Why are we combining spot, listen, search, and others? I know they all come off the wisdom atribute, but what about the fact that a goat tastes better than it can see. A deer hears and smells better than it can see. I see better than I can listen. It also boosts the character skills even more. What once was an addition of three skill ranks in three different positons costing three ranks to raise them each one, is now raising them three points by combining them into one category.
I thought the whole objective was to save 3.5 for those of us sticking with it. We are looking at re-writng it here. Not long and we will have 4e. Save us all the head-ache, lets just go 4e.
Please, leave the skill system the way it is. It is not broken....yet.
Do not combine all the senses into one skill. This really hurts the stats on all of my monsters.
Search was not a Wisdom based skill and fulfilled a very different function than Spot and Listen.
While it is true certain characters had a racial knack to just ‘spot’ things like secret doors or traps, when constructed into or out of materials they are intimately familiar with, Search was mechanically and flavoured different than Spot and Listen.
Spot and Listen are more reactive than Search; a character’s Intelligence tells him that the inside of this chest seems to be too small for the outside dimensions so the bottom must be hiding something, for example.
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Search was not a Wisdom based skill and fulfilled a very different function than Spot and Listen.
I agree completely. While I like combining Spot and Listen into Perception (and expanding Perception to use all five senses), a Search check involves actively rooting around (or, at least, very closely and carefully examining) an area to determine if it contains something not apparant to casual observation. To me, Perception is a more passive check to determine whether something can be noticed, while Search is a more active check to determine whether something can be found or uncovered.
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I don't see a Perception skill as a 'skill gimmee', but I don't like Search in there, either. Spot and Listen are usually used to notice someone trying to sneak up on you or waiting for you in ambush. It simply caused a situation with one action being resolved in multiple rolls.
Resolving one action with one set of die rolls is an improvement.
Since Search was never a part of that situation, it does not belong in the combined skill.
I don't believe that skills should be lumped together. Its detrimental to roleplaying.
Someone who was a scout in the military, explaining his ranks in spotting, shouldn't automatically gain the same abilities in listen, touch and taste.
Someone whose spent his life in the mountains, whose great at climbing, shouldn't automatically be good at tumbling like a master circus acrobat.
Basically, you're allowing characters to become great at many things by buying ranks in one skill.
I would argue that there is a connection between search and spot. As would anyone who as been searching for an item for 10 minutes only to realize it was right in front of them on top of the pile they were searching. Search and spot are just the active and passive forms of the same skill. If you are actively trying to spot something you are in effect searching for it.
Thats what synergy bonuses are for.
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I like the combination of Spot and Listen into a single perception check. I think it's a useful level of abstraction.
If I want to play a blind character, I can still raise my Perception - and then the higher Perception represents not my ability to see, but my ability to replace my sight with hieghtened attention to my other senses.
There's going to be some level of separation of the sense still - a blind person shouldn't be able to tell that a torch has continual flame cast on it unless they have the ability to detect magic, for example, and a deafened person can't hear the sound of footsteps creeping up behind them....but possibly the deaf person can feel the slight vibrations in the floor caused by those steps, if their Perception is high.
The game is about abstraction to a large extent anyway. Hit points in my mind don't represent my character's ability to survive being stabbed multiple times...but their stamina and ability to turn deadly blows into "mere flesh wounds". I think Perception is a useful abstraction that simplifies the rules without sacrificing too much immersion.
I'd be in favor of rolling search out from under Perception and lumping it into either an investigation skill, or leaving it as Search, myself. But I think Perception is awesome, personally - also, it no longer ignores our other senses, a nice little side bonus.
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I like the perception skill overall, however the only complaint I have with it is keeping all the different modifiers written down on the character sheet somewhere or on a note card/paper. By modifiers I mean if I have a Character who gets a bonus to Sight based Perception checks and a bonus to Listen based Perception checks that are different mods, let's say +2 and +1.
This leaves with having to keep three different Perception score mod's written down and having to ask the DM when he asks for a Perception check "is Sight or Listen based or just normal?"
On the flip side now as a DM I have to state what kind it is to the players which then add's to the instant "paranoid PC" issue. Of course as a DM I could keep track of every PC's different Perception total mods...but in a large group that is just more information I need to keep track of that can bog down the game.
