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CRMcNeill
Director of Engineering
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 Posted: Tue May 21, 2019 11:29 pm Post subject: Re: How do you like to handle sensory perception? |
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| Naaman wrote: | | What CRM seems to be looking for is an ability to effortlessly detect stray details that are seemingly innocuous merely by having an opportunity to observe them (but without consciously looking for them). In D&D, for example, certain characters get a search check merely for walking within a certain distance of a secret door, no matter how cleverly the door is disguised. This would be an example of a passive ability that "kicks in" just because something is there, whether or not the character (or player) thinks there is a reason to search for it. |
Exactly. Deductive reasoning would certainly play into analysis of what is detected in the Search roll, but Investigation would play more into the Analytical side of it, whereas Search/Alertness would cover the gathering of information needed to make an accurate analysis.
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"No set of rules can cover every situation. It's expected that you will make up new rules to suit the needs of your game." - The Star Wars Roleplaying Game, 2R&E, pg. 69, WEG, 1996.
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garhkal
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| Posted: Tue May 21, 2019 11:31 pm Post subject: |
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The way i see it, Search to get the info, investigation to make heads or tails of it.
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Naaman
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| Posted: Wed May 22, 2019 4:14 am Post subject: |
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| So you are in the search-as-a-catch-all skill for active and passive perception? |
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Naaman
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| Posted: Wed May 22, 2019 4:23 am Post subject: |
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| A question for CRM: what would trigger the aletness roll? Or do you start every round with "roll alertness before we do anything else."? |
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CRMcNeill
Director of Engineering
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Location: Redding System, California Sector, on the I-5 Hyperspace Route.
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| Posted: Wed May 22, 2019 9:36 am Post subject: |
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| Naaman wrote: | | A question for CRM: what would trigger the alertness roll? Or do you start every round with "roll alertness before we do anything else."? |
Alertness would substitute for Perception on passive rolls (as described above) and Initiative, then stack with Search on active rolls.
Basically, it's a way to improve that particular aspect of Perception without having to put in the time and expense of improving the Attribute itself.
_________________
"No set of rules can cover every situation. It's expected that you will make up new rules to suit the needs of your game." - The Star Wars Roleplaying Game, 2R&E, pg. 69, WEG, 1996.
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garhkal
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| Posted: Wed May 22, 2019 2:51 pm Post subject: |
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| Naaman wrote: | | So you are in the search-as-a-catch-all skill for active and passive perception? |
Nope. Search is active, Perception is passive.
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Naaman
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| Posted: Thu May 23, 2019 11:55 am Post subject: |
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| garhkal wrote: | | Naaman wrote: | | So you are in the search-as-a-catch-all skill for active and passive perception? |
Nope. Search is active, Perception is passive. |
So in that case, you consider what CRM is trying to do as off limits? That is, you would not allow a house rule to improve passive perception? |
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Raven Redstar
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| Posted: Thu May 23, 2019 1:43 pm Post subject: |
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I'm in the camp of rolling Search for passive perception checks as well.
In 2nd R&E page 53 it states under the description for the Perception attribute:
| Quote: | Gamemasters often ask players to make search or Perception rolls to see how much their characters notice about their surroundings. The higher
the roll, the more the character notices. |
I don't see why someone who is more skilled at looking for things would not have a better chance of noticing something passively with a glance. But, I also know that I'm largely in the minority when it comes to my feelings regarding skill bloat in later editions.
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garhkal
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| Posted: Thu May 23, 2019 2:22 pm Post subject: |
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| Raven Redstar wrote: | I'm in the camp of rolling Search for passive perception checks as well.
In 2nd R&E page 53 it states under the description for the Perception attribute:
| Quote: | Gamemasters often ask players to make search or Perception rolls to see how much their characters notice about their surroundings. The higher
the roll, the more the character notices. |
I don't see why someone who is more skilled at looking for things would not have a better chance of noticing something passively with a glance. But, I also know that I'm largely in the minority when it comes to my feelings regarding skill bloat in later editions. |
To me, search is an Active use, ergo for passive rolls, perception would be what's rolled..
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Raven Redstar
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| Posted: Thu May 23, 2019 3:25 pm Post subject: |
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| garhkal wrote: |
To me, search is an Active use, ergo for passive rolls, perception would be what's rolled.. |
You've stated as such multiple times. I was simply adding my opinion along with a page quote as to why I choose to do things my way. 
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Whill
Dark Lord of the Jedi (Owner/Admin)
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| Posted: Thu May 23, 2019 6:17 pm Post subject: |
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| Raven Redstar wrote: | I'm in the camp of rolling Search for passive perception checks as well.
