D&D General What's wrong with Perception?

[James Gasik]

As I recall, 1e AD&D gave all characters a set chance to notice concealed things (with some demihumans gaining further ability to notice unusual features), and there was a set chance of a character having exceptional senses of sight or hearing (I don't recall the number, if my ailing memory serves, it was printed on the 1e Dungeon Master's Screen).

As for 2e, Non-Weapon Proficiencies were introduced to cover various perceptive abilities (I recall the Complete Thief's Handbook had a few of these).

In both editions, of course, Thieves had a special ability to detect noise.

Most DM's I played with also used a Wisdom ability check for perception as well, instead of, or corollary to these rules.

 

[Bill Zebub]

So, if you don't have a lot of options to check, working in pairs is best. If you are crunched for time and have a lot of ground to cover, you might have to work singly.

I'm not sure I agree with your conclusion in this particular case, but in general I think the goal is for players to have more than one option, and for those options to have different risk:reward profiles, and for the optimized choice between those options to be non-obvious.

When those criteria are not met (which is most of the time in an RPG, except during combat) I'd rather just narrate through and leave the dice where they are.

 

[Thomas Shey]

As I recall, 1e AD&D gave all characters a set chance to notice concealed things (with some demihumans gaining further ability to notice unusual features), and there was a set chance of a character having exceptional senses of sight or hearing (I don't recall the number, if my ailing memory serves, it was printed on the 1e Dungeon Master's Screen).

In OD&D it was very specific hidden things (i.e. secret doors or other specific things). It didn't actually extend it to hidden items generically (though I don't doubt there were GM's who extended it that way).

Most DM's I played with also used a Wisdom ability check for perception as well, instead of, or corollary to these rules.

There was all kinds of patch-and-fill done in the early days when there was no skill system to work with (though when I saw it back in the day, usually Int was used; the connection between Wisdom and perception seems to have come later).

 

[James Gasik]

In OD&D it was very specific hidden things (i.e. secret doors or other specific things). It didn't actually extend it to hidden items generically (though I don't doubt there were GM's who extended it that way).



There was all kinds of patch-and-fill done in the early days when there was no skill system to work with (though when I saw it back in the day, usually Int was used; the connection between Wisdom and perception seems to have come later).

That makes sense, I know in the 2e PHB, Wisdom was tied to intuition not necessarily perception.

 

[rmcoen]

This is related to the fact that a lot of skills are basically trash & PCs don't have the budget for trash skills. Perception is almost always going to be useful to some degree. How often have you seen entire campaigns run without ever having someone use medicine/nature/handle animal history or performane? Out of the times those skills even come up in a campaign are they regularly important to any degree? Sure bob might tame a wild animal or use handle animal with a horse but was a possible failure going to have much more impact than "ok.. moving on" or something in even half of those cases?

Sorry just had to chime in here, many pages later. Literally in my last campaign session, the various PCs had to make Animal Handling (the ex-marine driving the horse-and-wagon cross country with the Exhasuted spellcasters in back because of a Forced March, ahead of a giant warparty), Medicine and Nature checks (identifying damaged plant life, determining they were medicinal plants picked clean, by said giant warparty, and understanding the medicinal salves would last only 3 days, giving a range of potential targets), Nature checks again (to determine that the awfully-conveniently-timed fierce storm was in fact natural in origin (helped by a druidcraft cantrip), and not a big "we're hitting this location here" sign), and a performance check with animal handling (to calm the storm-spooked horses of the giants' target, so they could mount up and flee). Oh, and a gratuitous Performance check by the bard, because why not!

Also used were Persuasion, raw Charisma, ranger Primeval Awareness (shocker, right?), Favored enemy, Favored Terrain, Survival (tracking, foraging), raw CON (the forced marches), Athletics (climbing mountainous terrain for a better view), Stealth (because giants!), and several raw INT checks (to recall previously learned/noticed information), and an INT/Arcana check (by the warlock) to understand a weird floating crystal near the giants' target. [No combat... but that's coming next session!]


Otherwise, to the OP, I work hard as a DM to make the line between Perception and Investigation very clear. That being said, the vast majority of my characters will have moderate to good Perception skills - sometimes despite low WIS - because nearly every bad situation starts with "make a Perception check"!! I won't let players "search" with Perception, but knowing this is a good time to Investigate is still valuable.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Otherwise, to the OP, I work hard as a DM to make the line between Perception and Investigation very clear. That being said, the vast majority of my characters will have moderate to good Perception skills - sometimes despite low WIS - because nearly every bad situation starts with "make a Perception check"!!

As I've noted, this is entirely keeping with any number of games entirely outside the D&D-sphere.