Passive Perception determines what you notice without actively searching. So if you need a 15 to notice something, and your Passive Perception is 15 or higher, you should have noticed it before even thinking of searching for it. So if you don't notice something without searching, you know any roll of 15 or under would fail (since you would have noticed it before searching).
I disagree with this interpretation, although I'm open to updating my opinion if you can provide me something official that says as much. I just re-read the SRD description of passive abilities and it says they "can be used when the DM wants to secretly determine whether the characters succeed at something without rolling dice, such as noticing a hidden monster." My position is that doing something without rolling dice is not at all the same thing with doing something without trying.
Furthermore, I feel like the idea that all abilities have a passive element to them is better served by my interpretation of the purpose of a passive check. Passive sleight of hand? Passive animal handling? Passive performance? None of these abilities are problems with my method.
It can be used as a device for DMs to force players to declare to be looking for something in order to find it, but that just smells of bad DM-ing.
Respectfully, you and I look at this differently. I find the idea of automatic detection without any work on the part of the character as being overly limiting to me as DM. And since I have already made the case for this position earlier in the thread, you're implying I engage in bad DM-ing.
Though not directly in the sources, it is kind of stated in many adventures when it talks about Passive Perception and Investigation. They list both as having the same value. As in my example in my previous post.
The character in the lead spots the hidden pit automatically if his or her passive Wisdom (Perception) score is 15 or higher. Otherwise, the character must succeed on a DC 15 Wisdom (Perception) check to spot the hidden pit.
As for your last part, I wouldn't call it bad DMing, but is a matter of how you want to run your campaign and how the players want to play. For example, I as a player might get annoyed with you if you would be disregarding my passive perception simple because you wanted me to roll more often. As I have stated, I built a character that the whole idea behind them was to be on the run and always watching out. She has very high passive skills. She is always on the lookout and keeps her eyes peeled. If you were having me roll checks for low DC because I couldn't tell a current was out of place every single time, I might get annoyed.
Now you could call me a bad player, but I could as easily call you a bad DM. When really the situation boils down to neither of our play styles really working together. As the GM you have all the power, meaning if you made me feel like I wasted my time building a character that has a backstory and abilities to match a waste, I would probably get annoyed and just stop playing.
Tabletop Roleplaying games are about the GM and Player working together, but if either is not willing to budge, it doesn't make them bad at either role, it just means they probably shouldn't play together.
I try to avoid rolling "for no reason", if a passive succeeds it succeeds. However I do tend to play with a crit success/failure narrative with ability/skill check simply to emphasize that they did exceptionally well/poor.
Player rolls 1 for Arcana me "You look at the runes and you know that you've seen them before, right there, on the tip of your tongue... That one looks like a rune used for fire spells, or was it cold... You think to yourself Maybe I should have taken better notes in class...".
Player rolls 20 to scale a rock face me "As your friends climb up the cliff you spend a few extra moments looking at it, then, in a burst of insight, you scale that cliff like a spider monkey after a triple shot espresso. Your friends are still half way up the cliff by the time you perch on the edge dangling your feet like a kid."
I can certainly see people being unsatisfied with the "no roll, no effort" approach to passive skills. At the extremes, having Players walk into a room, and having the DM to just regurgitate all the information available, with no interplay or rolls doesn't sound like a lot of fun. Thinking and problem solving is part of the game's fun, not just reading off a clue list.
Still - I think a case can be made for at least some automatic successes. I don't - personally - make an effort to recognize people, or my car, or cat, I just recognize them automatically.I don't ever critically fail and suddenly I have no idea who the cat is. I don't have to make an effort to read street signs, but if I'm not actively paying attention to the signs, one might escape my attention.
I think that's why I like the idea of automatic successes at a penalty - even if it's based on a reading error on Mouse0270's part :D
It allows the Players to automatically succeed - maybe even without effort - at tasks/clues that are way below their skill level, but doesn't take all of the fun and mystery out of investigation, or trying things, and it doesn't take away the benefit of actively paying attention or trying ( in order to lose the "I'm not really trying" penalty " ).
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Passive Perception determines what you notice without actively searching. So if you need a 15 to notice something, and your Passive Perception is 15 or higher, you should have noticed it before even thinking of searching for it. So if you don't notice something without searching, you know any roll of 15 or under would fail (since you would have noticed it before searching).
I disagree with this interpretation, although I'm open to updating my opinion if you can provide me something official that says as much. I just re-read the SRD description of passive abilities and it says they "can be used when the DM wants to secretly determine whether the characters succeed at something without rolling dice, such as noticing a hidden monster." My position is that doing something without rolling dice is not at all the same thing with doing something without trying.
Furthermore, I feel like the idea that all abilities have a passive element to them is better served by my interpretation of the purpose of a passive check. Passive sleight of hand? Passive animal handling? Passive performance? None of these abilities are problems with my method.
I don't think "can be used when the DM wants to secretly determine whether the characters succeed at something without rolling dice, such as noticing a hidden monster" contradicts my interpretation. Rolling dice is usually, if not always, a result of an action (not necessarily a physical one, though) performed by an entity (a character attacking, an NPC trying to escape a grapple, a monster trying to hide). When there is no action, there usually, if not always, shouldn't be a roll. If a monster is hidden (not hiding, but already hidden), there shouldn't be a roll, unless the character actively decides to search for it. You could also interpret some DC's as "pre-rolled rolls": if an encounter description says the PCs notice a hidden monster if their Passive Perception is 15 or higher, you can interpret that as "the monster rolled a 14 on its Stealth roll to Hide, and so any PC with a higher Passive Perception notices it".
Regarding Passive <insert any skill>, I wouldn't rule it out off-hand for any particular skill, although I struggle to come up with examples for Sleight of Hand and Performance. Passive Animal Handling I could imagine could be used as the DC for a Beast trying to act against its master (have the beast roll a Wisdom Saving Throw, using its master's Passive Animal Handling as the DC). Not sure I'd do it that way, but I guess it could work. In general, though, I wouldn't decide beforehand which skills could have Passive scores and which couldn't. I'd decide on each as it came up.
