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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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.
“Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.” — Voltaire
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 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:
also:
This theme persists throughout the rules.
Ability Check (general rule):
From the DMG:
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:
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.
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.
“Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.” — Voltaire
It's the way most things are done in RPGs. Perception is the anomaly for having rules.
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
“Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.” — Voltaire
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.
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.
“Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.” — Voltaire
From the PHB:
Certainly, it would change things if the rule was changed. that's true of any rule.
This particular rule covers two possibilities: You attempt to hide with no enemies in the area -- meet or exceed DC 15. Or you attempt to hide with enemies in the area (such as during combat) -- Meet or exceed DC 15 and also beat all nearby enemy Passive Perception scores. The reason why you make both of these checks at the same time is because you are currently attempting to hide and there are also currently enemies in the area that are generally aware of their surroundings. So, there is a chance that you successfully Hide and that you also "stop being hidden immediately" which both occur simultaneously. As for rolling a Perception check -- that would not occur at the moment that you take a Hide action. That occurs at the moment that another creature takes the Search action.
By rule, "Passive Perception is a score that reflects a creature’s general awareness of its surroundings." So, whenever a creature is generally aware of its surroundings, Passive Perception is on. An example of when a creature is not aware of its surroundings is when it has the Unconscious condition:
You've made this assertion a bunch of times now and yet there's nothing weird about this outcome. This is how Passive Checks were deliberately designed for the 2014 rules and it has remained the same for the 2024 rules. The math involved is just creating a certain probability for success. This model is acknowledging that you passively notice all sorts of things within your surroundings via input from your normal senses. Otherwise, you'd bump into things all the time while navigating your everyday life. This model estimates that the bottom half (the easy half) of all noticeable (with a check) things within your surroundings are trivial enough to notice that you can do so passively. Once that fails, the thing that you are searching for is automatically not trivial to find so there's a decent chance that you will fail to find it when you Search for it. That's completely reasonable.
There is still a difference. Being hidden also indicates that you are Unheard, the combination of which means that an enemy normally cannot know your current location. In the case of successfully hiding, you only have the Invisible condition "while hidden". When you are actually invisible this restriction does not exist.
Remember also that having the Invisible condition is not necessarily the same thing as being invisible. It just means that you gain the bullet point list of benefits that are described within the condition while you have it.
The 2024 rules establish that you can sometimes hide while in 3/4 cover. But if you completely leave cover then you aren't hiding -- you are no longer meeting the minimum requirements to be concealed. You only have the Invisible Condition "while hidden". Another way of looking at it is that you "stop being hidden immediately" when an enemy "finds you", which is what happens when you are standing out in the open.
The 5.5 rules for hiding/perception need house ruling because as written they produce nonsense results.
Cool. We're both right. Gaps like being unclear if passive is always there when someone hides. And nonsense like passive perception is a zero time action that produces the same result as spending your entire action searching.
“Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.” — Voltaire
The difference is that you want to make passive perception worse, and I want to make searching better.
Meh. For martial characters, they eventually cancel out Battlefield Uncertainty, can use Sentinel Shield and other features to get advantage on perception, AND they can take the Search[perception] check as a Bonus Action, and whatever they roll is their passive until the start of their next turn. That means if they're fighting something hard to find, they can roll a perception check as a bonus action, and apply Luck, Heroic Inspiration, Bardic Inspiration, and even Portents to boost their rolls, and the result sticks with them for a round of combat, meaning, their passive perception is really high if the enemy tries to hide on their next turn.
So, I think that makes perception better for the battle hardened character builds. And makes perception during combat make a lot more sense to how it works in real life. And since its a -5/disadvantage penalty, if you really want to counter it, get a sentinel shield as soon as you can afford one.
https://www.dndbeyond.com/forums/dungeons-dragons-discussion/homebrew-house-rules/240379-battlefield-uncertainty-combat-applies-5
“Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.” — Voltaire