Here I report some explanations made by JC: 1) Passive perception vs. Active perception The passive perception score represents the minimum, the baseline, of your awareness. So anything or anyone trying to Stealth check upon you has always to overcome your passive perception score. Even when you decide to make an active Perception check, and that roll + modifier is lower than your Passive Perception score, the Passive Perception score still counts as the DC to overcome for a Stealth check. Making an active Perception check means that you want to try to "beat" your Passive Perception score, and hence try to increase the DC for a Stealth check. This is true for both combat and non-combat situations.
2) Invisibility Being invisible does not mean that others are not aware of you and your position. Only if you take the Hide action (i.e. make a Stealth check, which you can always do if you are invisible) and you beat the Passive Perception of the others, these others are not aware of your position. At the DM discretion, some circumstances might make possible for an invisible creature to need not a Stealth check to make himself unseen and unheard. Such circumstances may be a significant distraction and fair distance. In those cases, always at the DM approval, an invisible creature benefits from being hidden even without a Stealth check.
3) Melee attack vs. Ranged attack when trying to sneak If you are hidden, and you decide to move out in the open to hit a target, you are not hidden anymore because you give your position away. You retain the benefit of being hidden if you make the attack within range and, in making the attack, you are still unseen and unheard. That is it quite important when you decide to make a sneak attack with a melee or ranged attack. Although, about this, there can be some circumstances in which the DM might allow to sneak upon the target (movement included).
I would personally limit the accuracy of automatically detecting the position of invisible creatures which are not hiding. Because the implication is that you are able to locate them through their noises made or changes in the environment, and those are too subtle to determine an exact position unless its very close or there are other circumstances which cause it to be clear. Something along the lines of if the target is within 15 feet, you know their position, under 60 feet and you know a 15ft cube they are located within, and beyond that you just know their direction and can see any obvious effects they make (such as shooting with an arrow or stomping through mud or knocking things over).
Basically as written, a blind person with a longbow can shoot at a target 600 feet away in the middle of his allies knowing he is targeting the right person. To me, if you are invisible and over 100 feet away, you are hidden unless the other creature has super hearing or the invisible guy is eating from those Sunchip compostable bags..
I would personally limit the accuracy of automatically detecting the position of invisible creatures which are not hiding. Because the implication is that you are able to locate them through their noises made or changes in the environment, and those are too subtle to determine an exact position unless its very close or there are other circumstances which cause it to be clear. Something along the lines of if the target is within 15 feet, you know their position, under 60 feet and you know a 15ft cube they are located within, and beyond that you just know their direction and can see any obvious effects they make (such as shooting with an arrow or stomping through mud or knocking things over).
Basically as written, a blind person with a longbow can shoot at a target 600 feet away in the middle of his allies knowing he is targeting the right person. To me, if you are invisible and over 100 feet away, you are hidden unless the other creature has super hearing or the invisible guy is eating from those Sunchip compostable bags..
Well, you are right. I forgot to mention that JC said that some circumstances might made very difficult for an invisible creature to be targeted. So, at the DM discretion, invisible creatures may be automatically hidden.
Yes, combat is noisy so unless the invisible person has tin cans dragging behind them, it's going to be very hard to know their exact square. As combat the past three editions has been chess-board rather than simultaneous movement, it's easier now to have an adversary walk through a square that the enemy is invisible in. I allow the invisible person to use a reaction "dodge" to avoid making contact with the passerby. This is a Stealth check at Advantage. If they've already used a reaction this round, the person bumps into them automatically. It works well to quickly adjudicate and keep the game rolling.
I love this clarification because it means that the observant feat is always useful and can even make a fair substitute for a high wisdom to patch your surprise-ability- a higher passive score always results in a higher chance of discovering anything with a perception or investigation check, it eliminates awkward corner cases where you're trying to get the DM to use your passive score when it would almost certainly be better than your active score, but not get into weird arguments about what would invoke an 'active' check and would invoke a passive one.
I love this clarification because it means that the observant feat is always useful and can even make a fair substitute for a high wisdom to patch your surprise-ability- a higher passive score always results in a higher chance of discovering anything with a perception or investigation check, it eliminates awkward corner cases where you're trying to get the DM to use your passive score when it would almost certainly be better than your active score, but not get into weird arguments about what would invoke an 'active' check and would invoke a passive one.
Right, the clarity does help with the whole passive perception thing where reminding DM's of your passive perception instead just calls for a perception roll.
