Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Passive perception checks feel weird

Player: i walk into the crypt
DM: okay roll a perception check

You don't need to know why you are rolling, you just now know something is up and you probably hope you had prof in perception.

If I have to be completely honest, while I agree that "keeping checks hidden" would make more sense in terms of realism, I'm sort of glad the game tells you about them, because it gives you some headroom to "cheat" your way around the check, at least knowing it's there. Otherwise too much hidden content would be lost to the player through mere bad luck.

If skill checks had to be completely hidden, then I'd probably also want them as a flat number requirement rather than a roll relying on dumb luck.

A agree with the failed checks prompt is kind of unecessary, and one way to deal with it, would be a simple gameplay menu option to turn it on/off. Make we choose at the beginning of the game, so we know there is this option, and leave it open to changes for the rest of the game.

Depends on what rolls you are talking about - if you are wandering round areas then i think its only fair that everyone in the party makes a roll to see if they notice something, its not as if the guy with the highest perception is going to be the only one trying to aware of their surroundings especially in somewhere dangerous. In fact I wouldnt mind if you got a roll each time you passed the area given that your equipment/skills might have changed in the meantime.

Passive perception, and passive insight aren't supposed to be rolls at all. It's supposed to be a flat 10+Skill. Active perception is what you roll when you're looking for things specifically. And that should be the skill you use to check a room that you feel suspicious about, or when you want to know which of the fifty barrels in the room aren't empty. Rogues are also supposed to get a bonus to spotting traps that doesn't seem to be coded in.

Having the auto-pause was a huge boon for me.. without it, by the time I realize something new should be investigated, or avoided, it is too late..

Ah yes, perception checks for animals.

I'm actually shocked to see that there are people that want immersion breaking mechanical equations, functions and logic gates thrown into their face. I agree with what you are saying but the perfect ruleset for this already exists in 5e and what you are seeing is Larian having taken liberties with the system, chosen to not implement it for whatever reason, or actively wants the presentation of their game to include these artificial arcade game features for whatever reason.

In 5e passive perception doesn't automatically trigger situations. It happens in the background. It affects the initial description of the area once you enter it and any desire for details ot a more detailed analysis requires you to roll. This works in tandem with the investigation feature. That being said, I do think that elements such as the level for a secret passage should only be seen prior to rolling one of these active checks if the main character meets the perception check. If a companion meets it they should hint for you that there is something worth investigating to prompt this check. The purpose of this is two fold as it would not only put all the power in the players hands but would keep your companions useful in a very realistic and immersive way. This feature can be improved if your relation status with them affects this to the point where they will keep it hidden from you or even tell you outright where it is which would even add a great deal of depth and significance to them.

That being said, traps and illusions include rules in regards to all of this. For traps passive perception would let you see the signs of traps(port holes, gaps in the seam in floot tiles etc) while figuring out what kind of track it is and how to avoid it requires an active check. As for illusions again passive perception will let you know immediately that something is wrong with a certain object but it still requires interaction to 'dispel' the illusion. In this case you do not need to roll anything but simply interact with the object to break the illusion.

This is not how things currently work in the game and I honestly haven't seen anyone make a convincing argument as for why they have deviated from this formula and these rules other than they are not aware of them, or consider their current system superior. In the case of the later it makes me question this full price EA and the point of giving feedback as it should be whichever system we as the players consider to be superior that should take precedent.

I like it, with the caveat of there should be an active way to search. It's not all that different from the "Nothing is Hidden" racial ability in DDO, but there, we have that, for the races it applies to, and an active search option, for when something just doesn't look right.

Yes, this thread is suggesting / feedbacking on that decision of theirs. Saying D&D isn't immersive because it has immersion breaking components of decisions, logic gates, and mechanical equations is an odd paradigm to start working from. Its only immersion breaking when you don't feel its something you should be doing or you cant do it when you feel like you should be able to.




Passive perception is what the average roll would be if you rolled infinite times and it is there to stop someone saying "roll for perception!" in dungeons and rooms to the DM. You can, at any point of the DM describing things, say "Id like to look at that statue, specifically" - even if passive perception had picked nothing up. Its a useful mechanic to avoid dice spamming from a PC.



Illusions require an active intelligence(investigation) check equal to the DC to see it as such; there is no mechanic for passive investigation due to the nature of what investigation is and how it is applied differently for each situation. They have done a good job of letting illusions be illusions, however. Ive been able to walk through every single one of them without any prior clue (except the map) that there is something beyond.



It feels like they have it almost perfectly wrong, at the moment. If they just rotate it a bit and put in more player controlled activity - a button that does a perception check on a small area, or investigation check on an object and lets us try until we hit a DC high enough to trigger "This is something / This is not something" then people can be as OCD as they want about it. In my last multiplayer game we went to the church with the resurrection skeleton guy. We all failed our checks to find the keyhole to his crypt. We had to leave. There is no other way to get in there or find that keyhole that we could think of. So, now we can't resurrect dead companions. Wtf. We need more tools than passive stats when it comes to some of the most used and highly rewarded mechanics in the game. Yes, it is a bit of a chin-scratcher if Larian decides to throw all of this advice out the windows, for sure.

