Is passive perception always on?

Im not taking about Dexterity (Stealth) check but senses or knowledge ability check such as Perception, Insight, Arcana, Religion etc...that may often come into play without active concious effort when the DM want to give information you might perceive, deduce or remember.

ANother hich, if you can only make ability check as part of an action,  there's none for Strength (Athletics) check, Dexterity (Sleight of Hand) check or Wisdom (Medicine) check.

Quote from Plaguescarred >>

Im not taking about Dexterity (Stealth) check but senses or knowledge ability check such as Perception, Insight, Arcana, Religion etc...that may often come into play without active concious effort when the DM want to give information you might perceive, deduce or remember.

ANother hich, if you can only make ability check as part of an action,  there's none for Strength (Athletics) check, Dexterity (Sleight of Hand) check or Wisdom (Medicine) check.

athletics checks are tied to movement such as jumping, climbing, and so on. So not an action per se, but part of movement. 

Sleight of hand is part of the Utilize action.

Medicine check during combat is part of the help action

https://www.dndbeyond.com/sources/dnd/phb-2024/playing-the-game#StabilizingaCharacter

"but senses or knowledge ability check such as Perception, Insight, Arcana, Religion etc...that may often come into play without active concious effort "

I do knowledge checks to see if a player already knew something at a particular moment. 

But investigation checks on a trap means you are checking out the trap, you figure out there is a wire, which goes to a switch, and you take action to disable it.  It takes time to figure something out.

If perception checks are zero time, free rolls whenever an enemy hides, theres no benefit to taking the search action.

And if thats the way it works, rhe idea that you get exactly the same result whether you spend your entire action doing nothing but looking, scannig, searching, for threats, gets the same result as if you spend your entire action aiming a crossbow at an enemy 100ft away, is phenomonally stupid.

A free-zero-time-perception-check that always rolls at disadvantage or something would make a little more sense.

Quote from Plaguescarred >>

Quote from up2ng >>

This is a good example.  Personally, I would classify this as a Specific vs General Exception to the rules. 

 Where is the general rule saying you can't make an ability check without taking a specific action that this specifically let you?

The authors generally don't use up extra word count to make clarifying statements like this.  They don't go out of their way to draw a line in the sand about this topic.  Instead, this is the most obvious conclusion that the author might expect the reader to make based on a combination of rules that are presented.

For example, the majority of the main section of the rules (Playing the Game) follow an introduction to the rhythm of play which is described like this:

The three main pillars of D&D play are social interaction, exploration, and combat. Whichever one you’re experiencing, the game unfolds according to this basic pattern:

1. The Dungeon Master Describes a Scene. . . .
2. The Players Describe What Their Characters Do. . . .
3. The DM Narrates the Results of the Adventurers’ Actions. . . .

The rules which follow are generally written from the point of view that the DM is adjudicating the result of what the characters actually DO -- meaning, they are taking some sort of action (or they are actively moving or something similar).  That's the default assumption.

For example:

D20 Test

The 20-sided die (d20) is the most important die you’ll use in the game. It’s central to the core mechanic—called D20 Tests—the game uses to determine whether creatures succeed or fail at the things they attempt during the game (see “D20 Tests” later in this chapter). You roll a d20 whenever your character tries to do something that the DM decides has a chance of both success and failure. The higher your roll, the more likely it is that you succeed.

also:

When the outcome of an action is uncertain, the game uses a d20 roll to determine success or failure.

This theme persists throughout the rules.

Ability Check (general rule):

An ability check represents a creature using talent and training to try to overcome a challenge, such as forcing open a stuck door, picking a lock, entertaining a crowd, or deciphering a cipher. The DM and the rules often call for an ability check when a creature attempts something other than an attack that has a chance of meaningful failure.

Most ability checks involve using a skill, which represents a category of things creatures try to do with an ability check. The descriptions of the actions you take (see “Actions” later in this chapter) specify which skill applies if you make an ability check for that action.

Ability checks can be key in determining the outcome of a social interaction. Your roleplaying efforts can alter an NPC’s attitude, but there might still be an element of chance if the DM wants dice to play a role in determining an NPC’s response to you. In such situations, the DM will typically ask you to take the Influence action.

From the DMG:

An ability check is a test to see whether a character succeeds at a task the character has decided to attempt.

and so on . . .

After all of that, eventually we come to the DMG guidance regarding passive checks which creates an exception to the above theme:

Ability checks normally represent a character's active effort to accomplish something, but occasionally you need a passive measure of how good a character is at doing a thing. Passive Perception is the most common example. (See “Perception” later in this chapter.) You can extend the concept of a passive ability check to other abilities and skills.

The conclusion is that checks with a die roll are used for active ability checks where the creature is taking some sort of action or is at least doing something actively.  Passive ability checks are used when a creature accomplishes something passively with no action or other activity required.