It can be used as a device for DMs to force players to declare to be looking for something in order to find it, but that just smells of bad DM-ing.
Respectfully, you and I look at this differently. I find the idea of automatic detection without any work on the part of the character as being overly limiting to me as DM. And since I have already made the case for this position earlier in the thread, you're implying I engage in bad DM-ing.
I'm sorry, I did not intend to call you, or anyone, a bad DM for doing so. I said, and meant, it smelled of bad DM-ing, as in "it's an indicator that there's possible bad DM-ing going on". What I meant, specifically, was that if you, as DM, want the players to only be able to find something by actively searching, there should be a natural, organic justification as to why they wouldn't notice it without actively searching for it. Simply saying "no, you didn't see it, because you didn't declare a Search action for it" feels cheap. Maybe the situation is chaotic enough that noticing things in the environment is particularly hard, if you're not actively searching (but then why not use Disadvantage on Passive Perception, i.e. -5, instead of ruling it out?). Or maybe there's a magic effect on the feature that prevents it from being noticed unless actively being searched (no problem... but why is everything protected by that magic effect?). I mean, consider a relatively-hard-to-notice off-color leaf on a tree. The characters all walk into the glade, and they all see the tree. Why wouldn't the extremely sharp-eyed Elf Rogue not notice the off-color leaf? It's there, not actually hidden from view, and the Elf's eyes are sharp enough to pick out such small details regularly (i.e. their Passive Perception is higher than the DC to notice the leaf). Why would they only notice it if they decide to more closely inspect the tree? The only reason I can think of, given the parameters (that is, w/o considering magic effects, etc.), is that the leaf was too difficult to notice for the Elf at a mere glance, and only upon closer inspection would they be able to... which is the very definition of a DC which is above the Elf's Passive Perception, but below their maximum possible roll.
I understand why you'd consider automatic detection based on Passive Perception to be limiting. It is, actually. But there are many other things that are also limiting (like monsters having a non-infinite amount of HPs, objects having a set AC, etc.). Not all limits are bad. Limits are part of the contract between the DM and the players. This specific limit speaks to the "I, as DM, guarantee to inform you, the Player, of any and all relevant details of the environment your Character finds itself in, provided the Character is able to notice them". Without that part of the contract, encounters could quickly turn into "Are there any rocks on the ground? Is the ground solid? Is it made of earth? Is there a door on the wall? How wide is the door? How high is the ceiling? Can I see any monsters in front of me? Is anybody attacking me? How many times are they attacking me? How are they attacking me? Do I have a weapon in my hand? Can I attack with it? etc, etc, etc", where the players find a need to ask about everything they can think of, not being able to trust the DM to describe the environment properly. To be clear, I am not in any way implying you would do that. I'm just saying why that part of the contract between the DM and the players is important.
(Also, I believe we all have our "bad DM" moments... saying "doing such-and-such is bad DM-ing" doesn't necessarily mean any DM that does so is automatically a "bad DM". :D)
So one of the feats i typically like to take is observant for most my characters and I've noticed alot of DM's don't really take into consideration passive perception/investigation and I can kind of understand why they don't because it's one of those things where feels weird to make a call on. Would your character see it normally or do you have to roll to see it? type of thing and I feel they kind of counteract eachother..
My question here is, how would you separate the two in terms of roleplay? what would trigger passive versus actual rolling?
I prefer my passives as minimums as Jeremy Crawford explained when I GM, however my primary GM only uses passives as a minimum to benefit NPCs in order to make his story point more reliable. He makes us roll for any check that matters so there is a chance of failure and he auto fails us even if we roll a natural 20 if he really wanted us not to succeed. I find that all very annoying and asked what about reliable talent which basically makes rogue passives their minimum roll for skills they are proficient or have expertise in. He called me an optimizer (I am not even playing rogue so it doesn't apply) and he kills our campaigns before level 10 so that never comes up.
Horrible story I know. As a GM he is a good story teller and we are all friends so I stay in the group. My point is thought, my that anyone not using passives is doing it to make players less reliable for random failures which creates GM fun, but its often annoying because they don't make the same calls and rolls for NPCs. If there was supposed to be an NPC ambush, there will be an NPC ambush and not amount of stealth will prevent it. I will say that my GM is at least wiling to admit he is story GM, cheats to make his story happen, and gets his most enjoyable moments when the party fails. As such when I took the observant feat, he let me change it out after the fact because he was never going to let me use it. I took alert, I am never surprised and have a high initiative … that impacted story because he could not ambush me so the result of recognizing my skills is he simply ensures no NPC is foolish enough to try to ambush us. I know that sounds bad but in a strange way I have learned to except my feat as "ambush immunity" and now I am good with it.
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The lack of inflection in text means that a reader of any post adds their own inflection as they "verbalize" it in their head. I write long and repetitive in an effort to be clear and avoid my intent from being skewed or inverted. I am also bad at examples. It is common for people to skim my posts pull out the idea they think I mean or want to argue against or focus on my bad example instead of the point I am actually trying to make. I apologies for the confusion my failure to be clear and concise creates.
There's also the nature of what exceptional perception means. Is it just extremely good hearing/vision/etc? Or is it like extrasensory perception? Because even Legolas is only going to see something if he's looking at it.
There's also the nature of what exceptional perception means. Is it just extremely good hearing/vision/etc? Or is it like extrasensory perception? Because even Legolas is only going to see something if he's looking at it.
Perhaps a bit of digression, but I was reminded ;)
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I can certainly see people being unsatisfied with the "no roll, no effort" approach to passive skills. At the extremes, having Players walk into a room, and having the DM to just regurgitate all the information available, with no interplay or rolls doesn't sound like a lot of fun. Thinking and problem solving is part of the game's fun, not just reading off a clue list.
Still - I think a case can be made for at least some automatic successes. I don't - personally - make an effort to recognize people, or my car, or cat, I just recognize them automatically.I don't ever critically fail and suddenly I have no idea who the cat is. I don't have to make an effort to read street signs, but if I'm not actively paying attention to the signs, one might escape my attention.