Because it is the truth. These are limitations that we cannot escape in PnP but are always looking to. Video games should not keep this limitations in for no reason. The older games hid with with a degree of finesse that hides the fact that the action economy is still working while everything happens in real time. They chose not to include active rolls so as to deepen the immersion and it was one of the things they changes that the community didn't get into uproar about because it worked to their advantage. The goal of D&D is to give structure to a story, and videogames are capable of doing that on a much deeper level. The roll's can still occur, but there is no reason to shove the artificiallty in the players face.


I am aware, this is exactly what I was describing to the point that you highlighted the reason I am championing it.


I didn't say there is such a thing as passive perception. I said passive perception works in conjunction with investigation and the act of you walking through an illusion is an investigation check that has been cleverly hidden from you. Not all illusions are hidden walls, how would you interact with an illusion that is concealing the text of a tapestry that is weaved in color without bolding or outlines? What if the same illusion concealed this text by changing what it says. One solution does not conquer all.


In older games you could just trigger search as a feature that passively happened while you walked through an area and factors such as your distance from hidden things or details also affected your chance to see it. Rolls where happening in the background and your passive perception was being taken into account but it was done in an immersive and natural way that didn't interfere with the player, didn't push them in any particular way while still adhering to the mechanics.

It is the perfect example of what I mean when I say that these artificial elements should be hidden from you so that things can take a more organic and natural approach. I'd like to just spurge on about this for a minute if that is all right. Think about how different those approaches are. In one instance you are having to stop to roll a dice. In the other you select a party member and get them to actively search while they move around(potentially with stealth) while the artificial busywork happens in the background. You get so much more power as a player with nothing to take you out of the moment while your build and stats remain just as relevant. It is such a simple solution but it carries so much weight. Imagine if spending a hit dice on a short rest was instead an option to 'rest' where your characters sit down and have a drink or eat a piece of fruit while they regenerate. There are so many solutions to this problem that can only improve the immersion.

I don't presume to know how to solve this, I just think it is problematic as it is right now

Look at older games. They solved a lot of these issues very intelligently.

I think we agreeing, just focusing on different aspects. It sounds like we are both saying get rid of useless passive rolls. Im just moving that into give me a player controlled function to examine something I am curious about - a tapestry for instance. A natural 20 on perception wouldnt notice anything about an illusory tapestry, to your point. They DID have you auto-roll in the hag swamp to see it as it was. It wasn't passive, just an automatically triggered roll. Id rather there be things in the "nice" swamp that made me think "huh...thats weird" *Investigates that object*.

To your point, if its automatically triggered, not using my passive, and merely lets me know I failed something, thats super annoying. Either there are enough clues there to allow you to actively decide to do something about it or let me go along my oblivious way. Right now it just means a lack of player agency and frustration at not being able to do anything about it.

For sure. BG did it much better I agree

Hence why I proposed for them to use the previous way of circumventing these problems by giving you an active search state you can trigger on individual party members, it would solve all the problems seamlessly. If you suspected there was something you couldn't roll high enough for you could use a potion or spells to buff yourself and your stats. As far as an active roll button goes I think it would be better if the active search would reveal something to interact with but the in dialogue option could contain the roll or actually interacting it could trigger the roll or decide on if you pass or not with a take 10.

I don't mind the tests, nor failing them. It means I have something to discover next time I play.

I would like a better indication of what the characters see though. a "Hmm that's interesting" doesn't always help you see things.

I'm not saying just one player should do the check. I'm saying that if I'm exploring solo with, let's say, Astarion in stealth mode, I don't want to see if I fail a perception check. Because the moment I see the bad roll I know there is something there, even if Astarion noticed nothing at all. This means that, even if there are no In-game reasons to do so, I will bring every single character in my party to that same spot to exploit their perception checks, and this is called meta-gaming.

You shouldn't be able to see the roll if it failed.
Other already said that, and I agree.

We don't have to feel we missed something. That would be better in the next playtrough.

Yeah, I get that. But it is still not entirely thought out. it works for pen and paper, because the DM has to create the visuals for you. In a game however the visuals are clear. So visible perceptions in BG3 are like nipples on men or your appendix: A Rudiment. Obsolete at best, harmful in the worst.
So you roll a visible check with four characters and something pops up. Sadly with the way scenery is designed in this game you might not have the slightest idea what you just perceived. The trap room in the first ruins is a fine example. What did I just notice? Is it this button? Or one of the other 23 highlighted and interactable objects? Why doesn't newly discovered trap or button clearly light up, with an explanation what it is? Did you also just notice the button or did you discover what it is for? In BG2 hidden doors lighted up pink, traps in red. It was clear what it was. I just learned that you can right-click on these objects to, to disarm them. A video told me that, because Larian could not do that, or did in a sentence or maybe video that I might or might haven't watched.
It is also highly abusable, just keep calling and dismissing familiars that will do a perception check. If they are visible you are absolutely inclined to just reload until you succeed anyway. Either hide the roll, so that you are genuinely surprised and/or tell the player what they found and if it is a container, door, trap or miscellaneous...