I've been considering how best to handle Perception, detect spells, traps and secret doors in my own campaign. In my experience this is a lot to handle as a GM. A well timed detect evil can seriously make the difference in many encounters, but some players and GMs are frustrated by the repetitive and overcautious nature of trap finding and detecting at every door.
Some players prefer "old school" detection, where the PCs must declare how they are interacting with the environment and character skill doesn't enter into the equation. Other players prefer a "new school" detection where they don't have to sit through tediously searching every inch of a room, they can just roll for it and their character's competence is tested. As a GM, my preference is old school, but my principle trap-finding player is new school, and as (I think) a good GM I should accommodate him.
In these situations, I tend to take a good hard look at the Rules-As-Written (RAW) and try to read them in a way that I enjoy. The trouble is, Perception, detection, and all that are really quite disparate. Here I am attempting to unify them in a way that makes things much more playable.
The last consideration is the completely mind-bending nature of resolving Perception and detection on the GM end. What, within 60 feet radiates magic? Evil? How many doors are between the PCs and those ogres? How many feet away from the trap trigger are they? It's a huge mess, and it's more than a little telling when I start stammering and stalling in the middle of a session as soon as someone casts a detect spell.
Here is my compromise. At all times the party (or a given player, for a split party) has a Caution Level. This tells the GM what the perception checks involved are — outside of combat they can be static which helps for advance planning — and what levels of detection magic will yield what data.
Perception: This is the result of your passive check when using a given level of caution. You can take a move action to inspect a specific item of interest, but this is not possible while moving at a reckless pace. Inspecting an item of interest with a move action allows a standard perception check, standard modifiers apply. Note that a natural 20 on the inspection of an item of interest is greater than taking 20 as with a meticulous level of caution.
Combat Speed: This is the speed at which you move during combat while using a given level of caution. This differs from the time it takes to inspect an entire room.
Detection Spells: Characters with active detection spells, such as detect magic or detect evil, glean information as listed in the spell description for the number of rounds given here.
Time per room (30x30): This is the amount of time it takes for a character to inspect a 30x30 foot room with the given level of caution.
Inspect in detail: This is the number of requests to inspect in detail. Inspecting in detail takes a move action and is limited to one discrete object or phenomenon. The player declares the object of attention and gets a Perception check to glean more information, as standard Perception skill usage. Each caution level allows a certain number of inspections, from none to unlimited, during the allotted time. More specific inspections will require more time to be spent in that location.
Levels of Caution
Reckless
Ambulatory
Careful
Meticulous
Nice idea, here are some thoughts
First, why the need for combat speed? If you are in combat, then the players need to be declaring their actions in detail. I am searching this square is a move action, and so on. I would drop the combat speed entirely.
Second, 20 perception is a little high for Meticulous:
Taking a 20 requires 20 actions which is 10 rounds of searching. That comes out to being able to move 1 square every 10 rounds, and 36 minutes to search a 30'x30' room. If you every taking 3 rounds to search each square, that would be 6 search actions. 6 search actions only gives you about a 27% chance of rolling a 20, but you do have about an 82% chance to get at least one roll that is a 15 or better.
Third, I don't like the idea of completely removing the roll, but setting an upper lower bounds and getting rid of the need to roll multiple dice would be nice. Combine this with rolling for an entire room or hallway at once and you can greatly speed out exploration.
For example:
Reckless: 1d20 - 10, minimum of 1.
Careful: 1d20 or 10 whichever is higher.
Meticulous:
Perception - 15 or 1d20 + 4 whichever is higher.
Fine Tooth Comb:
Perception - 20
Detection spell: 10 rounds
Time per room (30x30): 30 minutes
Inspect in detail: unlimited objects/phenomena
@Caedwyr: I'm being granular about it. The move action that perception allows will be either a Perception Check or an old-school inspection, depending on the player. It's a bit of a cop out, but it should work fine for my old school vs new schoolers.
Yes, they get to add their bonus to the list. The monk with maxed out Perception can actually take in some good information even when reckless, but he's still unlikely to notice any traps.
---
@Charender: Combat speed is just covering the bases. There are a lot of situations where the players are doing something "combat like" in my games, and that speed is there as a reference for me. Plus it helps to show how I arrived at these modes.