I think that's why I like the idea of automatic successes at a penalty - even if it's based on a reading error on Mouse0270's part :D
It allows the Players to automatically succeed - maybe even without effort - at tasks/clues that are way below their skill level, but doesn't take all of the fun and mystery out of investigation, or trying things, and it doesn't take away the benefit of actively paying attention or trying ( in order to lose the "I'm not really trying" penalty " ).
This is a serious concern that I had not considered because it hasn't been an issue in my own campaign so far. If I've learned anything from this discussion, it's that by attempting to impose more agency on my players, I have to be careful not to make them feel like I am minimizing the talent they have built into their characters. In my own adventures, so far, it has not been an undue burden for me to expect a player to take some personal initiative to deliberately act on passive skills at each encounter. At the same time, I absolutely don't want my players to say, "Just assume I'm always searching for things wherever I go," because that is inherently unsatisfying to me as a storyteller.
And it's also on me as DM to decide what things someone would perceive automatically without trying, like the people moving around the character in a crowded market. Obviously, even if the character wasn't deliberately perceiving the people around them, they would not go bumping into everyone in the market. I'm shooting from the hip here, but I think I would make the distinction between people out in the open and people who may be attempting to avoid detection. I think it has to be a pretty subjective and situational thing and if a player were to feel shortchanged by my DMing style, I would be open to adjusting things to suit the situation.
I think you touch on a really good point here. Automatically reading off the clues that the Characters can automatically detect - by virtue of the Player cleverness in designing that Character - can be unsatisfying to the DM, but only the DM.
This is because the DM has semi-perfect knowledge. We know the answers to everything we have thought about, and we decide the things we haven't thought about "from the hip" ( that's why I say only semi-perfect). We know that the Players have uncovered all the clues. But the Players don't know that! To them there is still the possibility for information, clues, items, loot, etc. that they haven't uncovered. There is still a sense of dramatic tension for them. The DM - who knows they found everything - loses that sense of dramatic tension.
I don't have any perfect answer to this - nor will I criticize DMs who enjoy that dramatic tension. I'm still mulling over a lot of this myself.
An argument could be made that the DM shouldn't try and preserve their own dramatic tension, by punishing Players by withholding benefits of Characters designed with high passive skills. I'm not sure that's a fair argument, but that case could be made.
As for your example of "looking for someone who happens to be in the Market" vs. "looking for someone trying to hide in the market" is excellent. In the former, I may fall back to passive perception at a penalty to just happen to spot someone ( although in a Market, DCs would be pretty high - unless they were standing on soapbox addressing the crowd, or some such ), and allow an active roll, with a Passive stat floor, if the Player announces they're looking over the crowd trying to spot the NPC. In the latter, that's someone doing something active - the NPC is trying to hide. The most natural resolution for that would be for the NPC to roll Stealth, targeting the PCs Passive Perception. Flipping that resolution over to a Player agency-centric resolution, it's statistically equivalent to have the Player roll, targeting the NPCs passive Stealth, or make it a contested roll of Stealth vs. Perception. Again, the math is the same, it's the flavor that changes - and the desired flavor is guided by the needs of Narrative and Pacing.
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As for your example of "looking for someone who happens to be in the Market" vs. "looking for someone trying to hide in the market" is excellent. In the former, I may fall back to passive perception at a penalty to just happen to spot someone ( although in a Market, DCs would be pretty high - unless they were standing on soapbox addressing the crowd, or some such ), and allow an active roll, with a Passive stat floor, if the Player announces they're looking over the crowd trying to spot the NPC. In the latter, that's someone doing something active - the NPC is trying to hide. The most natural resolution for that would be for the NPC to roll Stealth, targeting the PCs Passive Perception. Flipping that resolution over to a Player agency-centric resolution, it's statistically equivalent to have the Player roll, targeting the NPCs passive Stealth, or make it a contested roll of Stealth vs. Perception. Again, the math is the same, it's the flavor that changes - and the desired flavor is guided by the needs of Narrative and Pacing.
I think the current ruleset already addresses "looking for someone who happens to be in the Market" vs. "looking for someone trying to hide in the market". If the character is actively looking for someone, set a reasonable DC (which might be higher if the market's crowded, busy, etc.), have the player roll Wisdom (Perception) for their character's Search action, and resolve. If the target's trying to hide, the DM rolls Dexterity (Stealth) for the target, and has the player roll Wisdom (Perception) for their character's Search action, with a DC equal to the target's Stealth roll, and resolve. (Yes, this might mean the target is easier to find than if they weren't trying to hide, if they roll low enough. This is fine: failing bad enough at hiding can mean you make yourself more obvious!)
In neither of those cases does Passive Perception come into play, because it came into play before that happened. Once the character approaches the market, the DM should check the character's Passive Perception score and the DC to spot the target (either the set DC if not hiding, or the Stealth roll if hiding), and if the Passive Perception is high enough, the character should be informed that they noticed the target, with no action needed by the player. Once that happens, pass or fail, using Passive Perception as a floor to the roll for their Search action accomplishes nothing: if they roll at or above their Passive Perception, floor doesn't apply; if they roll below, what they know about the scene doesn't change, since anything that would've been perceived by raising the roll to the Passive score had already been perceived upon approaching the scene, before attempting to Search.
I understand the dramatic and/or narrative impact of withholding information before an active search. But I believe it needs in-game justification in order to properly work. If a detail is "Hard" to notice (i.e. DC 20), why would someone who notices "Hard-to-notice" details without searching (i.e. someone with a Passive Perception at or above 20) not notice it until they search? That's exactly what Passive Perception is: the maximum difficulty class detail you can notice without active searching.
Now, in-game justification does not have to mean artificially raising the DC of the check (or, equally, artificially lowering the Passive score of the character). It can be a purely narrative thing: the guy in the marker is near the food stalls, the characters are moving in the opposite direction and not looking behind them, so they're not gonna spot the guy just by Passive Perception. If a player says "I look around, to see if I spot the guy", the DM might then say, without having to roll, "you notice the guy near the food stalls, where you hadn't looked before", if the set DC was lower than the character's Passive Perception. If it was higher, then the DM might have the player roll, and if they beat the score, "you notice the guy, etc.". Dramatic/narrative impact maintained, in-game justified, rolling kept to a minimum, player agency maintained, voilà. It might require a bit more work for the DM, but it probably makes for a more satisfying experience for everybody.
