I’ve never seen a reference to it in the book, and I thought I was fairly thorough, but I was reading the Monster Burner, and it mentioned in the statistics section that perception is open-ended. I know the MB is based on BW Original, not Gold, but does the rule hold to the new edition?
Perception was open-ended in BW Classic and Revised, but is NO LONGER open-ended in Gold.
Then why does it still require successes to advance? It seems needlessly brutal…
I think the answer I’ve seen is that they found while playing that Perception was rolled a lot more than pretty much any other stat, so to keep it from advancing really quickly, they kept the requirement for successful rolls.
This might be a naive question, but why is Perception always rolled? I can see why in some game (let’s say, very thief / scout / dissimulation-oriented games) the Observation is often summoned for versus tests against stealth, sleight of hand and that kind of thing, but then again, that’s a skill, not a stat… so why the game is designed to summon this stats more than the others? Thanks!
Perception is the root of many, many skills, including all Wises.
Which makes it a stat your roll often for beginner’s luck. When obstacles are too high, tests are logged towards advancing perception instead of the skill, which means perception could reach a rating of 6-7-8 pretty quickly compared to the other stats. Plus, you’d open those skills and wise pretty fast and at high exponents.
Specifically, it was found to be really easy to game Beginner’s Luck for tests to advance Perception, more so than other stats.