I find the Passive Perception conversation (and callout box on Hiding in the PHB) very problematic. There are two reasons for this, both of them mechanical.
1. Searching in combat is an action. Hiding in combat is an action. Hiders ALWAYS have to use their action to try to hide, but searchers only have to use their action to find them when their Perception modifier is below X (where X = the hide check minus 10). That seems inherently unbalanced in terms of the games otherwise tight action economy. 2. Mathematically, by saying you use the higher of the die roll or a 10 for the results of a Perception check, you are in effect giving everyone (even people who are not proficient in Perception) Reliable Talent, a very high level rogue feature. It's roughly a 25% bump to Perception, for no reason at all.
In a home game, I would not allow you to use your Passive Perception in combat unless you took an action to Search. It simply is not fair.
Outside of combat, I think the more fair thing to do is to reverse the paradigm - you are always trying to move unobtrusively in a dungeon, so the DC to detect you should be your Passive Stealth score. Then if there are guards, they are effectively just standing around using all of their actions to Search, so they should make active perception checks to notice you.
In essence the JC interpretation creates a new statistic, lets call it "Awareness," which is functionally different than every other statistic in the game. The closest equivalent is Armor Class.
Also, agreeing with another poster about the "auto detect" on invisibility, that's not really the rule in the book. It's for "making a noise, such as shouting or breaking a vase." Typically, invisible creatures dont go around shouting and knocking over vases. And even if they did, you would only know where they were when they took that action, not where they went immediately thereafter. Example: I am in a completely dark room, but I have dark vision and you do not. You are sitting in the chest I want to get into. So when my turn starts, I break a vase in the corner of the room furthest from you, then move over right behind you, and ready my action to open the chest. You should think I am over in the corner near the vase, and head over there to investigate. But apparently, no, despite you being completely blind and having just heard a loud noise over there, you will automatically "sense my breathing and hear my footsteps" behind you, even if you have a 3 wisdom and no perception to speak of.
I find the Passive Perception conversation (and callout box on Hiding in the PHB) very problematic. There are two reasons for this, both of them mechanical.
1. Searching in combat is an action. Hiding in combat is an action. Hiders ALWAYS have to use their action to try to hide, but searchers only have to use their action to find them when their Perception modifier is below X (where X = the hide check minus 10). That seems inherently unbalanced in terms of the games otherwise tight action economy. 2. Mathematically, by saying you use the higher of the die roll or a 10 for the results of a Perception check, you are in effect giving everyone (even people who are not proficient in Perception) Reliable Talent, a very high level rogue feature. It's roughly a 25% bump to Perception, for no reason at all.
In a home game, I would not allow you to use your Passive Perception in combat unless you took an action to Search. It simply is not fair.
Outside of combat, I think the more fair thing to do is to reverse the paradigm - you are always trying to move unobtrusively in a dungeon, so the DC to detect you should be your Passive Stealth score. Then if there are guards, they are effectively just standing around using all of their actions to Search, so they should make active perception checks to notice you.
In essence the JC interpretation creates a new statistic, lets call it "Awareness," which is functionally different than every other statistic in the game. The closest equivalent is Armor Class.
Hiding does give you same bonuses (advantage on the next attack roll, and you are hidden, i.e. non targetable). So makes sense that you have to spend a Action to Hide, during combat. One which is doing nothing but just having his Passive perception on is not gaining any bonus. In the end, makes sense that the combatant which is trying to hide must sacrifice something, in this case an action.
Then, if you want to try to bump your Perception with an active roll, you sacrifice an action as well. Seems fairly balanced.
Also, agreeing with another poster about the "auto detect" on invisibility, that's not really the rule in the book. It's for "making a noise, such as shouting or breaking a vase." Typically, invisible creatures dont go around shouting and knocking over vases. And even if they did, you would only know where they were when they took that action, not where they went immediately thereafter. Example: I am in a completely dark room, but I have dark vision and you do not. You are sitting in the chest I want to get into. So when my turn starts, I break a vase in the corner of the room furthest from you, then move over right behind you, and ready my action to open the chest. You should think I am over in the corner near the vase, and head over there to investigate. But apparently, no, despite you being completely blind and having just heard a loud noise over there, you will automatically "sense my breathing and hear my footsteps" behind you, even if you have a 3 wisdom and no perception to speak of.
You are describing a non-combat situation. Again, it is up to the DM deciding if your move requires additional Stealth check or not.
