D&D General What's wrong with Perception?

[Micah Sweet]

Perception and Stealth are important in 2 pillars. It's the only two beside Acrobatics and Athletics that's define in the base rules as useful in the combat pillar.

If 5e was going to be so freeform, it either needed a few more skills or codify more skills having both combat and exploration uses.

My game has at least two added skills, more if we're playing space. I also give every PC an additional skill proficiency.

 

[Micah Sweet]

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.

I really wish the answer to, "Why can't we get better rules than this?" Wasn't always, "because players don't want to bother with it".

 

[Thomas Shey]

Like every other RPG?

I mean, dude, I know you've played a lot of RPGs. About 95% of RPGs either don't have Perception or a close equivalent, or do, but it's very rarely rolled, not rolled any tested constantly.

I've got to say that while your latter statement may be accurate, I can't think of many games that don't have a Perception skill of some sort. And while I can't claim to know every game in the world, I'm familiar with a pretty large number of them.

 

[Thomas Shey]

For me it’s a three-fold problem. One, see the “I make a perception check” thread. Two, players will mangle their concept and beg and wheedle their way into getting it. Three, it’s a useful skill, but players act like their character is guaranteed to die in the first seconds of the game without it. I don’t have a problem with perception as a skill per se, I have a problem with how players treat it, both in-game and in the meta-game. These things bother me. It’s this weird “either you’re perfect or you suck” mentality. Not everyone needs perception. It doesn’t make sense for every character to have it. If the only reason a character has it is because the player thinks it’s mandatory, there’s something wrong.

I can pretty much promise all it takes is a player to walk into one ambush, and they'll feel that way for the rest of their gaming career.

 

[Bill Zebub]

Acrobats climb quickly because they’re Athletic and Strong ;-)

Seriously, Strength is already one of the worst attributes, it doesn’t need its lunch money being stolen by Dexterity any more than it already has been.

That's only an issue if Athletics is bound only to Strength, and Acrobatics only to Dexterity. Strength(Acrobatics) seems entirely appropriate to me.

Climbing is way more about body positioning and technique (and, honestly, keeping a cool head) than it is about raw strength, anyway.

 

[Benjamin Olson]

I really wish the answer to, "Why can't we get better rules than this?" Wasn't always, "because players don't want to bother with it".

Well in this case my argument was more "because players will struggle unnecessarily with it" rather than "because players don't want to bother with it."

But yeah, if you want to play exclusively with hardcore tabletop gamers who struggle with no ruleset you can have a game with difficult, counter-intuitive, rules that uncompromisingly pursue whatever platonic ideal of simulation you want. If you want to be able to play with all sorts of people you have to make concessions to what players will struggle with and have some kind of dumb rules.

 

[amethal]

Like every other RPG?

I mean, dude, I know you've played a lot of RPGs. About 95% of RPGs either don't have Perception or a close equivalent, or do, but it's very rarely rolled, not rolled any tested constantly.

2E didn't have this. It just some situation-specific checks and you talked your way through it. Perception is a boring and wildly overused skill that's 90% passive and reliant on a couple of PCs in the party having it at a high level. Those PCs don't do anything interesting or cool with it, they passively ensure the party gets told stuff.

I'm not very familiar with the D&D 5th edition skill system (and my familiarity with the Pathfinder one is probably a drawback here), but what do you do if the monsters are trying to ambush the party, or somebody is using sleight of hand (either directly against them, or to quietly draw a weapon etc.)?

Seems like you'd need some sort of Perception score to compete against, unless you just have a static DC.

 

[amethal]

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).

I've not had a chance to try it out, but if I ran a 5th edition game I'd just ask for ability checks. It would then be up to the player to suggest proficiencies that might be relevant.

DM "The path ahead has collapsed into a chasm. It requires a Strength check if you want to jump across it."
Player 1 "Presumably I can use my Athletics proficiency?"
Player 2 "Can I use my Acrobatics proficiency?"

 

[Minigiant]

Part of me thinks that surprise should have been a separate mechanic like initiative completely disconnected from Perception.

Roll a dice. Add Dex or Int if you are the surpriser, Wis or Con if you are the surpriser.

 

[el-remmen]