Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer Creatures
Frozen Sick
D&D Beyond Basic Rules
Basic Rules (2014)
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Which does not mean you are unable to notice things without taking the search action. Passive perception defines what you notice when you don't take the search action.
It defines what you notice during the portion of the game where you're not even taking actions.
It doesn't, however, let you take infinite search actions for no reason. That's absurd. In combat you are tracking turn by turn action use.
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.
It doesn't let you take any search actions, because it's not the search action. It's a passive trait like armor class.
Oof. Well, thanks for the source. The second one is definitely Jeremy Crawford talking out of nowhere with no rules support. The first one can be taken as RAI that passive perception is intended to replace searching, but the two together casts doubt if the first is just an extension of the second non-rule.
"The tweets of Jeremy Crawford ... " and so on.
I agree about passive perception in combat but "passively paying attention" seems like a bit of an oxymoron.
How to add Tooltips.
My houserulings.
RAI more than anything, no rules nor SAC ever got this printed somewhere.
Personally, i don't always use this minimum threshold concept. If i ask for an active Wisdom (Perception) check, it's so the result can expressly be above or below your Passive Perception score as i don't use this score.
While general awareness was always on unless your unaware of your surrounding, a Perception check is only needed when DM asks for it, wether active or passive is at my discretion. One could then ask how could you often be less perceptive when actively searching then your general awareness? My answer is focused attention. It's one or the other i use though, as DM i usually uses an active check, unless i use a passive one instead, i don't usually use both.
If a player at my table brought this line of reasoning to me it would feel like they're trying to ruleslawyer themselves into have free actions.
Yes, of course you can see obvious stuff around you without a check. But that isn't what's being discussed. It is finding hidden or hard to notice things. In combat... that is the Search action.
Outside of combat you're not really tracking turn by turn actions, so your DM will either ask for the check OR use your passive if they don't want to tip you the player off that something is there to be missed.
It's right in the players handbook.
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 standard English, the difference between "active" and "passive" is that the person performing the action is active, the person receiving the action is passive. Thus, passive perception should be the thing you use when you are not the person acting -- which means you are not taking an action.
It is possible D&D is choosing to use the word in a nonstandard manner, 5e has done a lousy job of explaining what passive perception is actually about, but that's the natural interpretation of their choice of words.
The Passive Perception score doesn't say it require you to take the Search action. The DM uses this score when determining whether a creature notices something without consciously making a Wisdom (Perception) check.
Something I shared in a related thread:
What?? No. What does "recieving" have to do with anything?
Active means you are taking action, your body and mind are doing something. In this case, you would be actively searching. I.e. taking rhe Search Action.
Passive means youre not doing anything active, but you still achieve some benefit, though nothing in normal language would suggest the passive benefit equals the active benefit. In the case of passive perception, you arent actively searching. Youre doing anything but searching. Maybe youre dashing. Mayby youre attacking. But you still have -some- awareness of things going on around you. But since youre actively focused on something other than searching, you wont be as aware. Some migbt call it your background perception.
Players say they are actively searching: have them roll perception.
Players say they are actively searching, and dm wants to potentially ambush them: use their passive perception score.
Players say they are doing something othrr than searching, such as attacking or dashing or casting a spell: do not have them roll perception, do not ise passive perception. If they are about to dash over a trap, dm should check the players background perception to see if they spot it before they trigger it.
Player says they are attacking for their action. Until the start of their next turn, that player's perception is reduced to their background perception. Their passive perception is unavailable. If an enemy attempts to hide during this time, the enemy's Stealth roll should be greater than 15 first, and greater than any attacking enemy's background perception. if the hiding charavter has not entered combat, and the dm wants to check if the players will notice it, the dm should not ask for a perceptjon check active roll during combat if no one is doing the search action. But the dm could compare thr enemy's stealth roll against the background perception of the players.
The dmg described passive perception as something to use when the players are actively searching, but the dm doesnt want to ask for a perception check/roll becaue it will tip off the players.
When the players are NOT actively searching, and the dm doesnt want to tip off the players, the dm should use the party's background perception instead.
But if the player is not consciously making a wisdom perception check (not taking the Search Action), then that player should not notice as much.
But the rules say they do.
It means that they are not acting, they are being acted upon. Fundamentally, the purpose of passive perception is to be a target number for stealth. I would probably fix active perception by saying "perception is normally part of movement; the Search action gives you advantage until the start of your next turn".
The issue being, logically one would expect characters in hostile territory to constantly be "on alert", and even in less high stakes scenarios like walking down a street it is a common narrative that characters who make a point of being aware of their surroundings- aka ones who have invested in Perception- are still vigilant enough that they might spot in incipient ambush. However, it's rather impractical to ask players to constantly roll Perception checks to reflect this. Thus, Passive Perception to reflect that yes, when a party is walking through the BBEG's lair they can be assumed to be watching for ambushes or that the character with prof/expertise and +3-5 WIS can be presumed to be generally vigilant. Does this mean they get an automatic 10 roll on all Perception checks? No. However, it's meant to be a stand-in for rolling at points where it would break immersion to ask the players to roll and/or when they're in the middle of a scene where they can be expected to be exercising the level of awareness a Perception check is representative of on an ongoing basis. Basically, the issue here is that what a character can plausibly be "consciously doing" is not always best implemented via active rolls, particularly for something as broad as "watching for danger".
Where are you getting this from? There is no such thing as "background perception" in this game. You are making this up.
You described the important bit above -- awareness of things going on around you. That's Passive Perception. It models whatever you notice passively.
You can think of Passive Perception as just your senses functioning normally without actually doing anything. Assuming that your character does not have any special senses, this is just the classic 5 senses of vision, hearing, taste, smell and touch.