For me, setting the roll is all about planning and reducing effort for myself, since "thinking on my feet" is not something I am great at. I can see why you would prefer it as you described, but that method doesn't save me much effort, unfortunately.
---
My real goal is to get close to the RAW, but be able to frontload a lot of the Perception and Detection calls ahead of time by deciding what levels or caution will alert which player to which details. I'll be testing it out this Sunday.
I'm pleased to hear your thoughts and would love more feedback!
@Charender: Combat speed is just covering the bases. There are a lot of situations where the players are doing something "combat like" in my games, and that speed is there as a reference for me. Plus it helps to show how I arrived at these modes.For me, setting the roll is all about planning and reducing effort for myself, since "thinking on my feet" is not something I am great at. I can see why you would prefer it as you described, but that method doesn't save me much effort, unfortunately.
Fair enough. I would still put meticulous at around a 15, based on the idea that you are taking ~6 actions. I think that would be closer to the RAW.
We have some similar rules that we use. I let the players roll their perception tests. If they roll badly, I do not let the roll again. They must tell me how long they are taking the search each square before they roll the dice(ex:"I am taking 2 rounds(4 checks) to search each square"). The players then roll 4 dice and give me the highest result. This is the RAW, but your way is MUCH better.
I like the idea of making 1 set of search checks for an entire room or hallway combined with the caution level setting a minimum roll. Having a player roll 4-6 dice for every square moved gets really tedious really fast, but letting the players roll 1 dice for a room knowing that they can't get lower than a 15 is a lot smoother.
Example, the players are going down a hallway and there are 2 traps in the hallway. The players are moving normally, so I let the 1 in the lead roll 1 check for the next ~10 squares. They roll badly, pray their are no traps, move forward, and stumble into the first trap. After the bandage themselves up, they decide to be more cautious, I let them change their caution level and make a new set of rolls.
Am I missing something? 10 minutes = 100 rounds
The time to take 20 on Perception is only 1 minute. (move action 3 seconds * 20 = 60 seconds)
Considering that they can actually take 20 on a number of perception checks over the course of the 10 minutes, I thought it would be fair to let them take 20 on the whole room.
Am I missing something? 10 minutes = 100 rounds
The time to take 20 on Perception is only 1 minute. (move action 3 seconds * 20 = 60 seconds)
Considering that they can actually take 20 on a number of perception checks over the course of the 10 minutes, I thought it would be fair to let them take 20 on the whole room.
Searching a 5x5 foot square is 1 minute. Searching a 30x30 foot square should then be (30/5)*(30/5)=36 minutes in the current rules.
Right — I figured that, I really did. But my above rules are an approximation, also... lumping some of those 5 foot squares together and abstracting the whole thing so that I am not calculating room areas all the time.
You'll notice that the speeds and search times don't line up at all for that reason. I'm not sticking to the RAW exactly, but trying to devise a system that makes it a little bit easier to communicate what's going on.
Perhaps this will be clear: the idea of people actually searching a while room in 5x5 foot squares kind of bothers me. I just wanted some numbers for "searching a whole room" instead.
Perhaps this will be clear: the idea of people actually searching a while room in 5x5 foot squares kind of bothers me. I just wanted some numbers for "searching a whole room" instead.
I agree with you completely. I just pointed out what I thought the previous poster thought. This is the homebrew forum, not the rules one; I'm not pointing the finger saying you are doing this wrong.
In fact, I really like these rules.
Perhaps this will be clear: the idea of people actually searching a while room in 5x5 foot squares kind of bothers me. I just wanted some numbers for "searching a whole room" instead.I agree with you completely. I just pointed out what I thought the previous poster thought. This is the homebrew forum, not the rules one; I'm not pointing the finger saying you are doing this wrong.
In fact, I really like these rules.
Yeah, I was just giving you exactly what the RAW is. 36 minutes to take a 20 on a 30'x30' room.
