Listen

Use this skill to hear approaching enemies, to detect someone sneaking up on you from behind, or to eavesdrop on someone else’s conversation.

Check: Your Listen check is either made against a DC that reflects how quiet the noise is that you might hear, or it is opposed by your target’s Move Silently check.

Your DM may decide to make the Listen check for you, so that you don’t know whether not hearing anything means that nothing is there, or that you failed the check.

Table 1.1

Table 1.2

In the case of people trying to be quiet, the DCs given on the table could be replaced by Move Silently checks, in which case the indicated DC would be their average check result (or close to it). For instance, the DC 19 noted on the table for a cat stalking means that an average cat has a +9 bonus on Move Silently checks. Assuming an average roll of 10 on 1d20, its Move Silently check result would be 19.