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

[iserith]

I've played in groups where any player that ventured into a town would immediately yell: "I keep an eye out for pickpockets!". It is probably a learned behavior after some unpleasant experience with a DM that would allow pickpockets to rob the PC's blind at every opportunity, unless they explicitly made it clear that they were watching out (and even then they would have to make a spot check, which is just silly).

Yeah, classic DM failing to telegraph a threat which results in a gotcha. Players naturally want some control over outcomes, so this sort of thing happens as insurance against gotchas.

 

[KarinsDad]

A passive check is an ability check resolving a task that is performed repeatedly when that task has an uncertain outcome. So the process of adjudication is something like this:

The DM describes the environment. The players describe what they want to do. The DM considers whether the outcome of the tasks are uncertain. If not, the DM narrates the result of the adventurers' actions. If uncertain, then an ability check is called for, unless that task is being performed repeatedly, in which case it's a passive check. Once the check is resolved, the DM narrates the results of the adventurers' actions.

I think the confusion some folks have with passive checks - and maybe this doesn't apply to you, but I will explain it for anyone else - is that they think characters aren't doing something actively. "Passive" refers to there being no roll. A passive check is an ability check and ability check resolves uncertainty as to the outcome of a task the character is attempting. So working backwards, a character must necessarily be doing something actively in order for a passive check to resolve an outcome.

So in a practical sense, the DM asks what ongoing task each PC is doing as they travel or delve including when they are pouring over a "secured room." This choice comes with an opportunity cost of not performing some other beneficial or necessary task. Passive checks are used to resolve these ongoing tasks when the outcome is uncertain. The upside for the player is that they can't roll less than a 10 here and anyone Working Together adds a +5 to the resolution. Players naturally want control over outcomes via their decisions. The smart play for players is to reduce the need to roll dice because randomness is not their friend. If the game features a lot of randomness because the DM is asking for more rolls than average, then it is natural for the players to all train in those skills and pump them up because that is the only way they can have any control over the outcome.

The downside to performing a task repeatedly is that it comes with the expenditure of the resource of time (if nothing else). If there are time pressures, such as deadlines to meet or wandering monster checks at set intervals, the players are trading not rolling less than a 10 for the risk of, say, not completing their mission in time or running afoul of wandering monsters. If they instead attempt to perform a task with an uncertain outcome once, then an ability check may be appropriate at the cost of no longer performing the ongoing task for however long the other task takes or the risk of a bad outcome. Alternatively, they can sink 10 times the normal amount of time into a task and gain success automatically, but this can be a significant cost if time as a resource is precious.

With all of these trade-offs and considerations, it does make the choice of task, who in the party does what, how much time to spend on it a meaningful decision for the players with an important impact on outcomes. It also makes Perception good, but not a Must Have and even tones down the oft-maligned Observant feat (if you use feats). When it comes to the exploration pillar of the game, I cannot recommend it strongly enough.

Meh. It still sucks. We'll just have to agree to disagree.

If the DC of a secret door is SO high that the Expertise Perception Rogue cannot find it with passive perception, then it won't be found.

Alternately if it is a lower DC, it will always be found.


Ditto for another PC helping that PC.

The Rogue will always look for the secret doors, another PC will always help them. They will always find it, or if the DC is too high, the players won't know to figure out a way to have the DM give them an actual active roll.

Meh.

Always or never based on the DC. It sounds like an entitlement type of thing to auto succeed because the players declare that they are going to repeatedly do something.


Alternatively, the Rogue tries to search for secret doors once (instead of repeatedly searching over and over again). The DM allow him to roll an active roll. He rolls a 2 on the D20 and the player knows that he screwed up. So, he then tries to do so with help from another player. Even if the DM rolls in secret for the Rogue, if he misses, he just asks to re-do it with another player's help. It just becomes a big mess IMO. If neither of those work, the players just decide (if there is no time crunch) to attempt it passively by doing it over and over again with help. If the DC is too high, auto fail. Too low, auto success.

I just find the mechanic and the implications of it for player declarations of actions and the attempted potentials for abuse annoying.

The only way to make it random at all and not a sure thing one way or the other is to set the DC so high that a passive help check will autofail, but an active help check might succeed. Meh. I might as well just do an active check on whatever DC I think appropriate straight out of the box and throw the passive check out the door.

