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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Correction: it has a 0% chance of success. Someone who's hidden has already beaten your passive perception, and there is no ability to reroll it.
Oh well, then you should like my homebrew idea then.
Battlefield Uncertainty: During combat, -5/disadvantage to passive perception.
At martial class level 5, martials get bonus action Search action. And if you take search action or bonus action, whatever you roll check results in that becomes your passive perception until the start of your next round.
So enemy hides. They rolled >15 and >your passive perception
On your turn, bonus action Search. Use all the bonuses you want to search. Heroic inspiration, bardic inspiration, luck, whatevrr. Whatever the result is, that becomes your passive perception until the start of your next turn.
I.e. find them on your bonus action, use action to attack. And on enemy's next turn, your passive is going to be substantially higher.
At martial level 10, martials are not affected by Battlefield Uncertainty, so they can get +5 advantage added to their passive perception. But can still bonus action search if they have inspiraton, luck, and so on.
Nah, I'd go with:
when you say "perception has disadvantage", then taking the search action is also at disadvantage?
I'm suggesting a modification only for passive perception. If you take the Search action, its normal, no disadvantage, and it becomes your passive perception score unti the start of your next turn.
At the risk of muddying the waters further, if you are one to use "Degrees of Success" then a perception roll does not just mean pass/fail and passive getting the average of active probably does make less sense...
I'd probably say "Search: when you take take the search action, you have advantage on perception rolls until the start of your next turn" and make all perception passive.
There seems to be some presupposition going on here that finding something "should" be as easy as hiding it. I'm not sure anyone has even validated that this is true to begin with.
I'm probably laughing.
It is apparently so hard to program Aberrant Mind and Clockwork Soul spell-swapping into dndbeyond they had to remake the game without it rather than implement it.
In game balance terms that's the case. In reality it depends extensively on the situation and is very poorly represented by the D&D mechanics.
If it takes an action to hide and passive perception is always on/free, then hiding should be more effective than passive/not searching.
If it takes an action to hide and an action to search, then probably ahould be about the same chance to hide as to find
Passive perception has zero effect on finding a hidden character, because if they hid, they already beat your passive perception.
Of course, you could just say that Search requires a DC 15 perception check that is completely uncorrelated to the stealth of the person hiding, that would be parallel.
The current system works fine. It gives a reasonable mechanic for what your normal senses are doing for you all the time and there are various rules which impose disadvantage or auto-fail when such senses are compromised such as when looking around in Dim Light or when blinded. When taking the time (action) to concentrate on using those senses in a focused manner you have a percentage chance to find things that were previously unnoticed.
This system is also able to take into account some variability such as when the Hider is bad at hiding vs when the Hider is good at hiding and also when the Seeker has poor Perception (passive and active) vs when the Seeker has good Perception (passive and active) and all of the combinations which can arise from that.
This is only true when beginning from a state of being found, such as during combat. In situations where this is used outside of combat to set an ambush, then the rules just require the DC 15 stealth roll. Of course, to avoid meta-gaming I think that it's preferable in such situations for the DM to not ask for that stealth roll until such time that an enemy enters the vicinity where the Passive Perception comes into play, but there actually doesn't seem to be very good RAW guidance to suggest running it like that.
For the character to successfully hide they have to beat your passive perception, which is your average active perception check without you doing anything.
Thats the issue.
You arent searching, you arent taking the search action. But your passive perception is your average result of an active perception roll.
So passive perception has EVERY effect on the person successfully hiding in the first place. And it cost you no action, while trying to hide cost them an action.
But passive perception is always on. So even if rhe party is running/dashing through the woods and into the ambush, they get a passive perception check once they approach the ambush site.
The 2024 rules for hiding say your stealth check has to beat a dc 15 and then you are hidden until "found".
But passive perception is a valid way to find things. Passive perception is on during combat without you searching, so it is on outside of combat even when you are running through the jungle.
That's not an issue. If you want to be able to hide without checking observer's perceptions, observers should be able to find you without checking your stealth. If it's DC 15 to hide, it should be DC 15 to find someone.
.... what???
"If you want to be able to hide without checking observer's perceptions,"
Then you check their passive perception.
To hide is a stealth check that has to beat BOTH 15 AND the PASSIVE perception of anyone around.
That is 2024 rules. In 2014, it was a contested skill check so it was an active stealth roll versus an active Search action/perception check.
The problem with 2014 was if you were trying to hide, the enemy got to make an active search perception check roll, without taking a search action.
In 2024, they got rid of the active perception check, and added a minimum dc 15 but passive perception is still there, which is their average perception check value. And they still didnt take a search action.
The dc 15 is kinda irrelevant because for builds with high wisdom and proficiency or expertise in peeception, their passive perception can get above a 15, and they dont even have to take the search action to do that.
Where on earth did that idea come from? Making a skill check was always an action, it just didn't have a name in 2014.
It really feels like you are still missing some important points about how this works out in practice.
Something roughly approximate to 2/3 of all published monsters in the game are defined to have a Passive Perception score of less than 15. For low CR monsters spanning the first couple of Tiers of play this percentage is even higher than that. This means that for all of those monsters it is actually impossible for them to ever detect any hidden creatures passively.
