I hear this at least once on every episode of Critical Role.
I'm frequently thinking that that just staring at the room to find things should be inherently less likely to yield results than actually investigation.
Does anyone else feel this way? Has anyone ever tried to address this by just using different DC's for the two?
If so, does this get communicated so that players can "do the math?"
Too me it isn't that they have different likelihoods of yielding results, it is that they have different results they can yield because they do different things.
Perception is seeing something, investigation is figuring out something. Perception might spot a hidden door while investigation might discern a puzzle in the arrangement of books.
They aren't meant to be interchangeable, but the rules don't communicate skill checks very well to leave it up to DM.
I hear this at least once on every episode of Critical Role.
I'm frequently thinking that that just staring at the room to find things should be inherently less likely to yield results than actually investigation.
Does anyone else feel this way? Has anyone ever tried to address this by just using different DC's for the two?
If so, does this get communicated so that players can "do the math?"
No. Perception and Investigation have different meanings and different roles.
If the DM says "Use Perception or Investigation, your choice" - it means that whatever is or is not present can be noticed by seeing/hearing/smelling/tasting or otherwise sensing but that its presence could also be deduced logically by looking at the scene, noting some details that aren't hard to notice, and then putting the clues together to get to the same point as a character who just notices it.
In practice, "Use Perception or Investigation, your choice" is the DM deciding to let the character use their better skills to have a better chance of success in a situation where either skill could possibly be used OR where the DM just wants to let them have a bigger chance of succeeding to make the player feel good about the skill choices of their character.
Usually the DM will just use the same DC for either check just to keep it simple but in principle there would be nothing wrong with having different DCs depending on which skill the character uses for the skill check.
Anyway, the way I think of the skills:
Perception: Sensing - see, hear, smell, taste, touch ... see the faint outline of the secret door, smell salt water from a specific part of the wall, hear a noise from behind a secret door, run your fingers over the wall and feel an invisible seam, feel a faint draught ...
Investigation: This involves deduction, logic and thinking. You need to be able to perceive the clues needed but these are usually things that most people would notice. The challenge is figuring out what they mean. Scratches on the floor, uneven wear on books, an unusual breeze in the room (e.g. you can feel the breeze from the window but for some reason it changes direction in the room - or maybe everyone can feel warm and cool breezes in the room when there is no indication of a source for a cool breeze - thus deducing that there must be a hidden opening).
Another example which could possibly be either perception or investigation - searching a desk for a secret compartment. Examining and measuring the depth of adjacent drawers to deduce the existence of a secret compartment would be investigation while looking through the drawers and noticing one isn't as long as the other might be a perception check. There are quite a number of situations where perception and investigation might overlap.
Finally, there are situations where a perception check might be needed to notice the clues and an investigation check needed to figure out what they mean. This has the problem of gating success on the task behind two skill checks which reduces the odds of success. It also takes extra time. So a DM might decide that either perception or investigation is more appropriate or they might decide to let the player choose perception or investigation because they want to resolve the skill check with one roll and both skills are really a part of resolving the check but the DM would prefer a single die roll.
Perception is what you can see on the surface level. Think of it like a crime scene.
The regular police officers and detectives are going to utilise their perception when they survey the scene. What do they see, smell, hear. Perception is going to reveal that the person who kept this room was generally very organised, so the messy desk would appear to be a signal that someone else have been here and moved papers and the like around.
Investigation is more like the forensic team. They are going to conduct a thorough search utilising all their skills on the scene. They'll be opening drawers, removing wall panels, utilising tools to conduct a complete search for clues.
So, if I say to a player they could choose between perception and investigation the information I'm going to give them will be entirely different.
Scenario: Player wishes to do a check to see what information they can glean from a desk in the room. You as DM know that there is a secret compartment that can only be opened by touching a switch.
A perception check may reveal that: 'you notice the drawers depth seems odd, almost a little too short, or too shallow. You also notice that part of the carved decoration is more worn that the rest'. From here it is on the player to piece those two bits of information together.
An investigation check is going to look more like: 'you search through the desk, knocking and tapping as you go, pulling every hinge, every piece of metalwork. In one drawer as you tap you hear a hollow sound from beneath. Running your hands along the decoration of the desk, you hear a click as your finger runs across a concealed button.'
