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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Obreon" data-source="post: 7210769" data-attributes="member: 6815225">Yeah, I guess that might help with "everyone takes Perception" problem a bit - but even if I now have two skills in play I still have to deal with all the stuff around passives + bringing player skill into it.I can see how your distinction makes for an easy game mechanic; personally I don't find it feels that meaningful from a game fiction POV. This isn't directly relevant to my original post, but it brings up some interesting limitations in the 5e skill breakdown. Some examples of how you might become aware of items in a room:<ol> <li data-xf-list-type="ol"> Something catches your eye as you walk in</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol"> You scan a room and notice something</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol"> You walk around a room, looking closely at everything in it</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol"> You search a room, opening drawers, pulling books off shelves, looking to see everything that can be seen</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol"> You search a room,  looking for hidden things</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol"> You search a room, looking for one particular hidden thing</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol"> You deduce the presence of a hidden object from visual clues that you can see.</li> </ol>There are no sharp dividing lines here, but, in broad terms, the first 3 rely largely on your ability to take in visual detail and process it consciously. People who are more capable of focusing their visual attention, at storing visual detail in their memory, and at recalling other visual details to make connections between them ("I've seen one of those before") are going to perform better at this task. Once trained, much of this happens passively - you just notice things - but higher levels of detail may require closer or longer examination which would require an active engagement with the subject matter.The second 3 things involve more methodology. No matter how carefully you stare at the carpet you aren't going to see the trapdoor underneath it unless there are particular clues to its presence (outline showing throw the carpet, drag marks where the carpet has been moved etc). But someone skilled in searching a room will immediately think: "I should move the carpet in case there's something under it". There's a certain sort of lateral thinking involved here to look at an arrangement of objects and imagine where other objects might be hidden within it. In the case of deliberately hidden objects, that may also involve an ability to double-guess the thought processes of the person doing the hiding. Although there's this intellectual component to it, searching is very definitely an *activity* that involves interaction with the environment. Of course, you might be brilliant at the required sort of spatial reasoning, but incredibly inattentive - so you know where to look but miss things when you do!Item 7 is a slightly odd one. The intellectual component is closely related to the previous three, but rather than being a consciously directed activity ("searching") it's something that just pops into your mind as a self-evident conclusion from the visual evidence available to you. It's not too much of a stretch to say that it relies on a similar mental skillset as searching, but in the game it works differently because it doesn't really fit the model of players declaring actions and the GM adjudicating the results. Unlike in the simple perception case ('noticing'), it's also tricky to fold it into the phase of "GM describes the environment", because that amounts to the GM describing the character's thought process. This robs the player of the opportunity to reach the conclusions for themselves, and also threatens the player's sense of agency. How much this matters will naturally depend on the player.In D&D 5e, items 1-3 fall clearly under Perception for me. It's not especially clear how to deal with the varying degrees of active engagement required - passives vs active rolls, hidden vs open etc - but the skill involved seems clear. Personally I wouldn't want to draw a line between living/dead that cuts across this, because I don't find that a convincing model. YMMV.Items 4-6 are trickier. In previous editions this would have been Search, but that doesn't exist any more. There's some sense in this being an Intelligence-based skill, although as noted, success will still rely to some degree on your ability to Perceive things as well as reason about where they might be. Some people think that this is what Investigation is for - basically a drop-in replacement for Search - but a) that contradicts the guidance given in the rules and subsequent clarifications and b) I think it's pretty clear that Investigation also covers a wider range of other research - looking things up in books, solving logical problems etc. and  I see very little connection between these latter skills and those involved in searching a room methodically.Item 7 is pretty clearly Investigation; but making it an active roll feels weird and creates all sorts of meta-gamey problems, whereas relying on passive Investigation creates different problems with player agency. In the end it's all a bit of a fudge to keep the skill system simple, and as a result it's hard to make it convincing from a simulationist perspective. What I do at the moment:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"> 1-6 are all perception. Anything that involves an action (searching or examining) uses an active roll, anything else is resolved based on passive perception - but the DCs for noticing are generally higher than finding things by closer examination. This completely ignores the Intelligence component of searching but it streamlines game play and removes a lot of arguments, because there's one mechanical system for finding things rather than a lot of squabbling over whether something is a "search" or a "spot"</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"> 7 doesn't have a mechanical resolution. If I provide visual clues, its up to the players to draw conclusions from that; otherwise they have to use Perception to find the hidden item via a search</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"> Investigation is reserved for active intellectual problem solving or research. Examining a mechanism to find out how it works/how to disable it. Finding information in a book. Solving some complex puzzle (although generally I'd only include puzzles if the players like them, in which case they'll solve them with player skill rather than rolls)</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"> I basically don't use passive Investigation at all</li> </ul>I could see an argument for pushing 4-6 into Investigation - also unrealistic but perhaps no more so - which would make the Int/Wis choice more interesting and make Investigation a more valuable skill. But then searching a room becomes a more complicated thing to adjudicate - you really need a Perception roll to see what visual clues are picked up AND an Investigation roll to determine how effectively the search was conducted - and then you need to decide which information to connect to which roll. In practice I think anyone with a high INT will argue that they are alway searching, and anyone with a high WIS will arguing that they are perceiving. Unless there's a clear heuristic for deciding when each applies, I don't think splitting them up like this will help with game balance much.</blockquote>

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