D&D 5E Keen Mind + Investigation (also Observant)
- Thread starter bash
- Start date
Not exactly. Keen mind isn’t saving details you FAIL to notice, only things you successfully noticed. So you couldn’t notice anything new about a scene you did not notice before. But I would allow you to have a new revelation about a detail you DID notice but didn’t figure out the importance of. Like some kind of sneaky foreshadowing.
Paul Farquhar
Legend
I would allow it, in a Sherlock-like way.
The brain does notice things without immediately understanding their significance.
I might be inclined to use the Insight skill rather than Investigation.
The brain does notice things without immediately understanding their significance.
I might be inclined to use the Insight skill rather than Investigation.
At first I thought that Insight would make more sense, but the entry on Insight focuses more on discerning others' motivations, whereas Investigation mentions clues, hidden fragments of knowledge, etc.
Ancalagon
Dusty Dragon
I concur. A good investigator should have both skills though, understanding motive helps.
Yes, I think the question of what one notices is interesting. I imagine that what a PC notices would be what the DM describes them noticing, like a kind of active noticing.
Which is why I also wondered about whether Observant, with its focus on passive perception and investigation, could mean that a PC notices more than what was actively described.
Harzel
Adventurer
Except the feat says that you accurately recall everything that you have seen, not everything that you noticed. So you would have to decide what you think the difference between seeing and noticing is, if any. I would be inclined to treat "see" as much more inclusive than "notice". If there was something in sight, and it was part of a scene that the PC would reasonably have been attending to, then I will probably assume that they saw it. So in a 10x10 room in a dungeon in which the PC had time to look around, they likely saw everything in sight. Traveling through a city, they definitely saw enough to, say, retrace their path; whether they saw the smithy down the side street might be subject to a check to see if they happened to be looking in that direction when they passed by.
The problem is that the mind fabricates a huge amount of what we see, if we're not actively paying attention. So even if something is within our visible range, we're not necessarily going "see" it unless we intentionally study it or there is something notable about it: motion, contrast, an unusual shape, etc.
Now, it would be pretty miserable for a character to "remember" an important detail that didn't really happen, even though people in real life do that constantly. So I wouldn't recommend throwing fabricated memories at your players. But neither is the brain passively recording 100% of what is in front of your eyes like some kind of digital recorder.
Though, to be fair, someone with Observant is probably noticing a heck of a lot in general.
Last edited:
I would say yes. There was a short-lived detective TV show on a while back that did this; the main protagonist had a perfect memory and would "replay" what she had seen. Supposedly this was an accurate depiction of what it was like to have a perfect memory ... no clue whether it was just hype or not. In any case it sounds fun and makes the feat more worthwhile.