Another case is when the player wants to look for something you hadn't though they would want to look for. Say a Druid wants to use Plant Growth in the market situation above, maybe to try to get the hiding guy to react and give away his position. The Druid's player asks the DM "are there any plants around?". The DM knows there are, but they're not very tall, and are somewhat hidden by the people in the busy market, so they decide it's a Moderate task to spot them, setting the DC at 15. The DM then checks the Druid's Passive Perception. If it's, say, 17, the DM tells the player "there are some low plants which you can see around the people's feet." If it's, say, 13, the DM tells the player, "you haven't spotted any, do you want to Search for them?" If the player says he does (or before even asking, if time isn't really an issue, so that spending the "turn" needed for the Search action isn't an issue), the DM has the player roll for their Druid's Perception, and if the roll is below 15, "you don't see any", or above, "you manage to spot some plants on the ground". Sure, if the Druid's Passive Perception was 17, the DM should've technically informed the player that there were plants around... but it's not reasonable to describe every single perceptible-with-passive-perception detail of the scene every time, of course. :)
So ... the exact process I described already, in the very paragraph you quoted: passive as they approach; actively rolled if they declare they're looking, resolved as opposed, PC-centric, or NPC-centric skill checks, dependent on the desired narrative flavor - with rolls "floored" by the passive score, subject to the optional consideration of critical failures.
I guess technically, you can say that the passive check, and the active check should come in sequence, one after the other, so there is no need for "flooring" - but it's unlikely the Player is going to say, "I go to the market", wait for the DM to tell them what they see passively, and then say "OK, now I'm paying attention". It's more likely you'll hear something like "I run into the market, to see if I can spot the assassin!", at which point you can collapse both operations into a "floored" active roll.
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So ... the exact process I described already, in the very paragraph you quoted: passive as they approach; actively rolled if they declare they're looking, resolved as opposed, PC-centric, or NPC-centric skill checks, dependent on the desired narrative flavor - with rolls "floored" by the passive score, subject to the optional consideration of critical failures.
Mostly, with a couple of exceptions:
No "Passive score as floor" (this happens naturally, no need to actively floor the roll)
No "rolling active Perception vs Passive Stealth"
To be fair, my entire post was not meant to be a direct refutation of yours, but mostly building on what you'd said, explaining why I didn't see the need for a couple of things, and expanding on how dramatic/narrative feel could be maintained without resorting to artificially tweaking the actual ruleset.
My whole "Passive Perception as floor" gripe amounts to the fact that there are many other functional "floors" or "caps" in the game, but they're never talked about, because it's not necessary to do so, and because it can just bring confusion to do so. For example, I could very well say "If you shoot a ranged weapon over a range higher than its maximum range, the attack roll is capped at 0, and cannot critically hit". Functionally, it's the same: the attack will miss no matter what. But it's useless: attacking from longer than maximum range is already defined as an automatic miss, you don't even roll. And it can cause confusion: "What if my weapon's magic, and has a +2, does that mean I can hit something that has AC 2?" or "So if I roll a 20, it's not a critical hit, but still hits?" The solution is simply not to say "attack rolls are capped at 0, etc.", but to say "you can't attack at longer than maximum range". Similarly, instead of saying "Perception rolls are capped at your Passive Perception", you can just not say it, and in fact not say anything, and the result will be the same: any roll lower than the Passive score won't make you lose information you already have, and you won't gain any more, either. (It also sidesteps the oddness of having the Observant Feat raise your Passive Score, but not your active rolls.)
Right - so as my second paragraph ( which you may have missed as I may have been editing as you were replying :) ) - you're technically correct that there's a passive, then an active, resolution. In practice these would be collapsed into a single operation. In a purely theoretical sense, there's no need to "floor". In practice, there's only going to either be a passive check ( the Character is not actively looking ), or a floored active check ( the Character is looking ). Stopping, telling the Player what they see passively, then getting them to roll, then telling them extra details, seems unnecessary break of game flow.
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Right - so as my second paragraph ( which you may have missed as I may have been editing as you were replying :) ) - you're technically correct that there's a passive, then an active, resolution. In practice these would be collapsed into a single operation. In a purely theoretical sense, there's no need to "floor". In practice, there's only going to either be a passive check ( the Character is not actively looking ), or a floored active check ( the Character is looking ). Stopping, telling the Player what they see passively, then getting them to roll, then telling them extra details, seems unnecessary break of game flow.
Hm, ok, I think you're describing a situation in which there are several details to notice, with different DCs, none of which the character would've passively noticed. In that case, definitely the better choice is to roll once, "floor" it with Passive, and resolve. If there's only one relevant detail, though, either its DC is low enough to notice with passive (in which case, don't even roll), or it's not (in which case roll, no need to "floor").
My point is that there is never a choice between a passive check or an active check. The passive check always happens, when the characters approach the scene. Then, sometimes, an active check happens (if and when the players declare their characters are searching). You don't stop the flow to describe what they perceive passively, then roll, then resolve what they perceive actively. Describing what they see passively is part of the DMs description of the scene. To use an extreme, contrived example, it doesn't go:
DM: You arrive at a place
Player: What's there?
DM: <checks passive score> You see trees, the ground, covered in grass, a boulder between two trees.
Player: I look around the branches of the trees. Do I notice anything?
DM: Roll Perception
Player: <rolls>
DM: You notice one of the leaves looks odd and out of place.
But rather:
DM: <checks passive score> You arrive at a glade. It is surrounded by trees, the ground is covered in grass, there's a boulder between two trees.
Player: I look around the branches of the tress. Do I notice anything?
DM: Roll Perception
Player: <rolls>
DM: You notice one of the leaves looks odd and out of place.
