D&D General What's wrong with Perception?

[overgeeked]

Again, I never said anything about players reading the adventure. How did they know? Because they asked me after the adventure was concluded, and I told them.

I don't believe in hiding game mechanics from the players, otherwise, they can never learn about the game. If they ask, I'll explain at the end of every adventure I run.

Well there’s your problem. Pulling back the curtain like that only ends badly. No wonder your players feel bad about missing stuff and think they need to be perfect. You're pointing out every mistake they make.

Players: "What did we miss?"

DM: "You guys missed so much stuff. Here's a list of the 30 things you completely skipped."

Damn. Maybe don't do that.

You're not "concealing game mechanics" by not revealing DCs or things they miss. The game mechanics are: roll 1d20 + relevant ability modifier + misc modifiers. The players already know that.

"If you'd only rolled a 15 instead of a 12, you'd have found another 1000gp..."

That's rubbing the players' noses in their failure. Just a suggestion, but maybe stop doing that.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Not in 5e. Athletics is more basic. Running fast, marathon running, climbing, jumping farther than normal, etc. Acrobatics is explicitly what acrobats do.

"Your Dexterity (Acrobatics) check covers your attempt to stay on your feet in a tricky situation, such as when you're trying to run across a sheet of ice, balance on a tightrope, or stay upright on a rocking ship's deck. The DM might also call for a Dexterity (Acrobatics) check to see if you can perform acrobatic stunts, including dives, rolls, somersaults, and flips."

They seem to want acrobatics to primarily be balance, since that comes up more than flips would, but flips would still be acrobatics and not athletics.

It isn't used much, but I think it would be very effective if it were. Someone who knew when to dive, roll, etc. in combat would be a force. For instance, if two enemies were blocking a passage and you normally could not pass through them, I would give a DC and allow an acrobat to do a dive roll in-between them and get to the other side.

That used to be called tumbling, and it remains very cool.

 

[Vaalingrade]

"Huh. Wonder why we kept getting low PER rolls and then nothing happened. Oh well, I'm sure it's nothing. Good thing none of the rest of us DM and see this in basically every adventure so it' pretty clear that's what's happening here."

 

[Maxperson]

That used to be called tumbling, and it remains very cool.

Tumbling was underused as well, but it was used more often because of 3e's tendency to codify in things to do with the skills. Players saw that with an X DC roll they could do things.

 

[James Gasik]

Except, as the original post points out, I don't think this is a problem. I'm asking why other people think it's a problem.

 

[Micah Sweet]

In my opinion, most of the rolls in that list should have been Investigation anyway. I'm inclined to go with the "Perception is a passive skill only" interpretation, and leaving actually looking at stuff actively for Investigation. WotC made an error on having so many rolls hinged on Perception. Like a lot of other things, it's on us to correct it.

 

[overgeeked]

Having a middle ground requires more work. As in many, many other areas, WotC isn't going to do that work, because the new players that are all they care about don't care about that.

Look at Level Up. They did the work, and there's an active Kickstarter right now selling it.

Justin Alexander has a quick video on how to handle this.


As someone who's run a ton of investigation games, let me say that Justin knocks it out of the part in this regard. Anyone scratching their heads about perception and investigation should check out his blog, The Alexandrian. Especially his posts on the "three clue rule" and "node-based design."

 

[Vaalingrade]

Except, as the original post points out, I don't think this is a problem. I'm asking why other people think it's a problem.

But James, what if you just stopped doing that thing you're not doing?

 

[James Gasik]

Yes, it's obvious that what they did was make every Spot check a Perception check, and every Search check an Investigation check when they (lazily) converted Sunless Citadel. But that's the adventure they printed, and that was the adventure I was asked to run. And I'm pretty sure most people who ran the adventure (as well as the other adventures in the book) realized there was a problem here- it's an official adventure, isn't it?

As I said, it was my first 5e adventure, and I had several misadventures attempting to run it, Forge of Fury, and Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan as they were written.

Some of my earliest posts on ENWorld were questions regarding these adventures (and my complaints). And uh, lol, basically all I got was people saying "those aren't problems" or "you're doing it wrong", which is why I left for several years.

 

[James Gasik]

But James, what if you just stopped doing that thing you're not doing?

Then I'd have to start doing that thing that I am doing?