D&D General What's wrong with Perception?

[jdrakeh]

Perception should really be an ability, not a skill, but that's not how D&D works.

 

[Charlaquin]

Yeah, exactly like that. I knew it was a variant, but I haven't met anyone else who uses it.

A lot of folks on these forums seem to. I certainly do.

 

[Charlaquin]

It's not that simple though. Alice could have 20/20 vision compared to bob's coke bottle legally blind strength glasses but that's not going to help her see that she's walking along an unstable cliff face if she's lived her entire life in manhattan & knows nothing of unstable cliff faces. Bob by comparison might recognize all kinds of signs that suggest the cliff face is unstable. In a lot of cases interpreting the obvious is what it takes to see a thing. Great vision & hearing won't help you beat penn & teller to the punch if you don't know anything about sleight of hand & the various tools used by the guests.


I've tried hard for years but the amount of player resistance to it is pretty extreme IME. The sheet lists attribs beside skills & players expect to do things like add dex to a wis stealth check or they fill it out prof+attrib already calculated & pause to subtract one then add the other to wis or pause to find their prof bonus then add it to the stat I called for it with. Really it wasn't until I started running levelup where no skill has a default attrib that the pushback started to recede & eventually clear instead of acting like I'm speaking eldergod for the first time almost every time a call for a nonstandard check.

I just use a character sheet with blank space or lines to fill in what proficiencies you have. Have you seen the Dungeonesque character sheet? It’s 5e compatible and it’s brilliant. If only it didn’t have the fancy border and used that extra space to make the lined sections bigger, it would be perfect.

 

[Charlaquin]

I'll have to try it and see if I can explain what's going on. But yeah, the fact that one way is the default is a factor. I played White Wolf Storyteller games for years, where this is the way things work, any Attribute can be paired with any Ability, and players would get annoyed when I'd be like "I think you should roll Wits + Alertness" when something jumps out at you suddenly, and they have high Perception.

I recommend either using a character sheet that doesn’t have spaces for skill modifiers, or asking the players not to fill those out. “Just fill in the bubble if you’re proficient. When I ask for checks I’ll phrase them as ‘Strength plus intimidation’ or whatever, and if you have the bubble filled in, add your proficiency bonus.” or something to that effect.

 

[Shiroiken]

Yeah, exactly like that. I knew it was a variant, but I haven't met anyone else who uses it.

Which is funny, because every DM I know does use it. It's probably because most of us have played other RPGs that have this as part of the base game, so it's natural for us.

It's not that simple though. Alice could have 20/20 vision compared to bob's coke bottle legally blind strength glasses but that's not going to help her see that she's walking along an unstable cliff face if she's lived her entire life in manhattan & knows nothing of unstable cliff faces. Bob by comparison might recognize all kinds of signs that suggest the cliff face is unstable. In a lot of cases interpreting the obvious is what it takes to see a thing. Great vision & hearing won't help you beat penn & teller to the punch if you don't know anything about sleight of hand & the various tools used by the guests.

Part of the issue is a need to clarify what needs Perception and what does not. For example, people might notice the signs of the cliff being unstable, but without any knowledge of what it means, it would be ignored. This is why I usually use Investigation instead of Perception in such situations. Arcana, Nature, or some other skill might more appropriate, depending on the situation.

Something else that can be considered is using teamwork, with one member using Perception and the other using a different skill. Unless both succeed, the hazard is either overlooked or not understood.

 

[Maxperson]

Thats exactly the problem. Its a must-have combat skill.

Not in 5e where dangers got really weak. They weakened things tremendously and then made it 5-7 medium to hard encounters in an adventuring day. It's okay to blunder into things, or to rely on one or two party members to notice and warn you, letting you concentrate your specialties elsewhere.

 

[Maxperson]

I always run into people wanting to use Acrobatics for climbing. Climbing stuff is like half the point of the Athletics skill.

While you need to by physically strong to do it, Parkour strikes me as acrobatic climbing.

 

[Maxperson]

Yeah, exactly like that. I knew it was a variant, but I haven't met anyone else who uses it.

I use it on occasion. The thing about skills is that the vast majority of the time, the stat the skill is in is the most appropriate one to use. Occasionally, though, a different stat is more appropriate.

 

[Benjamin Olson]

Yeah, exactly like that. I knew it was a variant, but I haven't met anyone else who uses it.

I would consider the "mismatch skills with abilities" variant rule a little more than just a variant rule given that it is clearly how the designers actually wanted proficiencies to work, given that "pick the appropriate skill and add proficiency bonus" is the approach they took with proficiency in tools, musical instruments, vehicles, etc. The pull towards having set skill bonuses already added up on the character sheet is just too great though, partly because the skills they chose did mostly each sit comfortably with one ability, partly because of the way the character sheet is set up, and partly because the "floating proficiency bonus" concept just doesn't quite click with a substantial chunk of players (in my experience the majority).

Having just spent several weeks helping little kids play D&D I will say that part of the problem is that the name "proficiency bonus" sounds way to technical and is something most kids (and probably a lot of adults) just don't want to tangle with to the extent they can avoid it. In this age of D&D Beyond auto-calculating stuff and most groups having someone reasonably knowledgeable willing to help anyone update a character sheet on that rare occasion when the proficiency bonus changes, getting by without actually understanding the proficiency bonus is pretty easy.

 

[Yaarel]

Something I noticed in the "what don't you like about 5e?" thread was a few people griping about players going out of their way to take Perception. I'd run into this a few years back when I played Pathfinder 1e as well. I'm not really sure what the problem is with players wanting to be good at noticing things, so I was wondering if maybe people would help me understand their point of view on the topic.

D&D especially is a game where not noticing something can end up with your character getting in serious trouble, so it seems to me that everyone would want the ability to not blunder into traps or be snuck up on by Bugbears.

I feel Perception (and Athletics) should promote to full abilities, alongside Strength and Intelligence.

The way Perception works then, is you add your skill proficiency to the Perception ability check depending on what it is you notice. For example, a character searching for a hidden creature makes a Perception (Stealth) check. A character trying to identify the smell of an alchemical substance makes a Perception (Nature) check. And so on.

People with special training are more likely to notice what they are expert at.