Up next in 10
Investigation (Remastered) - Find Clues, Gather Intel, and Crack the Case! - RPGBOT.Podcast S4E10
Aug 25, 2025
In this remastered episode of the RPGBOT.Podcast, the team delves into the world of Tabletop Roleplaying Games and explores the often underestimated skill of Investigation. From uncovering secrets to finding lost treasures, this is a fundamental skill for adventurers. We also discuss how other skills and tools can be just as useful for finding things in the game. So grab your dice and get ready to hone your investigative prowess, because we're going to level up your skills in finding stuff.
This episode originally aired on Jan 26, 2024, and we're currently working to upload our episode backlog. For the latest from the RPGBOT.Podcast, find us in your favorite podcatcher.
Full show notes for this episode are available on RPGBOT.net: https://rpgbot.net/skilled-skullduggery-for-your-devious-deceiver-rogues-levels-11-20-rpgbot-podcast-s4e9/
Find us on Socials:
- 🦋 https://bsky.app/profile/rpgbot.net
- ⏰ https://www.tiktok.com/@rpgbotdotnet
Show More Show Less View Video Transcript
0:01
[Music]
0:16
[Music]
0:23
Welcome to the rpgbot.podcast. I'm Randall James, your unelected ombbudsman. And with me is Tyler Campra.
0:29
Hi there. Fantastic. And random. Good evening. All right. Welcome. Welcome. Tyler, what
0:35
are we doing today in episode one, our second episode? Well, we want to talk about fifth
0:41
edition Dungeons and Dragons investigation rules. We're going to go into the mechanics. We're going to go
0:46
into some broad context about how the rules work and how they work in different RPGs. and we're going to kind
0:53
of answer some questions and fill in some gaps and rules and explain how things work and how to use them better.
0:58
Good, good, good. All right, Random, what do you think we're doing today? Well, I'm partially the genesis for this
1:04
episode and coming from a long time playing 3.x X where search by itself was
1:12
a separate skill that was keyed to intelligence as compared to spot and listen has really left me with a desire
1:19
for explaining why those are there and in particular how we can use that to
1:27
help further optimize when different classes, different characters are going to be more interested in focusing in
1:33
either intelligence or wisdom, the skills most traditionally keyed to investigation and perception
1:40
respectively. Okay. I think yeah, that that's pretty interesting. So, it probably is worthwhile to do, right? So, what do we
1:45
have? We have the 3X series, you know, how do I look for things or how do I
1:50
spot things in my environment? We have Pathfinder 1, Pathfinder 2, we have, I
1:57
guess, fourth edition somewhere in there, probably pretty similar to Pathfinder 1. And then we finally have
2:02
fifth edition in all of its glory. So yeah, like what what was happening back in the 3x days?
2:09
So third edition, which is where Random and I both learned both learned tabletop RPGs. So there were three skills for
2:16
finding stuff. Uh you had listen, you had spot, you had search. They do pretty much exactly what they say on the tin.
2:23
Listen is for hearing stuff. Spot is for seeing stuff with your eyes. Search is for finding stuff that's hidden. And
2:29
there was always kind of this vague ambiguity between what was a search check and what was a spot check. And
2:36
amazingly, we're what 10 15 years from the release of third edition. We still
2:42
don't have a great answer there. Okay. Well, I'm going to stop for a second. As a person who never played third edition,
2:48
I guess my intuition would be spot is if it's in plain sight and search is if it
2:53
isn't. Is that one of the cults? I mean, yeah, that's that's a pretty good way to break it down, but what about creatures
3:00
that are hiding from you? Are they in plain sight? Creatures that are hiding, I think I'd have to search for them, right?
3:05
That one would be a spot check. That one would be a spot check. Yeah. And that's where it gets confusing cuz cuz Yes. Yes. Your first instinct is
3:13
absolutely right. And pretty much everyone has that thought. Okay. Wait, wait. Okay. When when you
3:18
say that this is right, like this is what the rule set says or this is what a general consensus has. bit of both.
3:26
Honestly, in general, you would go with there are actual rules. So, if you delve into the
3:33
skill descriptions in I want to say chapter 3, but good lord, it's been a decade of the 3.5 players handbook. You
3:43
will find hide, a skill, which along with move silently got folded into
3:49
stealth in Pathfinder 1 and later editions. and hide. It would specify that you could try to hide and that was
3:57
explicitly contested by spot and then they just never bothered explaining why
4:03
that's different than searching for hidden things. Yeah. Okay. So, if it's if it's alive, I have
4:09
to spot it. If it's dead or inadimate, I have to search it. Maybe.