On a particularly windy day you will feel the wind blowing against your face. You are not doing anything in particular to perceive this -- it just happens, passively. If it's strong enough you will also be able to tell with rough accuracy which way the wind is blowing. This scenario represents a low DC compared to your passive perception. Now, if there is very little wind, you might not passively notice any wind at all while doing other things. The DC is too high. So, if you need to know which way the wind is blowing in that case, you must now concentrate on that task and see if that can help you make that determination. If you stop and concentrate and can now accurately feel the wind on your face, or you managed to perceive it in some other manner, then you rolled well on your active roll. If not, then maybe there just wasn't enough wind for you to perceive it in this way and you did not think to pull up some grass and toss it into the air to perceive it in some other way. In that case, you rolled low. Whether or not the absolute value of the roll is lower than what you could have noticed passively is irrelevant. The number doesn't matter except that it represents either a success or a failure. If something was undetectable through your normal passive senses, then it will automatically be somewhat difficult to detect -- so there will be a chance of failing to detect it with an active search. The designers of the game arbitrarily decided that in the very best scenario you will be unable to detect this thing 50% of the time, and that percentage goes up from there as the target DC increases. They could have chosen some other cut-off point, but they didn't. And that really doesn't matter. The cut-off point that they chose was reasonable. Your passive senses allow you to detect a good chunk of the detectable things in the environment.
Another easy example. You are sitting at your computer composing an email. Somewhere behind you in the room two people are having a conversation. There's a pretty good chance that you'll at least hear voices in the room even if you aren't paying attention to what they are actually saying. That's Passive Perception against a low DC. Now, if the room is actually somewhat large and the people are pretty far away and there is other background noise and they are whispering softly and you are particularly absorbed in your work, then maybe that's a scenario where you are unaware that anyone else is in the room. That's Passive Perception against a high DC. Now, given that, if you were to stop and then concentrate on listening for voices in the room, maybe you can hear them and maybe you cannot. It's already going to be a somewhat difficult task since you already couldn't hear anything passively. Given that, it seems perfectly reasonable that there is at least a 50% chance that you still won't be able to hear anything now even though you are trying harder to hear something.
There is not really any compelling reason to tweak the arbitrary cut-off point that was set by the designers and there is certainly no reason at all to require such passive activities such as the ones described above to require any sort of action. Your senses are at work all the time without you putting in any effort, and that's what the term "perception" means -- interpreting sensory information to understand the environment. Some people can be more or less generally aware and some people can be better skilled at actively applying their senses to accomplish specific tasks (actively). All of that is modelled reasonably well by this game.
No, that's not how it works.
Also, you then proceed to talk a lot more about "background perception". That's not something that exists in this game. Is it possible that you are thinking of some other TTRPG besides D&D that you might also be playing? Because whatever you are talking about here is completely made up with respect to this game.
But back to the above statements. Here is how it actually works:
First, determine if the thing is detectable (perceivable) with some chance for success or failure. If so, set the DC to detect it. Then, we'll apply the creature's Perception skill to determine if the creature is able to perceive it . . .
Now, if the players are doing something else (not taking a Search action or generally searching outside of combat) or just nothing at all, then the only check that we make is whether or not this creature automatically detects this thing passively with normal sensory input. We do this by making a Passive Perception check by simply comparing the Passive Perception score to the DC (no action required). In this case, if this passive check fails then the thing is undetected. There is no possibility of making an active check because the creature is not taking an appropriate action to do so. Thus, what is possible for this creature to detect is limited -- it does not have access to the upper end of what would be possible with an active check.
However, what about "Players say they are actively searching"? First, hopefully we aren't talking about players who tell the DM " . . . as we walk through this dungeon, we're just always looking for traps, we're always looking for an ambush, we're always searching for secret doors or other hidden objects and we're always being stealthy". That's just not a thing and the DM should disallow that. We aren't going to be rolling a bunch of dice after every 5 feet of movement. That's one of the main functions of Passive Perception -- it eliminates the need for that. But instead, let's consider the situation where the character is actually searching for something. In this case, first, make the Passive Perception check. If the thing is detected then there is no need for an active check and no need to expend the action economy to take the Search action in situations where such things are being tracked, such as in combat. Just let the player do something else with their action -- the thing that they are looking for has already been found passively. Next, if the thing was not detected passively, THEN ask for an active Perception roll as a result of their Search action.
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A final note. If a DM really strongly feels that the particular situation warrants it, they can always impose Disadvantage on the (passive and active) Perception check. There is also precedent for situationally declaring that you simply cannot successfully make a Perception check at all (auto-fail), even if you take the Search action to try. Mechanically, we might think of this as artificially raising the DC to an unattainable number such that any attempted check would automatically fail.
For example, many published materials make a point that in certain scenarios the marching order makes a difference here and is used to determine which characters might detect the thing (the trap, the ambush, whatever). The implication is that the other characters automatically fail to notice the thing in that moment. Other obvious examples would be if you are simply too far away. If an ambush is lying in wait in the woods more than a mile down the road, you simply cannot perceive it right now, you are too far away. And so on.
Examples of imposing disadvantage that has some rules support: The "Travel" rules -- Fast, Medium or Slow. If travelling fast you would have disadvantage on Perception checks (passive and active) to spot an ambush on the road, for example. Dim Light -- Finding a secret door in a dungeon primarily involves sight (assume we aren't feeling around for it or whatever). If we're looking along a nearby wall while walking down a dimly lit hallway, we're meant to impose disadvantage unless we are shining some sort of light source where we are looking.
Besides these examples that are actually written into the rules, there are all sorts of unique scenarios that will arise during play. For that, the DM is meant to make these determinations on a case-by-case basis.