"just having your perception on" makes no sense. If I dart behind a column, then use my action to avoid notice, I should be able to be confident that I am not "wasting" an action. You said it gives you bonuses etc, but it doesn't... If the enemy has a passive perception that beats your check. That's the whole point I'm making. If I am using an action to make any other skill check in the game during combat, atheltics for example, you dont automatically get to resist my shove with your passive atheltics - you need to roll. And then you need to spend actions to try to Athletics out of my grab, you don't just automatically shrug it off if your passive atheltics beats my roll. Why carve out one skill that is just always "on"?
Look, if you want to shove a creature, you are trying to gain some advantage. The target does not. He/she is defending. So, you are going to spend 1 action, the target no.
If you want to go off the grapple, you are trying to take off a disadvantage. The grappler already spent his action to grapple. He spent his action to gain an advantage. Now it is your turn to spend an action to gain an advantage, which is taking off the disadvantage.
This logic holds for hiding. If you want to hide, you are trying to gain an advantage, so you must spent an action. It is exactly the same logic.
Now for the passive perception, I can give you two reasons why is the only skill check with a passive score:
1) Physical reason: Your perception (sight, hearing or others) works faster than any other physical skill. For the other physical skills, you have to move or work with your hands. Your perception is just....your perception. That why there is passive perception score. By definition a passive score is an average of that skill in time.
2) Gaming reason: If every time one wants to hide you ask for a Perception roll, the players intrinsically suspect that there is someone trying to hide. So, the passive perception score works "silently" as the DC against a Stealth check.
Technically if you are searching you are using Investigation, not perception. Perception is to see if you notice something, investigation is if you are searching for something. The line may blur if you are searching for something only by looking.
It would seem the game was written for passive perception to always apply. RAW, you don't have to look for traps if your passive perception would notice them. You detect a hidden creature always if your passive perception would notice it. If a creature moves, and is invisible you could still hear it (granted your passive perception should take a penalty, this could be a case where the game got off track with simplifying down to advantage and disadvantage). Anyway the game seems to be clearly written to assume that if passive perception is higher than active perception, you go with passive.
For those saying this shouldn't be part of the game, well technically 5th edition did have a long playtest period, so hopefully that is when you voiced your thoughts on active vs passive perception. The general idea of having passive perception has always been to give DMs a perception number without needing to ask the PCs to roll for perception. In every game I've ever played in, usually players end up rolling for perception any way, and you end up with these awkward moments of passive perception being higher than what you roll.
I completely agree that you would use passive in the case of "not wanting the player to know a roll was taking place". But that is obviously INSTEAD of a roll, not in addition to a roll. Huge mathematical difference (10 or roll keep the highest, instead of 10). You realize that this is like auto-advantage if you give them both right?
So if AND ONLY if the PCs are in the exploration phase of the game, then I will use thier passive perception (flat, disadvantage or advantage depending on travel pace and other environmental factors).
If they are in combat, I make them take the search action if they are looking for hidden enemies. Basically the hider wastes an action to avoid detection, the searcher wastes an action to cancel it out - just like casting a spell/countering a spell. I'm not "calling for a perception" like a save every time someone tries to hide. They just disappear into obscurement, until you find them.
It's ridiculous to suggest it works "faster" than other skills, like not losing your balance as you cross a beam, or noticing you are being deceived, or simply recognizing that leviosa is the verbal component for Telekinesis.
Also, no investigation is for piecing together clues, Sherlock Holmes style, not "spotting" things. It the difference between seeing wet paint and realizing that someone recently painted over something for a reason
Grapple is the perfect example. I make a check vs.your opposed roll. Then if I succeed, you need to spend actions every round to defeat me. That is exactly how hiding should work. I make a check vs your opposed roll. If I succeed, you have to spend actions every round to see me.
Ok. If your only objection is the passive perception score as a concept, you can ask the player to roll a Perception check to contest the Stealth check. As DM, it is your right to rule that way.
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Here it is the link for an interesting podcast with our patron Jeremy Crawford about the hot topic of Stealth:
http://dnd.wizards.com/articles/features/james-haeck-dd-writing
The podcast covers the followings:
1) Conditions for Stealth checks
2) Passive Perception score vs. Active Perception check
3) Invisibility
4) Melee attack vs. Ranged attack when trying to sneak
Enjoy!
