How to Make Low Perception Rolls Interesting When Your Party Travels
What's the classic problem of a DnD party travelling and taking watch?
DM: Roll perception check please.
Rogue: rolls...uh, that's a 4.
DM: -nothing interesting out here-
The players essentially gain no advantages or disadvantages from that. It's not interesting and they start to wonder if there's any real issues or dangers for them to face in the wilds. And that my friends is where you get the perfect opportunity for a misfire from the players.
In our session yesterday, the rogue and the bard were on watch outside the players camp (Galder's Tower), the bard on guard while the rogue did a patrol. The perception check was poor, below 5, and something needed to happen.
This was the description I went with:
Rogue, you round the first corner of the tower, taking your time to make sure nothing is sneaking up on your camp. The second corner, it all looks well. The third corner you hear some faint movement around the next corner, and as you go to peak, you see a tall humanoid figure in the darkness, peering into the door of your tower. You raise your crossbow, readying up for a problem and you realise it's the bard.
True, nothing of major import happened, no wild beast charged them down, but it gave the players a moment of light heartedness but also a reality that low perception checks may start to cause problems for them. It's nothing fancy, but at least it wasn't the same description for a low roll as a high roll.
What do you guys think, what do you do for perception checks on travelling and camping?
Once more, yours from inside the sack of a dice-obsessed goblin,
tomster-17
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Yep, I like that as a solution !
I always worry that Perception rolls (or Spot rolls in 3.5) are made too frequently. I appreciate that's why 5th Ed bought in Passive Perception, but that's a mechanic I hate because I've seen it misinterpreted or abused too often.
So for the majority of the time, I view anything that happens as either so obvious anyone could see it, or so discreet that a character has to ask a reasonably specific question for a purpose and then roll for it. Not "as I walk down the road, do I see anything odd ?", but rather "as I walk down the road, is there any fresh night soil, or does it all look more than a few days old ?"
I am 100% with you on that! That's why I enjoy passive perception and insight, but some feats like Observant...Observant can be great, I often say to the player he can roll perception or take passive from observant if it is higher or he feels one applies more rigorously than the other. I guess what's difficult is being on watch at night. Like, I think that I'm working towards is a better way of handling the night time watch, maybe making CON saves to stay awake?
I've always been really conflicted about the night time watch system. On the one hand, it's a good way for a DM to mess the party up. But the reality is that unless they are on a time-sensitive mission, most parties then just have a rest day to get their spells etc back, so all it does is slow things down.
Nowadays, I ask that the players set up a standard watch rota at the start, and then generally let them have their rest unless there's a good reason in the storyline not to. But then I mostly play 3.5 rather than 5th Edition - unlike 5th, with it's Long Rest mechanic, 3.5 is more about spells returning at dawn but only if you've had a full night's sleep (that's the simplified version, of course...)
Cool - every bit of realism helps and adds to the storyline!