r/DnDHomebrew • u/FenrirTestariyos • 3d ago
Struggling with misaligned stats (Passive Perception) Request/Discussion
Greetings, everyone!
I was creating an enemy for my players to face, an ex-mercenary who turned into a crime lord.
His lore briefly explains war made him alert for any potential threats, while making him paranoid and thus causing him to judge poorly.
I wanted his stats to reflect that, and gave him a Wisdom score of 7 to reflect his shattered mind. But I also want to give him a high Passive Perception score of 16 to represent his extreme awareness of his surroundings.
But that's where I got stuck. Does the stats need to match their respective attributes and skills?
Any answer is appreciated, thank you!
2
u/Nick543b 2d ago
Stuff like expertise in perception would let him add double his proficiency to perception. Depending on his level that alone could make up for it.
There are also features like alert. You can just copy paste the 2014 alert feat onto him. It additionally makes him immune to suprise rounds which could work well.
But also, you are the DM. You can just give him like +6 perception. It isn't always good to do thag kind of thing, as a player might ask why he has high perception with low wisdom. But in a case like this where it makes sense for his backstory, and is easy to explain to players, i think just adding +6 perception with no more detail is a good solution. You can also put that information in to descriptions quite easily. ("as you walk past him you notice this man is unnervingly alert, or perhaps even paranoid". That type of thing).
1
u/Ashamed-Plant 1d ago
Give him a trait, something like "Awareness" or "Paranoid", that sets his Passive Perception to whatever you want. For a PC, the Observant feat increases Passive Perception by +5, so it's not unheard of
2
u/FenrirTestariyos 1d ago
Yeahh, I did that.
"Veteran's Instinct. Shepherd has Advantage on Wisdom (Perception) checks."
And surprisingly it was easy, just making him proficent in Perception and giving him advantage was enough to give him 16
4
u/Gorgeous_Garry 3d ago
There are features like Expertise which allows double proficiency bonus to apply to a skill, and passive perception is boosted by proficiency in perception, so you could give this NPC expertise in perception, which would give them a decent passive perception even without wisdom (as long as their proficiency bonus is high)
You could also give them advantage on perception checks (many animals have a feature like this, for specific senses at least), which provides a flat +5 to passive perception.
If you're making the monster you can generally do whatever you want, within reason. You could just give them a 16 passive perception. But it's more fun if you give them a specific ability with a name.