What you're proposing:
DM: You arrive a glade. It is surrounded by trees, the ground is covered in grass, there's a boulder between two trees.
Player: I look around the branches of the trees. Do I notice anything?
DM: Roll Perception
Player: <rolls>
DM: <checks passive score, adjusts roll accordingly> You notice one of the leaves looks odd and out of place.
Two questions: Why did the DM withhold the fact that one of the leaves looked odd? Most reasonable answer would be: because the DC to notice it was above the character's passive score. But at that point, the DM had not checked the character's passive score. Second question: what did adjusting the score accomplish? If it was too low to notice the leaf, it was still going to be too low to notice it after adjusting. If it was high enough, it wouldn't be adjusted.
Now, if a ghost had imperceptibly materialized behind them upon arrival, with a low enough DC to notice that the character could passively perceive it if they decided to look behind them, the "passive as floor" concept could be useful, to smooth out the narrative. Without it:
DM: You arrive at a glade, covered in grass, boulder, yadda yadda
Player: I look all around. Do I notice anything?
DM: <checks passive score> You notice a ghost behind you. Roll Perception
Player: <rolls>
DM: You also notice one of the leaves looks off.
With it:
DM: You arrive at a glade, covered in grass, etc.
Player: I look all around. Do I notice anything?
DM Roll Perception
Player: <rolls>
DM: <checks passive score, adjusts roll> You notice a ghost behind you. Also, one of the leaves looks off.
Much better, admittedly. I still submit that those are edge cases, and that suggesting the passive score flat out is a floor to the active roll causes more confusion and misleads DMs in most cases. DMs should always consider Passive Perception when describing scenes, before the characters are even given a chance to act, which removes the necessity to consider the Passive score as a floor in most cases.
What I was describing is the last scenario, not the one you attributed to me.
My experience is that a more common scenario is:
Player: I sprint into the glade, chasing the assassin, do I see any clues where they may have gone?
DM: Give me a Perception check.
Player: <rolls> : 8?
DM: <adjusts roll up to passive score of 13> You are in a pleasant grassy forest glade, ringed by solid oaks, off left of center there's a large grey boulder. A flicker of lighter green catches your attention as you see a leaf on one of the lower branches of a tree across the glade appears to be broken, and is twisting in the light breeze.
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Fair enough. If that's more common in your games, then that's probably the best method to use. Maybe I've been ruined by decades of old text-based MUDs, which give you the description of rooms as soon as you enter. :D
Here is something that this thread got me thinking about.
As a DM, I would think that imposing disadvantage (-5) on passive perception for NPC because they are distracted for some reason would be appropriate.
I’m not sure that imposing disadvantage on a PC’s passive perception for being distracted would be a good idea. I can see a PC asking “wait, why was I distracted?” How would you justify it? Can you justify it simply with a roleplaying reason like “You said you were watching the seedy looking guy at the bar so you didn’t notice the halfling pickpocketing you.” Can you justify it with a game mechanics reason like “You failed an ability check to remain vigilant for all dangers so you failed to notice the halfling while observing the guy at the bar.” (I’m not sure what ability would be relevant)
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Though not directly in the sources, it is kind of stated in many adventures when it talks about Passive Perception and Investigation. They list both as having the same value. As in my example in my previous post.
As for your last part, I wouldn't call it bad DMing, but is a matter of how you want to run your campaign and how the players want to play. For example, I as a player might get annoyed with you if you would be disregarding my passive perception simple because you wanted me to roll more often. As I have stated, I built a character that the whole idea behind them was to be on the run and always watching out. She has very high passive skills. She is always on the lookout and keeps her eyes peeled. If you were having me roll checks for low DC because I couldn't tell a current was out of place every single time, I might get annoyed.
Now you could call me a bad player, but I could as easily call you a bad DM. When really the situation boils down to neither of our play styles really working together. As the GM you have all the power, meaning if you made me feel like I wasted my time building a character that has a backstory and abilities to match a waste, I would probably get annoyed and just stop playing.
Tabletop Roleplaying games are about the GM and Player working together, but if either is not willing to budge, it doesn't make them bad at either role, it just means they probably shouldn't play together.
I try to avoid rolling "for no reason", if a passive succeeds it succeeds. However I do tend to play with a crit success/failure narrative with ability/skill check simply to emphasize that they did exceptionally well/poor.
Player rolls 1 for Arcana
me "You look at the runes and you know that you've seen them before, right there, on the tip of your tongue... That one looks like a rune used for fire spells, or was it cold... You think to yourself Maybe I should have taken better notes in class...".
Player rolls 20 to scale a rock face
me "As your friends climb up the cliff you spend a few extra moments looking at it, then, in a burst of insight, you scale that cliff like a spider monkey after a triple shot espresso. Your friends are still half way up the cliff by the time you perch on the edge dangling your feet like a kid."
I am not suggesting rolling dice for passive checks or that I want to roll dice more often. I'm not sure where anyone got that from.
"Not all those who wander are lost"
Ignore my previous post, I mixed your response up with someone else's. That was 100% my bad on my end. Sorry
I can certainly see people being unsatisfied with the "no roll, no effort" approach to passive skills. At the extremes, having Players walk into a room, and having the DM to just regurgitate all the information available, with no interplay or rolls doesn't sound like a lot of fun. Thinking and problem solving is part of the game's fun, not just reading off a clue list.
Still - I think a case can be made for at least some automatic successes. I don't - personally - make an effort to recognize people, or my car, or cat, I just recognize them automatically.I don't ever critically fail and suddenly I have no idea who the cat is. I don't have to make an effort to read street signs, but if I'm not actively paying attention to the signs, one might escape my attention.
I think that's why I like the idea of automatic successes at a penalty - even if it's based on a reading error on Mouse0270's part :D
It allows the Players to automatically succeed - maybe even without effort - at tasks/clues that are way below their skill level, but doesn't take all of the fun and mystery out of investigation, or trying things, and it doesn't take away the benefit of actively paying attention or trying ( in order to lose the "I'm not really trying" penalty " ).
