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Message: <blockquote data-quote="ThePolarBear" data-source="post: 7053937" data-attributes="member: 6857451">Yep, you can. And you are right. Both investigation and perception are about methods, not about goals. The goals are various and complex, and can include finding things, but are not what the skill is about. Investigation is about connecting dots i can see and discerning what's relevant to what's not to what i want. To answer "Who, What, When, Why, Where...".Both can be used to "find things", but neither is about "finding things" specifically. And have different ways and limitation that have to be applied to them to make the difference matter.You can perceive the light coming from below what seems to be a wall whether or not you are searching for hidden doors. You are not able to perceive said hidden door if it's well made - it would feel like a wall, taste like a wall, look like a wall. Still, you might think that there's a hidden door there, even if in reality there's just a hole. You need to do one more step - investigate the anomaly - to have some answers. You do not need to roll for it prehaps, as you do not roll to notice you still have your feets and such, as long as there's no need for the roll. No. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":P" title="Stick out tongue    :P"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":P" />I do not agree. If there's nothing to be perceived, then there's no meaning in having a perception check. If the trap is obvious in its working, there's no need for an investigation check. And vice versa.Also, compounding checks makes failure easier, but nothing prevents a trap to have multiple requirements. I think it just goes against the intention of "simplicity" of 5e.I think you are missing the point.Tripwire: You can always ask for an investigation check if a player wants to know if that particular wire is or not connected to a mechanism, and what that mechanism does. However, in that particular trap, the bare minimal requirement for successfully avoid or negate the trap is spotting the wire. No need to go any deeper: a proficient character knows how to check for tension and disable the trap without caring for any other mechanism - if the trap is a simple tripwire.Doorknob: You are required an investigation check to notice a particular pattern on the marks on the door. The implication is that the character looking at the door could already see the marks. Perception has already passed, possibly because the difficulty to notice them was so trivial that the marks were simply described into the scene.Both this examples are in a place where it's underlined the difference between the two skills: Perceiving and Analyzing, exactly as you say, to simply underline the difference. Neither is an actual trap.This leaves the Fiery one as the apex of contention: Ash and burn marks.Quite simply for what i see the trap is still a simple one. For me it requires investigation alone because perception passes from "you have no way to perceive this normally" to " it becomes obvious once , while investigating and thus being near the place i'm looking at, i see that the mosaic is not intended to have black in that place and what i thought was dust like the rest is actually ash", neither situation requiring a check. You still need to perceive those things, it just passes from "impossible" to "automatic" once the right situation comes up.And that's why i think there's no uncertainty at least for these examples. Again, the Fire trap is a thematic one and if we want to go for it the Dm might already have been describing the temple as having a "deep, hot air that smells of coals, dust and ash, with a light whiteish fog that, while not enough to impede vision, gives the whole area some sort of supernatural and eeire feeling", already covering most of the sensorial inputs that perception itself would cover.That is not possible. The very same tripwire example falls perfectly in what you say Wotc doesn't want to happen. Again, it's simply impossible to notice those things without inspecting the related surface in detail. Once one does so, the anomaly becomes apparent. Then again a temple with a mosaic with runes on the floor smells like trap even without a perception check ;D</blockquote>

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