If I have a secret door that leads to extra treasure, I want there to be some chance of the players failing, and some chance of them succeeding. I don't want it to be an auto success or an auto failure because I'm using passive checks or based on what actions the players declare.

 

[KarinsDad]

Yeah, classic DM failing to telegraph a threat which results in a gotcha. Players naturally want some control over outcomes, so this sort of thing happens as insurance against gotchas.

In a super hero game, I had a player ask to search a spaceship for anything unusual.

The NPC shrinking flying villain had planted a bomb inside the engine casing, so there was for all intents and purposes, no way for him to leave any clues and no way for this particular PC to actually find anything.

So, I told the player that his PC did not find anything. No dice roll. Other PCs had abilities that would have allowed them to find the bomb, but not this PC.

If he had rolled great, I would have been in a conundrum as to explain that he didn't find anything, even though he rolled great. If he had rolled lousy, some other player might have tried to search in other ways, solely based on a dice roll total.

The bomb went off. The player was extremely angry (way off the chart) that he had wanted to search and had not gotten a roll. In hindsight, I should have given him a roll because chances were, he would not have rolled super great. It was a gotcha for this particular PC. If he had rolled super great, I could have at least explained that he didn't find anything because he did not have the proper abilities (I tried that anyway, but without the dice roll, it didn't matter to the player, he was pissed that he didn't even get a dice roll). Or alternatively, I should have rolled in secret behind the screen (I tend to not do that too often and it would probably have raised a red flag to the other players that something was up).

Every once in a while, DMs should not telegraph threats because the PCs should have no way to know that the threat exists. They are not omniscient. But, explain that to some players.

 

[Tony Vargas]

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):

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

I think the confusion some folks have with passive checks - and maybe this doesn't apply to you, but I will explain it for anyone else - is that they think characters aren't doing something actively. "Passive" refers to there being no roll. A passive check is an ability check and ability check resolves uncertainty as to the outcome of a task the character is attempting. So working backwards, a character must necessarily be doing something actively in order for a passive check to resolve an outcome.

Another way of saying about the same thing (if I followed that correctly), is that a passive check is only passive in the sense that it's not called for in response to an action declaration for that character.

As an aside, I quite like the passive mechanic and think contested checks should generally be avoided as 'too swingy' (as we tend to say on the boards, even if it's not statistically proper), a check, if the DM calls for one at all, should always be a roll vs a DC, a passive score is just a convenient formula for the DM to use in setting certain DCs. Or, I suppose, I'm saying "DCs shouldn't be determined randomly by a d20 roll."

As it applies to perception, making checks vs passive perception behind the screen is a fine way to determine what's found by the PCs, without any TT equivalent of 'pixel bitching' being required.
Even more convenient: narrating that they find whatever it is you mean for them to find without bothering with either.

Meh. It still sucks.

If the DC of a secret door is SO high that the Expertise Perception Rogue cannot find it with passive perception, then it won't be found.

Alternately if it is a lower DC, it will always be found.

OK, so that's another thing about passives. They should always be compared to a check, not a DC. Passive vs Passive is every bit as bad as a contested check for the opposite reason (no 'swing' at all).

If you're using the PC's passives, you should be making checks - stealth checks of enemies sneaking up on them, kolbold-trapmaking-tools checks to see how well-camouflaged that tripwire is under the current conditions, etc...

 

[KarinsDad]

OK, so that's another thing about passives. They should always be compared to a check, not a DC. Passive vs Passive is every bit as bad as a contested check for the opposite reason (no 'swing' at all).

If you're using the PC's passives, you should be making checks - stealth checks of enemies sneaking up on them, kolbold-trapmaking-tools checks to see how well-camouflaged that tripwire is under the current conditions, etc...

So, you are saying to not set a DC for a hidden pit trap?

Or are you saying to set a DC for a hidden pit trap, but don't allow passive checks to find it, only active?

 

[iserith]

Meh. It still sucks. We'll just have to agree to disagree.

If the DC of a secret door is SO high that the Expertise Perception Rogue cannot find it with passive perception, then it won't be found.

Alternately if it is a lower DC, it will always be found.

As to the particularly well-hidden secret door, that is not necessarily so. A player could choose to spend 10x the amount of time as normal and find it automatically. (See DMG page 237.) The key here is that it is the player's choice to trade the resource of time for automatic success.

