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Message: <blockquote data-quote="The Crimson Binome" data-source="post: 7160575" data-attributes="member: 6775031">Back when I played Pathfinder, everyone put every skill point into Perception at every opportunity, because being surprised was a death sentence. It was annoying, but you had to put up with it if you wanted to play the game (at least, to play the game the way that our GM ran it, from the adventure paths).To contrast, the few times I played 3.5 after having played Pathfinder or 4E, I just didn't even bother. With two different skills for Spot and Listen, it meant a 50% chance that I wouldn't have a chance to detect an ambush, even if I did invest heavily in one of those skills, and those odds don't add up to a game I would want to play. I'll just take two other skills that might come up, and trust to the rogue or cleric to pay more attention.With 5E, it comes back to how the DM runs it. If I'm going to need Perception and Investigation and Arcana in order to have a reasonable chance of not being surprised, then I won't bother. If Perception lets me detect anything worth noticing before it hurts me, then I'll reluctantly take that skill, and it's not a big deal. Of course with 5E, it's highly unlikely that I'm going to die regardless (as long as I'm not a level 2 character in bugbear country), so I'm not going to worry about it too much.As far as design philosophy goes, I think it would help if missing a Perception check wasn't quite so devastating. If surprising someone in combat just meant that you went first, rather than you got an entire extra round where they couldn't respond, then Perception would be nice but not quite as vital as many now consider it.</blockquote>

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