D&D 5E Perception checks, searching a room, listening at a door, etc etc

[SilverBulletKY]

My group is going through LMoP and have stated searching each room for traps and listening to door. That is fine but the problem is they all started doing this and I have 6 players. The first character listens to a door, hears nothing, the 2nd listens, hears nothing, etc etc. I decided last session to just use passive perception for all searching and listen checks but what do you all do? Allowing each person to roll seems strange to me. Maybe choose one person to roll but that person either succeeds or fails and nobody is allowed to roll after that?

 

[Boarstorm]

Make the others "help" instead of attempting individual checks.

That's what I do.

 

[Joe Liker]

Why not just have them all roll at the same time? Surely their characters are all searching at the same time. It takes less than 15 seconds to say, "Everyone roll a Perception check," roll, report totals, done.

Also, remember (and possibly remind the players) that rolling the search uses significantly more in-game time than using Passive Perception. During this extra time, you might have buffs expiring, monster patrols barging in, etc.

If there truly is no reason to hurry, there is also no reason not to allow everyone to roll a Perception check. This group obviously doesn't want to miss anything, and they are doing everything in their power to make sure they don't. Why would you want to deny them that?

 

[Antz7766]

For searching the room, when they all enter, and one of them asks to make a perception check, just ask them all to roll at the same time and if any one of them beats the DC, then the whole group basically know what that player know (unless you have players that likes to withhold information, like that secret stash of treasure he found in the corner of a room). If all of them failed, I wouldn't allow any further roll on perception unless something major happened, since their character firmly believe they saw nothing so why would the character wants to try and search again.

As for listening to doors, I would probably asks for a stealth roll on top of the perception roll. The point of listening to a door is to try and hear of any activity past the door without arousing attention. If they're not trying to be stealthy (low stealth roll), and just slams into the door while trying to listen to it, have that alert what's on the other side and either comes in to take a look, or set up an ambush for when they try and enter and make all future "listen" rolls against this room to autofail.

Also, if the character with the highest perception is always the first to go, but fails the roll, if I were the other characters, I would just trust what that character says. It makes zero logical sense for the character to say, "oh the wood elf ranger that's suppose to have superhuman hearing failed to hear anything? Pfft, let my bulky barbarian that is basically deaf give it a try". But that's just the way I would play, to try and be in character.

I believe in consequences when a check fails, to make checks in general more meaningful. If there are no consequences, then what's stopping the player to just "take a 20". Failed a perception roll on searches? great, you didn't see the trap and hopefully the player will trigger it. Failed a stealth roll on sneaking up to the door? the player have just alerted the other side of their presence and will hit the fan pretty soon (assuming there are creatures on the other side of that door).

 

[Astrosicebear]

5E kinda makes the "scout" go away... in previous editions there was always someone super good at perception, and if they couldnt see it or hear it, it didnt exist. 5e narrows that field wya down and its more roll luck than skill points.

What I like to do is have everyone, pre game, roll me 20 d20 rolls and write them down. I put them all in a columned post it witht he character's perception bonus, and just refer to the sheet and cross off the number.

 

[the Jester]

The longer they take to listen at the door, the sooner the next wandering monster check comes.

 

[Kid Charlemagne]

My group is going through LMoP and have stated searching each room for traps and listening to door. That is fine but the problem is they all started doing this and I have 6 players.

Only so many PC's can realistically listen or search for traps at one door; I'd start making listen rolls for anything on the other side once they start rotating. For the rest, I'd propose something to the PC's - IIRC the help rules indicate that if someone is helping you, you get advantage on the roll, so I'd suggest to save time that they assume the party is helping the person with the best skill in searching, etc. with that one roll applying to the entire process.

 

[halfling rogue]

If everyone is together and a situation comes up where one player asks to listen at a door (or something to that effect) I'll usually have everyone in the vicinity roll at the same time. They shout out their scores and for those who have met the DC I reveal that their characters heard something (or whatever).

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Go with Passive Perception. If you let six people roll to hear something, then the overwhelming number of dice being rolled will virtually guarantee that someone succeeds, regardless of the DC. It is exactly the situation where you would want a single "stealth" check for the opposing side.

 

[jodyjohnson]

For myself, it is time to go the oft ignored 'don't make the roll' option. If a sufficiently trained character wants to try a trivial task (that I usually want to have them succeed at anyway) they succeed. It's like a doctor having to make a check to hear a heartbeat with a stethoscope - it just happens. Or rolling checks to see if I can successfully drive to work.

We roll for tasks that I want to be random.

My preference is to let character that have spent resources on being good at a task to generally succeed.