4:14
Okay. That is the dichotomy I've just invented. I have one more question on this because this is wild to me a little bit. So, we managed to split our senses,
4:21
right? So, I I walk into a room and I say to my DM, "I want to attempt to spot
4:28
enemies and I roll my dice and I I spot nothing." But then afterwards, the DM's
4:34
like, "But if you had listened, you totally would have heard him whistling as they were walking down the hallway."
4:39
Wait, okay, you're both nodding vigorously for for folks who are at home. That is absolutely a thing that could
4:45
happen. Absolutely a thing. Okay, that could happen or that did happen. and then you viciously attacked
4:51
or mock your DM both. There's an interesting case for this. If you are a reasonable scout, there may be
4:58
a time when you decide, I am going to walk up to a door and listen to what's on the other side of it to see if I can
5:04
hear enemy camp conversation or whatever. Now, it was worth noting in the same way that fifth edition you have
5:11
a limited number of proficiencies to split in 3.x X, you had a limited number of uh skill points to spend. And you
5:19
could choose, for instance, to go for the much more common, I want to put all of my points into spot and not bother
5:25
with putting my points into listen to make it so that I have room to put those skills in other places. Well, if you go
5:32
up and put your ear to a door and you're not trained in it, you have a not great
5:38
chance of hearing conversation on the other side of a door. Even though you
5:43
can spot a swarm of bees at 1,000 ft
5:48
because that's how that mechanical difference manifested.
5:54
Okay, I follow this and I know we're going to come back to more recent editions. Okay, actually let's maybe hit
5:59
it. So, Pathfinder 1, 4E, that all changes, right? Yeah. Stop this dichconomy. And
6:06
so, fourth edition comes out and all three of those skills are condensed down to just perception. There's no more
6:13
listen. There's no more search. Just if you want to find something or notice something, it's just perception. Fourth
6:19
edition has the world's largest edition war. Pathfinder first edition comes out
6:25
to appeal to the 3.x adherence. And Pathfinder also just has perception and
6:32
that's it. There's no search. You just use perception for finding anything. Years pass, years pass, and then uh
6:38
fifth edition comes out and we have perception and investigation.
6:44
And inight, should we lump those together or no? Insight's its own separate thing.
6:50
Insight has stayed mostly separate through confused over it at least. Kind of. Yeah. Insight is mostly just
6:57
like get a sense of people. So, it's less about finding hidden things and more about just understanding people.
7:03
So, we're up to fifth edition. Fifth edition has perception and introduces
7:09
investigation, which is essentially search from 3.x. And then a couple years
7:14
later, Pathfinder second edition comes out. Pathfinder second edition is still just perception. And if you if you go
7:21
outside the dungeon fantasy genre and look at some other RPGs, pretty much every RPG just has one skill for
7:27
perception. Fantasy Flights Star Wars game has just perception. I believe the
7:34
Dark Heresy franchise has just perception. I'm drawing a blank on a
7:39
couple of other RPGs. I know I looked this up, but generally it's just perception for finding stuff. So, why is
7:46
fifth edition the odd one out with an extra skill? Tyler, why is fifth edition the odd one
7:53
out with an extra skill? Boy, I wish I had a good answer. It was worth a shot. I figured I know the best answer I've come up with
8:00
is perception is the best skill in the game already and it needs to do less things. But honestly, it's not a great
8:07
answer. And I wonder if part of this does sort of loop back around to what I was talking about where you want character
8:13
diversity. If you think about this in an actual real world context, not that there is a great correlation to I am
8:20
very wise and therefore I'm good at seeing things, but regardless, while you can sort of turn some of this into what
8:28
proficiency means, there is definitely a difference that is intuitive between I
8:35
am good at looking around at a room quickly and noticing what's shiny or out of place and I know things which are
8:45
likely to indicate something that I can figure out. If we look at and I'm
8:51
looking here at the first line of the investigation skill in D and D beyond's basic rules. When you look around for
8:58
clues and make deductions based on those clues, you make an intelligence investigation check. You might deduce
9:04
the location of a hidden object. If for instance I wanted to, and you know
9:09
what's a super classic dungeon crawl trope? I'm gonna search a door for traps. If I walk up to a door and I tell
9:16
or I guess I'll be the DM in this perspective. If I'm DMing and someone walks up to a door and says to me, I
9:21
want to search the door for traps, I'm going to say, great. Roll perception. Because they're just saying, I want to
9:27
look for a thing. If instead they walk up to me and they say, I want to check
9:35
the door frame for screw holes that might indicate that there's a trip wire.