Both methods are valid, it's just the how that dictates the information given. At least that's how I've always ruled it when I give those kinds of chocies.
That almost sounds like the character can make deductions with an Investigation check, but only the player can make deductions AFTER the perception check.
That almost sounds like the character can make deductions with an Investigation check, but only the player can make deductions AFTER the perception check.
Maybe I'm being too pedantic.
Its almost like the rules that they wrote specifically to say "DMs just make up the rules for us," are vague and incomplete.
It's different ways to achieve similar results in my mind. Perception is having better senses while investigation is having knowledge of how to look for clues. Arguably other knowledge checks could also tell you what to look for. So the investigator dusts for finger prints while perceiver looks for something out of place and the medical expert tells you that from looking at the injuries on the body you are looking for a knife.
Perception is how well you notice things. Investigation is actively looking for things.
Not quite. If you want to make a perception check (either passive or active) you need to be actively looking for something. Investigation is NOT actively looking for things - that is specifically perception. Investigation is actively searching for what things mean. To deduce what the things you see imply. It applies logic to your observations to determine something that isn't obvious.
When you use investigation to search a desk for a hidden compartment, the character sees the same things any other character might see but they figure out what they mean. As an example, anyone could look at for hidden compartments and notice that one drawer might be a little shorter or shallower than another. However, the investigation check is to figure out that this means there is a hidden compartment and not just poor manufacturing. Usually, for investigation, it isn't that hard to see the clues, the challenge is in figuring out what they mean.
"Perception. Your Wisdom (Perception) check lets you spot, hear, or otherwise detect the presence of something. It measures your general awareness of your surroundings and the keenness of your senses. For example, you might try to hear a conversation through a closed door, eavesdrop under an open window, or hear monsters moving stealthily in the forest. Or you might try to spot things that are obscured or easy to miss, whether they are orcs lying in ambush on a road, thugs hiding in the shadows of an alley, or candlelight under a closed secret door."
"Investigation. When you look around for clues and make deductions based on those clues, you make an Intelligence (Investigation) check. You might deduce the location of a hidden object, discern from the appearance of a wound what kind of weapon dealt it, or determine the weakest point in a tunnel that could cause it to collapse. Poring through ancient scrolls in search of a hidden fragment of knowledge might also call for an Intelligence (Investigation) check"
You also have to be searching in the right place for either perception or investigation to apply:
That almost sounds like the character can make deductions with an Investigation check, but only the player can make deductions AFTER the perception check.
Maybe I'm being too pedantic.
Sometimes that might be true. However, usually a DM will want a single skill check to resolve something so if the deduction is the challenging part they will use investigation if the seeing or noticing the clues is the hard part they will use perception. Also, if the clues are pretty obvious then you really wouldn't need a perception check.
For example, you walk into a room and search for a secret door. There is a wrinkle in the carpet near the bookcase. Everyone can see the wrinkle, someone probably bumped it with their boot. However, the wrinkle happens to line up with the location where the right side of the bookcase would intersect the carpet if the bookcase could open. The wrinkle isn't lined up with the edge of the bookcase since it only shows up where the edge would hit the carpet if the secret door could open. Everyone in the room can see the wrinkle, everyone in the room can see the location of the bookcase, the investigation check allows the character to deduce the meaning of those two clues to realize that the right side of the bookcase swings outward somehow.
Perception doesn't apply in this situation since the door has no perceivable elements - you can't see the edge of the door, no mechanisms visible, no drafts, no weird sounds. However, no one has any trouble seeing the wrinkle and the bookcases. The investigation skill puts the pieces together.
But you are right also, investigation requires perceivable clues or some information or knowledge to work with to make the deductions. For example, it might be an investigation check to determine where or how dwarven stone masons typically install secret doors assuming the character had the needed knowledge.
Both methods are valid, it's just the how that dictates the information given. At least that's how I've always ruled it when I give those kinds of chocies.
I agree that the two methods should give different information on a success. However, I've found that most DMs who use the "investigation or perception, your choice" will usually give the same information just narrated slightly differently.
