Perception for nearly every PC. Out of about 25 PCs since the game came out, I would guess that about 21 or 22 of them took Perception.

You can be a hardcore gamer (in this case, 5e) without going to ENWorld. But, more likely than not, if you hang out on ENWorld you are a fairly hardcore gamer who devotes a significant amount of time to the hobby. (As opposed to a less hardcore gamer who shows up to game each week but dedicates little to no time to the hobby between games.) Nothing wrong with either, but by the very nature that they are spending time away from the table on the hobby, ENWorld attracts those on the hardcore end of the spectrum.

 

[schnee]

Weird. We have 4 players (used to be 5) in our group that never check the Internet and nearly every one of them took Perception for nearly every PC. Out of about 25 PCs since the game came out, I would guess that about 21 or 22 of them took Perception.

Yeah, that's why anecdotes are dangerous. And I'm not assuming too much from my table either.

I think part of is our DM made it very clear that he wants *characters* and wouldn't screw with people that were sub-optimal. I've joined in co-DM-ing, so I'm carrying that on and even the people that are used to optimizing like crazy are joining in on the shenanigans.

That takes a lot of maturity, something I didn't have as a player until pretty late.

 

[KarinsDad]

Yeah, that's why anecdotes are dangerous. And I'm not assuming too much from my table either.

I think part of is our DM made it very clear that he wants *characters* and wouldn't screw with people that were sub-optimal. I've joined in co-DM-ing, so I'm carrying that on and even the people that are used to optimizing like crazy are joining in on the shenanigans.

That takes a lot of maturity, something I didn't have as a player until pretty late.

I don't think that optimizing is a sign of immaturity though. My current PC is Barbarian 5 / Wizard 5. I suspect that you won't find that on many optimization boards.

I play the game to have fun (which btw is not necessarily inclusive to optimized or non-optimized PCs). As a player, I used to want to "save the day" which meant having a PC that could pull something out of his butt on the fly which usually meant playing a wizard. These days as a player, I let everyone else save the day and I'm more concerned with telling jokes to keep players laughing, and making my own PC memorable (voice, mannerisms, saying cool stuff at just the right time, etc.).

 

[schnee]

I don't think that optimizing is a sign of immaturity though. My current PC is Barbarian 5 / Wizard 5. I suspect that you won't find that on many optimization boards.

Point taken, I wouldn't say it's necessarily a sign of maturity, but it sure happens often when there's socially immature people at the table. There's something about young men, with power issues, and the drive to get around limitations and rules that all combine to make super-optimization and 'wining the game' a hard thing to resist.

I say this having done it. It's hilarious fun when everyone's in on it; it ruins it for everyone else who's not, and they have no say in it due to the powerful characters having their way.

Anecdote time: My favorite person was a guy named Evan. We played Champions, and he came to the table with a build that was a Strength drain, at range, with one of the perks that as he drained more strength the radius increased. He said something like (paraphrasing wildly, it's been 20 years):

"With 1d6 drain at radius, if I sit down for coffee in Times Square, (shows calculated density of population in Manhattan), I'll kill the entire East Coast in about four hours, and assuming this works on animals too, (whips out global mammal biomass estimates), the entire world in 45. At that point, my strength will be in the high 7 digits, and (composition of earth's crust, calculated with Champions object hit point and hardness values) I should be able to punch my way into the mantle with two, maybe three strikes tops."

He tabled that one with a grin, and introduced a character that merely out-shined the rest of us.