Perception [Spellbound]

[merxa]

First, if anyone knows of past relevant threads that deal primarily with perception (or spot / listen) please link them. Often the den seems to fixate on stealth, and very little is said about perception, but I could be missing important contributions made previously.

Perception is sort of the Ur-skill, even in games without any sort of perception related skill, everyone must still contend with what their characters can see or hear. Maybe like fish in water, it can be difficult for us to explain something we're so immersed within.

My initial draft below is rough with obvious missing pieces, but I am looking for feedback from the community. I will be editing the section below to incorporate changes, suggestions, fixes, etc. Some attempts will be made at formatting, but the primary focus will be on the text itself. I hope this topic finds a little more purchase then my stealth thread.

edit: reorganized section, added a little clarifying text.
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Perception
Your bonus to Perception is calculated by adding together your DEX + SPR + MND and dividing the sum by three ( (DEX+SPR+MND) / 3 ).

Everyone is considered trained in perception even if they have no ranks in it. Perception is divided into three groups: Notice, Combat Sense, Social Sense. Notice also includes two sub groups of Search and Deduction. All Perception checks are modified by relevant distance, see Size, Distance modifiers and the Horizon for more information.

The basic perception DC is 3 +size - distance + misc, with those using stealth replacing the 3 with their stealth roll. The one rolling perception wins ties.

Notice
The default perception check, notice determines what pertinent details you pick up in your environment. Notice is also rolled when searching an area, or making a deduction. Typically a failed Notice check cannot be rerolled.

Search
Outside combat, declare the area being searched as well as the type of search being done: quick, careful, thorough, exhaustive. A player can always declare another search of the area but it must be more extensive than the previous search (from quick to careful), but cannot go backwards or redo the same sort of search. Anyone may find traps, secret doors/compartments through searching.

The GM should determine the total time it would take to search the declared area using the following guidelines.

A quick search assumes taking 1 AP per square, an especially dense square (searching through a pile of hay, opening multiple small compartments in a drawer) takes 3 AP per square. The searcher makes a single blind search roll.

A careful search does not require a roll, instead the searcher is assumed to have rolled a ‘10’ plus or minus any relevant modifiers (almost always gaining +1 for being adjacent to the space being searched). A careful search takes 3 AP per square, and especially dense squares takes 9 AP.

A thorough search does not require a roll. Instead the searcher is assumed to have rolled a ‘15’ plus or minus any relevant modifiers (almost always gaining +1 for being adjacent to the space being searched). A thorough search takes 1 minute per square and especially dense squares take 3 minutes.

An exhaustive search does not require a roll. Instead the searcher is assumed to have rolled an ‘18’ plus or minus any relevant modifiers (almost always gaining +1 for being adjacent to the space being searched). An exhaustive search takes 3 minutes per square and especially dense squares take 9 minutes.

During combat, only quick searches can be made. Searches often involve the clearing away of concealment which may reveal anyone using stealth in that square. If you happen to be searching the square someone is hiding in, and they have some other form of concealment, immediately make an additional perception (combat sense) check with a +3 bonus -- this is a one off check only applied to the characters hiding in the square being searched and does not count as the ‘free’ perception (combat sense) check made per round, nor does this result persist between turns as would a normal perception (combat sense) check.

Searching can also be used to find tracks, but following tracks requires a Nature (Survival) check.

Deduction
Used for investigation, deduction infers some greater truth from an assemblage of facts and observations. The GM may call for a deduction if they believe the characters have access to all the pieces of a clue but their players may have forgotten certain details or have not otherwise deduced the import of these clues. A PC may ask for a roll in order to be provided relevant information in a given circumstance, examples could be investigating a crime scene, interviewing witnesses or suspects, trying to gain insight into grand plans of adversaries. Rerolls are not permitted unless a significant new source of information is found, or the character gains a permanent increase in perception (notice).

Combat Sense
Mostly used in combat, Perception (combat sense) is also used for any opposed stealth checks. Ties go to the one rolling perception (combat sense). During your turn you may opt to roll a Perception (combat sense) check without expending any actions unless you have already rolled perception (combat sense) prior in the round. Otherwise, additional perception checks cost 1 AP, however If opponents are undetected, you may not make any additional perception checks unless your character has a clear and convincing motivation to do so. Your last perception check carries through until the beginning of your next turn.

Social Sense
Used to pick up social cues, and broadly a measure of your empathy. Perception (social sense) can be used to intuit a creatures emotional state such as how comfortable someone is in a given situation, whether a person is likely lying or telling the truth, social status, if someone is under any non-evident constraints, distress, compulsions (magical or otherwise). (un)Successful assessments of social affairs also provide (dis)advantage in any relevant Guile checks.

