Your senses allow you to notice fine details and alert you to danger. Perception covers all five senses, including sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell.
Check
Perception has a number of uses, the most common of which is an opposed check versus an opponent’s
Stealth check to notice the opponent and avoid being surprised. If you are successful, you notice the opponent and can react accordingly. If you fail, your opponent can take a variety of actions, including sneaking past you and attacking you.
Perception is also used to notice fine details in the environment. The DC to notice such details varies depending upon distance, the environment, and how noticeable the detail is. The perception checks table gives a number of guidelines.
Perception checks may be called for to determine the distance at which an encounter begins. A penalty applies on such checks, depending on the distance between the two individuals or groups, and an additional penalty may apply if the character making the Perception check is distracted (not concentrating on being observant).
Count Troops: With a DC 20 Perception check, you can make a rough estimate of the number of creatures in a formation. If the group contains two hundred fifty individuals or less, you can guess their numbers to the nearest ten. If the group has more than two hundred fifty individuals, you can estimate their numbers to the nearest hundred. For example, a group of eighty-six gnolls would be estimated as ninety, and a horde of four hundred twenty-seven barbarians would be counted as four hundred. This skill use only applies to groups of one thousand individuals or less.
Locate Commander: You can pick out an officer or commander with a DC 20 Perception check.
Locate Artillery: A DC 25 Perception check gives you the approximate range (within 30 feet) to any sort of artillery firing into the battlefield, whether the source is a siege engine or a spellcaster. The DC of this Perception check is not modified by distance.
Read Lips: To understand what someone is saying by reading lips, you must be within 30 feet of the speaker, be able to see him or her speak, and understand the speaker's language. (This use of the skill is language-dependent.) The base DC is 15, but it increases for complex speech or an inarticulate speaker. You must maintain a line of sight to the lips being read.
If your Perception check succeeds, you can understand the general content of a minute's worth of speaking, but you usually still miss certain details. If the check fails by 4 or less, you can't read the speaker's lips. If the check fails by 5 or more, you draw some incorrect conclusion about the speech. The check is rolled secretly in this case, so that you don't know whether you succeeded or missed by 5.
Action
Varies. Every time you have a chance to notice something in a reactive manner you can make a Perception check without using an action. Trying to notice something you failed to see previously or searching for stimulus is a
Move Action. To read lips, you must concentrate for a full minute before making a check, and you can't perform any other action (other than moving at up to half speed) during this minute.
Try Again
Yes. You can spend a
Move Action to try to spot something that you failed to see previously at no penalty, provided you have some reason to suspect you missed something. You can attempt to read lips once per minute.
A creature that has spotted a stealthed character may take a
Free Action once per round to attempt to point them out to their allies. Doing so triggers another perception check for everyone who hears or sees this attempt to find them (depending on the situation, they may need a perception check to notice their ally attempting to do so).
Special
Listen Underwater: The DC to hear a sound at a distance underwater increases more slowly than it does in air because sound travels better underwater, although water conditions can make the rate change from place to place and time to time. Typically, however, the DC is increased by +1/50 feet.
Listen Through Soil: The DC to hear a sound when both the listener and the source of the sound are in direct contact with the earth increases much more slowly with distance than it does in air. The base DC is 10 higher for the check, but is increased by only +1/400 feet.
Pinpoint Sound: If you exceed the Perception DC to hear a sound by 20, you pinpoint the source of the sound, learning the exact space the sound came from. If you cannot see the sound’s source, it still has total
Concealment against your attacks.
Skill Unlock
A character who selects this skill for the Signature Skill feat or a
Rogue who selects it for their Rogue's Edge class ability gains the following abilities when they reach the designated number of ranks in this skill:
- 5 Ranks: You remain alert to sounds even in your sleep, and the normal DC increase to Perception checks when you are sleeping is halved. The distance modifier on the DC of Perception checks you attempt is reduced to +1 per 20 feet.
- 10 Ranks: The distance modifier on the DC of Perception checks you attempt is reduced to +1 per 30 feet. In addition, you gain a +5 bonus on Perception checks to notice or locate an invisible creature or Object.
- 15 Ranks: You remain alert to sounds even in your sleep, and the normal DC increase to Perception checks when you are sleeping doesn’t apply to you. The distance modifier on the DC of your Perception checks is reduced to +1 per 40 feet.
- 20 Ranks: You gain a +10 bonus on Perception checks to notice invisible creatures or objects. The distance modifier on the DC of Perception checks you attempt is reduced to +1 per 60 feet.
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