D&D 5E How do you do secret doors?

[Quickleaf]

That sounds to me like an issue with presentation more than anything.

<snip>

Again, it sounds like a presentation issue here.

To use a concrete example that's pretty typical of how I've seen secret doors presented in published material, here's an abbreviated Area 11 from Fane of the Night Serpent in Tomb of Annihilation:

[SECTION]11. Throne Room
Four pillars support the vaulted ceiling, and steps ascend to an iron throne carved in the likeness of a hydra. Painted on the wall behind it is a large blue triangle. To the south, an engraved stone disk is set into the floor of an alcove. A ten-foot-wide opening in the east wall leads to a flooded cave.

Secret Door. A secret door in the western corner of the north wall leads to Ras Nsi's lair (area 12). To locate the secret door, a character must succeed on a DC 16 Wisdom (Perception) check while searching the walls. If the characters have been told about the secret door, they gain advantage on the skill check.[/SECTION]

I searched the text and there's no description of how the secret door opens, what exactly locating it means narratively, how it might subtly be demarcated, or anything else. EDIT: Notably, it's the only secret door in the dungeon.

Presumably the passive Perception rule (if a DM uses that) would apply, so a PC with a 16 passive Perception score notices the secret door (or 11 if they've been told about the secret door).

So the DM might ad lib an evocative description about dinosuar-hide tower shields flanking either side of the iron throne, and the PC noticing that one of the tower shields seems crooked (from the secret door being regularly opened/closed). But that's a pretty minute detail. Why should a player think that's relevant, short of meta-gaming "it's important if the DM describes it"? A crooked tower shield? The player says they'll investigate, DM describes a thin outline of a secret door in the stone, player says they'll open it, and DM narrates the resplendent villain's lair beyond.

Discovering the resplendent villain's lair is cool. Exploring the rest of the throne room and dealing with the challenges (which I omitted for brevity's sake) is cool. But the secret door itself? It's 45 seconds of nothing. There's no challenge. No sense of figuring something out. No sense of the villain who installed it. It's a little speed bump that isn't adding anything from what I can see.

This sort of secret door presentation is what I'd consider typical.

How you do you present your secret doors? Or do you have a positive example of what you mean?

 

[mrpopstar]

I stick with the basic rules: A secret door presents a challenge that must be overcome. There is chance of failure, so I call for a Wisdom (Perception) check when someone attempts to overcome the challenge and find the door. I grant advantage if someone knows about the door, reflecting the help provided by having such information. I also allow working together. I only use passive Perception if someone makes multiple attempts to overcome the challenge.

 

[iserith]

To use a concrete example that's pretty typical of how I've seen secret doors presented in published material, here's an abbreviated Area 11 from Fane of the Night Serpent in Tomb of Annihilation:

[SECTION]11. Throne Room
Four pillars support the vaulted ceiling, and steps ascend to an iron throne carved in the likeness of a hydra. Painted on the wall behind it is a large blue triangle. To the south, an engraved stone disk is set into the floor of an alcove. A ten-foot-wide opening in the east wall leads to a flooded cave.

Secret Door. A secret door in the western corner of the north wall leads to Ras Nsi's lair (area 12). To locate the secret door, a character must succeed on a DC 16 Wisdom (Perception) check while searching the walls. If the characters have been told about the secret door, they gain advantage on the skill check.[/SECTION]

I searched the text and there's no description of how the secret door opens, what exactly locating it means narratively, how it might subtly be demarcated, or anything else. EDIT: Notably, it's the only secret door in the dungeon.

Presumably the passive Perception rule (if a DM uses that) would apply, so a PC with a 16 passive Perception score notices the secret door (or 11 if they've been told about the secret door).

So the DM might ad lib an evocative description about dinosuar-hide tower shields flanking either side of the iron throne, and the PC noticing that one of the tower shields seems crooked (from the secret door being regularly opened/closed). But that's a pretty minute detail. Why should a player think that's relevant, short of meta-gaming "it's important if the DM describes it"? A crooked tower shield? The player says they'll investigate, DM describes a thin outline of a secret door in the stone, player says they'll open it, and DM narrates the resplendent villain's lair beyond.