Common Senses and Special Senses
Demi-humans are assumed to have the 5 common senses -- Sight, Hearing, Smell, Touch, and Taste. Some creatures may have additional senses or especially well developed versions of the common 5. For the typical commoner, of the common 5 senses, Sight and Hearing are the dominant senses and often the first ones that are relevant. Stealth requires concealment from sight -- without some special ability, a high stealth roll will not allow someone to hide if they are plainly visible.

A general distinction is made between a sense that is precise or more coarse-grained. Special senses, or regular senses that are heightened, will often be given a ‘sight’ and ‘sense’ range. Bonuses and advantages are generally provided to those making perception checks if such an ability is relevant, and for high precision abilities that are counted as ‘sight’, automatic detection is provided. As an example, many undead have a lifesense and lifesight ability, which functions independently of the common 5 senses to detect anyone considered alive. Those attempting to stealth within an undead's lifesense rolls stealth as usual, but unless they have special abilities,they will be automatically detected if they enter the lifesight range, just as if they were plainly visible to someone's eyesight.

For legacy reasons, ‘hearing-sight’ will be referred to as blindsight, ‘smell-sight’ as scent.

Demi-huamns are considered to have ‘touch-sight’ 0m, that is they automatically detect anything that is touching them. The same goes for taste (they automatically detect anything they taste).

Related conditions:

Blindness. You cannot see. Everyone is considered invisible to you. Without some other special ability, you cannot detect anyone beyond 300m unless they are extremely loud or otherwise. You are considered flat-footed. Anything that reasonably requires sight automatically fails. Any unknown terrain is considered difficult terrain.

These drawbacks are assumed for those who become temporarily blind. Anyone who is permanently blind can overcome some of these constraints, in particular: you are not automatically considered flat-footed (you are still flat-footed to anyone you have not detected), and unknown terrain is not considered difficult terrain.


Size, Distance Modifiers and the Horizon

Distance to the relevant source impacts perception and is done by range categories.
Adjacent, within 1 meter, +1
Close, within 2-10 meters, +0
Medium, 11-30 meters, -1
Long, 31-100 meters, -2
Extreme, 101-300 meters, -3
Overland, 301-1000 meters, -4; 1001m-2000m -5, 2001m-3000m -6, 3001m-4000m -6, 4001m-5000m -7

Assign an additional -1 penalty for every 1000 meters beyond Overland. For large distances, calculate the beginning of the range in 1000s of meters and add an additional -3 penalty -- so something 27000 to 28000 meters away is 27+3, or -30 in total.

Without elevation, a medium sized creature cannot see anything beyond the horizon which is 5000 meters unless the object is 1 meter or taller.

The general equation being used to determine distance to horizon is 3.6*sqrt(height), distance is rounded down to 100s of meters.

Sight distances assume an exceptionally clear day with no other obstructions. Weather conditions can reduce these distances by 10%, 20%, 50% or more.

Light sources are much easier to see, without other obstructions a candle can easily be see from 2500m, and a torch from 3000m

Assume objects larger than colossal can be seen automatically once they appear on the horizon. A basic rule of thumb can be if the object isn’t at least 1/10000th the size as the distance it cannot be seen unless it is also admitting light in which case it’ll appear like a star to most onlookers. (While these guidelines are intended for extremely large objects, applying this to a 2m sized creature, it assumes it cannot be seen if further than 20,000m; within the rules of the system this would otherwise be a DC 3 + size0 -distance(-22) = DC 25.)

Height Horizon
1m 3600m
2m 5000m
3m 6200m
4m 7200m
5m 8,000m
6m 8,800m
7m 9,500m
8m 10,100m
9m 10,800m
10m 11,300m
12m 12,400m
14m 13,400m
16m 14,400m
18m 15,200m
20m 16,000m
25m 18,000m
30m 19,700m
35m 21,200m
40m 22,700m
45m 24,100m
50m 25,400m
60m 27,800m
70m 30,100m
80m 32,100m
90m 34,100m
100m 36,000m
150m 44,000m
200m 50,900m
250m 56,900m
300m 62,300m
400m 72,000m
500m 80,400m
1000m 113,800m
2000m 160,900m
3000m 197,100m
4000m 227,600m
5000m 254,500m
10000m 360,000m

Calculating the distance two tall objects can see each other is 3.6*sqrt(h1+h2) *1000m, distances rounded down as above. see table below for reference



Creature sizes


For weight, creatures will typically range 1kg to 150kg per cbm.

Creatures can be of different dimensions but should adhere to their cubic meter (cbm) range; here width and length are assumed to be the same. Size is an approximation of the space a creature comfortably occupies, and isn’t assumed to fill the entire space.

Scaling down

For weight, creatures will typically range 0.001mg to 0.15mg per mm^3.

