NOTICE ANYTHING DIFFERENT?
The Perception score; a new way of looking at things!
By Thomas Ruddick
Update to 2nd Edition & Skills & Powers By Lord Eadric
His Honor the Lord Mayor was naturally quite interested in the adventurers
who took temporary residence in one of the finer inns of the town -
especially when he learned that one of their aims was to find the local
assassins' guild and settle an old score with it. the guild had caused the
Lord Mayor many problems in the past, and he welcomed the possibility that
the guild might soon suffer problems of its own. The adventurers, however,
were close-mouthed and were cool toward his offers of assistance.
His course of action was to rely on the capable services of Ferd, his
halfling informant. Ferd began to tail the adventurers whenever they
ventured into the city reporting back to the Mayor on their activities...
At this point, the DM creating this scenario must pause. Obviously, the
game is going to develop in different ways depending on whether or not the
adventurers notice that a nondescript halfling is following them around.
How should he determine if the characters notice or not?
The official AD&D game rules have no provision for dealing with most
situations like this one. The Players Handbook contains rules for elves or
dwarves discovering secret doors, and for thieves detecting traps, but it
has nothing that applies in general to situations in which characters might
or might not notice something.
Each DM seems to have a slightly different method for dealing with this sort
of situation. Some roll a die and let players "roll higher" to see whether
or not a discovery is made. Others simply require the players to "roll
high" to acquire the information. Some suggest that the players make
ability checks against intelligence, wisdom, or dexterity. Still others
never design such ambiguous situations into their games - whether the
players notice an unusual event or not is simply determined in advance. But
none of these solutions seem satisfactory. Dealing with them on at a time:
1. Purely randome die rolls assume that all characters are equally
sharp-witted - not a very realistic assumption.
2. Saving vs. a character's intelligence, wisdom, or dexterity score is
unrealistic. Why isn't it possible to have an intelligent, wise, or
dexterous individual who also happens to be less alert much of the time?
Basing this saving throw on those abilities seems about as appropriate as
making a bend bars/lift gates roll on the basis of charisma - the ability
score was not designed to include this attribute.
3. Restricting game design to exclude these situations takes the interaction
out of the game. In advance, we know if the party will obtain information or
not, so the game becomes more of a story told by the DM, with the players'
actions and characters' abilities having less effect on the outcome.
the RUNEQUEST game has a character ability call Spot Hidden, which covers
the detection of anomalous situations and objects. The closest thing the
AD&D game has to this is the suprise roll but this applies most strongly to
combat situations with living foes. So far, no official AD&D game have been
published to deal with "general detection" powers, so individual DMs and
game designers have had to come up with individual ways of coping with this
shortcoming. As a result, different games still lack constistency in this
area. We need new rules that would provide general guidelines for all of
these possibilities.
My own solution has been to create an eighth ability (this the time of first
edition when comliness was in use) score: perception. It is similar to the
original six ability scores for strength, dexterity, constitution,
intelligence, wisdom and charisma, each of which is normally a number from
3-18 used to describe a range of related abilities that an AD&D game
character might posses.
Perception describes the quality of a character's vision and hearing, as
well as mental habits such as attentiveness, visual and aural memory, and
interest in his surroundings. Perception is important to all character
classes, as it affects the character's chances to notice things that might
be important in the course of the game (and not merely suprise in combat).
Normally, a character's perception score is between 3 and 18. However, a
character with a perception of 3 or 4 would suffer from severe vision or
hearing impairment - such a character should probably be NPC, sicne he
probably would not last long as an adventurer. (Survival is unlikely when
the character has a hard time seeing or hearing whatever is attacking!) A
character with a perception score of 9-11 would have a normal (20/20)
vision, hearing and habits of observation. Characters with scores above 15
would be exceptionally observant individuals, gifted with particularly sharp
eyes and keen ears, and being habitually attentive.
Most characters should be able to survive with average or even low scores in
perception, assuming they could compensate with other abilities or by
depending on other characters. A few character classes, however, require
above-average perception scores. For example, theives excell at hearing
noises; rangers can find tracks that are not apparent to others; assassins
and ninjas are skilled at disguise and counterfitting. Each of these
activities requires highly developed powers of perception. Therefor, it is
appropriate to set minum perception scores for these character classes.
Doing so gives even more legitimacy to perception as a character ability -
all of the other abilities except comeliness take turns as requisite
abilities for several classes. Also, such an attribute addition forces
players to make the choice between different types of character abilities.
For example, a player who rolls moderately well under the established rules
might choose to play a ranger instead of a fighter, because the ranger can
fight just as well as the fighter and the ranger's tracking and survival
skills might help the party in unique situations. But if a high perception
score is required, then the player realizes that there mucst be a trade off
between fighting skills and detection skills, and the fighter class may
become an attractive option for the player who wants only to hack and slash.
PERCEPTION IN PLAY
Most players and DMs have probably already thought of dozens of obvious
situations in which an ability check vs. perception would be appropriate.
One of the most common situations would be attacks agains the PCs when some
members of the party are sleeping - the usual arguments about whether or not
a charcter is a light sleeper are avoided with a simple 1d20 roll against
perception. Characters who want to search for hidden items, clues, or
persons in a crowd may also use this 1d20 perception roll. Characters
should likewise be given some odds for success if searching for secret
doors, traps, and other things even if they have no previous skill at
finding such items; a 1d100 roll vs. perception would probably be
appropriate in most situations. Other possibile applications are boundless.
