D&D 5E Eyes of Minute Seeing: Investigation vs Perception

[WarpedAcorn]

I may be wrong, but I likened it to 3rd Edition where Spot+Listen = Perception, and Search = Investigation. So you might roll Perception and notice a discolored section of the wall, but you would need an Investigation check to determine its a secret door.

 

[pukunui]

That section actually doesn't say to make a perception check in the 'finding a hidden object' box.

Actually it does. The very first sentence in the sidebar reads: "When your character searches for a hidden object such as a secret door or a trap, the DM typically asks you to make a Wisdom (Perception) check."

I may be wrong, but I likened it to 3rd Edition where Spot+Listen = Perception, and Search = Investigation. So you might roll Perception and notice a discolored section of the wall, but you would need an Investigation check to determine its a secret door.

Yes, it seems like that is a common way to approach it. However, that doesn't appear to be the way the designers have been handling it. Not only is it unclear in the rules themselves, but if you look at all the various official adventures, the designers seem to be just as confused as we are. In Lost Mine of Phandelver, there are some things that call for a Perception check in one section of the adventure but an Investigation check in another. I'm pretty sure the Tyranny of Dragons modules mostly just use Perception. Princes of the Apocalypse, however, mostly uses Investigation for finding secret doors and the like. I haven't read all the way through Out of the Abyss, so I'm not sure about that one. Death House has no Investigation checks. It's all Perception checks. So it's like the designers can't even make their minds up about when to use Investigation vs Perception.


p.s. For the record, here's another thread I made on the subject almost exactly a year ago: Perception vs Investigation.

 

[NotActuallyTim]

Actually it does. The very first sentence in the sidebar reads: "When your character searches for a hidden object such as a secret door or a trap, the DM typically asks you to make a Wisdom (Perception) check."

'Typically', 'asks', 'secret door' and 'trap' all indicate that looking for things a character might have trouble finding does not necessarily involve the perception skill. It does not say to make a perception check. It says the DM is probably going to ask the player for one, particularly when looking for objects similar to traps and secret doors.

This is an important distinction, because it is a departure from the common 3.x player attitude towards skills.

 

[pukunui]

I am aware of that distinction. I don't believe it is relevant to this discussion. My point is just that the sidebar clearly associates finding secret doors with Perception, rather than Investigation.

 

[discosoc]

Yes, it seems like that is a common way to approach it. However, that doesn't appear to be the way the designers have been handling it. Not only is it unclear in the rules themselves, but if you look at all the various official adventures, the designers seem to be just as confused as we are. In Lost Mine of Phandelver, there are some things that call for a Perception check in one section of the adventure but an Investigation check in another. I'm pretty sure the Tyranny of Dragons modules mostly just use Perception. Princes of the Apocalypse, however, mostly uses Investigation for finding secret doors and the like. I haven't read all the way through Out of the Abyss, so I'm not sure about that one. Death House has no Investigation checks. It's all Perception checks. So it's like the designers can't even make their minds up about when to use Investigation vs Perception.

The early adventures plus HotDQ all were written when the rules were still in flux, so I wouldn't use them as benchmarks. The adventure references rules like Readiness, for example, that simply didn't make it to 5e publication.

PotA and Abyss seem to be much more consistent in the roles of perception and investigation, which largely backed up my method of handling them (see my last post). Death House, however, is very weird and contradictory in the way it handles skills. I'd definitely turn a good half of those perception checks into investigation.

 

[Robot Hyena Ghost]

For my purposes in 5E, I've been looking at it from the perspective of Perception is about noticing data, while Investigation is about interpreting it. I think we're seeing an overall trend towards skill compression in d20 derivatives, since Pathfinder Unchained had rules to squish a bunch of PF's skills together.

 

[discosoc]

Actually it does. The very first sentence in the sidebar reads: "When your character searches for a hidden object such as a secret door or a trap, the DM typically asks you to make a Wisdom (Perception) check."

This is how I read that: Perception is to determine if your character notices something (secret door, hidden goblin, trap, etc) while you're searching around or when you enter a room or whatever. With a high enough perception, maybe a character can actually figure out that there's a secret door because they felt a slight breeze from the base of one of the walls or noticed a hallow sound when they walked over part of a rug. That works.

Which is why passive perception works so well. They enter a room and you can immediately know who notices anything unusual. If they state that they are going to search for traps or secret doors or something, have them roll investigation. If they just say they want to do a quick search for "anything valuable" or something generic like that, let them make a perception check and, depending on what they find, perhaps a follow up investigation check (such as figuring out where the switch for the newly-found secret door is located).

More importantly than anything, IMO, is to make sure you communicate up front to the players on exactly how and when you plan on using perception and investigation before they start rolling characters. You could totally do what the Death House writers seem to have done, and simply ignore investigation and roll it up into perception. Just make sure players understand that so they aren't wasting skill slots.

 

[jayoungr]

Perception was for finding living objects that could move around and which were trying to hide from you (or were so far away you might not pick them out.)

Investigation was for finding inanimate objects that someone had to spend time trying to cover up and hide.

I may be wrong, but I likened it to 3rd Edition where Spot+Listen = Perception, and Search = Investigation. So you might roll Perception and notice a discolored section of the wall, but you would need an Investigation check to determine its a secret door.

I like both these systems. I've been allowing players to use perception and investigation interchangeably due to the confusion over which does what, but I may adopt or modify one of them.

There's one other use of Investigation which I don't think has been discussed yet: I call for Investigation checks where D&D 3.5 would have used Gather Information, i.e. where you're talking to a lot of people.

 

[DEFCON 1]

There's one other use of Investigation which I don't think has been discussed yet: I call for Investigation checks where D&D 3.5 would have used Gather Information, i.e. where you're talking to a lot of people.

I oftentimes will do that too... but as I also use the variant rule that says you can assign skill profs to different ability scores for checks... something like you describe I'd give as a CHA (Investigation) check. And with regards to Perception/Investigation... I also assign both of them to either Wisdom and Intelligence depending on their Passive or Active use. So Passive Perception and Passive Investigation uses 10 + WIS mod + Per/Invest... Active rolls to find hidden people or hidden doors/traps would be 1d20 + INT mod + Per/Invest.

 

[Sunseeker]

Not sure where the problem lies. You use Investigation to figure out where the door is most likely located, then you use Perception to actually see the hidden door. They work together and overlap as most big, umbrella skills will.