D&D 5E Passive Everything

[abirdcall]

I am in the camp that likes passive checks. I think it has a lot more potential.

For those of you who do as well, what do you think of passive everything?

We already have mention of passive investigation in a feat.

It would have a few ramifications:

1. If you are spending an action you roll, if you aren't you don't. Want to roll for insight? You need to interact with the person in an attempt to have them slip up or give something away. Otherwise you just rely on your passive score.

2. No more opposed rolls. The opponent's passive score now acts as their AC. Just like stealth vs passive perception.

Limitations:

3. What about needing to roll to 'save' versus an effect like acrobatics to keep balance? These are usually Dex saves right? Should they always be? Usually you make an acrobatics check when running on ice, but that shouldn't cost your action.

4. Knowledge checks. These are pretty wonky to begin with. These are measuring your ability to recall lore. So does everyone's character know everything and they just can't recall it? Should you have a base amount of knowledge and you can roll if you spend time in thought? Or researching? I think this may need to be its own thread. Perhaps advantage to checks that the character has in their background or they have encountered.


Conclusions:

Incorporating more types of passive checks.

Rolling for effect is not always going to cost an action but it will need to involve the character being active...

with the exception of knowledge checks. Still not sure what to do with those.

No more opposed rolls. Abilities now work similarly to attacks and spells.

 

[Cernor]

I think that both active and passive skills have a place, so you shouldn't completely replace one with the other... But I am in the camp that prefers to use passive skills where possible.

Rolls (active skills) are used for situations when you're actively trying to do something (sneak past a guard, look for a hidden door, climb a cliff, keep your balance while running across a slippery surface, etc.), especially when the task is one with a degree of risk if you fail. If the guard sees you, he'll raise the alarm and you'll be overwhelmed by reinforcements. If you fail to find the hidden door, the monster in the lake will eat you. If you fail to climb the cliff, you'll hurt yourself falling, and so on. These don't necessarily have to consume your action: keeping your balance is made while moving, and trying to intimidate someone arises from making a threat.

Taking opposed rolls out of the system is a consequence of using solely passive skills that I disagree with, but I'm perfectly willing to admit that having not seen it in play, I dislike only in principle. IMO having a variable DC from opposing checks is one of the easiest ways to add tension to a situation. Taking the most extreme example I can think of, if two people are both trying to influence a crowd to help them instead of the other, it definitely feels like a cop-out if one person wins just because his Passive Persuasion is higher than the other person's, and a little arbitrary if one person gets an automatic 10 on her check (using a Passive score) while the other has to roll.

That being said, I'm a fan of using passive skills, if for no other reason than to speed up play. Despite not looking for it specifically, you can still be observant enough to notice the traces of a hidden door, or you can extrapolate the effects of a trap based on its trigger and location. IMO the knowledge skills should be passive rather than active (with a few exceptions) to make knowledgeable characters consistently more knowledgeable than others. Or, in other words, because you're a knowledgeable character (proficient in Arcana, History, Nature, or Religion), you can more easily draw connections between related phenomena (in your proficient field of knowledge) and recall information about them, so you have a passive score with the option to roll instead, whereas others have to roll to see if they recall information.

 

[aramis erak]

I love having passive as a valid option. I use it a lot. But I do not, and will not, run diceless...

 

[TarionzCousin]

Passive Charisma: Checks made by attractive NPC's to determine whether or not they even notice you.

See also: http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0028.html

 

[Hriston]

I don't know. I really like passive perception for automatically detecting hidden things at any time, but if someone wants to take the search action during combat or is actively searching at any other time, I think rolling is appropriate. I could also see using passive investigation in a situation where a search is covering a large area and so is being done repetitively. By extension, a passive score could be used in any situation where something is being done over and over again, to summarize the action and speed things up. Passive survival could be used, for example, to see how successful a PC was in locating enough of a certain herb in a day's foraging to make a healing potion. Passive sleight of hand could be used to see if a thief can raise a certain amount of cash from a crowd of people without getting caught. There are lots of possibilities, but I'd limit it to this type of use. I wouldn't want to use it to resolve one-time tasks that may have a dramatic outcome. It's more fun to roll.

 

[Hriston]

Also, taking an action is really only a thing in combat, so there's no way to "spend an action" outside of combat, but that doesn't mean that creatures aren't making the same effort when they actively use their skills as they would if they were taking an action in combat. In fact, there is even more of an opportunity for them to do so due to the absence of an action economy. Certain actions take more time than others, but it's not like you can search the room without spending the ten minutes it takes to do that, so you could make a single perception check that covers the ten-minute search, or you could assume that the search is actually broken up into multiple, smaller acts of searching, in which case you could use the passive score. Whatever's more fun.

 

[Psikerlord#]

passive perception is broken with traps bec it takes away all randomness. i prefer rolling.

 

[abirdcall]

Hmm....I seem to be misunderstood.

That is probably my fault.

I don't mean to use passive checks all of the time. I agree with most of the responses here. Rolls should be used when the character is being active.

I just mean to have a passive version of each check, not just perception.

 

[GMMichael]

I don't mean to use passive checks all of the time. I agree with most of the responses here. Rolls should be used when the character is being active.

I just mean to have a passive version of each check, not just perception.

Passive perception is the simulation of PCs observing all the time. Rolling a check says, in a way, "okay, I'm doing this NOW." Which doesn't really apply to perception, because you don't stop perceiving.

It's not appropriate for every check, because you're not always attacking, recalling lore, or intimidating.

It's fine and fast for characters to have a "passive result" for each check - a 10 on the 20 die - which is very close to assuming an average performance on each check (but slightly worse). However, since the game works by comparing rolls to DCs, a PC with a marginal advantage on his, now passive, check will either always succeed against that DC or always fail. Which, you'll note, removes all of the tension to which Cernor was referring.

 

[Rune]

Knowledge checks are actually the one area I would be fine with always-on-passive scores. That way, you could simply tell the players what their characters know.

In all other cases, I strictly adhere to the "passive" part of passive scores; if they're actively doing something--and it matters--they roll for it.

I also require detailed description of what's being searched in order to get detailed information of what's found. Because of this, passive perception will tell a character that something is wrong, but not what.