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Message: <blockquote data-quote="ThePolarBear" data-source="post: 7055701" data-attributes="member: 6857451">That is exactly what i'm saying. No amounts of perception will ever allow you to see the marks, unless the act of perceiving is made at a distance of 5 cm. (exageration, i know.) At that point, only if you are looking at the right place with the right inquisitive mind you are able to understand what those spots actually are. They are dead obvious. It's not about seeing them. It's about understanding what they are.If the character is investigating the mosaic then the attention is clearly there.No, the outcome is certain. He does not notice the marks for what they are. There's no requirement for perception, because perception alone does not help.No amount of rolling will let you jump to the moon. No amount of perception will let you recognise the marks, unless you happen to be looking for some clue specifically.That's because the old general rules still apply. If something it's impossible, something it's impossible. It's not uncertain. There's no roll. The fact itself that there is no roll listed indicates that perception is not what it takes to identify what happens in this case - RAI.A blind person is blind. (i know, i love tautologies. edit: Well, repetitions, more than tautologies.) No matter how hard he tries it's not going to see anything, no matter what he tries to do. It's up to the DM to rule on this cases. The roll is investigation, but requires visual input for at least a part of the informations. This case? For me it might set off the trap, end up touching the ash and understanding what is is, feeling the indentations of the runes, if there's one. Or it might end up touching a part of the mosaic that's clean and not notice anything.And yes, TECHNICALLY understanding that what is being touched is ash is perception. How difficult is that however? Is it really meaningful (again, another rule for rolling) to have a roll that's probably quite easy and really not more important than the player actually expressing is willfulness to inspect thorougly something?Is a perception check dispensable for following tracks? Yes, that's just survival. You might find the tracks, you might not, but either way you are unable to follow them or learn anything useful if you fail.Is a perception check dispensable to look for the right tome in a library? Yes, that's most likely an investigation or an arcana check. You do see books, how you search for the book you are looking for is way more important than how visible the book actually is - in most cases at least.Would you advocate that to grapple you have to make an acrobatics check to see if you do not lose your footing, then an attack roll to see if you actually come into contact with the creature you are trying to grapple, then the athletics check to see if you can actually hold it, then another acrobatics to see again if the struggle does not bring you down? Or even just two of these?It's the same for traps. For some actually see something is more important than knowing how it works. For others the other way around is the most important. And the roll is just one - in the intentions. (Not that it really needs repeating, we are on the same page here) A Dm is always free to change that for any reason, as long as it's for making the game more confortable for his group.All that said, if a character walks on the mosaic the trap triggers, so if seeing a mosaic on the ground does not put your team on high alert they are going to perceive the trap from a very advantageous position <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" />Dunno. If i use tripwire i might be committing either an error (i'm letting more informations out than what is actually availlable) or giving out a specific indication that's clear on the intent of what is being seen - a tripwire, a contraption that is based of a triggering mechanism connected to a wire or other form of string that serves to activate something. I might use "string" or "tripwire", depending on how much i think is right for the players to know. I do not usually describe a corridor as something like "an open space lined in worked rocks of non-identified kind that streches in lenght for an unknown distance, that's more or less regular in shape, about 4 arms of width and 8 in height" after all <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" /></blockquote>

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