How would you GM casting in a crowd?

[Junar]

GMing a game with a theater performance and the PCs are in the audience. A player casts Daze on one of the actors on stage to hinder their performance. The actor fails their save.

Considering this was done during a portion of the performance in which the audience was noisy (laughing), I'm not sure who if anyone would get a chance to hear or see the spell being cast (V,S).

In a crowd of 100 people, how would you GM this?

Let it go?
Assume that 1-2 people saw the casting?
Roll a percentage for chance?

At first I was inclined to believe everyone would be watching the stage, however it's natural for people to look around every once in awhile.

Thanks

[RealAlchemy]

Start with the base perception DC. It is DC 0 to hear the details of a conversation or to see a creature in plain sight, so I wouldn't expect the base DC to identify someone casting would be high. Modify by distance (+1 per 10 feet) and by +2 to +5 for unfavorable or terrible conditions depending on how loud the audience is. Modify by +5 again for the creature making the check being distracted. Based on those modifiers, I'd place the DC between 7 and 10 +1 per 10 feet of distance.

[Junar]

RealAlchemy wrote:

Start with the base perception DC. It is DC 0 to hear the details of a conversation or to see a creature in plain sight, so I wouldn't expect the base DC to identify someone casting would be high. Modify by distance (+1 per 10 feet) and by +2 to +5 for unfavorable or terrible conditions depending on how loud the audience is. Modify by +5 again for the creature making the check being distracted. Based on those modifiers, I'd place the DC between 7 and 10 +1 per 10 feet of distance.

My question is: who gets to make a perception check?

[LazarX]

It's a GM's call based on situation.

The first time a player does this, he's very likely to get away with it in my games.

If he makes a habit of doing this, some folks are likely to catch on with the idea that something fishy is going on.

Please also note the range of the spell. It's fairly close range, which means you can't be doing this from the cheap seats in the nosebleed section.

[Nullpunkt]

Was it adding drama to the situation and made for a really cool scene that everyone enjoyed?

Roll a die, scoop it up: "Wow, you're lucky! Looks like you got away with it!"

The PC was already on the radar of a local power group? Roll a dice, make a "huh" sound, and later when the power group sends assassins/agents/thugs/recruiters you say "looks like someone did see you do it".

It really sounds like a situation that should not be handled with rigid rules but with some good ol' fashioned GM judgment.

I'm assuming the player did not invest in any metamagic feats like Still Spell or Silent Spell so mechanically he should not just get parts of those feats for free but this specific situation does not sound like something that is going to come up frequently so a little bit of leniency would go a long way in terms of drama and most of all, fun!

[Junar]

OK that is good advice. I like both of your responses and, as my first time figuring this out, I thought to rule "he got away with it."

I just wanted opinions for the next time. It was a situation that totally caught me off guard. To put it plainly, I didn't realize how much chaos spell casters can cause with 0 level spells!

[FLite]

While I would let people get away with it once at a fairly raucus play, be careful about allowing it all the time. There are a bunch of archtypes and such who have the power to disguise their spell casting as something else. If no one ever gets called on spell casting, it kind of devalues those archtypes.

[Azothath]

First off - define the audience. Are they commoners or nobles? Spellcasters?

Would responding to the player's actions add to the scenario? If it's just a minor nit then ignore it or roll for 4 guys (his seated neighbours) and see if you get lucky and someone acts in time to stop the event (Perception and INIT).

In Pathfinder where magic is fairly common, I'd always assume that casting a spell when & where it is not expected is like pulling out and firing a shotgun; socially rude and generally a hostile action. Thus people just need to make their perception to be aware of it to react, they don't have to identify the spell.
So most nearby are going to get a perception check. I'd modify it a bit as most are paying attention to the actors on stage {the usual behaviour} (have the actor roll a Performance check then divide by 10 and add that to the DC).
So as above DC 7 to 10 seems reasonable with +1 for 10ft as usual.

Next roll initiative for those that noticed. They may not get to react until after the Daze has gone off.

continue as required...