Creatures not using stealth are assumed to be defaulting to a 3 before adding any relevant modifiers. For example, for a medium sized commoner to see an unarmored Storm Giant (10m height) walking over a clear plain at the maximum horizon distance (11,300m), would require a DC 3 - 4size +14(distance) or DC 13

[deaddmwalking]

So as soon as I have to calculate the distance between two mountains, I've lost interest.

If you're going to make things complicated, you want them to work. A Blue Whale (-6 to Stealth) on the opposite end of the National Mall (4000m, -6 to Perception) seems like something I'd expect to be able to see relatively easily. Now maybe they just have a really bad Stealth Score before you figure in the penalty.

If you're going for something reality based, the fact that a creature 2x every dimension is 8x bigger seems like the size penalties should scale faster.

The reason a lot of things focus on Stealth is that it's pretty easy to see something really big really far away if it isn't hiding and it's shining a light (like a star!!!). It's much harder to spot something that is trying to avoid being noticed. Perception can be tied to letting you notice circling buzzards that are far away but not actually HIDING, and it can also be tied to seeing someone lurking in ambush. I think it's important to distinguish between those.

Can you spot a group of mountaineers working their way up the slope of a mountain from 15 miles away? That's a question you might want your system to be able to determine a TN and spit out an exact answer - but not necessarily...

[merxa]

Thanks for your feedback!

I definitely need to reorg the section, as a working draft I am most interested in making sure the rules work, but after that yes I need to make sure they are readable.

Regarding the Blue Whale, I did actually list a similar example, i'll repaste it here:

Creatures not using stealth are assumed to be defaulting to a 3 before adding any relevant modifiers. For example, for a medium sized commoner to see an unarmored Storm Giant (10m height) walking over a clear plain at the maximum horizon distance (11,300m), would require a DC 3 - 4size +14(distance) or DC 13
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If the commoner is defaulting to an 11, they would notice something on the horizon around 10,000m -- and it would probably look like a really, really tiny face, if they could even get much detail from it, maybe just a little color bobbing up and down against the horizon.

~
Taking your example, let's say the blue whale is in a giant tank 4000m away, that would be a DC 3 +size - distance, which is 3+-6-6, or DC 3, so you would basically automatically notice this, assuming you had an unobstructed view to the tank.

the system is using 3d6, since it is a bell curve, a -1, -2, -3, etc is very severe, -6 is an extreme penalty -- with no bonuses, getting an '11' with -6 requires a roll of 17 or 18, which only happens about 2% of the time.

I do want the rules to figure out if you can see a group of mountaineers working their up a slope of a mountain 15 miles away -- again assuming they aren't engaging with stealth and they happen to be on an exposed cliff and no other obstructions exist ... 15 miles is ~24,000m that would be a penalty of -27, taking DC 3 +size - distance, DC would be 30, so that would require a minimum of a +12 and rolling an 18 -- perhaps something a very high level character optimized in perception (notice) would be capable of in this system.

The height charts could be placed at the end of the section -- probably only useful if you're in the crows nest of a ship and want to know how far away you'd see another crows nest on the open sea on a clear day. Perhaps you have local geography and want to know if they can see the 3000m mountain? I want my system to be able to answer those questions with authority (this mountain could be visible by most 2m demi-humans as far as ~197,000m away).

So the system as presented is splitting perception up in a few buckets: Notice (which also contains search and deduction), combat sense (the primary skill when opposing stealth), and social sense. I had deduction split off, but recently wrapped it back into Notice, which I really am not sure about.

[MGuy]

I did not use specific long distances to decide on modifiers for perception. I also try to keep what rules I write for perception focused in on practical uses only. If a big thing is off in the distance and unobscured by an equally big thing the players 'just' see it. I don't feel the need to get numbers involved even at the design stage for just that. I think the only thing I did was make considerations for seeing stuff over the horizon to determine whether or not a big thing can be seen in the fog of war from a certain Hex. Even that was just copied from a set of hex rules that already exists. I'm not even sure that's a valuable thing to even do because anything important, that's really big, is going to be something I want players to see. Perception otherwise functions to spot ambushes, find stuff, etc but on a much smaller scale. Also I further define what happens when something that was previously ambiguous, like what happens when an ambush is detected, happens. In the case of an Ambush it means the players get to choose better initial start positions and get act first in the order they wish.

I have no rules equivalent to this deduce thing. I'm guessing this is so players don't get stuck if they can't intuit what a GM is laying out for them. At the point I'd be doing this I wouldn't bother with a roll. Taking some kind of resource I believe would be the better option.

For combat I do pretty much the same thing. Perceptive abilities counter stealth or distraction skills. There's also different abilities that tie into leveraging perception to do other things.