My DM Philosophy, as summed up by other people: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rN5w4-azTq3Kbn0Yvk9nfqQhwQ1R5by1/view
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I don't think "can be used when the DM wants to secretly determine whether the characters succeed at something without rolling dice, such as noticing a hidden monster" contradicts my interpretation. Rolling dice is usually, if not always, a result of an action (not necessarily a physical one, though) performed by an entity (a character attacking, an NPC trying to escape a grapple, a monster trying to hide). When there is no action, there usually, if not always, shouldn't be a roll. If a monster is hidden (not hiding, but already hidden), there shouldn't be a roll, unless the character actively decides to search for it. You could also interpret some DC's as "pre-rolled rolls": if an encounter description says the PCs notice a hidden monster if their Passive Perception is 15 or higher, you can interpret that as "the monster rolled a 14 on its Stealth roll to Hide, and so any PC with a higher Passive Perception notices it".
Regarding Passive <insert any skill>, I wouldn't rule it out off-hand for any particular skill, although I struggle to come up with examples for Sleight of Hand and Performance. Passive Animal Handling I could imagine could be used as the DC for a Beast trying to act against its master (have the beast roll a Wisdom Saving Throw, using its master's Passive Animal Handling as the DC). Not sure I'd do it that way, but I guess it could work. In general, though, I wouldn't decide beforehand which skills could have Passive scores and which couldn't. I'd decide on each as it came up.
I'm sorry, I did not intend to call you, or anyone, a bad DM for doing so. I said, and meant, it smelled of bad DM-ing, as in "it's an indicator that there's possible bad DM-ing going on". What I meant, specifically, was that if you, as DM, want the players to only be able to find something by actively searching, there should be a natural, organic justification as to why they wouldn't notice it without actively searching for it. Simply saying "no, you didn't see it, because you didn't declare a Search action for it" feels cheap. Maybe the situation is chaotic enough that noticing things in the environment is particularly hard, if you're not actively searching (but then why not use Disadvantage on Passive Perception, i.e. -5, instead of ruling it out?). Or maybe there's a magic effect on the feature that prevents it from being noticed unless actively being searched (no problem... but why is everything protected by that magic effect?). I mean, consider a relatively-hard-to-notice off-color leaf on a tree. The characters all walk into the glade, and they all see the tree. Why wouldn't the extremely sharp-eyed Elf Rogue not notice the off-color leaf? It's there, not actually hidden from view, and the Elf's eyes are sharp enough to pick out such small details regularly (i.e. their Passive Perception is higher than the DC to notice the leaf). Why would they only notice it if they decide to more closely inspect the tree? The only reason I can think of, given the parameters (that is, w/o considering magic effects, etc.), is that the leaf was too difficult to notice for the Elf at a mere glance, and only upon closer inspection would they be able to... which is the very definition of a DC which is above the Elf's Passive Perception, but below their maximum possible roll.
I understand why you'd consider automatic detection based on Passive Perception to be limiting. It is, actually. But there are many other things that are also limiting (like monsters having a non-infinite amount of HPs, objects having a set AC, etc.). Not all limits are bad. Limits are part of the contract between the DM and the players. This specific limit speaks to the "I, as DM, guarantee to inform you, the Player, of any and all relevant details of the environment your Character finds itself in, provided the Character is able to notice them". Without that part of the contract, encounters could quickly turn into "Are there any rocks on the ground? Is the ground solid? Is it made of earth? Is there a door on the wall? How wide is the door? How high is the ceiling? Can I see any monsters in front of me? Is anybody attacking me? How many times are they attacking me? How are they attacking me? Do I have a weapon in my hand? Can I attack with it? etc, etc, etc", where the players find a need to ask about everything they can think of, not being able to trust the DM to describe the environment properly. To be clear, I am not in any way implying you would do that. I'm just saying why that part of the contract between the DM and the players is important.
(Also, I believe we all have our "bad DM" moments... saying "doing such-and-such is bad DM-ing" doesn't necessarily mean any DM that does so is automatically a "bad DM". :D)
I prefer my passives as minimums as Jeremy Crawford explained when I GM, however my primary GM only uses passives as a minimum to benefit NPCs in order to make his story point more reliable. He makes us roll for any check that matters so there is a chance of failure and he auto fails us even if we roll a natural 20 if he really wanted us not to succeed. I find that all very annoying and asked what about reliable talent which basically makes rogue passives their minimum roll for skills they are proficient or have expertise in. He called me an optimizer (I am not even playing rogue so it doesn't apply) and he kills our campaigns before level 10 so that never comes up.
Horrible story I know. As a GM he is a good story teller and we are all friends so I stay in the group. My point is thought, my that anyone not using passives is doing it to make players less reliable for random failures which creates GM fun, but its often annoying because they don't make the same calls and rolls for NPCs. If there was supposed to be an NPC ambush, there will be an NPC ambush and not amount of stealth will prevent it. I will say that my GM is at least wiling to admit he is story GM, cheats to make his story happen, and gets his most enjoyable moments when the party fails. As such when I took the observant feat, he let me change it out after the fact because he was never going to let me use it. I took alert, I am never surprised and have a high initiative … that impacted story because he could not ambush me so the result of recognizing my skills is he simply ensures no NPC is foolish enough to try to ambush us. I know that sounds bad but in a strange way I have learned to except my feat as "ambush immunity" and now I am good with it.
The lack of inflection in text means that a reader of any post adds their own inflection as they "verbalize" it in their head. I write long and repetitive in an effort to be clear and avoid my intent from being skewed or inverted. I am also bad at examples. It is common for people to skim my posts pull out the idea they think I mean or want to argue against or focus on my bad example instead of the point I am actually trying to make. I apologies for the confusion my failure to be clear and concise creates.
There's also the nature of what exceptional perception means. Is it just extremely good hearing/vision/etc? Or is it like extrasensory perception? Because even Legolas is only going to see something if he's looking at it.
