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Hi all,
I've been working on this for awhile now for personal use, but may as well share! I gave up on the Paizo perception rules trainwreck awhile ago. Players never understood it without months of practice, and hardly anything makes sense. For example, the DC to see a campfire from a mile away at night is over 500 in core rules, but should be automatic success in real life. In fact, you can pretty much not see anything at all 400 feet away. Invisiblity for no apparent reason grants more bonuses than being in total darkness does. Etc. And rules are spread out over a dozen different parts of books, are sometimes redundant or conflicting, blah blah.
So I've made a whole new system. ALL the main rules are on ONE page. Followed by tables and modifiers for each individual main detecting sense. It is not suuuper simple, but ends up being far simpler and more transparent than the vanilla rules.
Everything in the document has also been researched with regard to actual physics and psychology as well. Signals degrade by inverse square laws, decibels map to realistic perception thresholds, all the example stimuli were looked up for at least one point of real world reference for how loud/smelly/whatever they are, atmospheric absorption of sound is integrated already, and so on. Despite all the complicated calculus and arithmetic though, it's all just lookup tables, so you don't worry about any of that.
Appreciate any and all feedback! There are also several applied examples at the end for clarity.
PDF:
Perception Overhaul System
(minor errata: the fox example is out of date with regard to upwind/downwind, sorry, don't want to re-upload)
It isn't just Pathfinder -- as far as I know, D&D at least up through 3.x had the same problem, and you can find this (when you can find the information at all) in some other games, including computer games, where in some cases it seems like your units (particularly the lower end ones) are incredibly nearsighted.
Quote: in some cases it seems like your units (particularly the lower end ones) are incredibly nearsighted. "Your" as in mine here? If so, which ones, I can look into more closely.
Or "your" as in in the video games?
Crimeo wrote: "Your" as in mine here? If so, which ones, I can look into more closely.
Or "your" as in in the video games?
If you take UnArcaneElection sentence as a whole, it is clear that he talk about the fact that : In some games, units are nearsighted. In this context, Your meant "the units you possess as a player of a game".
UnArcaneElection didn't make any call on the effectiveness (or uneffectiveness) of the rules you proposed.
My first impressions on your propositions :
¤ Decoupling sight, hearing & smell : While I understand why you did so, I tend to prefer the idea that a single Perception check is the result of the combination of all relevant senses, not only the meta-chosen sense. Another issue is that the rules as presented doesn't allow creatures with better-than-normal hearing to actually pinpoint someone/something.
¤ DC tables : I personally hate this kind of tables because while you can pretty easily remember the most common modifiers that applies to a check, you pretty much always have to refer to that kind of table. Wouldn't be that much of an issue if the mechanic being reworked was Perception, a really common kind of check.
I hate your tables even more since I can see that there is simple underlying rules to some of the values. For example, in the vision table, the DC is reduced by 10 for each increase in Size Category. That mean that the table could have at least been reduced to a "simpler" one-dimension DC by range, with the size applying an additionnal modifier.
¤ Smell : why +140DC for creature without Scent ? That the is a check penalty/DC increase, I understand, but why "140" ? That seem a rather empirical value.
Quote: While I understand why you did so, I tend to prefer the idea that a single Perception check is the result of the combination of all relevant senses, not only the meta-chosen sense. There is definitely something to be said for perception being synergistic. But I don't see any easy way to do this short of requiring people to look up all three values every time. the cost to gameplay is much too large compared to the benefit IMO. And one table would ruin the whole purpose of the project. If you have another idea, lemme know though.
Quote: Another issue is that the rules as presented doesn't allow creatures with better-than-normal hearing to actually pinpoint someone/something. They do actually allow that. It's a bit subtle, but notice that blindsense and blindsight say "Add levels of accuracy" to the result when inside of the ability range, not just adjust the DC.
If your level of accuracy is "20% miss" (like beat by 20, 5ft away) and you add 1 level of accuracy to that in the table, the result is "complete pinpoint" So blindsense creatures passing the DC by 20 or blindsight creatures passing the DC by 16 can both completely pinpoint to at least some distance, no penalty.