Here I report some explanations made by JC:
1) Passive perception vs. Active perception
The passive perception score represents the minimum, the baseline, of your awareness. So anything or anyone trying to Stealth check upon you has always to overcome your passive perception score. Even when you decide to make an active Perception check, and that roll + modifier is lower than your Passive Perception score, the Passive Perception score still counts as the DC to overcome for a Stealth check. Making an active Perception check means that you want to try to "beat" your Passive Perception score, and hence try to increase the DC for a Stealth check.
This is true for both combat and non-combat situations.
2) Invisibility
Being invisible does not mean that others are not aware of you and your position. Only if you take the Hide action (i.e. make a Stealth check, which you can always do if you are invisible) and you beat the Passive Perception of the others, these others are not aware of your position.
At the DM discretion, some circumstances might make possible for an invisible creature to need not a Stealth check to make himself unseen and unheard. Such circumstances may be a significant distraction and fair distance. In those cases, always at the DM approval, an invisible creature benefits from being hidden even without a Stealth check.
3) Melee attack vs. Ranged attack when trying to sneak
If you are hidden, and you decide to move out in the open to hit a target, you are not hidden anymore because you give your position away. You retain the benefit of being hidden if you make the attack within range and, in making the attack, you are still unseen and unheard. That is it quite important when you decide to make a sneak attack with a melee or ranged attack. Although, about this, there can be some circumstances in which the DM might allow to sneak upon the target (movement included).
I would personally limit the accuracy of automatically detecting the position of invisible creatures which are not hiding. Because the implication is that you are able to locate them through their noises made or changes in the environment, and those are too subtle to determine an exact position unless its very close or there are other circumstances which cause it to be clear. Something along the lines of if the target is within 15 feet, you know their position, under 60 feet and you know a 15ft cube they are located within, and beyond that you just know their direction and can see any obvious effects they make (such as shooting with an arrow or stomping through mud or knocking things over).
Basically as written, a blind person with a longbow can shoot at a target 600 feet away in the middle of his allies knowing he is targeting the right person. To me, if you are invisible and over 100 feet away, you are hidden unless the other creature has super hearing or the invisible guy is eating from those Sunchip compostable bags..
Yes, combat is noisy so unless the invisible person has tin cans dragging behind them, it's going to be very hard to know their exact square. As combat the past three editions has been chess-board rather than simultaneous movement, it's easier now to have an adversary walk through a square that the enemy is invisible in. I allow the invisible person to use a reaction "dodge" to avoid making contact with the passerby. This is a Stealth check at Advantage. If they've already used a reaction this round, the person bumps into them automatically. It works well to quickly adjudicate and keep the game rolling.
We all leave footprints in the sands of time.
I love this clarification because it means that the observant feat is always useful and can even make a fair substitute for a high wisdom to patch your surprise-ability- a higher passive score always results in a higher chance of discovering anything with a perception or investigation check, it eliminates awkward corner cases where you're trying to get the DM to use your passive score when it would almost certainly be better than your active score, but not get into weird arguments about what would invoke an 'active' check and would invoke a passive one.
I find the Passive Perception conversation (and callout box on Hiding in the PHB) very problematic. There are two reasons for this, both of them mechanical.
1. Searching in combat is an action. Hiding in combat is an action. Hiders ALWAYS have to use their action to try to hide, but searchers only have to use their action to find them when their Perception modifier is below X (where X = the hide check minus 10). That seems inherently unbalanced in terms of the games otherwise tight action economy.
2. Mathematically, by saying you use the higher of the die roll or a 10 for the results of a Perception check, you are in effect giving everyone (even people who are not proficient in Perception) Reliable Talent, a very high level rogue feature. It's roughly a 25% bump to Perception, for no reason at all.
In a home game, I would not allow you to use your Passive Perception in combat unless you took an action to Search. It simply is not fair.
Outside of combat, I think the more fair thing to do is to reverse the paradigm - you are always trying to move unobtrusively in a dungeon, so the DC to detect you should be your Passive Stealth score. Then if there are guards, they are effectively just standing around using all of their actions to Search, so they should make active perception checks to notice you.
In essence the JC interpretation creates a new statistic, lets call it "Awareness," which is functionally different than every other statistic in the game. The closest equivalent is Armor Class.
