D&D 5E Passive: It's not Just Perception - Passive Skill Checks

[iserith]

Sure you can. If a character has to parkour up a building, or something like that, you can set the DC before hand based on the material, how many outcroppings there are, hand holds, etc..., but, more to the point, how hard you want it to be. Even if it comes up on the fly, the DC can be set on the spot based on your idea of how difficult it is.

If the player then, as you said, does an action that can make it easier to succeed, he can be granted advantage, which gives +5 to passive skill checks. Conversely, if the player isn't specific enough or takes an action that will make the check harder, giving him disadvantage (-5 to passive skill checks) or unable to succeed at all.

Either way, its very easy to do this without deciding the result ahead of time, you simply set the DC. If your players have a character (or characters) that can automatically succeed at this based on their builds, then that rewards them in a non combat way for their class being good at certain skills, which is nice for positive reinforcement.

Perhaps we're talking past each other then because I'm advocating not setting a DC until the player has stated an approach to achieving a goal. "Parkour up the building" is an approach to the goal of getting up to the roof or balcony or whatever. You can set a DC for doing that task in your notes if you want, but it's potentially a waste of effort since you don't know if the player have his or her character engage in that approach. The player may decide to throw a rope with a grappling hook, take the time to hammer in pitons and climb up, or cast a levitate spell, for example.

 

[jprepo1]

Generally I do not plan too far in advance past a core of a story, I am an avid subscriber to Sly Flourish's "lazy dm" style of running a game. That being said, sometimes there will be elements of your game that are (almost) unavoidable. You may know they are coming for quite some time, or you may have to make them up on the fly, but, ideally DC's should be pretty consistent across the game for similar activities, that way, players have a good idea what they are and are not reasonably capable of. There is always the monkey wrench that be thrown in there, from traps, magic items, etc...

Now, this does take a little bit of work on the DM's part to avoid metagaming. A lot of DM's dont realize they are even more susceptible than players to metagaming at times. Its very tempting to set DC's based on your characters, either for good or for ill, but, ideally, DC's should be set without regard for players abilities, although, like you said, they can be modified by their actions.

One thing I've found very useful to keep consistent is that, though I don;t write many DC's down ahead of time, I will take note of them afterwards. This way I can help remind myself of similar situations when they come up in the future.

 

[KahlessNestor]

I use them when the characters engage in a fictional task repeatedly, provided that task has an uncertain outcome.



I think the DM's mistake in this scenario is simple: He or she didn't consider whether the outcome of the fictional action had a certain or uncertain outcome before engaging the mechanics of the game. A lot of DMs miss this critical step and often end up with results that don't make a lot of sense, such as a hulking barbarian failing to smash something easily breakable. In this example, I would not ask for a check, passive or otherwise. If the object in question really does seem like the character could smash it without a problem, then he or she just succeeds.

The DMG touches on this on page 237: "When a player wants to do something, it's often appropriate to let the attempt succeed without a roll or a reference to the character's ability scores... Only call for a roll if there is a meaningful consequence for failure... When deciding whether to use a roll, ask yourself two questions: [1] Is a task so easy and so free of conflict and stress that there should be no chance of failure? [2] Is a task so inappropriate or impossible - such as hitting the moon with an arrow - that it can't work? If the answer to both of these questions is no, some kind of roll is appropriate."



In this example, the character does not appear to be performing a task repeatedly. Therefore, I would call for an Intelligence check if I thought the player's stated approach to the goal fell short of outright success but somewhere north of outright failure in my estimation.



If just about any action boils down to a check - passive or otherwise - in a given game one might want to consider the DMG's warning (page 236): "...roleplaying can diminish if players feel that their die rolls, rather than their decisions and characterizations, always determine success."

Except that they then would have missed out on great RP following Grog's fumble, not to mention possibly kept them from releasing a BBEG.

 

[iserith]

Except that they then would have missed out on great RP following Grog's fumble, not to mention possibly kept them from releasing a BBEG.

One can always find a silver lining in what I would consider a bad DM call if one looks hard enough. The question is whether the call I would have made would have also been fun for everyone and helped create an exciting, memorable story. What would have been the result if Grog smashed the whatever it was he or she was trying to smash? (I don't watch Critical Role.)

 

[GX.Sigma]

I only use passive Perception, and pretty much only as a DC for Stealth checks.

For example, let's reference Critical Role. *SPOILERS* At one point, a barbarian PC named Grog, who, as you might expect, has a Strength score up around 20, goes to smash something on the ground, and item that one would expect to have an extremely low DC. He rolls a natural 1, automatically failing the check per the DM's house rules (and mine).

Does it really make any logical sense that he wouldn't have succeeded there? In my opinion, no. This is an example of where Passive Athletics could have come into to play. The concept is simple, though by no means concrete. For me, I typically add between 5 to 10 (depending on how hard I deem the check to be) to the skill check DC, which will give me my passive check DC. That's a totally arbitrary set of numbers, which you are adding to an already arbitrarily set number, so, as always, your mileage may vary.

I agree with your reasoning, but your conclusion doesn't work for me. I guess you like mental math more than I do (which is saying a lot, so well done), but I just don't see the need to involve numbers at all. You want to smash a thing? Congratulations, you smash the thing. If there's no consequence for failure, why involve a check at all? And if there is a consequence for failure, why not roll? And if you're going to arbitrarily determine the result anyway, why make yourself do math?

