OOC Megathread!

Impervious indeed! Tolvaj almost certainly, thusly, realizes that this is no ordinary darkness, it is magical darkness!

Ooooh I completely forgot! My bad! Will edit my post.

Can someone explain Perception vs. Passive Perception to me? I'm not sure I'm using it correctly here. Does "passive" mean Eithne isn't actively looking at anything specific? Like while travelling or on watch duty? I guess what I'm really asking is, when does she benefit from the Observant feat and when doesn't she?

Passive Perception is generally for using vs a monster stealth roll, primarily. Active Perception is used when you are actively looking for something, like checking a door for traps.

This is a general overview, and there are other uses for Passive Perception dependent on DM, some I've seen use it as a measure of a minimum perception roll.

If you're actively looking, you're rolling dice. Passive perception is for all other times.

Makes sense. Now if you have the Observant feat, which gives you a +5 on Passive Perception? Then why would you ever actively look? Of course this is metagaming.

Because you can't detect everything passively. You'll never passively notice the hidden door behind the tapestry, that's something you have to actively search for.

In general, I do like the idea of treating passive as a 'minimum' as well. That resolves on irritation I have with D&D (which has to do with the massive variation inherent in a d20 system). But Naatkinson is right, some things you won't notice 'passively' and require 'searching for'.

I also used passive as the minimum at first, then I got a level 7 player with a 24 passive perception and changed my mind lol

I definitely do agree that the massive variance in a d20 system is really annoying.

If they invested effort (feats, skill expertise) in getting it that high, I don't see why a 24 minimum is a problem. That means they've cultivated a +14 anyway, and half the time they'd get 24+ anyway.

Well, his regular perception is only +9, and allowing a 24 minimum means that it's pretty much impossible to hide things from him. The main problem was that he'd get to roll, and if he rolled a 1 he'd just say, "Well, that's a 24"

It was basically giving him 2 chances to beat whatever DC I had set for him.

But natural 1 is always failure, no matter what modifiers, right?

Not on skill checks, only on attack rolls and (Maybe?) saves

A 1 is only auto-fail on attacks.

My view is that, if player puts a lot of resources into having a high passive perception like that, it's fine that you 'cant hide things from them'. It means as long as the player decides to look, they'll find whatever it is - and they built a character meant to search for things so great! They should succeed at what they are best at most (if not all) of the time. But, as the GM, you have other tools to make the player face tradeoffs and risk twists and danger (whcih is why we want to 'hide' things from players in the first place). A 24 perception doesn't mean you instantly notice, searching takes time and effort.

In fact, that's what I liked about the 4e perception rules -- because really, with enough time you'll find anything. I much prefer the "take 10", now that I think of it, to minimum Perception based on passive (and maybe you get to add passive bonuses to a 'take 10' - it takes 10 minutes after all). What matters is the time. In circumstances where you are pressed for time, taking 10 isn't possible, you search hastily and so you roll. Now the +9 Perception character failing to find something makes sense - even Sherlock can miss something when under the right kind of pressure.

So I've done 42 damage to the creature now? 30 from the first attack and 12 from the second?

Aye. And some of that radiant.

Argh, I was so sure I'd equipped my shield before this door was opened! But reading back I see that I forgot again :-P

So I'm curious whether Moonbeam will work, given the magical darkness. We'll see, won't we?

Or won't see, as the case may be!

Knowing what we're facing (at least, I have a very strong sense of what it is) makes it hard not to meta-game. Thankfully we have a globe of darkness hiding the results from view, so it's easier to play from a RP perspective .

Be that as it may, would clerics know what the creature is, based on its activity and what we can sense? What roll would that use, if any?