For social things I am leaning away from making a lie detector ability. Doesn't sit right with me. Otherwise I'm doing something similar. Using perception to pick up on things like general mood, strange compulsions, and such.

Only thing I have to say about the senses is that there should probably be noticeable debilitating consequences for senses outside of sight being impaired. For senses like hearing and our sense of touch being put off balance (for the former) and being made clumsy (for the latter) would probably be decent penalties. Not being used to being unable to hear anything (and anything that might disable your hearing temporarily) tends to be disorienting. Being unable to feel anything makes it harder to do things in general. For greater senses like scent, just losing the sense should be fine since it is a niche thing anyway.

That's all I got for a quick reading at least.

[merxa]

Thank you for your reply!

I did not use specific long distances to decide on modifiers for perception. I also try to keep what rules I write for perception focused in on practical uses only.

I am interested in reading through your take on perception, would you be willing to link or post your rule set?

If a big thing is off in the distance and unobscured by an equally big thing the players 'just' see it. I don't feel the need to get numbers involved even at the design stage for just that. I think the only thing I did was make considerations for seeing stuff over the horizon to determine whether or not a big thing can be seen in the fog of war from a certain Hex. Even that was just copied from a set of hex rules that already exists. I'm not even sure that's a valuable thing to even do because anything important, that's really big, is going to be something I want players to see.

I have the explicit goal to formalize some of this, even if the formalization is 'if the object is extremely large, it can automatically be seen'. Another way of saying this is I'd like to write a bit of rules text that help better table play (whatever that means).

These highly specific horizon rules can also be used in low level survey games, ie the party is contracted to survey a path like lewis and clark. If someone says, I climb up the tallest tree nearby, or I find the highest point around, what can I see? It helps me at least to just have a formalized answer I can spit out.

I am going to reorganize the perception rules to put more of the technical things at the back. I will also redo the h1,h2 table to include more variations. That table in particular was adapted from a excellent blog post on the subject by John Giovannis. He ends up with a higher constant (3.83), which I did not go with because of some other sources as well as liking that the standard 2m creature has an easy to remember 5km horizon line of sight. I ended up somewhere between his case I and II

Perception otherwise functions to spot ambushes, find stuff, etc but on a much smaller scale. Also I further define what happens when something that was previously ambiguous, like what happens when an ambush is detected, happens. In the case of an Ambush it means the players get to choose better initial start positions and get act first in the order they wish.

ambushes and 'surprise' has some really interesting edge cases that I am curious how other people play through. Let's say the PC is in a controlled position, and able to easily observe the enemy and determine how they want to engage. Once they say 'I cast a spell' or 'I fire an arrow' I trigger a surprise round and let them initiate the action that they described. But I have noticed players often want their action to have 'occurred' before the surprise round even starts, which explicitly goes against certain abilities, take for example the 5e weapon of warning:

This magic weapon warns you of danger. While the weapon is on your person, you have advantage on initiative rolls. In addition, you and any of your companions within 30 feet of you can't be surprised, except when incapacitated by something other than nonmagical sleep. The weapon magically awakens you and your companions within range if any of you are sleeping naturally when combat begins.

and of course such abilities can lead to the person being ambushed to actually act before the ambusher engages and does the action they declared. It's obviously sometimes a frustrating outcome for people, and it can be odd to describe to a character what they sense exactly -- 'your spidey sense is tingling' or some variant thereof ends up happening. I've made peace with this myself, but I am curious how others approach this.

I have no rules equivalent to this deduce thing. I'm guessing this is so players don't get stuck if they can't intuit what a GM is laying out for them. At the point I'd be doing this I wouldn't bother with a roll. Taking some kind of resource I believe would be the better option.

Some of this is inspired by the 3 clue rules discussions from the alexandrian, but much of it just comes from actual table play, where I think as GM, the PC has received enough bits of information that they would likely piece together some conclusion, but the player might be coming at this information weeks apart instead of hours apart, and they certainly don't live in the mindspace of their character 24x7. It could also be used for puzzle locks, puzzles in general (certainly will sidebar discuss puzzles in play). It's meant to be a roll that can answer the 'what do I know I know?' sort of questions, often PCs will default to a straight wisdom or int check, if they feel unsure if their character should be aware or ascertain some conclusion or not.

Is this replacing roleplaying with rollplaying? I hope not, my philosophy generally boils down to using rolls to determine uncertain outcomes, and if someone wants to be better at certain types of outcomes then others they should invest into the mechanical means to achieve it.

For combat I do pretty much the same thing. Perceptive abilities counter stealth or distraction skills. There's also different abilities that tie into leveraging perception to do other things.

Again, I am interested in reading through any ruleset you are willing to share.