For the less well-hidden secret door, I see no issue here. The player is still choosing to Search for Secret Doors which comes at the cost of not performing other tasks. The character will automatically be surprised if lurking monsters attack due to not Keeping Watch. He or she will potentially run afoul of traps. And can't do anything else which distracts from that effort that might be of benefit or necessity to the party while performing that task. That's a meaningful choice and that's the sort of thing we want in our games, right?

Ditto for another PC helping that PC.

The Rogue will always look for the secret doors, another PC will always help them. They will always find it, or if the DC is too high, the players won't know to figure out a way to have the DM give them an actual active roll.

Meh.

Always or never based on the DC. It sounds like an entitlement type of thing to auto succeed because the players declare that they are going to repeatedly do something.

If the rogue always looks for secret doors, he or she is not looking for traps or monsters. Same deal for the PC that is helping the rogue. Sure, they'll always find the secret doors - great! But they'll also always be surprised (when surprise is a thing) and maybe set off traps and can't do anything else. That's a player or players prioritizing one thing over another and taking risks to get a particular outcome. Isn't that desirable?

Alternatively, the Rogue tries to search for secret doors once (instead of repeatedly searching over and over again). The DM allow him to roll an active roll. He rolls a 2 on the D20 and the player knows that he screwed up. So, he then tries to do so with help from another player. Even if the DM rolls in secret for the Rogue, if he misses, he just asks to re-do it with another player's help. It just becomes a big mess IMO. If neither of those work, the players just decide (if there is no time crunch) to attempt it passively by doing it over and over again with help. If the DC is too high, auto fail. Too low, auto success.

The DM decides when a roll is called for, so if nothing substantially changes about the method of searching, then why ask for another roll - they just fail again outright. Alternatively (and preferably in my view), you can offer the trade: Spend 10x more time on this task and I'll give you auto-success in that you will either find a secret door or know with certainty that there isn't one in this chamber. Now it's on the player to make another meaningful choice. This of course presumes that time is a limited resource. If it's not, I heartily recommend you do something about that.

I just find the mechanic and the implications of it for player declarations of actions and the attempted potentials for abuse annoying.

I just can't see any abuses, not in practice or in theory. The players get to make meaningful choices to improve their odds of success. Isn't that a good thing?

The only way to make it random at all and not a sure thing one way or the other is to set the DC so high that a passive help check will autofail, but an active help check might succeed. Meh. I might as well just do an active check on whatever DC I think appropriate straight out of the box and throw the passive check out the door.

If I have a secret door that leads to extra treasure, I want there to be some chance of the players failing, and some chance of them succeeding. I don't want it to be an auto success or an auto failure because I'm using passive checks or based on what actions the players declare.

Again, it's only a sure thing at the cost of something else. It's on the DM to make that cost meaningful. I don't see why the DM should care one way or another whether or how often the PCs succeed or fail, only that they had some say in how they go about their tasks and that their choices impact whether they succeed or fail.

 

[iserith]

Another way of saying about the same thing (if I followed that correctly), is that a passive check is only passive in the sense that it's not called for in response to an action declaration for that character.

At some point, the player had to have described what they want to do (or else it's the DM assuming character action which encroaches upon the player's role in the game). It's just what they want to do is something they're doing repeatedly. When that ongoing task has an uncertain outcome, the passive check resolves it for the DM to narrate a result.

As an aside, I quite like the passive mechanic and think contested checks should generally be avoided as 'too swingy' (as we tend to say on the boards, even if it's not statistically proper), a check, if the DM calls for one at all, should always be a roll vs a DC, a passive score is just a convenient formula for the DM to use in setting certain DCs. Or, I suppose, I'm saying "DCs shouldn't be determined randomly by a d20 roll."

I'm not a huge fan of contests for the same reason. I guess I just live with them because they don't come up much. Grappling is the most common in my experience. It just seems like extra effort for no return.

OK, so that's another thing about passives. They should always be compared to a check, not a DC. Passive vs Passive is every bit as bad as a contested check for the opposite reason (no 'swing' at all).

I disagree. I think it's fine to resolve an outcome to an uncertain task performed repeatedly by comparing a passive score to a DC. I don't see any upside to rolling dice here.

 

[Tony Vargas]

So, you are saying to not set a DC for a hidden pit trap?