9:41
I want to check and see if the flag stone immediately in front of the door
9:47
slides down a little bit when I push on it. If I want to
9:53
use a hand mirror to look under the door
9:58
and see if there is something that is going to trigger when I push the door open. That is not looking for a trap.
10:07
that is trying to use like it says look for clues and make deductions based on
10:13
those clues. You're not looking for a trap. You're looking for specific things and you are thinking to yourself, I
10:20
understand that if this stone in front slides, that probably means it's a pressure plate that's going to trigger a
10:26
trap. I understand that this wire likely means that something is going to be
10:32
triggered by this door opening. That's where you can introduce some player creativity
10:39
in order to turn it into rather than just a straight perception, which is very good, but is wisdom based, into a
10:47
more intelligence check. Okay. So, I want to ask you like as a DM, how do you play that? So, let's say
10:53
my plan is I'm going to put a pressure plate trap in front of a door and my my
10:59
player says, you know, I'm going to check the screws to look for like a mounting bracket for a trap on the other
11:05
side. Do you let them make their roll and if it's a good roll, like, yep, you
11:10
nailed it. You found the trap. Or do you still, hey, no, you don't find anything like that. But while you're checking
11:16
that, you trigger this pressure plate and bad things happen. Personally speaking, I am rarely going to punish
11:21
somebody for trying. That feels bad. That's terrible. With that said, and
11:26
again, looking at the basic rules, if we go to perception, there's a little
11:31
sidebar call out. In most cases, you need to describe where you are looking in order for the DM to determine your
11:37
chance of success. For example, a key is hidden beneath a set of folded clothes in the top drawer of a bureau. If you
11:43
tell the DM you pace around the room looking at the walls and furniture, you have no chance of finding the key regardless of your wisdom perception
11:50
check result, you would have to specify that you're opening the drawers or searching the pure in order to have any
11:55
chance of success. Now, that is pulled straight from the basic rules. Even Watsi, Wizards of the Coast, even Watsi
12:02
is here saying if you're not specific enough, you just don't find it. If
12:08
someone is doing the sort of like I am going to take the time to investigate this door, if they call out that they
12:15
are investigating in a way that says yes, I'm going to have you roll investigation, am I necessarily going to
12:21
nitpick a pressure plate versus a screw hole? Probably not. Mechanically, is
12:27
there precedence for it? Sure. But that feels bad from a player perspective. and
12:32
I am much more interested in my players feeling satisfied that their character build is doing well.
12:38
Now, let's say I'm a player in your game and you have described to me a door. I
12:44
come down a hallway and you tell me at the end of the hallway you encounter a door. Now, I might not necessarily have
12:50
all of the details like you and I in our heads have very different picture of what that door looks like most likely.
12:56
So, if I just say I search the door for traps, do you consider that enough to
13:02
give me an actual answer about whether or not I find traps as opposed to saying you weren't specific enough, you don't
13:08
find anything? Absolutely. And again, if you say, "I searched the door for traps," I would ask you to roll perception because
13:15
that's just searching. If you, and again, Wizard of the Coast being real
13:20
nitpicky here, if you ask me to search the door for traps, and I say there's no
13:25
traps, but 3 ft to the left of the door is a secret panel full of treasures
13:31
beyond imagining, you're not going to find that cuz he didn't search the wall, which is what they're talking about.
13:36
That seems reasonable. I I think from like a is the rule of the DM the right thing to do? I think I'm
13:42
with you. But I feel like to me this is further just making it feel like there
13:48
isn't much of a difference between investigation and perception. I feel like what we're really saying is we're going to give credit to somebody
13:55
properly roleplaying and their words are going to dictate how they phrase what
14:01
they do is what's going to dictate whether I ask them to perceive or investigate.
14:06
Okay. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. So, if I look down at my character sheet, well, if if random is my DM, and I look down
14:12
at my character sheet, and I think, I I am not a smart man, but somehow I am
14:19
wise, then I'm I'm going to find a way to make it about perception. Is that too
14:24
metagamy? Like, is that not No. Are you kidding? So, if you look at, and feel free to cut me off at some point, but if
14:31
you think about humans in real life, I know that I am maybe not super strong,
14:38
but I'm decently smart. Would I, the person, say, I'm going to try and lift
14:45
this box, or am I going to try and get a rock and a board and use leverage to
14:51
lift this box? That's a reasonable thing that humans do in real life. Is a
14:56
character going to try and pigeon hole themselves into what most people do for
15:03
a thing? Not necessarily. People figure out workarounds that work better for them all the time.
15:08
Okay. But I think the real question is how are you going to find the box in the rock?