To find the appropriate check in these situations, the DM must concider the
relative difficulty of the act of perception in the game. If an average
perception is represented by a score of 10, and if individuals with really
bad perception scores are logically not going to be adventurers, then
players with characters of average perception will pass a 1d20 check agains
perception slightly more than half the time. Checks agains perception using
2d20 will succeed about one time in four, while 1d100 checks will succeed
only slightly more than one time in every 10 tries. Also, the DM needs to
consider whether or not the character can appreciate what he has perceived -
which my involve other ability checks vs. intelligence or wisdom, as the
situation dictates.
Applying perception to the example that started this artical, we get this
conclusion:
Whenever several members of the party venture out together, the DM instructs
the players whose characters are along to roll percentile dice - the odds
that any of them notice the halfling are slight, so a 1 in 10 chance is
appropriate. In fact, in the course of tailing the party many different
times, Ferd is noticed by two of the adventurers, each on different
occasions.
However, just noticing Ferd once is not enough - there is no reason to
suspect that he is following the party unless a party member notices him
more than once. Both party members who succeede at the 1d100 checks
subsequently fail the 1d20 checks tht would have meant they noticed Ferd on
a later occasion - so there is no reason to even attempt the 1d20 check vs.
their intelligence scores to suspect the halfling is a spy.
Unable to locate the headquarters of the assassins' guild, the frustrated
party goes on to other adventures. in the future, the PCs may return to the
city and try again - at which point, there is still a slight chance that one
of them might notice and begin to wonder about that halfling that keeps
following wherever they go.
MINIMUM ABILITY SCORES
These guidlines are for official character classes and kits only, but gamers
who use additional character classes or kits (like those that are introduced
every so often in DRAGON Magazine or on the net) should be able to adapt
this information easily enough. Keep in mind that a perception score of 9-11
is average, 12-14 is above average, and a 15 or over is exceptional.
Ranger and Ninja. Minimum perception: 15. Both depend heavily on
perception. The ranger is skilled at tracing, woodlore, pathfinding, and
spying. The ninja is difficult to suprise and is the most skilled of all
the character types in disguise. All of these skills demand superior
perception.
Barbarian, druid and thief . Minum perception: 12. Barbarians and druids
both depend on the ability to "tune in" to nature, which would be difficult
without good perceptual ability. Thieves obviously need to notice things
about their intended victims and potential witnesses, and there is a strong
relationship between perception and many of their specific skills.
Bard. Minimum perception: 9. High perception would benefit th bard, but
their other minimum scores are already so high that requiring an
above-average perception would make it almost impossible to roll up such a
character using any fair method.
Other character classes have no minimum requirements for perception, but a
character with a perception score lower than 5 should be severely
handicapped as an adventurer.
BONUSES FOR HIGH PERCEPTION
Since characters receive benefits for having exceptional scores in the other
abilities, the same should hold true for perception. On the other hand, in
order to maintain playability, the bonus system should be simple. Three
sorts of bonuses are suggested here.
PERCEPTION SCORE TABLE
(This is for games not using Skills and Powers)
Bonus to Bonus to
Ability General Adjustment specific specific
score information to suprise skills NWP's
3 Serious perceptual impairment -1 -10% -1
4 Perceptual impaiment exists -1 -5% -1
5-8
9 Minum Score for bards
10-11 Average
12 Minum score for thieves, druids, and barbarians
13-14
15 Minum score for rangers and ninjas
16
17 +1 +5% +1
18 +1 +10% +1
19 +2 +15% +2
20 +2 +20% +2
21 +3 +25% +3
22 +3 +30% +3
23 +3 +35% +3
24 +4 +40% +4
25 +4 +45% +4
BONUS TO SPECIFIC SKILLS
This applies to theives: Find Traps (but with no bonuses to improve the odds
to removing traps), Detect Noise, Detect Magic, Detect Illusion, Escape
Bonds, and a Bard's Hear Noise and Detect Magic Skills.
BONUS TO SPECIFIC NONWEAPON PROFICIENCIES
General: Fishing, Gaming, Navagation, Orienteering, Weather Knowledge.
Priest: Astrology, Religion, Spellcraft.
Rogue: Appraising, Blind Fighting, Disguise, Reading Lips.
Warrior: Blind fighting, Hunting, Survival, Tracking.
Wizard: Astrology, Astronomy, Religion, Spellcraft.
SKILLS AND POWERS PERCEPTION
The subabilities derived from a character's perception score are
precognition, which is a measure of how well a character notices something,
and observe, which measures a character's attentivness.
PRECOGNITION
Precognition Adjustment
score to suprise
3-4 -1
5-16 0
17-18 +1
19-20 +2
21-23 +3
24-25 +4
OBSERVE
Bonus to Bonus to
Observe specific specific
score skills skills
3 -10% -1
4 -5% -1
5-16 0 0
17 +5% +1
18 +10% +1
19 +15% +2
20 +20% +2
21 +25% +3
22 +30% +3
23 +35% +3
24 +40% +4
25 +45% +4
BONUS TO SPECIFIC SKILLS
This applies to theives: Find Traps (but with no bonuses to improve the odds
to removing traps), Detect Noise, Detect Magic, Detect Illusion, Escape
Bonds, and a Bard's Hear Noise and Detect Magic Skills.
BONUS TO SPECIFIC NONWEAPON PROFICIENCIES
General: Fishing, Gaming, Navagation, Orienteering, Weather Knowledge.
Priest: Astrology, Religion, Spellcraft.
Rogue: Appraising, Blind Fighting, Disguise, Reading Lips.
Warrior: Blind fighting, Hunting, Survival, Tracking.
Wizard: Astrology, Astronomy, Religion, Spellcraft.