As for creatures without special hearing good enough to qualify them for blindsense or blindsight, I don't think it is physically realistic for them to pinpoint a creature down to less than a foot or so required for 0% miss chance, from 5 or more feet away. That's max 17 degree spatial accuracy, in a non-bat or anything like that. at 10 feet, 9 degrees. Ehh....
Quote: Smell : why +140DC for creature without Scent ? +10DC = roughly double difficulty (changes result by 50% of likelihood whenever you are scaling within the range of a d20. Not an exact statistical science, but as close as I could figure).
So +140 = 2^14 = 16,384. 10,000-20,000ish was as best as I could determine, the average answer for how many times better the acuity of a dog's sense of smell is than a human's (in terms of a given signal strength and mostly journal type sources, tried to filter out the pop science articles whose writing implied that they didn't seem to even grasp inverse square)
Quote: I hate your tables even more since I can see that there is simple underlying rules to some of the values. This is true, but I believe it is only true for vision table along the horizontal axis, actually (the one you pointed out). I should make a note about the shortcut for people who want to use it, yes.
I THINK everything else is nonlinear. Like distance for vision accounts for atmospheric haze for example. And even the basic optical law stuff is by its nature quadratic over distance and almost impossible to rattle off in your head from one base value.
It's just a fact of the world that physics doesn't follow easy linear rules along most dimensions that are easy to mentally calculate. You have to choose mental calculation or realism. If you don't care about the latter nearly as much, this just isn't the system for you.
Unless you have ideas how to compensate.
^Which kind of nonlinearity -- is it something amenable to a simple formula? If so, it might be good to make the formula(s) the refernce (tweaking tables that are printed for convenience to fit the formulas if they differ by just a little bit). If not, that does make things more inconvenient (although ameliorated by at least having the tables in the same place).
As an aesthetic matter, for the Scent table, I would be inclined to make the table for a creature that DOESN'T have the Scent ability (since that is the baseline for most PCs), and then add a big bonus for creatures that have Sceent (since this is listed as an ability), although I still wonder if +140 is too big (on the other hand, I can smell and even be bothered by a lot of things that most other people don't notice).
Quote: As an aesthetic matter, for the Scent table, I would be inclined to make the table for a creature that DOESN'T have the Scent ability (since that is the baseline for most PCs), and then add a big bonus for creatures that have Sceent The reasoning for flipping it this way is that if you don't have scent, you won't be using that table in the first place 99% of the time, and will just be assuming failure.
So it would mean that almost every time you are using the table (scent creatures), you're having to do extra math.
Aesthetically perhaps weird, but practically sound I think.
Quote: Which kind of nonlinearity -- is it something amenable to a simple formula? Yes they all follow formulas.
In some cases it is like 3 formulas on top of one another though (could all be made into one, but complex and polynomial, not doable in your head). For example, for sound by distance, you have:
1) Inverse square falloff of sound pressure
2) The brain doesn't perceive loudness in a 1:1 relationship with sound pressure, so there's another filter on top of #1, logarithmic IIRC.
3) Atmospheric absorption at medium distances, this accumulates linearly with distance instead of inverse square, so it's another separate term. (at the longer ends of the table it starts being like a 30-40DC difference)
I could potentially craft the formula directly and set it up in an excel document or something, but how would you use this in a way that would let you find the DC faster than the table?
Now a friend of mine had a thing like this but it was a spreadsheet for fall damage integrated with tumbling to calculate actual falling damage based on a real life model with level 5 being the border of humanly possible.
Also, the reason perception is WIS based is because its not just noticing or being able to visibly see something but also being able to notice it stands out from the rest of what's there: your fire in the night example is an easy thing to notice stands out and should have a DC that reflects the more obvious part of that, while a snow hare hidden amongst a field of snow is much harder to pick out even if you are still "able to see" it.
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I love your color coding and formatting. The page is a thing of beauty.