15:13
Oh, that depends on if it's hidden or not. Yeah. Can you spot it or do you search
15:18
for it? Oh, wait. No. Yes. But you've you've hit the nail on the head with the big problem of where
15:24
do you draw the line between investigation and perception. Random has that absolutely right. Almost all of the
15:31
time when you're searching for something hidden, it's going to be perception. But it gets real confusing because if you
15:38
read the text of the investigation skill, one of the sentences is you might
15:43
deduce the location of a hidden object. Now, that's probably the sentence that
15:48
causes most of the confusion between the two. The key word there is deduce. It's
15:54
not find. You don't find the object. You figure it out. So, you might use investigation and like maybe you search
16:02
through a bunch of documents and in the documents you get some ideas and you're like, "Ah, now I know where the hidden
16:07
safe is based on what I found in these documents." But perception is the act of looking
16:13
around just finding the thing. Okay. But so with investigation, it's the whole like, you know, you find the
16:20
count's journal and in the journal he talks about how he hates these three kids, but he really loves this one kid
16:26
and the one kid's birthday is X. And lo and behold, that's the safe code. It's weird that you refer to yourself as
16:32
a count, but yes. Okay, here we are. And in fact, that's
16:37
one of the things that's very nearly called out specifically in the text of the skill is pouring through ancient
16:42
scrolls in search of a hidden fragment of knowledge might also call for intelligence investigation. If we go back to the way that I'm discussing
16:49
traps, if someone says, I want to search for clues that would tell me that there
16:54
is a a pressure plate. They might understand that there is a pressure
17:00
plate there. Is that necessarily going to tell them that it's this particular
17:06
square? It's all 10 ft. I mean, that could be worth exploring, which is
17:13
perhaps a way to make it less impactful than perception, although again, part of this is that we're trying to make it so
17:19
that there is possible diversity. One thing that's worth mentioning, there are a lot of cases, in fact, it's most of
17:26
the cases where investigation is not going to help you where perception will. If you want to say I am going to look
17:34
around the room for treasure, that's perception 100% of the time. If you want to get creative with even that, you can
17:40
say, okay, I want to look for places in the room where the absence of dust tells
17:48
me that this is a place that is frequently used, even though there's nothing nearby that is necessarily of
17:55
interest. And maybe that might indicate the presence of a hidden door. Again, it
18:00
really does come down to what can you make a good case for? Because while it's
18:06
not meant to be competitive, it is meant to be a lot of cooperative storytelling.
18:11
There are definitely ways in which you have built your character and sometimes you will need to convince your DM that
18:18
the thing that you are trying to do should maybe be governed by a particular set of the rules.
18:24
Okay, I think I'll follow that. I have maybe one more follow-up like I'm you know I'm thinking through what you're saying. So let's say I'm chasing
18:30
somebody. I run into a room and there are no obvious exits and my query has
18:36
escaped. So I say I look for additional exits or I say I look for scraping of
18:45
stone creases in the wall or or seams where the stone all lines up. you as a DM, do you have a table in your back
18:52
pocket where you're pulling it out and say it's like, "Oh, well, this was going to be 17 skill check and that
18:58
description right there bought you six points. We're going all the way down to an 11." I personally wouldn't do that. Nor do I
19:03
think that that's necessarily a reasonable thing to ask of yourself. However, I think absolutely a thing that
19:09
you can grant is advantage. If they're saying, "All right, I walk into this room, this person's gone. I want to
19:15
explicitly look for this very relevant sign of the way that they disappeared. Great advantage. On the other hand, if
19:22
they call out, I want to explicitly look for this particular sign of way they disappeared, roll a disadvantage. And if
19:30
you don't necessarily want to let them know that they are looking for the wrong thing, you can just ask them to roll
19:36
twice and tell you both numbers, which is a really interesting way to handle advantage disadvantage without letting
19:42
the player know which version they're getting. That's I do like that. But knowing my
19:48
luck as a DM, the character or that the player is then going to roll a one and a 20.
19:56
It's like, well, no, it wasn't that direction. Yeah. No, but I do think Yeah, that is a nice idea which I guess
20:02
actually I mean this gets back to a whole another thing, right? We do have and I constantly forget as a DM like I
20:07
never have it in front of me. We have passive perception. I could even imagine like leveraging that in some way in in
20:13
the conversation that we're having. Let's say same story. I'm looking for Cory, but it's a crowded it's a crowded space. You
20:20
know, someone got a glance of what they were wearing and so we're chasing them down. It would be boring to like every
20:26
every town block say roll perception again for me. Roll perception again for me. You know, I think the right thing to
20:32
do as a DM is to leverage that passive perception. But yeah, how do you how do you think about that?