In 2nd R&E page 53 it states under the description for the Perception attribute:
| Quote: | Gamemasters often ask players to make search or Perception rolls to see how much their characters notice about their surroundings. The higher
the roll, the more the character notices. |
I don't see why someone who is more skilled at looking for things would not have a better chance of noticing something passively with a glance. But, I also know that I'm largely in the minority when it comes to my feelings regarding skill bloat in later editions. |
Sure. Someone certainly can be good at noticing things both when looking and not looking. That was never debated. But either way you do it (RAW pre-R&E, or R&E) being good at both can also come just from a high base Perception.
Hypothetically, there are three possible ability comparison combinations of active and passive awareness. (1) A character is equal at both active and passive. (2) A character is better at active than passive. (3) A character is better at passive than active.
#3 doesn't make any sense to me. How could a character be worse at noticing things when looking? Well, original RAW and newer RAW don't have that option, so that's good. But the update in R&E, lumping passive awareness in with active (the Search skill) eliminates #2, when I think it's extremely reasonable that a character could be better at noticing things actively than passively. Original RAW has that option by Search being for active awareness with passive remaining with the base attribute.
So what does the update in R&E do? It makes raising passive awareness much easier, but sacrifices the combination possibility of ever being more skilled in active than passive. (In R&E RAW, base Perception is still the basis for initiative even though passive awareness should be a key factor in initiative.) I don't think a good solution is having two separate skills for active and passive, because then you could have the wonky situation with better passive than active.
Base Perception being passive with Search being active is the way it was done in the first 9 years of this game before R&E, and I guess I just feel that if it ain't broke, don't fix it. A bigger complaint I've ran into among D6ers about Star Wars is that Perception includes both physical and social awareness (D6 Adventure and other games split these up into two separate attributes). RAW allows for a higher social than physical by justing having high social skills on a low Perception, so the main issue with the system is making characters with a low social awareness and high physical awareness. Instead of adding another normal attribute which could throw a lot of other stuff off, I've added a simple physical awareness advantage available at char gen (that requires at least one skill die allocated to search) which increases passive awareness checks to +2 above attribute and gives a +1 to initiative rolls. So you still can't have an extreme differential of physical over social awareness, but it gives a character a chance to have higher physical awareness than social awareness, while preserving passive physical awareness not being better than active. It works for me.
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CRMcNeill
Director of Engineering
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Location: Redding System, California Sector, on the I-5 Hyperspace Route.
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| Posted: Thu May 23, 2019 9:10 pm Post subject: |
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| Raven Redstar wrote: | I'm in the camp of rolling Search for passive perception checks as well.
In 2nd R&E page 53 it states under the description for the Perception attribute:
| Quote: | Gamemasters often ask players to make search or Perception rolls to see how much their characters notice about their surroundings. The higher
the roll, the more the character notices. |
I don't see why someone who is more skilled at looking for things would not have a better chance of noticing something passively with a glance. But, I also know that I'm largely in the minority when it comes to my feelings regarding skill bloat in later editions. |
The question there, IMO, would be how many MAPs a character would have applied to their passive Search roll...
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"No set of rules can cover every situation. It's expected that you will make up new rules to suit the needs of your game." - The Star Wars Roleplaying Game, 2R&E, pg. 69, WEG, 1996.
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garhkal
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| Posted: Thu May 23, 2019 11:32 pm Post subject: |
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| Naaman wrote: | | garhkal wrote: | | Naaman wrote: | | So you are in the search-as-a-catch-all skill for active and passive perception? |
Nope. Search is active, Perception is passive. |
So in that case, you consider what CRM is trying to do as off limits? That is, you would not allow a house rule to improve passive perception? |
In effect, yes. If you want a better perception, increase the attribute.
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CRMcNeill
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| Posted: Fri May 24, 2019 10:15 am Post subject: |
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| garhkal wrote: | | If you want a better perception, increase the attribute. |
We should do the same with Dodge. If you’re deliberately Dodging an attack, you get to roll Dodge, but if you’re just “passively” Dodging (reacting to an attack while doing something else), you default to your Dexterity Attribute. Want to get better at Dodging unexpected attacks? You’ll have to increase your Dex Attribute.
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Naaman
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| Posted: Fri May 24, 2019 12:00 pm Post subject: |
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| garhkal wrote: | | Naaman wrote: | | garhkal wrote: | | Naaman wrote: | | So you are in the search-as-a-catch-all skill for active and passive perception? |
Nope. Search is active, Perception is passive. |
So in that case, you consider what CRM is trying to do as off limits? That is, you would not allow a house rule to improve passive perception? |
In effect, yes. If you want a better perception, increase the attribute. |
How do you handle this in D&D? I'm not familiar with AD&D, but I know 3.x has separate search and spot skills, as well as defaulting to wisdom for characters "untrained" in the skill.
For you, is it merely because the D6 rules don't aready provide for what's at issue in this thread (passive perception)? Or do you feel that RPGs (or just Star Wars characters) should never be able to have higher-than-attribute general awareness?
If I converted a d20 character with max ranks in spot, and skill emphasis, etc, how would you handle that from a character concept perspective? |
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