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Passive vs Active Perception...
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<blockquote data-quote="DEFCON 1" data-source="post: 7331621" data-attributes="member: 7006"><p>Unlike the others who have responded above... for me, absolutely they can notice it.</p><p></p><p>It seems to me that I treat the definition of "Perception" differently than other people (and probably how the game treats it too for the most part.) To me, Perception is noticing things. NOT "looking" for things, or "searching" for things-- in my games, that's why we have Investigation as a skill. Perception is what your senses do continuously through no real effort. You see stuff. You hear stuff. You smell stuff. No one goes "searching" for an odor... they just perhaps notice the odor as it wafts by. Which is what I use Passive Perception for... how good you are at just "picking stuff up" as you wander around. That goblin on the other side of the door that tried to be quiet (and how well it did it I figured out by rolling a Stealth check for it?) If your Passive Perception was high enough, you heard it. Not because you were "trying really hard to hear things"... but because your ears just picked up on it. And that's the whole reason why I use Passive scores (Perception and Investigation)... because sometimes you just notice things through no real effort, but only because the person or creature or item that was TRYING to hide itself did a really crappy job.</p><p></p><p>I don't go along with the other people who commented that if a PC didn't say they were searching for a secret door that they had no chance to notice it. To me, that's ridiculous. What if the secret was just hidden really badly? There's a doorway that someone hung a curtain in front of, but the curtain keeps billowing from the draft? Or an ogre tried to hide in bushes that were just barely able to cover him? Hidden situations so badly done that you might only assign or roll a DC 8 to find them? To NOT let the most obvious of hidden objects not be found because the player didn't SAY they were "looking" for them to me misses the point. Now yes, you as the DM could <em>ask</em> the player to roll a Perception check because they obviously would have had a pretty chance to actually see the thing had the PC actually been in that situation... but what's the point? Just so the player has the chance to roll a 1 and thereby miss the most obvious of clues due to a crappy roll? No thanks. If I want PCs to possibly miss hidden things, the DCs to find them just happen to be higher than 10. If the DC is 15... many PCs might miss it, and some might find it. And if I want to make it even more variable or a given... I'll roll a die to determine the DC for a hidden object the same way I'd roll a die to determine the DC for a Stealthed individual. That way the DC might be so high that nobody notices it using their Passive score, and then they HAVE to state they are making an Active search to find it (at which time they roll the dice and have a chance of getting a higher score if they roll 11 or higher on that d20.)</p><p></p><p>Obviously everyone wants to and does run their games differently, which again is why the Stealth rules are so generic-- because almost no one would agree on WotC's decision had they made rules more concrete and the people would just ignore them and make up their own. Same goes for spotting things.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="DEFCON 1, post: 7331621, member: 7006"] Unlike the others who have responded above... for me, absolutely they can notice it. It seems to me that I treat the definition of "Perception" differently than other people (and probably how the game treats it too for the most part.) To me, Perception is noticing things. NOT "looking" for things, or "searching" for things-- in my games, that's why we have Investigation as a skill. Perception is what your senses do continuously through no real effort. You see stuff. You hear stuff. You smell stuff. No one goes "searching" for an odor... they just perhaps notice the odor as it wafts by. Which is what I use Passive Perception for... how good you are at just "picking stuff up" as you wander around. That goblin on the other side of the door that tried to be quiet (and how well it did it I figured out by rolling a Stealth check for it?) If your Passive Perception was high enough, you heard it. Not because you were "trying really hard to hear things"... but because your ears just picked up on it. And that's the whole reason why I use Passive scores (Perception and Investigation)... because sometimes you just notice things through no real effort, but only because the person or creature or item that was TRYING to hide itself did a really crappy job. I don't go along with the other people who commented that if a PC didn't say they were searching for a secret door that they had no chance to notice it. To me, that's ridiculous. What if the secret was just hidden really badly? There's a doorway that someone hung a curtain in front of, but the curtain keeps billowing from the draft? Or an ogre tried to hide in bushes that were just barely able to cover him? Hidden situations so badly done that you might only assign or roll a DC 8 to find them? To NOT let the most obvious of hidden objects not be found because the player didn't SAY they were "looking" for them to me misses the point. Now yes, you as the DM could [I]ask[/I] the player to roll a Perception check because they obviously would have had a pretty chance to actually see the thing had the PC actually been in that situation... but what's the point? Just so the player has the chance to roll a 1 and thereby miss the most obvious of clues due to a crappy roll? No thanks. If I want PCs to possibly miss hidden things, the DCs to find them just happen to be higher than 10. If the DC is 15... many PCs might miss it, and some might find it. And if I want to make it even more variable or a given... I'll roll a die to determine the DC for a hidden object the same way I'd roll a die to determine the DC for a Stealthed individual. That way the DC might be so high that nobody notices it using their Passive score, and then they HAVE to state they are making an Active search to find it (at which time they roll the dice and have a chance of getting a higher score if they roll 11 or higher on that d20.) Obviously everyone wants to and does run their games differently, which again is why the Stealth rules are so generic-- because almost no one would agree on WotC's decision had they made rules more concrete and the people would just ignore them and make up their own. Same goes for spotting things. [/QUOTE]
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