Also, agreeing with another poster about the "auto detect" on invisibility, that's not really the rule in the book. It's for "making a noise, such as shouting or breaking a vase." Typically, invisible creatures dont go around shouting and knocking over vases. And even if they did, you would only know where they were when they took that action, not where they went immediately thereafter. Example: I am in a completely dark room, but I have dark vision and you do not. You are sitting in the chest I want to get into. So when my turn starts, I break a vase in the corner of the room furthest from you, then move over right behind you, and ready my action to open the chest. You should think I am over in the corner near the vase, and head over there to investigate. But apparently, no, despite you being completely blind and having just heard a loud noise over there, you will automatically "sense my breathing and hear my footsteps" behind you, even if you have a 3 wisdom and no perception to speak of.
"just having your perception on" makes no sense. If I dart behind a column, then use my action to avoid notice, I should be able to be confident that I am not "wasting" an action. You said it gives you bonuses etc, but it doesn't... If the enemy has a passive perception that beats your check. That's the whole point I'm making. If I am using an action to make any other skill check in the game during combat, atheltics for example, you dont automatically get to resist my shove with your passive atheltics - you need to roll. And then you need to spend actions to try to Athletics out of my grab, you don't just automatically shrug it off if your passive atheltics beats my roll. Why carve out one skill that is just always "on"?
Look, if you want to shove a creature, you are trying to gain some advantage. The target does not. He/she is defending. So, you are going to spend 1 action, the target no.
If you want to go off the grapple, you are trying to take off a disadvantage. The grappler already spent his action to grapple. He spent his action to gain an advantage. Now it is your turn to spend an action to gain an advantage, which is taking off the disadvantage.
This logic holds for hiding. If you want to hide, you are trying to gain an advantage, so you must spent an action. It is exactly the same logic.
Now for the passive perception, I can give you two reasons why is the only skill check with a passive score:
1) Physical reason: Your perception (sight, hearing or others) works faster than any other physical skill. For the other physical skills, you have to move or work with your hands. Your perception is just....your perception. That why there is passive perception score. By definition a passive score is an average of that skill in time.
2) Gaming reason: If every time one wants to hide you ask for a Perception roll, the players intrinsically suspect that there is someone trying to hide. So, the passive perception score works "silently" as the DC against a Stealth check.
Technically if you are searching you are using Investigation, not perception. Perception is to see if you notice something, investigation is if you are searching for something. The line may blur if you are searching for something only by looking.
It would seem the game was written for passive perception to always apply. RAW, you don't have to look for traps if your passive perception would notice them. You detect a hidden creature always if your passive perception would notice it. If a creature moves, and is invisible you could still hear it (granted your passive perception should take a penalty, this could be a case where the game got off track with simplifying down to advantage and disadvantage). Anyway the game seems to be clearly written to assume that if passive perception is higher than active perception, you go with passive.
For those saying this shouldn't be part of the game, well technically 5th edition did have a long playtest period, so hopefully that is when you voiced your thoughts on active vs passive perception. The general idea of having passive perception has always been to give DMs a perception number without needing to ask the PCs to roll for perception. In every game I've ever played in, usually players end up rolling for perception any way, and you end up with these awkward moments of passive perception being higher than what you roll.
Um that is totally a turn based combat situation.
I completely agree that you would use passive in the case of "not wanting the player to know a roll was taking place". But that is obviously INSTEAD of a roll, not in addition to a roll. Huge mathematical difference (10 or roll keep the highest, instead of 10). You realize that this is like auto-advantage if you give them both right?
So if AND ONLY if the PCs are in the exploration phase of the game, then I will use thier passive perception (flat, disadvantage or advantage depending on travel pace and other environmental factors).
If they are in combat, I make them take the search action if they are looking for hidden enemies. Basically the hider wastes an action to avoid detection, the searcher wastes an action to cancel it out - just like casting a spell/countering a spell. I'm not "calling for a perception" like a save every time someone tries to hide. They just disappear into obscurement, until you find them.
It's ridiculous to suggest it works "faster" than other skills, like not losing your balance as you cross a beam, or noticing you are being deceived, or simply recognizing that leviosa is the verbal component for Telekinesis.
Also, no investigation is for piecing together clues, Sherlock Holmes style, not "spotting" things. It the difference between seeing wet paint and realizing that someone recently painted over something for a reason
So for you in combat hide is automatic and only active perception rolls are valid?
Grapple is the perfect example. I make a check vs.your opposed roll. Then if I succeed, you need to spend actions every round to defeat me. That is exactly how hiding should work. I make a check vs your opposed roll. If I succeed, you have to spend actions every round to see me.
Ok. If your only objection is the passive perception score as a concept, you can ask the player to roll a Perception check to contest the Stealth check. As DM, it is your right to rule that way.