Dungeons & Dragons: What Is Passive Perception
Your party enters the dungeon. A cool breeze wafts past you, relieving you from the enduring heat from outside. It’s a narrow entrance, allowing only one person to enter at a time, but it quickly opens up, allowing three to stand shoulder to shoulder. The stone walls have a reddish hue, showing they were hewn from local sandstone. Erosion is clearly visible, with deep, vertical channels carved where water has flowed. Moss clings to the wall, growing where it is still damp. Your Dungeon Master pauses for a moment before making a Passive Perception check.
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Wait, what? What the heck is Passive Perception?
Passive abilities are the innate abilities that your character has actively running in the background. There are many of them present within the Dungeons & Dragons universe, but Passive Perception checks are perhaps the most commonly used. If you have a high Wisdom level, you will have a naturally high Perception rating, giving you a greater chance of spotting things that ordinary folks miss.
More often than not, you will not know that the DM has made a Passive Perception since they handle this behind the scenes, ensuring the flow of the game remains uninterrupted. Doing otherwise could take you out of the game and provide clues that something is about to happen.
Passive Perception values must be calculated using your base Wisdom modifier and applying any additional modifiers provided by race, class, spells, or if your character has proficiency in Perception as well. Once all the modifiers are applied, the DM will take this value, and in place of a die roll, add ten to the figure to give your Passive Perception.
For example, if an NPC attempts
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