For example, the character could use either perception or investigation to find a hidden trap door. The DM may narrate the character as seeing something if they use perception or noticing some details that lead to them deducing a secret door is present if investigation is used. However, it is just narrative. In either case a successful check reveals the secret door and in all likelihood (most DMs I know) the DC used is the same in either case.
I consider them to be differentiated largely from whether the player initiates it or the DM.
For example - the party is following a NPC. The NPC attempts to slip undetected through a gap in a fence. The DM says "roll perception" to the group, and nobody rolls over the DC. The party, as a whole, fails to notice the NPC slipping through the fence, and the DM narrates that they have disappeared somewhere in that region.
The party goes over to the area and does not find the NPC. A Player says "I will look for their tracks if possible to work out where they went", and the DM says "roll for Investigation". If they roll well, they will find their tracks, or they will see the gap, perhaps with a thread that they recognise as being from the NPC's jacket.
The Perception roll was for them to see something that the DM decided happened. The Investigation roll was to perform an action that the Player decided happened. I would never call for an investigation roll in response to the world changing around them, because they first need to perceive the change (EG NPC has gone through the gap, or disappeared), and then need to decide to investigate before I ask them to roll it.
Similarly, the players are not likely to initiate their own perception check unless they ask "do I notice..." or "Do I see...". This is more for roleplay, EG if one character steals something from an NPC, and doesn't tell the other characters, then the players might ask "Do I notice this?". It's mainly for when a player knows something (EG listens to the interaction between thief and DM) and then needs to know what their character knows about this. You wouldn't tell them something which happened and then rule that nobody saw it so nobody knows it happened! You just tell them what they do know.
Funny, as a kid watching shows on TV like "The Rockford Files", I tend to include social interaction with investigation, as well as forensic techniques. Still hunting for the answers with one's smarts, but (played out or not) finding clues through conversation and people watching is a big part of it.
Funny, as a kid watching shows on TV like "The Rockford Files", I tend to include social interaction with investigation, as well as forensic techniques. Still hunting for the answers with one's smarts, but (played out or not) finding clues through conversation and people watching is a big part of it.
I would suggest that is the role of Insight. In fact the description specifically mentions gaining clues from a person.
That said I could easily see how Investigation might play a part in putting together clues from interviews, and insight being the equivalent of a hunch based off of talking to someone.
I hear this at least once on every episode of Critical Role.
I'm frequently thinking that that just staring at the room to find things should be inherently less likely to yield results than actually investigation.
Does anyone else feel this way? Has anyone ever tried to address this by just using different DC's for the two?
If so, does this get communicated so that players can "do the math?"
Too me it isn't that they have different likelihoods of yielding results, it is that they have different results they can yield because they do different things.
Perception is seeing something, investigation is figuring out something. Perception might spot a hidden door while investigation might discern a puzzle in the arrangement of books.
They aren't meant to be interchangeable, but the rules don't communicate skill checks very well to leave it up to DM.
No. Perception and Investigation have different meanings and different roles.
If the DM says "Use Perception or Investigation, your choice" - it means that whatever is or is not present can be noticed by seeing/hearing/smelling/tasting or otherwise sensing but that its presence could also be deduced logically by looking at the scene, noting some details that aren't hard to notice, and then putting the clues together to get to the same point as a character who just notices it.
In practice, "Use Perception or Investigation, your choice" is the DM deciding to let the character use their better skills to have a better chance of success in a situation where either skill could possibly be used OR where the DM just wants to let them have a bigger chance of succeeding to make the player feel good about the skill choices of their character.
Usually the DM will just use the same DC for either check just to keep it simple but in principle there would be nothing wrong with having different DCs depending on which skill the character uses for the skill check.
Anyway, the way I think of the skills:
Perception: Sensing - see, hear, smell, taste, touch ... see the faint outline of the secret door, smell salt water from a specific part of the wall, hear a noise from behind a secret door, run your fingers over the wall and feel an invisible seam, feel a faint draught ...
Investigation: This involves deduction, logic and thinking. You need to be able to perceive the clues needed but these are usually things that most people would notice. The challenge is figuring out what they mean. Scratches on the floor, uneven wear on books, an unusual breeze in the room (e.g. you can feel the breeze from the window but for some reason it changes direction in the room - or maybe everyone can feel warm and cool breezes in the room when there is no indication of a source for a cool breeze - thus deducing that there must be a hidden opening).
