Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer Creatures
Frozen Sick
D&D Beyond Basic Rules
Basic Rules (2014)
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Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer CreaturesFrozen SickD&D Beyond Basic RulesBasic Rules (2014)Sign in to view your library & saved favorites.
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Still, it’s not fun spending an action doing nothing, quite a few monsters have bonus action Hides while the only way to get that for players is to be a Rogue or a Goblin. Blindsight is only available at high levels with the exception of Blind fighting style and the Skulker feat, even then Blindsight can be quite limited in range if the enemy is a distance away.
If you don't want to spend an action searching, then you can take the Observant feat.
True, but a feat’s a feat, it’s gonna be a tad of a challenge for non-wisdom classes that aren’t the rogue and fighter.
Only if they have equal success chance. At equal skill levels, in 2014, the chance to hide was 55% (passive score), the chance to find that person after they hid was an average of 30% (their roll, which since it already succeeded we know was 0-10 points higher than passive score). In 2024, it's a bit messier because it varies with skill level but it remains consistently harder to find the hidden target than to hide. That's why I suggested that the DC for search be passive stealth, it means the odds become equal both ways. Also, both search and hide are punishingly useless as an action, but "I'll invest in X to mean I can do something" and "I'll invest in X to prevent other people from doing something" are not equal.
The idea that PCs normally build for features like blindsight is ... creative. It's not a thing that never happens, but it's hardly what I'd call normal, and trying to find someone with 10' of blindsight (the only option routinely available is blind fighting style) is still quite limited.
I built a character for perception skills. I was eventually able to procure a robe of eyes. I was thinking of taking the observant feat. BUT. my passive perception was a 20, and using my bonus action to Search means half thr time, i roll worse than my passive perception.
Its a really bad feat, given how passive perception works compared to an active Search action
Observant is a perfectly good feat -- it gives +1 to a stat and proficiency or expertise in a commonly used skill. Bonus action search isn't amazing, but it's at least occasionally useful, as opposed to the regular search action, which is completely useless.
The problem, however, isn't that passive perception is too good. It's that active perception isn't good enough.
The "problem" doesn't exist if you play Passive Perception as a DM-only tool designed for situations where the DM doesn't want to alert the players to a potentially failed Search check like the rules say. It only becomes a problem if you're homebrewing a "free Action Search" for your players.
Search being a total waste of an action in combat has nothing to do with passive perception, it would remain a problem even if passive perception did not exist.
I'm just not seeing the "problem" here. Search isn't used much because attacking at Disadvantage or waiting for an enemy to reveal themselves is more efficient than trying to find them in most cases. You don't tend to use Influence in combat much either.
Which creates the problem that Hide basically becomes "spend a Bonus Action that the relevant class/blocks rarely have competing options for to get a full round of Invisiblity"- which, let's not forget, takes a bunch of spells off the table since they require a target you can see. It's not game-breakingly broken, but playing it out like that reads a lot more like an exploit than RAI.
The problem is action economy. Even at the same skill level, it takes about twice as many actions to find someone as it does to hide, and most characters who are going to use stealth in combat have superior levels of stealth and something that improves their action economy. Plus, rogues don't need stealth to backstab anyway -- have an ally next to the target, or use steady aim, or dual wield with a Vex weapon, or use some other subclass feature that solves the problem -- so there is no compelling reason to make combat stealth all that useful.
To Hide, you need to spend an Action while observers don't. Only if they want to later Search do they need to match your action expenditure - and Search is one of the many, many ways that the Hide can be negated.
Honestly, your anti-Hide fetish is bizarre. Hide, even on a Rogue, isn't remotely as powerful as a College of the Moon Bard's ability to use a Bonus Action to hand out a Bardic Inspiration die, teleport and then turn Invisible. Yet somehow the conditional nature of Hide with drawback of potentially being found by a Search check, without the accompanying class mechanic/teleport breaks action economy?
The discussion is getting out of topic at this rate.
Darkness is too much fun for those who have darkvision and can Hide as a bonus action. Unless you take a precious action, you can't see me, normally, and you'll always have disadvantage to target me.
How do do a generic skill check in dnd:
Take an action, roll d20, add mods. Done.
How to do passiver perceptjon in dnd:
10 plus modifiers. Done
How to do active perception check in dnd;
Take an action. Roll d20, add mods. Half the time you will roll less than 10 and actively searching is worse than doing something else and relying on passive perception. Some suggest solving this by saying active search cant roll worse than passive perception. Now half the time, you roll a 10 and you taking an action to actively search is equal to doing nothing and relying on passive perception, and half the time it is better. On average, its about 3 points better than passive search.
So: how to roll perception check in dnd:
Take an action. Roll d20, floor is 10, add mods. On average, you will roll 3 better than passive perception.
Any passive skill makes the same problem for the active skill check: the active check becomes statistically useless, a waste of an action, and only 3 better than the passive score. So do something else and rely on passive score.
Normal skill checks with proficiency might roll anywhere from a 3 to 23. But passive perception sets the floor to 10 so that skill checks with proficiency only roll from 13 to 23. Thats a major buff to that skill.
Normal skills even with proficiency, you have a good.chance of failing. But passive perception and its floor raises the effectiveness of the check by 50 percent.
And as a result, all the rules around hiding have gotten weird because perception is so over powered.
Passive perception in the rules is stated to be a way to allow the dm to ambush the players, using thier passive score so they dont have to ask players to make a perception check.
Pretty sure this is one of the big sources of the problem. Just ask the players to roll, like literally any other check in the game.
Player: i search the room.
Dm: roll perception
Player: is a 3.good?
Dm: there is nothing in the room as far ss you know.
At this point, everyone knows the player rolled badly so they wont find anything, so the other players will ask to roll too. And then the dm can either allow all the rolls, or enforce a "one player rolls perception" rule. Maybe anothr player can help, so its with advantage.
Even then, with advantage, the player might only get an 8, and another player, knowing an 8 wont find anything, will chime in and ask if they can also roll perception too.
Its metagaming. One character searched. they rolled an 8 and didnt find anything. The other charavters dont know their rogue rolled an 8. The players do. The charavters dont.
The solution, as dm, is to enforce a no-metagaming rule. For example: One person searches, advantage if helped. And thats a 10 minute dungeon turn. If you want to search again, its a short rest and try again.
Or, one person says they search, the dm rolls for the player, players dont know the roll number, they just know "you dont find anything". This has the problem that it prevents players from using features like heroic inspiration. So player might tell dm, i search, and will use heroic inspiration if need be. It takes 10 minutes, and a short rest to try again.
But at some point, either the dm enforces no-metagaming rule, or they dont. If they dont, there is no point of hiding anything.
Dm: you enter a room. There is a secret hidden door on the north wall, and the candle holder on the wall is a secret lever to open it.
Which then gets into dungeon design: if finding the secret thing is required to advance in the campaign, then dont make it secret at all.
Secret compartments, secret doors, secret levers have to be used for bonus loot only. Or else, your dungeon is going to encourage players to break the no-metagaming rules. Dont design bad dungeons. If you run into a bad dungeon as a dm, fix it.
A dm using passive perception to NOT tip off the players is a dm who has not enforced a no-metagaming rule with their players. Or its a dm who wants to railroad the players into an ambush. Either way, it indicates bad dm'ing.
Just ask for a check. And dont allow your players to change their character actions because you asked for a check. If you cant do that, then using passive perception is just pushing the problem somewhere else.