Changes

Sometimes it's not feasible or desirable to just kill or run off everything that's between you and your goal. Enter the infiltration game. An infiltration generally means that you need to avoid or render defective encounters along the way to your objective. There are a few ways to go about that in D&D, though for some reason simple stealth seems to be exclusively used. In this section we'll go through two methods of obtaining access without alerting the enemy, and discuss how they work with the revised skills. But first it might be helpful to understand the watchers, those who play on the other side of the infiltration game. This should also serve as a general guide to how people notice things under these rules. ===The Perception Mini-Game===The perception mini-game is how the players learn what is going on in the world. Most of the time people just see or hear things, and it's not really important what else they are doing. When there's a chance that they didn't notice something relevant, however, the DM needs to know how to figure out who noticed what. The can be done by asking what the PCs are doing, determining their bonuses based on that, and giving out information based on their final modifiers. Under normal circumstances, characters don't roll Perception checks. The isntead use their Passive Perception. Passive Perception fluctuates based on the character's activity: *Characters "Take 10" if they are standing on guard. The character uses a standard action to Notice.*Characters "Take 5" if they are walking around. The character uses a move action to move, and a swift for a hurried Notice.*Characters "Take 0" if they are busy with another task. The character uses a standard action to do something other than notice, and a swift action for a hurried Notice with the -5 distracted penalty.*Characters "Take 0" with their passive perception as a free action, regardless of what else they are doing. The above results assume that your character is acting at normal pace. If your Endurance bonus is good enough you can instead hustle all the time, or fit in sufficient breaks, and maintain laser-like focus from dusk to dawn without burning out. If you want to actually do everything at double speed the above results still apply, but if you're still moving at a slower pace with the rest of the party, this gives you leftover actions that you are assumed to spend on a higher Passive Perception, like so: *Hustling characters "Take 10" if they are walking around. The character uses a move action to move, and a standard to Notice.*Hustling characters "Take 3" if they are busy. The character uses a standard action to do something other than notice, and a move action for a hurried Notice with the -5 distracted penalty. When the fight-or-flight response kicks in, most people just stop seeing details completely. The rogue about to hit them in the back of the head with a pipe, for example, can be easily missed when you're dodging blows from someone else instead. In combat, everyone's Perception defaults to one of two results, regardless of their Endurance: *Characters "Take -5" if they are not actively threatened. The character uses a free action to Notice passively, with the -5 distracted penalty.*Characters "Take -10" if they are threatened or being stabbed in the face. The character uses a free action to Notice passively, with the -10 extremely distracted penalty. If you like, you can spend an action in combat to roll an actual Perception check, and that's probably a good idea if you have nothing better to do. Characters with 4 or more ranks in Perception do not need to roll checks, and can instead "Take 10" as a standard action to boost their results by 10 or hurry the action for a smaller boost. The typical senses are not the only ways to learn about events in the world, however. Characters with enough ranks in Dowsing can use Sense Presence instead of Perception to gain access to alternate senses. You can't spend actions on Perception while using Sense Presence, however, which means you default to "Take -5" with your passive perception as it is also considered distracting to those senses. However, you gain Blindsense, and can find creatures normally hidden to your other senses. You may spend actions to notice creatures with this sense, as if you were spending actions with Perception, but you use your Dowsing skill total instead and your result is only used for your Blindsense. Your options and check results depend on the range of Blindsense you are working with, like so: *Blindsense 60' requires a move action to maintain, so...**Hustling characters "Take 10" if they are on guard. The character uses a standard action to 'notice' creatures or objects with their Blindsense.**Characters "Take 5" if they are otherwise on guard. The character uses a swift action for a hurried 'notice' against creatures or objects with their Blindsense.**Other characters "Take 0" if they passively using their Blindsense or using their swift action for another task.*Blindsense 15' only requires a swift action to maintain, so...**Characters "Take 10" if they are on watch. The character uses a standard action to 'notice'.**Hustling characters can "Take 10" and a move action if they are on watch. The character uses a move action to move and a standard to 'notice'.**Characters "Take 0" if they are walking around. The character uses a move action to move and their passive 'notice' abilities.**Characters "Take -5" if they're busy. The character uses their standard action for anything other than a 'notice' check with their Blindsense. As long as your Dowsing check beats DC 0, Blindsense lets you automatically notice any creature within its range, unless it's masked by a special ability such as Foil Senses (which is available at the same level). It hinders your passive Perception, however, which works at a greater range, especially in good conditions. Sense Presence is very powerful under certain circumstances, such as when you're expecting an invisible foe, securing a bottleneck around a corner, or when you're in very dense terrain, but it won't usually replace a good Perception bonus. You can remove a distraction penalty with a DC 15 Concentration check. This means that if you have 1 rank in Concentration and at least a +5 bonus, you can Take 10 and never suffer from distraction penalties out of combat, and that boosts your Passive Perception accordingly. This is a free action, so there's no reason not to do it. If you have at least 5 ranks in Concentration, you can take 10 on Ignore Distraction in combat, too.