Another example which could possibly be either perception or investigation - searching a desk for a secret compartment. Examining and measuring the depth of adjacent drawers to deduce the existence of a secret compartment would be investigation while looking through the drawers and noticing one isn't as long as the other might be a perception check. There are quite a number of situations where perception and investigation might overlap.
Finally, there are situations where a perception check might be needed to notice the clues and an investigation check needed to figure out what they mean. This has the problem of gating success on the task behind two skill checks which reduces the odds of success. It also takes extra time. So a DM might decide that either perception or investigation is more appropriate or they might decide to let the player choose perception or investigation because they want to resolve the skill check with one roll and both skills are really a part of resolving the check but the DM would prefer a single die roll.
Okay, that helps!
The easy way to interpret it is "you have an opportunity to do one or the other but not both; what you discover will depend on which you attempt".
The distinction between investigation and perception is not well explained, though. I tend to view it as "if a dog would find it, it's perception".
Perception is what you can see on the surface level. Think of it like a crime scene.
The regular police officers and detectives are going to utilise their perception when they survey the scene. What do they see, smell, hear. Perception is going to reveal that the person who kept this room was generally very organised, so the messy desk would appear to be a signal that someone else have been here and moved papers and the like around.
Investigation is more like the forensic team. They are going to conduct a thorough search utilising all their skills on the scene. They'll be opening drawers, removing wall panels, utilising tools to conduct a complete search for clues.
So, if I say to a player they could choose between perception and investigation the information I'm going to give them will be entirely different.
Scenario: Player wishes to do a check to see what information they can glean from a desk in the room. You as DM know that there is a secret compartment that can only be opened by touching a switch.
A perception check may reveal that: 'you notice the drawers depth seems odd, almost a little too short, or too shallow. You also notice that part of the carved decoration is more worn that the rest'. From here it is on the player to piece those two bits of information together.
An investigation check is going to look more like: 'you search through the desk, knocking and tapping as you go, pulling every hinge, every piece of metalwork. In one drawer as you tap you hear a hollow sound from beneath. Running your hands along the decoration of the desk, you hear a click as your finger runs across a concealed button.'
Both methods are valid, it's just the how that dictates the information given. At least that's how I've always ruled it when I give those kinds of chocies.
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agreed.
Perception is how well you notice things. Investigation is actively looking for things.
That almost sounds like the character can make deductions with an Investigation check, but only the player can make deductions AFTER the perception check.
Maybe I'm being too pedantic.
*looking for specific things or things with a specific context.
Actively looking for shiny things would still be perception because it doesn't require deduction to find.
Its almost like the rules that they wrote specifically to say "DMs just make up the rules for us," are vague and incomplete.
It's different ways to achieve similar results in my mind. Perception is having better senses while investigation is having knowledge of how to look for clues. Arguably other knowledge checks could also tell you what to look for. So the investigator dusts for finger prints while perceiver looks for something out of place and the medical expert tells you that from looking at the injuries on the body you are looking for a knife.
All could lead to evidence of the killer.
Not quite. If you want to make a perception check (either passive or active) you need to be actively looking for something. Investigation is NOT actively looking for things - that is specifically perception. Investigation is actively searching for what things mean. To deduce what the things you see imply. It applies logic to your observations to determine something that isn't obvious.
When you use investigation to search a desk for a hidden compartment, the character sees the same things any other character might see but they figure out what they mean. As an example, anyone could look at for hidden compartments and notice that one drawer might be a little shorter or shallower than another. However, the investigation check is to figure out that this means there is a hidden compartment and not just poor manufacturing. Usually, for investigation, it isn't that hard to see the clues, the challenge is in figuring out what they mean.
"Perception. Your Wisdom (Perception) check lets you spot, hear, or otherwise detect the presence of something. It measures your general awareness of your surroundings and the keenness of your senses. For example, you might try to hear a conversation through a closed door, eavesdrop under an open window, or hear monsters moving stealthily in the forest. Or you might try to spot things that are obscured or easy to miss, whether they are orcs lying in ambush on a road, thugs hiding in the shadows of an alley, or candlelight under a closed secret door."
