Ability: Wisdom
Requires Training: No
Perception represents a character's ability to notice hidden creatures, objects, traps, environmental cues, and subtle details, combining sight, hearing, and reasoning. Skilled characters can detect anomalies, secret objects, traps, hidden creatures, and extract information others might miss. It may also be used with social skills to gather information indirectly.
Uses:
- Passive Detection: Automatically checks each round for hidden creatures, objects, traps, or subtle cues; movement is normal.
- Active Detection: Focused search reduces movement and makes a check covering visual, auditory, and investigative detection, revealing hidden creatures, secret doors, objects, traps, and patterns or clues missed passively.
Check:
- DCs are opposed by Stealth, trap complexity, or environmental difficulty, modified by circumstantial factors.
Circumstantial Modifiers (Visual & Auditory):
- Complete line-of-sight block or invisibility, or magical silence / creature silent: Cannot detect
- Partial obstruction: +2 DC indoors, +5 DC outdoors per ~4 tiles
- Darkness / low-light without darkvision: +5 DC
- Target carrying light: -10 DC
- Size: 2 smaller +8 DC, 1 smaller +4 DC, same 0, 1 larger -4 DC, 2 larger -8 DC
- Back arc / out of line-of-sight: +5 DC
- Walls, doors, terrain: +2 DC indoors, +5 DC outdoors per ~4 tiles (auditory)
- Distance: +1 DC per 3 meters (~10 ft)
- Standing still: +5 bonus
- In combat: +10 DC (auditory)
Other Uses:
- Detect Traps: Attempt Perception vs trap DC; only rogues detect DC>35
- Find Secret Objects: Locate hidden or concealed items
- Interpret Clues: Understand patterns, deduce mechanisms, or extract meaning from subtle signals