"Not all those who wander are lost"
Perhaps a bit of digression, but I was reminded ;)
My DM Philosophy, as summed up by other people: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rN5w4-azTq3Kbn0Yvk9nfqQhwQ1R5by1/view
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This is a serious concern that I had not considered because it hasn't been an issue in my own campaign so far. If I've learned anything from this discussion, it's that by attempting to impose more agency on my players, I have to be careful not to make them feel like I am minimizing the talent they have built into their characters. In my own adventures, so far, it has not been an undue burden for me to expect a player to take some personal initiative to deliberately act on passive skills at each encounter. At the same time, I absolutely don't want my players to say, "Just assume I'm always searching for things wherever I go," because that is inherently unsatisfying to me as a storyteller.
And it's also on me as DM to decide what things someone would perceive automatically without trying, like the people moving around the character in a crowded market. Obviously, even if the character wasn't deliberately perceiving the people around them, they would not go bumping into everyone in the market. I'm shooting from the hip here, but I think I would make the distinction between people out in the open and people who may be attempting to avoid detection. I think it has to be a pretty subjective and situational thing and if a player were to feel shortchanged by my DMing style, I would be open to adjusting things to suit the situation.
Thanks. This has been educational.
"Not all those who wander are lost"
I think you touch on a really good point here. Automatically reading off the clues that the Characters can automatically detect - by virtue of the Player cleverness in designing that Character - can be unsatisfying to the DM, but only the DM.
This is because the DM has semi-perfect knowledge. We know the answers to everything we have thought about, and we decide the things we haven't thought about "from the hip" ( that's why I say only semi-perfect). We know that the Players have uncovered all the clues. But the Players don't know that! To them there is still the possibility for information, clues, items, loot, etc. that they haven't uncovered. There is still a sense of dramatic tension for them. The DM - who knows they found everything - loses that sense of dramatic tension.
I don't have any perfect answer to this - nor will I criticize DMs who enjoy that dramatic tension. I'm still mulling over a lot of this myself.
An argument could be made that the DM shouldn't try and preserve their own dramatic tension, by punishing Players by withholding benefits of Characters designed with high passive skills. I'm not sure that's a fair argument, but that case could be made.
As for your example of "looking for someone who happens to be in the Market" vs. "looking for someone trying to hide in the market" is excellent. In the former, I may fall back to passive perception at a penalty to just happen to spot someone ( although in a Market, DCs would be pretty high - unless they were standing on soapbox addressing the crowd, or some such ), and allow an active roll, with a Passive stat floor, if the Player announces they're looking over the crowd trying to spot the NPC. In the latter, that's someone doing something active - the NPC is trying to hide. The most natural resolution for that would be for the NPC to roll Stealth, targeting the PCs Passive Perception. Flipping that resolution over to a Player agency-centric resolution, it's statistically equivalent to have the Player roll, targeting the NPCs passive Stealth, or make it a contested roll of Stealth vs. Perception. Again, the math is the same, it's the flavor that changes - and the desired flavor is guided by the needs of Narrative and Pacing.
My DM Philosophy, as summed up by other people: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rN5w4-azTq3Kbn0Yvk9nfqQhwQ1R5by1/view
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I think the current ruleset already addresses "looking for someone who happens to be in the Market" vs. "looking for someone trying to hide in the market". If the character is actively looking for someone, set a reasonable DC (which might be higher if the market's crowded, busy, etc.), have the player roll Wisdom (Perception) for their character's Search action, and resolve. If the target's trying to hide, the DM rolls Dexterity (Stealth) for the target, and has the player roll Wisdom (Perception) for their character's Search action, with a DC equal to the target's Stealth roll, and resolve. (Yes, this might mean the target is easier to find than if they weren't trying to hide, if they roll low enough. This is fine: failing bad enough at hiding can mean you make yourself more obvious!)
In neither of those cases does Passive Perception come into play, because it came into play before that happened. Once the character approaches the market, the DM should check the character's Passive Perception score and the DC to spot the target (either the set DC if not hiding, or the Stealth roll if hiding), and if the Passive Perception is high enough, the character should be informed that they noticed the target, with no action needed by the player. Once that happens, pass or fail, using Passive Perception as a floor to the roll for their Search action accomplishes nothing: if they roll at or above their Passive Perception, floor doesn't apply; if they roll below, what they know about the scene doesn't change, since anything that would've been perceived by raising the roll to the Passive score had already been perceived upon approaching the scene, before attempting to Search.
I understand the dramatic and/or narrative impact of withholding information before an active search. But I believe it needs in-game justification in order to properly work. If a detail is "Hard" to notice (i.e. DC 20), why would someone who notices "Hard-to-notice" details without searching (i.e. someone with a Passive Perception at or above 20) not notice it until they search? That's exactly what Passive Perception is: the maximum difficulty class detail you can notice without active searching.
Now, in-game justification does not have to mean artificially raising the DC of the check (or, equally, artificially lowering the Passive score of the character). It can be a purely narrative thing: the guy in the marker is near the food stalls, the characters are moving in the opposite direction and not looking behind them, so they're not gonna spot the guy just by Passive Perception. If a player says "I look around, to see if I spot the guy", the DM might then say, without having to roll, "you notice the guy near the food stalls, where you hadn't looked before", if the set DC was lower than the character's Passive Perception. If it was higher, then the DM might have the player roll, and if they beat the score, "you notice the guy, etc.". Dramatic/narrative impact maintained, in-game justified, rolling kept to a minimum, player agency maintained, voilà. It might require a bit more work for the DM, but it probably makes for a more satisfying experience for everybody.
Another case is when the player wants to look for something you hadn't though they would want to look for. Say a Druid wants to use Plant Growth in the market situation above, maybe to try to get the hiding guy to react and give away his position. The Druid's player asks the DM "are there any plants around?". The DM knows there are, but they're not very tall, and are somewhat hidden by the people in the busy market, so they decide it's a Moderate task to spot them, setting the DC at 15. The DM then checks the Druid's Passive Perception. If it's, say, 17, the DM tells the player "there are some low plants which you can see around the people's feet." If it's, say, 13, the DM tells the player, "you haven't spotted any, do you want to Search for them?" If the player says he does (or before even asking, if time isn't really an issue, so that spending the "turn" needed for the Search action isn't an issue), the DM has the player roll for their Druid's Perception, and if the roll is below 15, "you don't see any", or above, "you manage to spot some plants on the ground". Sure, if the Druid's Passive Perception was 17, the DM should've technically informed the player that there were plants around... but it's not reasonable to describe every single perceptible-with-passive-perception detail of the scene every time, of course. :)
So ... the exact process I described already, in the very paragraph you quoted: passive as they approach; actively rolled if they declare they're looking, resolved as opposed, PC-centric, or NPC-centric skill checks, dependent on the desired narrative flavor - with rolls "floored" by the passive score, subject to the optional consideration of critical failures.
