Perception
His Honor the Lord Mayor was naturally quite interested in the adventurers who took temporary residence in one of the finer inns of the town — especially when he learned that one of their aims was to find the local assassins' guild and settle an old score with it. The guild had mused the Lord Mayor many problems in the past, and he welcomed the possibility that the guild might soon suffer problems of its own. The adventurers, however, were close-mouthed and were cool toward his offers of assistance.
His course of action was to rely on the capable services of Ferd, his halfling informant. Ferd began to tail the adventurers whenever they entered into the city reporting back to the Mayor on their activities.
At this point, the DM creating this scenario must pause. Obviously, the game is going to develop in different ways depending on whether or not the adventurers notice that a nondescript halfling is following them around. How should he determine if the characters notice or not?
Perception Score Table
| Ability Score | General Information | Adjustment to surprise | Bonus to specific skills |
|---|---|---|---|
| 3 | Serious perceptual impairment exists | -1 | -10% |
| 4 | Perceptual impairment exists | -1 | -5% |
| 5-8 | |||
| 9 | Minimum score for bards and monks | ||
| 10-11 | |||
| 12 | Minimum score for thief- acrobats, druids, assassins, yakuza, and barbarians | ||
| 13-14 | |||
| 15 | Minimum score for rangers and ninjas | ||
| 16 | |||
| 17 | +1 | +5% | |
| 18 | +1 | +10% |
Perception as an Ability
Perception describes the quality of a character's vision and as well as mental habits such as attentiveness, and aural memory, and interest in his surroundings.
Perception is important to all character classes, as it affects the character's chances to notice things that might important in the of the game (and not merely surprise in combat). Normally, a character's perception score is between 3 and 18. However, A character with a perception of 3 or 4 would suffer from severe vision or hearing impairments. A character with a perception score of 9-11 would have normal (20/20) vision, hearing, and habits of observation. Characters with scores above 15 would be exceptionally observant individuals, with particularly sharp eyes and keen ears, and being habitually attentive.
Minimum Ability Scores
These guidelines are for official character classes only, but additional character classes should able to adapt this information easily enough. Keep in mind that a perception score of 9-11 is average, 12-14 is above average and 15 or over is exceptional.
Ranger and Ninja
Minimum Perception: 15. Both of these classes depend heavily on perception. The ranger is skilled at tracking, woodlore, pathfinding, and spying, and is surprised only on a roll of 1 on a d6. The ninja is also difficult to surprise and the most skilled of all the character classes at disguise. All of these skills demand superior perception; in particular, the ranger's better odds for being surprised must depend on perception, since the class has no minimum score for dexterity.Barbarian, Druid, Thief, Assassin, Thief-Acrobat, Yakuza.
Minimum perception: 12. Barbarians and druids both depend on the ability to "tune in" to nature, which would be difficult without good perceptual ability. Thieves and related classes obviously need to notice things about their intended victims and potential witnesses and there a strong relationship between perception and many of their skills. Assassins have the added power of disguise but their thief-type skillsMonk and Bard
Minimum perception: 9. High perception would benefit either of these character but their other minimum scores are already so high that requiring an above-average perception would make it almost impossible to roll up such a character using any fair method. We can conceive that the monk makes up for an otherwise average perception by high dexterity and careful mental discipline; the bard can get through the mandatory thieves' training with a lower-than-normal perception score because the character can compensate with experience as a fighter.Other Character Classes
Other character classes have no minimum requirements for perception, but a character with a perception score lower than 5 should be severely handicapped as an adventurer.
Bonuses for High Perception/Penalties for Low Perception
Since characters receive benefits for having high scores in the other abilities, the same should be true for perception. On the other hand, in order to maintain playability, the bonus system should be simple. Two sorts of are suggested here (one with a complementary penalty).
First, characters of any class with a perception of 17 or 18 should receive a bonus of +1 to surprise rolls. This should not apply to other members of the party; it simply reflects the individual's ability to hear or see things a split-second earlier than the average person. This bonus should not apply to encounters with creatures that are perfectly silent or invisible, depending on the situation. This bonus also does not apply to initiative rolls, since perception is of limited value when a character is locked in combat with an opponent. In the same way, a character with a particularly low perception would be easier to surprise.
Characters with a perception score of 3 or 4 would receive a -1 to all surprise rolls.
Second, several skills that are related to character classes should receive bonuses for high perception. The bonuses for each of these specific skills is +5% for a perception of 17 and +10% for 18. These bonuses would apply in addition to any others. These skills are:
- Rangers: Tracking
- Thieves, assassins, monks: hear noise and find traps (but with no bonuses to improve the odds for removing traps)
- Barbarian: back protection, detect illusion, detect magic, and tracking
- Ninja: disguise, escape, and find traps (but not removing them, as above)
- Yakuza: hear noise
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