D&D 5E Stealth

[Hriston]

Why do you suppose perception is based on wisdom? It seems to me it's because that's the best measure of someone's resistance to being distracted. No?

I think that's part of it, but to elaborate, I think that Wisdom is the foundation for Perception because it measures your ability to narrow or widen your focus appropriately. Also, cf. the Wikipedia entry on perception that I quoted up-thread. It names learning, memory, expectation, and attention as factors that shape perception through interpretation of information gathered through the senses. All of these could be characterized as aspects of Wisdom.

I was a soldier. Stealth was a big deal to us. Taking advantage of your target's distraction is a considerable part of it.

I agree, and it's an interesting issue with regard to the rules. The game assumes that all creatures are aware of their surroundings and will infallibly notice threats that are out in the open unless the DM determines that they are distracted in some way. The woman in the gorilla suit in the study was not trying to be stealthy. She was out in the open, so in D&D, everyone would notice her automatically unless the DM determined that they were distracted by watching the white-shirted people passing the ball.

The rules go into this in detail in three places, all of which are concerned with things that are, or have been, hidden. In the section on Perception it says that to find a hidden object you need to look in the right place, then roll a Perception check against the hidden object's DC. If you are looking in the wrong place no amount of searching will result in you finding the hidden object. This is very similar to being distracted.

This also comes up in the exploration rules where party members who are busy mapping or performing tasks other than watching for hidden threats do not get the benefit of using their passive Perception scores to detect such threats, so being too busy is treated like being distracted.

Finally, of course, are the hiding rules, which is where things get a little complicated. It says that a creature may remain hidden if it approaches a creature that the DM has determined to be too distracted to notice it approaching. Of course this creature has already been hidden, so its Stealth check must have beaten the other creature's Perception check, because creatures are assumed to quickly become aware in combat unless they're surprised. So it ends up being a combination of a low Perception check allowing the creature to hide in the first place, or being distracted at the beginning of the encounter and walking into an ambush, and also being distracted enough in combat for the creature to sneak up on you.

I think the study would be best modeled in D&D by assuming that 50% of the people watching the video were too distracted with the task they'd been given to notice the gorilla. That's why I said that Perception (with a capital P mind you) doesn't come into it. They are using their Perception to focus on their task, rather than watching for something unexpected. So it isn't really a failure of Perception, but rather where that Perception is being focused. For this to work within the rules, however, you have to assume that the gorilla had been hidden before it came on-screen.

 

[Aenorgreen]

Isn't the halfling hiding behind a box almost exactly describe what real world magicians do all the time? Pretty girl goes inside box in the center of the stage. Magician makes a comment, waves around a bit, and then opens the box. Girl is gone! Everyone saw her go in and there is nowhere else she could have gone, yet she has. Seems about the same to me. If it works here, I expect in a world of fairies and real magic they would be able to hide even easier. Let the little guy be hide, I say.