20:37
My general rule is if the player says that they're actively looking for
20:42
something, make them roll. If a player walks into the room, let's say you walk into a room and you as the DM know there
20:49
are hidden enemies in that room. you check their passive perception and use that. But if the player walks in and
20:55
says, "I look around the room to see if anything's hiding in the room," then you let them roll. Now, one very important
21:02
thing to remember about passive skills is passive skills actually provide a floor on your skill check. If you roll
21:10
and your the result of your roll is below your passive score, your passive score still applies. Let's say you're
21:17
incredibly perceptive and you walk into a room. You roll a natural one and the DM says, "Oh yes, you uh you look off in
21:24
one corner and you don't notice and then satisfied that you see nothing in the room, you turn back to the room and then
21:30
your past perception kicks in and you notice a bunch of guys hidden in the corners." That one has been specifically
21:35
addressed in Sage Advice and Jeremy Crawford has talked about it. So that one's legit. It's not some weird weird
21:41
that we made up. You say that that that has been spread far and wide. I did not know that.
21:46
Yes. Disadvantage. Oh, I'm sorry. As someone who has DM'd for me, I
21:53
forgive you. Yes, that one that one's pretty easy to overlook. It's It's really not clear
21:59
from the text of the rules. And unless you're scrutinizing Jeremy Crawford's Twitter feed, it's pretty easy to miss
22:06
these things. Honestly, the the Sage Advice PDFs and then Jeremy Crawford's
22:11
Twitter feed. Great resources for rules answers, but not super discoverable.
22:16
Okay, actually maybe this brings, you know, I I'll maybe spoil the surprise, right? Right before this conversation, it was pointed out I learned a thing.
22:23
I'll confess that that on the character sheet, there is actually passive insight and passive investigation. I was not
22:30
aware of that. I want to go back random to your rubric, which is like depending
22:35
on how you describe to me the action that you want to take. I'm going to use that to determine whether I want you to
22:40
make an investigate or a perception check. I almost said persuasion. Yeah. Convince the other to come out and then
22:47
we'll talk. Okay. In the passive scenario, how do you determine which
22:52
passive that you want to look at? What would be the rubric here? While I appreciate them putting a passive
22:58
investigation on the character sheet, there aren't going to be many times when
23:03
that's important because so much of the way that you would use investigation,
23:09
even the way that they wrote it, is in a very active sense. If that's just to
23:14
remind the player exactly what Tyler just talked about, that even if you roll
23:19
a two, your floor is still whatever's listed in passive. If I am an incredibly
23:28
smart, well-trained individual looking for the signs of there being a trap
23:36
somewhere, I'm not going to just suddenly go, "Yes, that soup we had last
23:41
night, my god, so good." And just miss something. getting into how
23:47
investigation can be used and getting into one of the things that kicked this off. Tools can
23:55
Yeah, let's talk about tools. The artificer armor handbook that I
24:01
wrote and and is available on rpgbot.net calls out using your thieves tools to
24:09
aid in your investigation checks. And a couple ways that you might do that, using shims to prod around the side of a
24:18
stone, which might be a pressure plate. Using your little dentist mirror to look
24:25
inside perhaps a keyhole for a trap that might
24:30
be triggered by turning the key one way and not the other. That's a real thing written into a 3.5 module that I've
24:37
encountered. I'm not just pulling that out of thin air. That sort of thing. So again, I think that really goes back to
24:45
what are you able to make convincing? And on the one hand, that's as a player,
24:53
I want to tell a good story about how I played to my strengths. And on the other hand, as a DM, that's am I going to
24:59
allow this person to be super strong at all of these things? And if so, is that
25:07
serving the story well or do we need to tone that back in some fashion?
25:12
Nice. Okay. And then remind folks, so I I have tools. What is that going to do
25:18
to my my role? What's the modifier? The character that I am talking about, I
25:23
call out that you never bother taking proficiency in investigate because it is
25:29
your job to figure out how to use your thieves tools to perform the
25:35
investigation checks that you care about, like searching for traps and searching for hidden treasure. Now, in
25:41
fifth edition, you can only get your proficiency to a single role once, no matter how you do it. So, if for
25:48
instance you are proficient in well, I mean here's here's a good one.