It does make some sense that you could completely search a room faster than that. Some parts of the room are going to have less to search than others. Areas of interest like a corner with 3 pieces of furnature is going to take longer than the middle of the room where there is nothing bu a bare floor. Taking a 20 is based on the worst case scenario. So based on that you could probably simplify "searching a room" to half or a third of what the RAW states. Giving your 12 minutes to search a 30' x 30' room. To make the math easy round that down to 10.
I did some number crunching. I put the results here
So based on those numbers I would let players take a 15, and it would take around 1.5 rounds per 5'x5' square. 3 actions to search, and free 5' step. That gives me 54 rounds to take a 15 on a 30' x 30' room. Divide by 3 for the "whole room" discount, and you get 18 rounds, round up to 2 minutes to make the math easier.
Taking a 10 on an entire 30x30 room would take 18 rounds by the RAW. I would give it about a 50% "whole room" discount, and put that at 1 minute.
TLDR version - 10 minutes to take a 20, 2 minutes to take a 15, and 1 minute to take a 10 when searching a 30 x 30 room
TLDR version - 10 minutes to take a 20, 2 minutes to take a 15, and 1 minute to take a 10 when searching a 30 x 30 room
Oh cool, so this was about spot on. Yeah, Charender the "50% discount" was just about my reasoning.
Note that this makes dungeons without timers into old-school affairs: if people are going through each room meticulously (because they have no reason not to) they will detect only traps they can find while taking 20, and it still behooves them to interact carefully with the surroundings because A) they might roll a natural 20 on a specific investigation, and B) they might trigger and unseen trap with a ten foot pole or the like.
So that is the way I intend to make it a compromise between old and new schools.
However, it isn't hard to create a timer for a dungeon, in fact, it's quite fun. In most cases, it can just be a response from other monsters in the dungeon if they are coordinated: the other occupants notice something is wrong or something is missing at a certain time. Players who are sludging through meticulously will then incur the consequences.
Many GMs do this by instinct, but I think it is intellectually preferable for me to give it a hard number and let the players "game" their speed through the dungeon.
TLDR version - 10 minutes to take a 20, 2 minutes to take a 15, and 1 minute to take a 10 when searching a 30 x 30 roomOh cool, so this was about spot on. Yeah, Charender the "50% discount" was just about my reasoning.
Note that this makes dungeons without timers into old-school affairs: if people are going through each room meticulously (because they have no reason not to) they will detect only traps they can find while taking 20, and it still behooves them to interact carefully with the surroundings because A) they might roll a natural 20 on a specific investigation, and B) they might trigger and unseen trap with a ten foot pole or the like.
So that is the way I intend to make it a compromise between old and new schools.
However, it isn't hard to create a timer for a dungeon, in fact, it's quite fun. In most cases, it can just be a response from other monsters in the dungeon if they are coordinated: the other occupants notice something is wrong or something is missing at a certain time. Players who are sludging through meticulously will then incur the consequences.
Many GMs do this by instinct, but I think it is intellectually preferable for me to give it a hard number and let the players "game" their speed through the dungeon.
Actually I have found that sometimes the players make the dungeon timers themselves...
Level 3 Wizard -> Mage Armor -> 3 hours. Unless they have backup spells memorized they only have 3 hours before buffs start wearing off.or We have 5 minutes of bear's strength/Cat's grace, we need to get to the next fight before it wears off.
Yes, that's an excellent observation!
Not for my players:
I'm running Fort Rannick from Pathfinder #3 now, and I figure the PCs have (under their current plan) about 25 minutes before the ogres outside the keep decide something is wrong and start battering down the doors. Should be fun!
Yes, that's an excellent observation!
Not for my players:
** spoiler omitted **
I spent the weekend thinking about it, and I think there needs to be a modifier based on how crowded the area is.
10 minutes sounds fine for a sparse room. My living room has 2 couches and an entertainment center, not a lot of drawers, everything in is plain view. I could search it pretty well in 10 minutes.
My bedroom on the other hand... 3 laundry hampers, 2 night stands, king size bed, 2 dressers, jewelry stand, and that is just the furnature. I am not sure I could completely search my room in less than 30 minutes.
The thing is, my living room is 50% bigger than my bedroom in square footage.
Think of it as the difference between searching a clean hallway for traps vs an alleyway that has midden heaps every 2 feet.