Talk:Tome of Prowess (3.5e Sourcebook)/Perception

Is this finished? Its odd to see the DC´s empty, I am missing something?

Not entirely finished, no. - Tarkisflux 20:29, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

And done.

It occurred to me that you might have been referring to the 0 DCs as incomplete. The 0 DCs are not errors, they are actually 0 DCs. The intent is that you walk around taking 0 on perception and are able to see things around you. With 0 as the default DC you notice more things than you miss, and you can get a good description of an area without worrying about a perception check. You should be able to notice most things in the world that happen on or above your scale and aren't trying to hide from you, which this does. But it also means that you can still miss things when you're distracted by conversations or in a fight, or when they're far away, or lots of other things unless you have ranks in the skill or a big wisdom modifier.

tl;dr - the 0 DC entries are intended, and work properly as far as I've found. - Tarkisflux ^Talk 00:40, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

Relative vs Absolute Size Modifiers

For all the talk of relative size modifiers on the stealth page, it sure seems like perception, at least sight, is based around absolute size modifiers. Am I missing something or is this a mistake?--TheDarkWad (talk) 00:33, 7 November 2014 (UTC)

It's not a mistake. They do very different things. The stealth modifiers are for avoiding notice when you're trying to blend in, which is easier to do when you're smaller than everything else and harder to do when you're bigger than everything else. The sight DCs are to perceive things at all. Which might sound weird but allows you to determine from the skill rules things like what details you can make out from 50 paces or a mile, how far out you can see different enemy groups, etc.

There is some potentially weird overlap where someone is trying to hide behind a tree and parts of them are sticking out (a 'stealth' attempt without stealth check I guess), and in those cases you'd just check against the size of the shown bits to see if you perceive them or not. If they were actively stealthing on top of it... I don't know. I think it was supposed to be the higher of your stealth DC or your normal perceive DC, but I'm not sure if that's in there right now.

I'm not surprised that it's unclear how these interact. The skills were finished at pretty different points and almost certainly need a bit of updating. I'll get them right after I finish reverting affability and appraisal to the older format. - Tarkisflux ^Talk 03:45, 7 November 2014 (UTC)

After looking at it again I figured out what was going on. Short version - that rant is accurate-ish, but very out of date and refers to modifiers that aren't there anymore (specifically size difference bonuses and penalties vs. size category bonuses and penalties). The relative part is now handled by the various size based range DC adjustments. While that might look like large creatures are worse at stealth than smaller ones, they actually aren't when their environments are considered on scale. Giants can get within as many giant-lengths (giant dining tables, or whatever appropriately scaled measure you want to use) of their target as a human can get within human-lengths of theirs before discovery becomes a concern. And humans get within fewer giant-lengths of their target before discovery become a concern (fewer still if there is available cover for them that a larger creature wouldn't benefit from), and giants begin to fear discovery at more human-lengths from their target than a human does. Which is intended, and the gist of the rant.

Anyway, I'll go update that rant now. And fix the wording on what avoid notice does to the DC to find you. Thanks for bringing it to my attention. - Tarkisflux ^Talk 07:16, 16 November 2014 (UTC)