25:54
So, if you're proficient in slight of hand and proficient in thieves tools and
26:01
you go to pick a lock and your DM calls for a dexterity thieves tools slide of
26:07
hand check, even though you have proficiency in both things, you can only apply that once. By the same token, you
26:13
only need to become proficient in one of those things if that's all you expect
26:19
yourself to do most of the time. So rather than spending the proficiency on becoming proficient in investigation,
26:26
you take your proficiency and then later expertise that you will get in thieves tools and use that to become the driving
26:34
force on your roles for searching for traps and hidden things. Now, to take
26:40
another example on combining tools and skills, a a really common case is
26:46
characters who are proficient in both persuasion and an instrument. Say you're playing a bard or sorry, not persuasion,
26:53
performance. Performance and an instrument. Basically, every bard is going to be proficient in performance.
27:00
And by default, they get, I think, three instruments. Now, let's say you go to do a
27:05
performance or something and you have proficiency in both, let's say, the flute and performance. So, as random
27:12
said, you don't get to apply your proficiency bonus twice unless you have a feature that lets you do that, like
27:18
expertise. So, so a typical bard, let's say you're level one, you don't have expertise yet. Your proficience in the
27:25
flute and performance, you go to perform, you just add your ability score
27:30
modifier and your proficiency bonus. Xanithar's Guide to Everything introduced a new kind of optional rule.
27:38
It's on page 78. It addresses combining skills and tools. Uh the DM may allow
27:44
you to make that check with advantage. If you have proficiency in both a tool and a skill, which apply to the same
27:51
situation, which if you apply that to the Bard case, it means performing with
27:56
an instrument is always better than performing without an instrument. Yeah, I guess that makes a ton of sense to me
28:03
because otherwise ignore Zanithar for a second. All right,
28:08
okay, fine. I I look the other way. He looks the other way. It's fine. All eyes turn. I I have proficiency in
28:15
performance. I have proficiency on these three instruments and that's useless because I could perform with any
28:21
instrument and have just as good of a role. Exactly. Am I okay? I I don't think we need to
28:27
commit an episode to that, but I maybe we just let it linger for a second. Yeah. And then it becomes this weird
28:34
question of okay then what is the point of having those item proficiencies in the first place? And you could say, okay, well now, for instance, what if I
28:42
wanted to write a song that was going to
28:47
accomplish some particular harmonic effect? Or let's say I want to take my
28:54
flute and try and play the particular pitch that's going to break glass.
28:59
Now, if you were to know what pitch that would be, that would be intelligence.
29:06
That's a thing, you know. Oh, that's not a thing that you perform. There could definitely be a case where a DM calls
29:13
for an intelligence check to play that and you say, "Let me add proficiency from my flute." Is it common? Absolutely
29:20
not. And I think that the Zanithar's rule is a a good way of trying to adjudicate that. But there is definitely
29:27
points and in fact I will call up an example a less preposterous edge case
29:33
example from my own play. The soldier background lets you pick proficiency in
29:40
one of three board games essentially. It's like playing cards dice or three
29:45
dragon ante because what do soldiers do in downtime? They play games. I ended up
29:50
in a contested role where one of my party members was cheating, playing
29:55
cards with me and used stealth to hide what they were doing. And you know, my
30:01
DM said, "All right, great. Roll of perception." And I said, "I'm proficient in playing cards. Can I use that
30:07
proficiency to modify this perception check?" And he said, "Absolutely. Go for
30:12
it." And that was a lot of fun. Calling out the little bits of stuff is a great way to make reference to parts of things
30:20
that are often overlooked. It's almost like that's a theme of this podcast. Nice. Nice. So, to go back just a tiny
30:27
bit, the existence of tools since the release of fifth edition, like tools
30:33
were kind of overlooked for a really long time because it was difficult to find ways to bring them into play.
30:39
Xanithar did a lot to make tools more interesting. It fleshed out specific
30:45
mechanics for different sets of tools. The section on tools and skills together. The second sentence is, "Thus,
30:53
why would a character who has the opportunity to acquire one or the other want to gain a tool proficiency instead
31:00
of a proficiency in a skill?" Wizards of the Coast literally understood that tools weren't interesting and added
31:06
rules to the game to make them more interesting. tools have some trouble. Combining them with skills or using them
31:14
in place of skills like Random suggested, that is a great way to make tools both interesting and meaningful in
31:20
your game. 100% 100%. I'm actually I've got the crank turning now. I'm thinking about
31:26
other tools that we should be introducing. New tools. But anyway, awesome. Tyler, I think you had
31:32
something special. I did. Okay. So, this is kind of a pop quiz. We are going to play a very very
31:41
fast game of Dn D and the entire mechanic is going to be I will describe
31:47
what is happening and you two tell me do you roll perception or do you roll investigation or do you roll something
31:53
else? That is the basic scenario. All right. So it's a real like David versus Goliath
31:59
uh of of of tabletop. I'm putting all that pressure on. Sure. Yes. Which one am I? Because I
32:05
remember which one wins. I I think you're the rock. I think I'll take that
32:12
as a compliment. Randoms Goliath. All right. Kill Random. Got it. Okay.