I guess technically, you can say that the passive check, and the active check should come in sequence, one after the other, so there is no need for "flooring" - but it's unlikely the Player is going to say, "I go to the market", wait for the DM to tell them what they see passively, and then say "OK, now I'm paying attention". It's more likely you'll hear something like "I run into the market, to see if I can spot the assassin!", at which point you can collapse both operations into a "floored" active roll.
My DM Philosophy, as summed up by other people: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rN5w4-azTq3Kbn0Yvk9nfqQhwQ1R5by1/view
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Mostly, with a couple of exceptions:
To be fair, my entire post was not meant to be a direct refutation of yours, but mostly building on what you'd said, explaining why I didn't see the need for a couple of things, and expanding on how dramatic/narrative feel could be maintained without resorting to artificially tweaking the actual ruleset.
My whole "Passive Perception as floor" gripe amounts to the fact that there are many other functional "floors" or "caps" in the game, but they're never talked about, because it's not necessary to do so, and because it can just bring confusion to do so. For example, I could very well say "If you shoot a ranged weapon over a range higher than its maximum range, the attack roll is capped at 0, and cannot critically hit". Functionally, it's the same: the attack will miss no matter what. But it's useless: attacking from longer than maximum range is already defined as an automatic miss, you don't even roll. And it can cause confusion: "What if my weapon's magic, and has a +2, does that mean I can hit something that has AC 2?" or "So if I roll a 20, it's not a critical hit, but still hits?" The solution is simply not to say "attack rolls are capped at 0, etc.", but to say "you can't attack at longer than maximum range". Similarly, instead of saying "Perception rolls are capped at your Passive Perception", you can just not say it, and in fact not say anything, and the result will be the same: any roll lower than the Passive score won't make you lose information you already have, and you won't gain any more, either. (It also sidesteps the oddness of having the Observant Feat raise your Passive Score, but not your active rolls.)
Right - so as my second paragraph ( which you may have missed as I may have been editing as you were replying :) ) - you're technically correct that there's a passive, then an active, resolution. In practice these would be collapsed into a single operation. In a purely theoretical sense, there's no need to "floor". In practice, there's only going to either be a passive check ( the Character is not actively looking ), or a floored active check ( the Character is looking ). Stopping, telling the Player what they see passively, then getting them to roll, then telling them extra details, seems unnecessary break of game flow.
My DM Philosophy, as summed up by other people: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rN5w4-azTq3Kbn0Yvk9nfqQhwQ1R5by1/view
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Hm, ok, I think you're describing a situation in which there are several details to notice, with different DCs, none of which the character would've passively noticed. In that case, definitely the better choice is to roll once, "floor" it with Passive, and resolve. If there's only one relevant detail, though, either its DC is low enough to notice with passive (in which case, don't even roll), or it's not (in which case roll, no need to "floor").
My point is that there is never a choice between a passive check or an active check. The passive check always happens, when the characters approach the scene. Then, sometimes, an active check happens (if and when the players declare their characters are searching). You don't stop the flow to describe what they perceive passively, then roll, then resolve what they perceive actively. Describing what they see passively is part of the DMs description of the scene. To use an extreme, contrived example, it doesn't go:
But rather:
What you're proposing:
Two questions: Why did the DM withhold the fact that one of the leaves looked odd? Most reasonable answer would be: because the DC to notice it was above the character's passive score. But at that point, the DM had not checked the character's passive score. Second question: what did adjusting the score accomplish? If it was too low to notice the leaf, it was still going to be too low to notice it after adjusting. If it was high enough, it wouldn't be adjusted.
Now, if a ghost had imperceptibly materialized behind them upon arrival, with a low enough DC to notice that the character could passively perceive it if they decided to look behind them, the "passive as floor" concept could be useful, to smooth out the narrative. Without it:
With it:
Much better, admittedly. I still submit that those are edge cases, and that suggesting the passive score flat out is a floor to the active roll causes more confusion and misleads DMs in most cases. DMs should always consider Passive Perception when describing scenes, before the characters are even given a chance to act, which removes the necessity to consider the Passive score as a floor in most cases.
What I was describing is the last scenario, not the one you attributed to me.
My experience is that a more common scenario is:
My DM Philosophy, as summed up by other people: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rN5w4-azTq3Kbn0Yvk9nfqQhwQ1R5by1/view
Disclaimer: This signature is a badge of membership in the Forum Loudmouth Club. We are all friends. We are not attacking each other. We are engaging in spirited, friendly debate with one another. We may get snarky, but these are not attacks. Thank you for not reporting us.
Fair enough. If that's more common in your games, then that's probably the best method to use. Maybe I've been ruined by decades of old text-based MUDs, which give you the description of rooms as soon as you enter. :D
lol only noobs ran full-time in verbose :p
"Not all those who wander are lost"
Here is something that this thread got me thinking about.
As a DM, I would think that imposing disadvantage (-5) on passive perception for NPC because they are distracted for some reason would be appropriate.
I’m not sure that imposing disadvantage on a PC’s passive perception for being distracted would be a good idea. I can see a PC asking “wait, why was I distracted?” How would you justify it? Can you justify it simply with a roleplaying reason like “You said you were watching the seedy looking guy at the bar so you didn’t notice the halfling pickpocketing you.” Can you justify it with a game mechanics reason like “You failed an ability check to remain vigilant for all dangers so you failed to notice the halfling while observing the guy at the bar.” (I’m not sure what ability would be relevant)