Discovering the resplendent villain's lair is cool. Exploring the rest of the throne room and dealing with the challenges (which I omitted for brevity's sake) is cool. But the secret door itself? It's 45 seconds of nothing. There's no challenge. No sense of figuring something out. No sense of the villain who installed it. It's a little speed bump that isn't adding anything from what I can see.

This sort of secret door presentation is what I'd consider typical.

You definitely won't find me defending the published adventures on this score.

How you do you present your secret doors? Or do you have a positive example of what you mean?

I discuss how I handle secret doors upthread here. That post describes how I largely still handle it.

I've refined how I structure exploration challenges a bit in some circumstances to in effect "zoom out" (passive checks, if needed, to resolve activities while traveling) and "zoom in" (resolving activities in 10-min turns which may or may not call for ability checks and are connected to wandering monster checks). So you might, for example, notice a secret door while traveling the dungeon (as resolved by a passive check), but we might then "zoom in" if the players want to figure out how it works and get it open. This going to come at the cost of time and the risk of a wandering monster and may require an ability check. And the choice to search for secret doors while traveling came with the further risk of being surprised if a lurking monster attacks. So there's some choices and trade-offs to be made here.

 

[Quickleaf]

You definitely won't find me defending the published adventures on this score.

I discuss how I handle secret doors upthread here. That post describes how I largely still handle it.

I've refined how I structure exploration challenges a bit in some circumstances to in effect "zoom out" (passive checks, if needed, to resolve activities while traveling) and "zoom in" (resolving activities in 10-min turns which may or may not call for ability checks and are connected to wandering monster checks). So you might, for example, notice a secret door while traveling the dungeon (as resolved by a passive check), but we might then "zoom in" if the players want to figure out how it works and get it open. This going to come at the cost of time and the risk of a wandering monster and may require an ability check. And the choice to search for secret doors while traveling came with the further risk of being surprised if a lurking monster attacks. So there's some choices and trade-offs to be made here.

I see you mention using the exploration rules for long-term large dungeon exploration, and that someone needs to take the Searching for Secret Doors exploration task in order to apply their passive Perception towards noticing secret doors.

What if you have players, after a fight, say "we want to search for secret doors in this room" but that's not the exploration task any of them selected? In other words, what if the upfront declaration doesn't survive contact with the actual adventure material? Do you answer "you find no doors" because you have this exploration task system in place? Or do you treat it as a case of specific-trumps-general and call for Perception checks? Or use passive Perception?

And it sounds like you're saying secret doors aren't a puzzle to figure out in your games, but rather they are a risk-versus-reward choice for players to make (i.e. risk of wandering encounter vs. reward of finding treasure or something cool)? Is that right?

 

[iserith]

I see you mention using the exploration rules for long-term large dungeon exploration, and that someone needs to take the Searching for Secret Doors exploration task in order to apply their passive Perception towards noticing secret doors.

What if you have players, after a fight, say "we want to search for secret doors in this room" but that's not the exploration task any of them selected? In other words, what if the upfront declaration doesn't survive contact with the actual adventure material? Do you answer "you find no doors" because you have this exploration task system in place? Or do you treat it as a case of specific-trumps-general and call for Perception checks? Or use passive Perception?

That would be the "zooming in" and "zooming out" bit that I mentioned before. It's not like you're stuck doing one thing all the time. You can choose to do otherwise and that may come with different trade-offs and risks.

And it sounds like you're saying secret doors aren't a puzzle to figure out in your games, but rather they are a risk-versus-reward choice for players to make (i.e. risk of wandering encounter vs. reward of finding treasure or something cool)? Is that right?