32:18
All right. So, the two of you are pursuing a pair of murderous thieves.
32:25
Uh, you have pursued them to their hideout and stand outside what you believe to be the door to the hideout.
32:32
You know that they are prone to leaving traps behind them wherever they go. And you know that they're willing to attack
32:38
you if they see you. You stand at the door and with one of your passive
32:43
skills, you notice around the door there are some red splotches splattered on the
32:48
wood of the door. Which passive skill do you use? Are you talking about which passive
32:54
skill found that red information? Found that red splotch information. Call that perception. Perception. Okay, Randall, what do you
33:00
think? Yeah, just to see the red splotches, I would also say perception. Okay. All right. Now, what skill would
33:07
you use to figure out what those red splotches are? I'm going to go with investigation
33:13
because it feels like you would have to do a deducing. That's certainly one possibility. I
33:20
would actually say that it depends on what the substance is. If it's blood, I might give it investigation or medicine.
33:27
If it's something alchemical, I would probably give it arcana. If it's something else entirely, I mean, well,
33:35
Arcana covers a lot, but I would say that it definitely depends on what the composition of it actually is.
33:42
Okay. I like that you brought in the other skills there. I would agree with you, both of you, actually.
33:47
Investigation would be my first go-to. If it's blood, I would allow medicine.
33:53
Now, in my imagination, it's blood and also something else. And with a decent investigation, you discover that some of
34:00
it's blood, some of it's just wine. So, you notice that there is some kind of combination of blood and wine splattered
34:07
below the door handle on the door. Knowing that the thieves you're pursuing
34:13
are prone to leaving traps behind them, you suspect that there is some kind of trap on the door. What do you use to
34:19
look for traps? the previous half an hour of conversation.
34:24
Me personally, I'm gonna go to that experience of playing that artificer that I just did. And again, it's going
34:31
to depend a fair bit on am I certain that they're still inside this building that I have the time. If I have the time
34:37
to break out my toolkit and go poking at it, absolutely. I'm going to want to investigate that if that's what the
34:45
character is built for. If I want to look for things which are suspicious,
34:50
things which might indicate a trap, I would roll perception. Okay, Randall.
34:56
So, here's the deal. My initial instinct would actually be to more of like I I look for long tree limb to poke handle.
35:02
I look for window to get in. Like, I'd be looking for alternatives. I like that creativity.
35:08
Yeah. For fear of handle. Okay. All right. What what what you told me is handle a scary and I'm not sure if
35:14
I'm going to be able to get through that. I'm sorry. This is this is like exactly the thing that I was very happy about
35:21
where this is like, you know, the the two 20-year veteran software developers
35:26
arguing about which particular way to tweak the code and some non-coder walks
35:31
in and says, "Okay, but how about you just do that thing?" And everyone just throws up their hands.
35:38
What's funny in that analogy is Randall and I are both software developers. Random and you you are not. Yes. So, but
35:46
great analogy. I have been in many of those conversations. All right. We'll say you find a trap and
35:53
also climb through a window to avoid it. You are now in some sort of warehouse.
35:59
The room is dimly lit, but you can see stacks of boxes towered around you. You
36:06
believe that the thieves could be lying and waiting to ambush you. What skill do
36:11
you use to look for them? I believe it's spot. Nailed it. Time travel.
36:17
Ye olden days of 2005. Absolutely. Yeah, I would call that perception. And in fact, I would
36:23
probably not even ask my players to roll because the act of searching, if there
36:29
are people there waiting to actively ambush you, I would just straight compare it to passive. And if you beat
36:35
it, you see them. And if you don't, they get a surprise. Not that there's a whole lot of mechanical benefit for surprise
36:40
in fifth edition. But there it is. Yeah, we should do an episode on surprise.
36:45
Yeah, Perception. Great answer. Okay, so the thieves pop out. You trained
36:51
adventurers quickly defeat them. Having defeated them, you know that each of them is carrying a key to the vault
36:58
where they hide all of their illgotten goods. How do you find the key? I just hope this doesn't come down to medicine.
37:06
Yeah, if if it's come down to medicine, we're searching the insides of the thieves, and that's not a pleasant thought.
37:12
Oh, no. You said it out loud. Oh, that's what I do.