For social things I am leaning away from making a lie detector ability. Doesn't sit right with me. Otherwise I'm doing something similar. Using perception to pick up on things like general mood, strange compulsions, and such.

So Spellbound by design has 4 basic outcomes, success, failure, then critical success and critical failure. Currently that is defined as hitting the DC, failing the DC, beating the DC by +6, failing by +6 (so for a DC 11, 11 is success, 17 is critical success, 10 is failure, 4 is critical failure). This allows for a 'lie detector' ability to return type I and type II errors, and if you enforce blind rolls then the player has no meta information to impact their decisions (beyond the meta information that they may be mistaken, but hopefully we all live with such meta information yeah? haha).

We've discussed social encounters here, and my tiny paragraph on it is certainly not sufficient -- it's more like the elevator pitch for including it -- but, for me at least, players often want to know how they feel about a given NPCs behavior, are they trustworthy, do I think they are lying, or withholding some important facts? I think letting people be better or worse at figuring that out is a worthwhile goal, and this is meant to do that heavy lifting.

Only thing I have to say about the senses is that there should probably be noticeable debilitating consequences for senses outside of sight being impaired. For senses like hearing and our sense of touch being put off balance (for the former) and being made clumsy (for the latter) would probably be decent penalties. Not being used to being unable to hear anything (and anything that might disable your hearing temporarily) tends to be disorienting. Being unable to feel anything makes it harder to do things in general. For greater senses like scent, just losing the sense should be fine since it is a niche thing anyway.

Yeah fully agree, I wrote up blindness because I figured I could do it quickly, but being deaf should have impacts, and I may as well make notes about what lacking smell, touch, taste, could entail. As well as a more general note on how it would be bewildering for a creature with a 6th sense to lose it suddenly.

That's all I got for a quick reading at least.

Thanks again for the comments.

[MGuy]

I tend to read these things regularly at work on my phone so I'm not at home to sift through my documents. If I remember by the time I get out of here I can copy paste some lines from the perception section. I cannot do the same as easily with combat as that's still a massive wip with a lot of parts and things I haven't taken the time to decide on. I can go into more detail about what I've done and am thinking about doing. It's on my mind a lot even if I don't work on it as often as I'd like.

First I should explain a bit about my thinking on the use of perception and an important bit about what I plan to do overall with my HB. Characters are constantly perceiving stuff so it's gotta be a thing we all know that. Whenever I introduce a roll or think about numbers I start off thinking about what I'm ok with players failing at. In the case if perceiving stuff that practically means knowing a thing exists in most cases. This is the same thing I do for everything. There's nothing I can think of that would be on the horizon and possibly visible that I would want to chance players failing a spot check for. So I don't cover it (save for horizon limits as I explained). For the surveying adventure I'd see some use of knowing exactly how many Hexes they can see but even then I'd go by number of Hexes instead of metered distances as that is the real measuring scale that they are interacting with. Of course Hexes translate to certain distances so I'm figuring that out on my end but then whatever I come up with I'll be rounding to the nearest hex size.

There are benefits to this. Not covering it saves me space and by just telling GMs to straight up tell players if there's anything important in the distance I push them to giving players vital info that they should have to make decisions with (without jerking them around for it) and I avoid even the smallest chance of me fucking up numbers that might cause some kind of weird interaction because of number manipulation or abilities that might come up that have some weird interaction that ends up creating a weird interaction.

One of my design goals was to make a game that had more discreet phases that players act within with more defined actions that players can take within those phases All of the rules are then effected by that. So the reason I don't have many concrete numbers for long distance spotting is because that would only be done in the Hexploration part of the game and as I mentioned that's mostly a copy paste job where the only significant long distance consideration is how many Hexes away can players spot things (I actually think I got the rules from the Alexandrian). The value of that consideration is still in the air because I cannot think of a scenario where I'll ever desire players to ever have a chance at missing anything distant and large. Otherwise there's no long distance use for perception in the Hexploration part of the game since it's mostly just navigating and avoiding hazards/ambushes.

On a smaller scale players can go through 'dungeons' or other space that would be fitting for the "Delve" section of the game. The distances players will be operating at within these sections are much smaller so I still don't need to worry b about long distances. Here perception serves the largely the same function as before. Avoiding hazards, spotting enemies, with the addition of finding secrets.*

Then there's the combat minigame where perception is a defense against stealth, deception, and whatever kind of attacks. Basically anything trying to distract, mislead, or avoid detection within combat. This could come into play any number of ways, I imagine mostly from maneuvers and spells, but that's still all up in the air still. Even in large battlefields the scope of uses outside of defense against what I described is limited. For those cases I use the distance considerations I have for long range weapons like long bows and guns where therev are simply penalties for spotting a thing in combat based on combat distances. Those are rangrs that are like 30, 60, 90 ft. About what you can expect to be on whatever mat you're using. There are different numbers I'm probably going to implement for engagements with vehicles or Kaiju but I haven't planned for it yet so I don't even have numbers off the top of my head. Even so players will likely be able to see these things and so the ranges will most likely be for maneuvers and attacks.

