Passive perception is one of those rules that tends to be overlooked or misunderstood, and when combined with combat it gets even more muddy, so this is to clearly state how it works in campaigns based in Fiore. These rules are a combination of standard and homebrew.
Passive Perception
Passive perception is effectively the minimum your character can roll on perception checks. While in combat or otherwise preoccupied your passive perception will suffer a -5 penalty. Passive perception is the default number a stealth roll will be compared to when determining success.
Ability Checks When Passive Perception is Applied
Sometimes the DM will determine that the chance of an unlikely failure or success is needed. When making a perception check either despite having a passive perception higher than the DC or a modifier too low to achieve the DC a roll of 1 will result in a failure and a roll of 20 will result in a success. When rolling to notice a creature that is hidden, the result of your perception roll must be higher than the stealth roll made by the creature.
Perception in combat
As an action in combat, you may make a perception check to notice something your passive perception may have missed.
Comments