Beyond that, based on how the Hide action is written, the result is actually meant to represent a degrees-of-success sliding scale for how well hidden a creature actually is based on its Stealth roll. Perception results work differently -- that result is pass/fail . . . you either spot something or you don't. If a creature is "just barely" hidden with a roll of 15 or 16, for example, then there are now a handful of monsters that will detect it without having to search. But if it rolls well on its Stealth roll by achieving, say, a roll of 25 or 26, then there are virtually no monsters that can detect this hidden creature passively. This represents a difference between being "just barely" hidden and being "very well" hidden. For creatures with average Perception, this makes no difference -- they cannot spot any hidden creatures passively. For creatures with especially high Perception, they can spot a "just barely" hidden creature passively, but if they need to find a "very well" hidden creature then they will have to actively search and roll quite well on that corresponding check. None of this is an "issue", it's functioning as intended.
Again, this is functioning as intended. The Passive Perception check will only very rarely be successful anyway since the hidden creature is defined to be setting a DC of at least 15 and it will often be quite a bit higher. For those few times where the seeker happens to have unusually high Perception AND the Passive Perception score is high enough to actually find a hidden creature, then that should be rewarded. Same goes for the NPC monsters -- there is a reason why the authors went through all of the trouble and ink and page space to list an entry for Passive Perception for every monster in the game -- it is meant to be used in this way. It's the whole reason for the stat.
Now, again, if a DM is especially bothered by the particular circumstance involved such as wildly dashing through a jungle, then they can impose disadvantage on that particular (passive / active) Perception check to spot the ambush. The RAI on this is that the circumstance should actually impact your senses such as when looking around in Dim Light or while blinded. These numbers are otherwise meant to be used unmodified during combat since senses are heightened which positively affects your general awareness as much as the distraction and/or focus required might detract from it. The RAW of course is that a DM can always situationally impose disadvantage -- just expect to get some push-back from players if there doesn't seem to be a justifiable rules-based explanation within the given situation.
If the DM feels strongly that the current system just doesn't work for some reason, then this should definitely become a Session 0 discussion since it then becomes likely that the issue will veer pretty quickly into Homebrew territory when it comes to making the related rulings during play. Again, expect some push-back from players during that time when suggesting significant modifications to such a core mechanic.
This is false.
See the Chapter 7 "Hiding" sidebar and the Chapter 9 rules for "Surprise", both of which explicitly discuss using Passive Perception for this skill contest. It was actually far more explicit in 2014 than it is in 2024 that Passive Perception should be used for these purposes.
This is false. See above.
There are quite a few officially published monsters that have a Passive Perception score of 10 or less. In 2014 you could hide from such monsters with an 11 on your Stealth check. The DC 15 requirement in 2024 is not irrelevant at all. It's a major change to the mechanic.
"It really feels like you are still missing some important points about how this works out in practice.
Something roughly approximate to 2/3 of all published monsters in the game are defined to have a Passive Perception score of less than 15. For low CR monsters spanning the first couple of Tiers of play this percentage is even higher than that. This means that for all of those monsters it is actually impossible for them to ever detect any hidden creatures passively."
in 2014, you could roll an 11 and hide from the passive perception 10 monster, and their passive would never percieve you.
in 2024, you roll an 11, and you're NOT HIDDEN, so the monster with the passive percpetion of 10 sees you because you're NOT HIDDEN.
Its not that its harder for monsters ot percieve you, It's harder for you to hide.
You can think of the minimum DC 15 on the stealth check as a minimum passive perception that all creatures have as far as your ability to HIDE is concerned.
"These numbers are otherwise meant to be used unmodified during combat since senses are heightened which positively affects your general awareness"
No. Your perception is not positively affected during combat.
This is the very root of the problem. During combat you get tunnel vision. You get hyper focused on the threat directly in front of you that you don't see the guy coming at you 45 degrees to the right. Studies repeatedly show this.
You can argue that the RULES say this or the RULES say that. But I'm also very clear that the justification repeated over and over about WHY the rules are this way, that people become hyper perceptive in combat, is absolutely, positively not true. If you know this justification is absolutely wrong, then the rules start looking very, very dumb.
You keep telling me what the rules are. I know what the rules are. And teh rules are dumb.
Civilians are absolute garbage in combat. They panic. They freeze. They do stupid stuff. One of the goals of military training is to transform civilians into people who can get some modicum of functionality under combat conditions. The military trains and trains people for combat so that they don't compeletely freak out during combat.
So, during combat, unless you're taking teh Search Action on your turn, you get a -5 penalty to your passive perception for disadvantage. If you take the Search Action, that's your passive score until the start of your next turn. These two rules reflect how people get tunnel vision during combat, but can overcome it briefly is the stop and take a moment.
And marital classes at level 5 can do Search on their Bonus Action. And at level 10 they no longer suffere the -5/disadvantage penalty. These two rules reflect constant military training for combat helps martials keep their cool under fire, different from, say, all the time a wizard spends at the library reading books.
While it's true that people get tunnel vision in combat... that's the only reason hide is even possible. Try to hide from someone who's alert, aware of your existence, and not distracted, and you're just going to fail, unless you get full concealment and then spend an extended period slowly moving away, or you are at ranges far beyond normal D&D combat ranges.