Or are you saying to set a DC for a hidden pit trap, but don't allow passive checks to find it, only active?

Yes!

So, if the PCs don't look for a hidden pit trap, you might roll a check vs their best passive DC to see if anything gives the trap away. If, OTOH, the PCs come in looking for a trap, you'd call for a check (or group check), with a DC you set. Obviously (IMHO, it's obvious) the overall chance of finding the trap should be higher in the latter case than the former.

What I wouldn't want to do is compare a DC to a DC or a check to a check.

 

[Tony Vargas]

I'm not a huge fan of contests for the same reason. I guess I just live with them because they don't come up much. Grappling is the most common in my experience. It just seems like extra effort for no return.

Nod, saves-as-defenses worked out well for that in 4e. It wouldn't be hard to figure a DC for grapple checks in 5e.

I disagree. I think it's fine to resolve an outcome to an uncertain task by comparing a passive score to a DC. I don't see any upside to rolling dice here.

It's not an uncertain task, though, at that point. I'd consider that just narrating success/failure. (Which I am fine with, and have resolved to do a lot more of my next 5e campaign, BTW.)

 

[KarinsDad]

As to the particularly well-hidden secret door, that is not necessarily so. A player could choose to spend 10x the amount of time as normal and find it automatically. (See DMG page 237.) The key here is that it is the player's choice to trade the resource of time for automatic success.

For the less well-hidden secret door, I see no issue here. The player is still choosing to Search for Secret Doors which comes at the cost of not performing other tasks. The character will automatically be surprised if lurking monsters attack due to not Keeping Watch. He or she will potentially run afoul of traps. And can't do anything else which distracts from that effort that might be of benefit or necessity to the party while performing that task. That's a meaningful choice and that's the sort of thing we want in our games, right?



If the rogue always looks for secret doors, he or she is not looking for traps or monsters. Same deal for the PC that is helping the rogue. Sure, they'll always find the secret doors - great! But they'll also always be surprised (when surprise is a thing) and maybe set off traps and can't do anything else. That's a player or players prioritizing one thing over another and taking risks to get a particular outcome. Isn't that desirable?



The DM decides when a roll is called for, so if nothing substantially changes about the method of searching, then why ask for another roll - they just fail again outright. Alternatively (and preferably in my view), you can offer the trade: Spend 10x more time on this task and I'll give you auto-success in that you will either find a secret door or know with certainty that there isn't one in this chamber. Now it's on the player to make another meaningful choice. This of course presumes that time is a limited resource. If it's not, I heartily recommend you do something about that.



I just can't see any abuses, not in practice or in theory. The players get to make meaningful choices to improve their odds of success. Isn't that a good thing?



Again, it's only a sure thing at the cost of something else. It's on the DM to make that cost meaningful. I don't see why the DM should care one way or another whether or how often the PCs succeed or fail, only that they had some say in how they go about their tasks and that their choices impact whether they succeed or fail.

Two issues with this:

1) Having a player declare that they are searching for secret doors and then having a trap autohit doesn't make sense to me. He is searching. He really doesn't know what he is searching for, but he is looking. Pressing stone, blowing dust over edges, whatever. To me, if he declares he is searching for a secret door and there is only a hidden trap, I let him roll to find the trap. If there is a hidden monster behind an illusory ceiling tile, I let him try to find the hidden opening, the monster does not automatically win surprise because the PC was busy searching for a secret door. Searching for secret doors also allows him to find non-conspicuous runes or anything else out of the ordinary. He's searching.

2) The 10x effort and auto succeeds on a check rule in the DMG (page 237) is problematic to me. I don't think that PCs should automatically succeed at tasks, just because they put extra time in. Climbing Mount Everest is slow going, but low skill (and even highly trained) people still fall. I would only use that rule if the DC is within a reasonable range of being successful. Say the PC has to roll an 18 on the die roll to make the check, he's not going to make it automatically (in my game) by taking 10x as long. A better rule (IMO), is to allow him to roll once with advantage if he takes 10x as long. I don't like auto-successes. Also, you mentioned that the PC would automatically know with certainty with the 10x rule that if nothing is found, nothing is there. According to the DMG, that is not quite correct. It might be an impossible task for this PC and he autofails, but it might be a possible task for a different more skilled PC. He doesn't know that nothing is there, he knows he tried his best and didn't find it.