*There are still some things I'm mulling over about how I want to do scouting ahead and if want to deal with things like noise/danger levels to add a bit of a ticking clock to getting through a dungeon encouraging players to weigh the risks of delaying the final confrontation vs achieving possible side objectives for some boon or another. The focus will be on what concrete benefits players will gain from having someone do recon while having it be small and quick enough so that it doesn't bog down okay for a party that likely won't be fully sneaky.


All of my decisions are leaning towards utility at the end of the day. If there's a flying whale on the horizon that's a thing I'm always going to see. I don't see the need to craft a complicated number system just to tell GMs to tell players they see a giant whale. The thing about deducing an answer for players after they've collected x number of chores would be the same. At that point you believe the characters should be able to put the clues together and get whatever conclusion you've set for them. Is there any reason to have them roll? Not in a roll vs roleplay way. Just why have them roll to get information you need and want them to receive after they've already done the song and dance to earn it? I'd say at that point you just give it to them, or if you want to penalize them for not fitting the pieces together make it cost a resource. I don't see any utility in leaving that to chance.

As for the lie detection I am not criticizing your desire to allow players to do it. If you want that there're definite advantages to having it. I'm leaning away from it right now (at least until I test it out some more) because I think it's more engaging if the answer to whether or not someone was lying or not it's a bit more ambiguous. I think there's a bit more drama if players with high insight notice ticks or things that don't exactly tell you if the person is lying but instead give you insight into their feelings. This is definitely still in the brain storming stage because doing diplomacy is difficult and I don't work on this as often as I would like. However the idea is that, like in crpgs (and recently games like Deus ex and another investigative game I can't remember the name of), there might be words, phrases, moods, etc are given instead of a yes/no on lying so the canny investigators can go digging more or just come to the wrong conclusions altogether.

I don't know if this will work out as planned but that's my intent. I've been trying to find ways to ease it into my current games but the people I game with are just interested in me running more pf games and not really with b switching up for anything too experimental so that eats up most of the time I spend doing ttrpg stuff.

[merxa]

I have reorganized the perception section to push the tables to the back. Added a little clarifying text. The ruleset still needs numerous things, DCs for searching (secret doors, hidden compartments, finding the relevant letter in a stack of papers, etc), and more tables of DCs in general. Also need write up for conditions like being deaf or numb.

I tend to read these things regularly at work on my phone so I'm not at home to sift through my documents. If I remember by the time I get out of here I can copy paste some lines from the perception section.

Friendly reminder, if you have time over the holidays, I am interested in reading though your perception ruleset.

There's nothing I can think of that would be on the horizon and possibly visible that I would want to chance players failing a spot check for. So I don't cover it (save for horizon limits as I explained).

Do you use encounter distances instead? How faraway do you allow PCs to spot a huge dragon that is flying towards them? Currently this system says the dragon would be seen by a commoner (perception check 11) at 7000 meters. They may not identify it as a 'dragon', they would just see something, a dot of color, far off in the sky.

How about an 8m ruined tower in the barren wastes, will your players see this from 1hex away, 2 hexes, 3? Maybe the route they are taking won't let them see it unless they happen to be 10m or higher in the air? I think 'winging' the answers to these questions causes the ttrpg video game equivalent of pop-in.

For the surveying adventure I'd see some use of knowing exactly how many Hexes they can see but even then I'd go by number of Hexes instead of metered distances as that is the real measuring scale that they are interacting with. Of course Hexes translate to certain distances so I'm figuring that out on my end but then whatever I come up with I'll be rounding to the nearest hex size.

I've haven't begin the process of developing hex based rules, but there will at some point be a recommended / standard hex size (likely will be 6km, although maybe it'll be 30km so I can say 30km ~= 18miles). Once the standard hex is set, it'll be basically arithmetic to define these questions. The more I think about it at this moment, the more I like using larger hexes, as my experience in play is smaller hexes tend to get traveled through too quickly causing the usefulness of the abstraction to diminish. If a single hex ends up being at least a days travel, it will make them more significant, and make overland travel times longer, common trips taking weeks instead of days.

A 'survey / trailblazing' minigame would take some additional considerations to make it feel 'fun' I think, terrain types will need extensive breakdowns, perhaps some procedural generation tables.

