Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer Creatures
Frozen Sick
D&D Beyond Basic Rules
Basic Rules (2014)
Sign in to view your library & saved favorites.
Sign in- Marketplace
Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer CreaturesFrozen SickD&D Beyond Basic RulesBasic Rules (2014)Sign in to view your library & saved favorites.
Sign in
If passive skills are optionL and not used with Hide, that would make Hide work pretty much the way i was pointing to here:
https://www.dndbeyond.com/forums/dungeons-dragons-discussion/rules-game-mechanics/239724-a-creatures-passive-perception-is-only-available
Rogue hides on their turn, rolls a 16. Beats the dc 15, successfully hides.
The nearby monster would have a passive perceptiom of 20 and see the rogue passively preventing the rogue from ever hiding, but since the dm doesnt use passive perception, the rogue is hiddem on the rogues turn. And could Sneak Attack with advantage.
The monster has to.wait until their turn to try to search for the rogue. If they have the Find legendary reaction, they could do the search immediately after the Rogues.turn, but the rogue still got to hide and attack with advantage and hide on their turn.
No passive perception creates an interesting sequence where Hide could work on the turn someone was hiding, and finding the hidden creature would wait until an enemy has a turn or action to search.
I think i might actually prefer that approach.
They completely nerfed the Surprise Round, so hiding and stealthing has much less impact.
But if you hide on your turn and thats in effect until the enemy does an active search (cause no passive perception), youre actually back to something close to a surprise.round.
Hide, roll a 15 lr.higher. hidden. Set up ambush. Enemy approaches. Roll initiative. The enemy running point might be actively looking/actively searching, and might spot the party, so the warlock hexes their Wisdom. Search/perception is at disadvantage. They dont spot thr party, the rest of enemy column walks up, and now the party is hidden and basically everyone takes the ready action to fire at the same time.
In a location where the enemy is not expecting an ambush, not actively searching, the party would be guaranteed at least one round of readied actions from everyone before the enemy can react.
The moment the Warlock attempts to Hex, you go into Initiative - and the Initiative roll occurs before the Hex would land. The Warlock can certainly Hex when they act during Initiative, but it's unlikely it would be particularly useful at that point.
It's also doubtful the party would take Ready Actions. Ready Actions can only be taken once Initiative is rolled and there isn't much point in deliberately delaying when you attack - especially when it comes at such a cost (martials can only take a single attack, casters have to use concentration to hold the spell, neither can move unless that's all they do). Nor is there any guarantee the entire party would win Initiative and be able to act before their opponents. It's certainly likely since the enemies would have Disadvantage on Initiative due to Surprise, but there's no guarantee.
This plus:
is my summary of this thread and the Twinned Thread A creature's Passive Perception is only available during the creature's actions?
I'd say the main (only?) problem with passive perception is its name. It gives the impression that it describes how perceptive you are when not focusing, while a skill check corresponds to when you actually are looking for something. And with that interpretation, the numbers don't make sense. Focusing should not make you less perceptive half the time.
I find the name Passive Perception actually quite on point, both in terms of passive vs active check & perceptiveness.
Okay, this is actually two questions
One point of passive Perception is to mitigate the constant “we stop and roll Perception” while the party is moving through an area, though. Practically speaking it can only ever be a case of being left to player initiative- creating the aforementioned issue of requiring regular intervals of resolving checks, the DM calling for a roll when appropriate- creating meta/immersion issues when everyone rolls low but also now has the expectation that something is present, or giving something the DM can independently reference before giving any information- undercutting the chance of failure.
Ultimately, I would say that situational awareness is simply too much of an ongoing process to be something active rolling can cover without creating too much overhead, particularly if only one or two people in the party have decent Perception, meaning everyone else has to stop and watch dice be rolled for something that isn’t an active scene and might or might not have an consequence on progression.
I think hiding in combat shouldn't be harder or easier, i prefer if there's a single way regardless of situation and circumstances may grant Advantage or Disadvantage if needed.
At DM's discretion i believe Passive Perception can work for most things a Wisdom (Perception) check can.