So, let's put this concept into context. A wizard, with an Intelligence score of 18, and a + 4 to his Int checks, is attempting an easy history check with a DC of 8, bringing its passive DC, in my games to somewhere between 13 and 18, depending on context. On top of that, let's say he is also proficient in History, and we'll say he's level 5. This gives him a passive History score of 10+3+4, for a total of 17. Let's further say he has advantage on the check, due to the thing he is trying to remember being something his character studied in his backstory. This gives us another +5, leading to a total passive History score of 22.

That's pretty damn high, now, you could, of course, roll a natural 20 (or a 1) for effect, but would it really make sense for him to fail that check? His character was chosen to have certain skills, based on class and background, that would naturally make him suited to this check, Moreover, was it worth stopping the game, busting out the dice, and tallying results, rather than just rewarding him for being a character with skills in certain areas.

This just doesn't make sense to me. By this system, any character with a passive knowledge skill of X or higher automatically knows all information of DC X or lower (or whatever). Like, everyone with a +5 intelligence bonus automatically knows every single basic fact there is to know, like they've memorized the dictionary or something. To me, this is a situation where it makes sense to roll, because it's uncertain if this particular character knows this particular piece of information.

Of course, if I as the DM wanted the player to automatically know the information, because I felt it's something the character should know, I'd just tell them the information. No checks necessary.

If you needed to grab something from a bird's nest that was situation 100 feet off the ground in the side of a cliff, and the important thing is just that somebody succeeds, then I might roll the climbing difficulty against the passive Athletics of the party in order to see if anyone can get up there. If you have an enemy tied up in a room, and the party is going to take turns pumping them for information, I might roll their ... whatever skill ... against the passive Intimidation of the party.

I get a similar effect by letting one player roll a singular check (the one with the highest bonus), with advantage if someone is helping, or a group check (if they're all helping). If they fail, that's it. Question answered, scene over. If the barbarian can't climb up the cliff, none of you can. The goblin won't tell you any more, and no amount of torture is going to make him talk.

 

[jprepo1]

Yes and no. Remember, since this is at DM discretion, there may be times when something that, in and of itself the PC should be able to do, that may call for a roll even if they would normally pass with a passive check. This can be used to great dramatic effect. In the end though, unless you tell the character they just passed a passive check, they wont know one way or the other.

One of the big benefits to be found with increased use of passive checks is that it subtly rewards players for building their characters to include something other than just combat-centric skills.

It's also very handy for putting players on the spot to develop their characters a little and/or improv. Let's take the example above. Lets say the Arcana check in question was about the magical properties of troll fat, as an alchemy ingredient. You can tell your the player that their character recognizes X about troll fact, then make them explain how their character knows that.

As with all things DnD, the beauty is in all the different ways we can all do the same thing, in this case, I prefer to make their character roleplay the explanation, to put the action back in their hands, than determine that they know it because they rolled Y. Of course, there's nothing stopping you from doing both.

 

[KahlessNestor]

Perhaps we're talking past each other then because I'm advocating not setting a DC until the player has stated an approach to achieving a goal. "Parkour up the building" is an approach to the goal of getting up to the roof or balcony or whatever. You can set a DC for doing that task in your notes if you want, but it's potentially a waste of effort since you don't know if the player have his or her character engage in that approach. The player may decide to throw a rope with a grappling hook, take the time to hammer in pitons and climb up, or cast a levitate spell, for example.

Every written adventure contains DCs. You're saying that is wrong?

 

[KahlessNestor]

One can always find a silver lining in what I would consider a bad DM call if one looks hard enough. The question is whether the call I would have made would have also been fun for everyone and helped create an exciting, memorable story. What would have been the result if Grog smashed the whatever it was he or she was trying to smash? (I don't watch Critical Role.)

Well, not sure I want to give too many spoilers, but Grog was very much roleplaying the not so smart barbarian looking for a quick fix to the massive problem the party was facing and it was clearly telegraphed that the skull wasn't very kosher. They could have traded one problem for another or compounded the problem and made it worse. There was some of the best rp of the show in that scene.

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

Every written adventure contains DCs. You're saying that is wrong?

He didn't say "wrong" he said "potentially a waste of effort", which is true - even when it is nice to have the DC in the adventure, there is no guarantee that the DC is actually going to need to be used.

Module: "This wall is DC 20 to climb."
Player: "I move that table over a few feet in front of the wall, get a running start and jump onto the table, then up on top of the wall."

DC wasn't used, so considering it earlier and righting it down was (a very brief moment of) wasted effort because the result is identical to having not written the DC at all.

 

[iserith]

Every written adventure contains DCs. You're saying that is wrong?

Written adventures have DCs for approaches to particular goals just as I stated. The example of the secret door I provided above, for instance, is right from Lost Mines of Phandelver. The module goes on to say the DC is different (as is the type of check) if the PCs specifically search the wall with the secret door on it. As well, adventure modules are communicating to the reader the vision of the author. A DM preparing his or her own material doesn't need to write down DCs ahead of time and doing so is not a great use of prep time in my view since there is no guarantee that prep will be useful.