[MGuy]

I'll set a reminder and probably have it up tomorrow or Wednesday depending on how tired I am after work. Definitely by Wednesday since I'm off. There's not too much to it. The most complicated thing is I'll have to explain what the tags mean. Some things aren't detailed much under perception because it is detailed in another section. Like spotting things at very large distances, like miles, is detailed more in the Hexploration section because there's not a regular roll for it. I've been using the Alexandrians write up for hex stuff for years now. It works well enough for pf. I'm sure I'll be changing it up a bit for my HB as needed. It's done a fine job otherwise whenever I've run a hex crawl.

As for how far a dragon can be spotted it depends on the size of the dragon and under what conditions. Under normal circumstances you can't see anything in another hex. If it's as big as a large building, or just is literally a tall building, they'd be able to see it within their hex as long as there's nothing in the way. If the party's senses are being obscured the designated navigator would use their perception to bypass it as needed, rolling against a general TN based on the environment. If it's just kinda big, like an ogre, then it would be treated like a potential ambush, especially if the dragon intends to try to hide it's approach. Encounter distance is always 'the map' since I'm not trying to have regular combats at huge range and I don't think there's a significant reason to vary the distance any further.

Successfully spotting something that's trying to ambush the characters allows them to opt to engage or avoid. If they choose to engage they get to move from their starting position to where they desire on the map and then get top of initiative in any order they wish. The reverse is true if the PCs are ambushed. If the thing doesn't know they are there yet they can opt to try to bypass it (stealthily or not at depending on what they choose) or ambush it. If both parties are aware of each other and one of both are hostile they start off on opposite ends of the relevant map and go for initiative. There'll probably have to be different considerations when dealing with vehicles, Kaiju, and possibly seiges but I haven't gotten that far.

Adding a fun element to travel is something I have thought about but I haven't come to much of a conclusion outside of the logistics of travel and the decisions that might force. Putting important resources like supplies, food, and things like that at the forefront while limiting the PCs' ability to bypass these concerns is the best I've come up with. Traveling into dangerous places should be harrowing and costly. So the characters will have to be prepared and desire to avoid wasting anything, encouraging Then to gather info or get a guide to know exactly where they are trying to go. Have a reason to want to take shortcuts and be annoyed by bad weather or traveling conditions. Then, as players grow in capability, they will be able to bypass certain concerns and hazards over time to make the progression feel significant.

[MGuy]

Perception [Wits] All Characters are considered to be constantly perceiving the world. As long as a Target is not attempting to hide themselves, and is not purposefully or ambiently Hidden in some way, a Character can perceive it. How this manifests depends on the particular sensory organ and its corresponding Specialty. In general Characters are privy to all details that could be considered obvious in a given Scene and this Skill, along with its Specialties, are used to detect Hidden information only.

Insight [Active Skill, Opposed] - This Specialty represents the Character’s adeptness at reading others. Through this Specialty a Character becomes more proficient at picking up on a Target’s emotional state, presence of hostility, and more subtle behaviors that may not be immediately obvious. This Specialty can only be used when interacting with a living Target for at least a minute. This Specialty is opposed by a Target’s Deception or Influence Bonus (Whichever is higher). Creatures that are alien to the Character will be more difficult to read, inflicting a -5 Penalty or worse depending on the Target. If Successful the Character may discern a Subtle Truth that is not being outright revealed by the Target. On a Critical Success the Character may discern a Hidden Truth. On a Failure no new truths are revealed. On a Critical Failure the Character mistakenly picks up on a False Truth.

Spot [Passive Skill] - This Specialty represents the Character’s ability to rapidly process information about their surroundings through visual stimuli. Through this Specialty a Character becomes more proficient at noticing and processing minor details in a Scene, locating Targets that might be Hidden, and seeing through visual illusions. This Specialty can only be used when the Character is capable of picking up on visual stimuli.
Special Note - Most standard Characters primarily use sight to precisely locate Targets. Unless otherwise noted a Character must be able to spot their Target in order to establish the Line of Sight necessary for the use of certain abilities.

Listen [Passive Skill] - This Specialty represents a Character’s sensitivity toward sound and their ability to sift through noise. Through this Specialty a Character becomes more proficient at picking up on ever softer sounds, clearly interpreting those sounds through ambient noise, and doing so at ever greater distances. This Specialty can only be used when the Character is able to pick up on auditory stimuli.
Special Note - Most Standard characters primarily use sight to precisely locate Targets. Unless otherwise noted a successful Listen Check can, at best, give an approximate location of the source of a sound and cannot be used to establish Line of Sight.

Things to note:
Wits is the name I'm using for my HB's Wisdom attribute. It is applied to everything dealing with detecting whatever.

Skills come in sets. In this case the overarching skill is Perception. Any investment in that gets you baseline investment in the specialties. Further investment in the specialties gives you a bigger bonus when using them and access to abilities related to them. Max you can invest in advancing a skill is 3. 1 to get the set and 2 in any individual specialty. That's the basics. There are a few other things but I'm not going to explain the whole thing here.