Other than that I like the skill, I like the other senses added into it.
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Someone who was a scout in the military, explaining his ranks in spotting, shouldn't automatically gain the same abilities in listen, touch and taste.
In this specific case, I'd keep the base Perception bonus and add a circumstance bonus on Perception(sight) checks. Other bonuses specific to particular senses could either be written into a class or race description (as Keen Senses does for several of the Pathfinder races) or adjudicated on the fly by the DM as a circumstance bonus for a particular situation.
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... Spot and Listen are usually used to notice someone trying to sneak up on you or waiting for you in ambush. It simply caused a situation with one action being resolved in multiple rolls.
Resolving one action with one set of die rolls is an improvement.
Since Search was never a part of that situation, it does not belong in the combined skill.
Agree 100%. Most of the time it doesn't matter how you notice something, just that you do. A general Perception score let's players and DMs just make one roll to see if you notice. The little +2 to sight, +2 to hearing come in when the player says, "I listen at the door." It's like Stealth where most of the time they are used together so it's just easier to combine them.
The loss of Search as a separate Intelligence-based skill, though, makes me very, very sad. I hate to saying things like this before the final rules are even out, but I will almost certainly house rule Search back.
Yes the search skill is often used in an investigative role in examining for clues, ideas and deductions so it should be separate and based off of intelligence. If you are glancing around and notice something, perception (formerly spot) should be used. The search skill deals not only with noticing something but knowing whether that something is the valid item of your search. It can be an obvious deduction, like looking though a pile of clothes and finding a gem and deciding it is worth while, or thorough reasoning, like finding clues on a wall to find the device that stops the spiked ceiling from decsending (however figuring out how to disarm the trap would be disable device).
Someone whose spent his life in the mountains, whose great at climbing, shouldn't automatically be good at tumbling like a master circus acrobat.
It occurs to me that you cite this argument frequently. But Climb hasn't been rolled into Acrobatics, to the best of my knowledge. If it has, can someone clue me in so that I can protest against it, too? Because, I agree, it would be a horrible idea.
My group want's to adopt some pathfinder rules, and I'm in favor of it.
But not using Perception and Stealth is the one thing I'm really campaigning for.
That's what's so great about Pathfinder. They've kept the skill points the same. If you like their combinations, or want to devise new or different groupings (which a great many people, myself included, seem to be doing), you can go that route. If you want to stick with some or all of the 3.5e skills, you can do that, too, without necessarily altering any other part of the game.
I don't believe that skills should be lumped together. Its detrimental to roleplaying.
It is only detrimental to roleplaying if you let it be. If your character has spent his life in the mountains, then don't try to tumble everywhere. It is not the system's fault if you are unable to not do things that you don't want your character to do.
For the ranger that has never touched a blade, then don't use your proficiency with blades.
For the wizard that hasn't studied necromancy (and only necromancy), don't prepare and scribe necromancy spells.
I like Spot and Listen rolled together. Its mechanically cleaner and saves on dice rolls. For me that benefit outweighs the "realism" of the separate checks for Spot and Listen, though I can see the other side of the argument.
I agree Search should be a separate skill. If it stays part of perception in the final iteration of Pathfinder, I plan to house rule it back into my game.
I'm also in favor of combining spot and listen into perception. It mirrors nicely the combination of hide and move silently into stealth. As others have pointed out, these sets of skills are often used together.
In the rare case that a blind person is trying to use perception on something that emits light but no sound, you can just not allow a roll.
In less extreme cases, you can just make some adjustments to the DC if you think the relative strengths of the perceiver's senses are optimal to the situation or not.
The whole process is just an abstraction, and not a very good one occasionaly. Sometimes the distance penalties add up too quickly and make things that people routinely notice in real life impossible for D&D characters to detect.
I would argue that there is a connection between search and spot. As would anyone who as been searching for an item for 10 minutes only to realize it was right in front of them on top of the pile they were searching. Search and spot are just the active and passive forms of the same skill. If you are actively trying to spot something you are in effect searching for it.
I completely agree. The change is effectively the dc.
I have put up a few more ideas in this thread. Skill List!