That said, any house rule that entails a six-step process involving at least two tables, in the midst of game play, is what I call a "cell phone rule," because while one person is using it, everyone else gets bored and starts Facebooking or something.
Pathfinder is chock full of stuff that makes no sense at all. But one thing I learned from Galloway's (well-intentioned but utterly unplayable) Fantasy Wargaming is that the goal of greater realism should always be subordinate to the goal of minimizing calculations and consultations of tables during play.
Crimeo wrote: {. . .}
I could potentially craft the formula directly and set it up in an excel document or something, but how would you use this in a way that would let you find the DC faster than the table?
Actually, if you had Excel (or something) open on your computer that you are using instead of a GM screen (or maybe even on your phone), you could -- just plug the number(s) in to the formula.
For those who aren't using a computer, the next best thing would be to have the tables up on your GM screen.
UnArcaneElection wrote: Crimeo wrote: {. . .}
I could potentially craft the formula directly and set it up in an excel document or something, but how would you use this in a way that would let you find the DC faster than the table?
Actually, if you had Excel (or something) open on your computer that you are using instead of a GM screen (or maybe even on your phone), you could -- just plug the number(s) in to the formula.
For those who aren't using a computer, the next best thing would be to have the tables up on your GM screen.
Are there still people who use GM screens instead of a Laptop excel or other form of data tracking program on a laptop or tablet? All of the books cost more than a used ipad or a new decent tablet. Not to mention a laptop doubles as a screen.
Quote: Actually, if you had Excel (or something) open on your computer that you are using instead of a GM screen (or maybe even on your phone), you could -- just plug the number(s) in to the formula. My point was that I don't see how typing 2 numbers into a formula is faster than scanning your eyes to the cell of a 2 dimensional table.
Also the reason I used the smoothly flowing colors is not just to be pretty, but to allow you to glance oftentimes and go "Oh deep red or bright green, assume success/fail without bothering with DCs" I think you can still do that with a formula but I don't know how, so you might lose the cue that saves you a lot of work with a formula cell.
Quote: any house rule that entails a six-step process involving at least two tables, in the midst of game play, Step 1 is new but takes a couple seconds.
Steps 2-6 are just the same as the current perception rules. You already have to roll perception, already have to pick a sense (since the DCs are still by sense even though confusingly crammed in one table), look up a bunch of DCs, and do an opposed stealth roll if target is stealthed.
Step 6 isn't on the perception skill page, but is still part of the vanilla game broader procedure too, it's just written all over in other places.
I understand it's slowish and should be used sparingly in full. But since it's still faster than properly using the vanilla system in full, this isn't a drawback in comparison.
Maybe it would be a good idea to have a couple of tiers of system. Make up a DC is fastest, "Slapdash still more realistic but fast" system, then full system? Depending on the importance of the situation?
Crimeo wrote: Quote: Actually, if you had Excel (or something) open on your computer that you are using instead of a GM screen (or maybe even on your phone), you could -- just plug the number(s) in to the formula. My point was that I don't see how typing 2 numbers into a formula is faster than scanning your eyes to the cell of a 2 dimensional table.
{. . .} Admittedly, my perspective may be skewed by my table lookup funcitonality being slowed by the need to deconvolute **3** images in EACH eye unless the text characters in the table are large and have plenty of space between them.
Crimeo wrote: But since it's still faster than properly using the vanilla system in full, this isn't a drawback in comparison. Yeah, the existing system is pretty bad, so I'm always looking for workable alternatives -- the main reason I clicked here, in fact.
Crimeo wrote: Maybe it would be a good idea to have a couple of tiers of system. Make up a DC is fastest, "Slapdash still more realistic but fast" system, then full system? Depending on the importance of the situation? I think that sounds like a winner. In my game, if it's just a matter of avoiding surprise or something, I assume everyone is always Taking 10 unless they ask for a roll. That way I can just compare to the notice DC or ambusher's Stealth results and have a determination. It loses a lot of granularity that way, but it sure speeds things up. The only time I worry about the rest of it is when they're intentionally trying to notice something else.
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