There are some tables detailing different things I haven't put in here because the morning is already running long and I don't feel like trying to figure out how to do tables correctly on here. I'll just say that Spot and Listen are effected by how distracted the character is. For example Spot is normally Base 10. It'll go down to Base 5 if the character is focusing on something already and Base 15 if the character is alert and knows they are on the lookout for something specific. There's no take 20. If the group has enough time to flip a place upside down they find what they are looking for if its there. Smaller things have an easier time finding bigger things and bigger things have a harder time finding smaller things. Distance, when applicable, comes in three different ratings. Immediate, Close, and Far (no numbers on these just descriptors). Things that are far are a bit more difficult to perceive than things that are near.

You can guess from that that a passive skill is rolled against by someone else. Opposed just means you're rolling against someone else's roll. Active means that the character uses an action to do it or has to meet some set of conditions.

I have a placeholder "other" for whenever I get around to determining how sixth sense detection is going to work. I think I wanted to do something for taste/touch/and smell lumped together but that didn't go anywhere.

That's the short version of it. Again there's more written for related subjects I talked about like seeing things at long distances (in the Hexploration section), what 'truths' are and can be (that's for the GMs), and how getting or setting an ambush works (covered in the combat section where initiative is). If I ever get around to doing a full write up I'll put the entire thing in the "my own invention" section. It ain't gonna be done this year as I have two ongoing campaigns to finish before I will allow myself the time to get back to this in earnest.

[merxa]

Encounter distance is always 'the map' since I'm not trying to have regular combats at huge range and I don't think there's a significant reason to vary the distance any further.

While I am sympathetic to constraints inherit in playing a given game, ultimately I fall on the other side (especially if I am designing the system) -- the other side being that the necessary tools will be made to ensure the game can run as expected. I've had too many sessions with someone using a longbow complaining they never get to engage with it's range increments. In table play, when a party is traveling through a plain or other open field, I try to very specifically tell PCs when things are far away which tends to be a little past fireball range (3e), so about 800ft or so depending on party level, in Spellbound this would correspond to edge of 'extreme' distance category (300m)

Adding a fun element to travel is something I have thought about but I haven't come to much of a conclusion outside of the logistics of travel and the decisions that might force. Putting important resources like supplies, food, and things like that at the forefront while limiting the PCs' ability to bypass these concerns is the best I've come up with. Traveling into dangerous places should be harrowing and costly. So the characters will have to be prepared and desire to avoid wasting anything, encouraging Then to gather info or get a guide to know exactly where they are trying to go. Have a reason to want to take shortcuts and be annoyed by bad weather or traveling conditions. Then, as players grow in capability, they will be able to bypass certain concerns and hazards over time to make the progression feel significant.

Supplies tends to matter if you have a very large group and or a very low level group. High level groups can still have some logistical issues when it involves very large amounts of other people, but for the 'power level' range of being level 5 or 6, supplies, non-magical weather or temperature, difficult terrain, are just not real hurdles for the typical party, at most they consume a bit of resources. And I'm not especially interested in changing this dynamic, level 3 being the sort of edge where 'survival' or 'travel' can still be an interesting challenge. Extreme local conditions can change this of course, but you tend to be going far outside standard assumptions to achieve it. Since Spellbound will be a level 1-10 game, I don't plan on providing much game support for making survival or overland travel in mostly mundane places difficult past level 2. So the 'lewis and clark' survey game is really going to be a very explicitly level 1, level 2, sort of endeavor, with maybe a few twists for high level play in the most extreme of places.

To make travel into dangerous places more interesting, you need to make getting there and getting out difficult. It can be difficult because it takes time, days and days or even weeks of travel. Some things need to be modified to make time in and out of a dangerous place more interesting, as I'm happy to table 'food, water, and weight' concerns pretty early on -- magic to create food and water and a bag of holding are not going to get moved up the tier ladder -- I am going to be changing the injury system. Hit points are a simple easy to use system, but I'm interested in trying to model injury in a (slightly) less abstract manner. Magical healing in particular needs a revamp, as well as curing various afflictions like poisons, diseases, curses -- realizing you've caught a disease 3 weeks from civilization should be a more significant event, and it should be a more significant event for a wider range of levels.

Once teleport comes online (for spellbound that would be level '5' at the moment), travel time is mostly not a hurdle anymore, and most slow moving afflictions will no longer be a large consideration. Instead other challenges are expected to be introduced to retain the default of needing dangerous places 'difficult' to enter or leave. A adventuring location being 'difficult' or 'dangerous' to leave I think is an important constraint at (nearly?) all levels of play, it creates the basic dynamic of either pressing on or retreating to recover. More risk more reward as they say.