"Investigation. When you look around for clues and make deductions based on those clues, you make an Intelligence (Investigation) check. You might deduce the location of a hidden object, discern from the appearance of a wound what kind of weapon dealt it, or determine the weakest point in a tunnel that could cause it to collapse. Poring through ancient scrolls in search of a hidden fragment of knowledge might also call for an Intelligence (Investigation) check"
You also have to be searching in the right place for either perception or investigation to apply:
"FINDING A HIDDEN OBJECT
Sometimes that might be true. However, usually a DM will want a single skill check to resolve something so if the deduction is the challenging part they will use investigation if the seeing or noticing the clues is the hard part they will use perception. Also, if the clues are pretty obvious then you really wouldn't need a perception check.
For example, you walk into a room and search for a secret door. There is a wrinkle in the carpet near the bookcase. Everyone can see the wrinkle, someone probably bumped it with their boot. However, the wrinkle happens to line up with the location where the right side of the bookcase would intersect the carpet if the bookcase could open. The wrinkle isn't lined up with the edge of the bookcase since it only shows up where the edge would hit the carpet if the secret door could open. Everyone in the room can see the wrinkle, everyone in the room can see the location of the bookcase, the investigation check allows the character to deduce the meaning of those two clues to realize that the right side of the bookcase swings outward somehow.
Perception doesn't apply in this situation since the door has no perceivable elements - you can't see the edge of the door, no mechanisms visible, no drafts, no weird sounds. However, no one has any trouble seeing the wrinkle and the bookcases. The investigation skill puts the pieces together.
But you are right also, investigation requires perceivable clues or some information or knowledge to work with to make the deductions. For example, it might be an investigation check to determine where or how dwarven stone masons typically install secret doors assuming the character had the needed knowledge.
I agree that the two methods should give different information on a success. However, I've found that most DMs who use the "investigation or perception, your choice" will usually give the same information just narrated slightly differently.
For example, the character could use either perception or investigation to find a hidden trap door. The DM may narrate the character as seeing something if they use perception or noticing some details that lead to them deducing a secret door is present if investigation is used. However, it is just narrative. In either case a successful check reveals the secret door and in all likelihood (most DMs I know) the DC used is the same in either case.
I consider them to be differentiated largely from whether the player initiates it or the DM.
For example - the party is following a NPC. The NPC attempts to slip undetected through a gap in a fence. The DM says "roll perception" to the group, and nobody rolls over the DC. The party, as a whole, fails to notice the NPC slipping through the fence, and the DM narrates that they have disappeared somewhere in that region.
The party goes over to the area and does not find the NPC. A Player says "I will look for their tracks if possible to work out where they went", and the DM says "roll for Investigation". If they roll well, they will find their tracks, or they will see the gap, perhaps with a thread that they recognise as being from the NPC's jacket.
The Perception roll was for them to see something that the DM decided happened. The Investigation roll was to perform an action that the Player decided happened. I would never call for an investigation roll in response to the world changing around them, because they first need to perceive the change (EG NPC has gone through the gap, or disappeared), and then need to decide to investigate before I ask them to roll it.
Similarly, the players are not likely to initiate their own perception check unless they ask "do I notice..." or "Do I see...". This is more for roleplay, EG if one character steals something from an NPC, and doesn't tell the other characters, then the players might ask "Do I notice this?". It's mainly for when a player knows something (EG listens to the interaction between thief and DM) and then needs to know what their character knows about this. You wouldn't tell them something which happened and then rule that nobody saw it so nobody knows it happened! You just tell them what they do know.
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Funny, as a kid watching shows on TV like "The Rockford Files", I tend to include social interaction with investigation, as well as forensic techniques. Still hunting for the answers with one's smarts, but (played out or not) finding clues through conversation and people watching is a big part of it.
I would suggest that is the role of Insight. In fact the description specifically mentions gaining clues from a person.
That said I could easily see how Investigation might play a part in putting together clues from interviews, and insight being the equivalent of a hunch based off of talking to someone.
DM session planning template - My version of maps for 'Lost Mine of Phandelver' - Send your party to The Circus - Other DM Resources - Maps, Tokens, Quests - 'Better' Player Character Injury Tables?
Actor, Writer, Director & Teacher by day - GM/DM in my off hours.