37:18
I mean, so you said that we know that each of them carries a key. If you just take one of them and strip him down to
37:26
component clothing and sift through it, if you do it the way that I just
37:31
described, I'd probably call that an investigate because you know that there is a thing which you are looking for and
37:37
you are doing it in a methodical fashion. If you're just going to pat down the body, that's probably
37:42
perception. Okay. So, so you're saying there's a line based on method. Going
37:47
back to the text of the rule. So investigation specifically uses the phrase deduce the location of a hidden
37:54
object. So would you consider taking all of the person's belongings and going through all of them? Would you consider
38:00
that deducing the location of a hidden object or would you consider that just a really thorough perception check? I mean
38:07
I I could see I could see arguing that you're you're making some deduction. Like so for instance, let's say the first thing you do is you just strip
38:13
them naked and then you split the clothes in half and you search through one pile and you search through the other pile and if you don't find it then
38:19
you split it again and you look deeper. And so what we're going to do is we're going to do a binary search to the
38:24
clothing where we touch each piece of clothing in further and further detail
38:30
the more the the more we don't find it. Similar to if you lost your keys in your house, what do you do? You walk in a
38:36
quick circle, take a peek at everything. Okay, that didn't work out. Now I'm going to look harder. And now I'm going
38:41
to look harder. Which actually this is what I wanted to say like as a DM in that scenario. So the danger is over. I
38:48
know that they carry the key on them. What scenario is there where you are going to deny your party finding the
38:55
key? And that's an interesting point. And actually I would not deny them if they know it. If they know that each
39:01
individual carries a key unless that's a lie that I have built in and someone has lied to them. There's little reason to
39:08
deny them or even force a rule. What you're talking about though with your binary search goes back to a mechanic
39:14
from 3.x that is no longer present taking 20. In 3.x X for any skill which
39:22
had no penalty for failure and where you were not threatened. You could simply
39:28
take 20 to simulate that you did the action 20 times and rolled every number
39:34
1 through 20 on a d20 for your skill check and it took 20 times as long. And there were actual mechanical rules about
39:41
how long it took to search something taking 20. Now, in fifth edition,
39:46
obviously, you know, if you say that I want to just be very thorough, and you describe being very thorough, maybe that
39:52
gives you an advantage. For this particular instance, I personally wouldn't roll. If I was going to have
39:57
them roll, I would really allow either. Okay, I like that answer. Allow either.
40:03
So, so on the subject of not having the key on their person. So, we we should do
40:09
an episode on failure and skill checks sometime. But one thing that you as the DM could do if you call for a roll on
40:17
that check instead of simply have it be like, "Oh, you don't find the key. If they roll, maybe the key is somewhere
40:23
else." Part of what rolling the dice is supposed to account for is outside factors, randomness, things that you
40:30
can't predict. So, maybe a low roll isn't the character making a mistake. Maybe the key is just somewhere else.
40:36
Actually, I guess I'll throw in what I really love the idea of is you find the decoy key or you find like the key to
40:42
their front door, which is not the key you were looking for. And I like, yeah, you know, you totally find a key. Skull, crossbones, it's got all those things on
40:49
it. Do they match? Of course they match. They're best friends. Nice. Okay, good talk. Are there other
40:56
things we wanted to hit? I think we've beaten this one to death. Nice. Nice. Nice. All right. Well,
41:02
thanks everybody for joining us on episode one, the second episode of the RPGbot dot podcast. Again, I'm Randall
41:09
James. You can find me at amateurjack.com, amateurjack
41:15
on Facebook, and Jackamate on Instagram and Twitter. I'm Tyler Camstra, author of RPGbot.net. You can find me online at
41:23
rpgbot.net, ET on Twitter at rpgb t do o
41:28
t ne and on Facebook at facebook.com/rpgb
41:35
t ne because rpgbot was taken on both of them.
41:42
And you won't really find me much on social media. I do occasionally contribute to rpgbot.net. If you look in
41:48
places where people play games, you might find me as Harley Quinn because that or Harley Quint with a T on the end
41:55
because Harley Quinn is fairly common. So you will find me in one of those on Steam, Discord, a few other places, but
42:01
in general mostly you're going to find me here. I like the random is at all the cool places. All right. Well, thank you all
42:07
and thank you to our producing Dan. We got a polite thumbs up and that was all. It was more like a finger. I don't I
42:14
don't It It was an index though, so I think it was friendly. All right. So, yeah, I think Right. Join us next time.
42:22
I think we're going to have a conversation about mounted combat. We sure are. And that will be spicy. All
42:29
right. Thanks, folks. [Music]
#Arts & Entertainment
#Online Media
#Roleplaying Games
#Roleplaying Games