Sometimes a secret door can be a puzzle, when it is fun for everyone and helps make for an exciting, memorable tale. But some aren't all that complex, relatively-speaking, and dealing with it is simply a matter of managing time and risk in order to gain a reward of some kind. Are you willing to at a minimum spend 10 minutes looking for the secret door you suspect is there, risk a wandering monster check, and then spend another 10 minutes and risk a second wandering monster check trying to figure out how to open it? What is everyone else doing while you're doing this? What if the gnolls that control this section of the dungeon come calling? How do you prepare yourselves?

 

[Rya.Reisender]

Passive perception for me only leads to extra hints, I will never outright say "you spot a secret door" no matter how high the passive value is. But it may help noticing something is off in the room.

How I handle active checks depends on how the player approaches it. "I look around the room" might not yield as good results as "I check the western wall for a hidden lever" on the same roll result.

 

[clearstream]

I'm gearing up to run Caverns of Thracia converted to 5e in the Summer and I really don't have an idea on how to do secret doors in a meaningful way. In the old days it was just a d6 roll whenever the party passed on, and I suppose the logical continuation of that would be a perception check now (or passive perception). But something about that feels like its missing something, its not very robust and more than a little arbitrary. But in the same vein, every time I've tried to describe an area of the wall in such a way that hints at something being there, like "this part of the wall is covered in a newer looking coat of plaster, then the door is always found and its not very secret.

So how do you do secret doors? What ways have you tried that work?

Each secret door has a pre-determined DC. I then use the party's highest passive Intelligence (Investigation) unless actively searching, and then Intelligence (Investigation) check.

Roughly, I say to players that perception is noticing something; investigation is noticing something is out of place.

 

[Notsofunnyguy]

I can't tell you...it's a secret.

 

[Quickleaf]

Sometimes a secret door can be a puzzle, when it is fun for everyone and helps make for an exciting, memorable tale. But some aren't all that complex, relatively-speaking, and dealing with it is simply a matter of managing time and risk in order to gain a reward of some kind. Are you willing to at a minimum spend 10 minutes looking for the secret door you suspect is there, risk a wandering monster check, and then spend another 10 minutes and risk a second wandering monster check trying to figure out how to open it? What is everyone else doing while you're doing this? What if the gnolls that control this section of the dungeon come calling? How do you prepare yourselves?

I was reflecting on how you do secret doors as a risk-vs-reward aspect of exploration, and I'm wondering if "secret door" might be an umbrella for a 3 separate concepts. The secret path, the secret passage, and the magic secret door.

A secret path is something like the hidden West Gate into Moria or the pass of Cirith Ungol into Mordor. The sense of discovery comes from locating the path. It often (though not necessarily) circumvents a threat or allows stealthy movement behind enemy lines. This type seems well-suited to the sort of exploration techniques you use [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION].

Then there's a secret passage which is the sliding bookshelf or trap door concealed under the rug. There isn't much sense of discovery in the passage itself, rather the discovery comes from whatever cool thing lies beyond the passage. It often leads to hidden treasure or a special beneficial area (e.g. a safe resting spot). This type seems to be the default assumption in the D&D rules of the sorts of "secret doors" PCs are encountering.

And then theres the magic secret door which is exemplified in Harry Potter's Diagon Alley, which is entered by going through an inn and tapping a wand against exactly the right spot on the brick wall. Another classic example would be the Dwarven Door into Lonely Mountain which can only be opened by moonlight on Durin's Day. The sense of discovery mostly comes from figuring out the trick to using the secret door, and often (though not necessarily) that trick involves magic. This is the type of secret door I'm thinking of when I talk about wonder, mystery, and discovery.

 

[delericho]

Place a couple of broken 'secret' doors early on, so that the characters find them easily enough using Passive Perception. Make sure these are all the same - there's a consistent way they were hidden (before they got broken).

Then place a bunch of other secret doors later in the adventure with a much higher DC, so that they're out of reach for Passive Perception - you'd need a really good roll to find one. But hide these in the same consistent way as the broken doors, so that smart players can figure out where and how to look - and therefore can bypass the need to roll entirely.

(Also, be sure not to hide anything vital behind such doors - remember that there's a real good chance your PCs might not find them, and they almost certainly won't find them all.)