Passive Perception is part of standard gameplay.  Other passive checks are optional which "can" be used at the discretion of the DM if and when the DM needs a passive measure of something that involves a different ability and/or skill.

Honestly, neither stealth nor perception should be an action, they should be something rolled as part of another action.

If you want to perform an action stealthily, roll stealth.

If you want to see what you notice when doing something, roll perception.

This doesn't mean an action can't be searching, but what you should really do is describe what you're doing to search, and the DM then decides what, if any, action is needed, and calls for a roll if appropriate. If you're searching for a hidden character, and you say "I'm looking behind that tree over there", the action you're using is just spending movement so you can see behind the tree, and the DM could easily choose to rule that you just find the person hiding there.

Quote from Pantagruel666 >>

 action you're using is just spending movement so you can see behind the tree, and the DM could easily choose to rule that you just find the person hiding there.

Yeah, but thats not a "game" in any sense of the word. Its story telling make believe and thr dm has to wing every decision.

You dont play checkers by saying "i make a stunningly powerful opening move" and some referee says "ok". Its actual pieces on the board with rules for how they move. 

Quote from SunIsGettingRealLow96589 >>

Yeah, but thats not a "game" in any sense of the word. Its story telling make believe and thr dm has to wing every decision.

It's the way most things are done in RPGs. Perception is the anomaly for having rules.

Quote from SunIsGettingRealLow96589 >>

 

 

Quote from Pantagruel666 >>

 action you're using is just spending movement so you can see behind the tree, and the DM could easily choose to rule that you just find the person hiding there.

 

Yeah, but thats not a "game" in any sense of the word. Its story telling make believe and thr dm has to wing every decision.

You dont play checkers by saying "i make a stunningly powerful opening move" and some referee says "ok". Its actual pieces on the board with rules for how they move. 

I mean, storytelling make believe is at least as much of a part of D&D as the crunchy side of combat. If you're just looking to move figures around, roll dice, and check a rulebook for every interaction, that's more the field of miniature games.

With attack rolls, armor class, you determine if you hit the target. With damage and hit points, you determine how badly you hurt the target.

With Saving throw proficiencies and spell save dcs, you determine if you polymorph the monster into a turtle.

None or those work very well if the rules are nothing but "you tell the dm what you want to do, the dm ponders it a bit, and then the dm decides the outcome" You cant actually plan anything, you cant strategize, theres no skill to playing the game. How good or bad things go is determined solely by how good or bad the dm is.

Hiding and Perception are similarly important things to do during combat. And if the rules are nothing but the dm decides what happen, no rules for any kind of roĺls, then the game gets weird very quiclly.

Now, the outcome of hide/percieve changes quite a bit if you roll stealth and have it beat 15, versus having it beat highest passive perception, versus having it beat everyone making a perception roll.  It makes a difference if passive perception is always on or if passive is only on when dm wants a secret determination. And it produces weird outcomes to have a creature get rhe same roll as a zero time/any time background check versus spending their entire action searching. There used to be a difference between hidden and invisible, mechanical differences and now successfully hiding gives you the invisible condition.  Amd the rules for what you can do while successfully hidden with the invisible condition are rubbish. Can you leave cover or not? 

The rules for hiding/percieving feel like a group essay that was hurriedly written the night before. It has holes. There is a lot of ambiguity. Its STILL spread out ovef multiple different locations in the phb and dmg. And there is nothing about it that needs to be this vague and poorly written. Obviously the rules cant cover every possibility, but the rules we have dont even clearly define what to do under base conditions.

Attack someone behind half cover? Plus 2 to.their ac. Simple, clear, concise.

Hide/percieve rules are roll a d20 and everything after tthat is vibe coded

Quote from SunIsGettingRealLow96589 >>

None or those work very well if the rules are nothing but "you tell the dm what you want to do, the dm ponders it a bit, and then the dm decides the outcome"

There is an enormous amount of stuff in any RPG that works exactly like that. The default flow of D&D is "player describes what they're doing, DM tells them what if any rolls to make, and if relevant how long it takes to do it".

The purpose of RPG rules is to facilitate the roleplaying; rules that regularly have to be house ruled because they produce nonsensical results are worse than useless. That's actually the current state of perception and stealth in 5.5e; it would be better to have fewer rules.

Quote from Pantagruel666 >>

; ules that regularly have to be house ruled because they produce nonsensical results are worse than useless. That's actually the current state of perception and stealth .

5.5 rules for hiding/perception need house ruling because there are so many gaps. Not because it gives too much information that needs to be special-cased.

The fact that a quarter of.all votes contradict three-quarter of.votes on a bare minimum, drop dead simple question of mechanics is because the rules dont actually give enough to establish the basics.

Is passive perception always on? 

Thats a bog simple question that the rules failed to make clear to customers.