D&D 5E Secret Doors

[iserith]

It's a dungeon crawl, so yeah, I'd say that searching is in-genre. But the problem is that there seem to be two standard ways of handling it, and neither one is satisfying:

• Option 1: "We check the east wall. Any secret doors?" (Optional: "Roll Perception." "12.") "No, you don't find any." "We check the west wall." "No doors." "Okay, we move 10 feet south. Any doors on the east wall?" This is excruciatingly tedious, and you can sense that everybody at the table is bored, but they don't want to miss a door.
• Option 2: "You see a 30-foot hallway leading south. Player A with the high passive perception score, you notice a secret door in the east wall." This completely negates the point of having a secret door in the first place, because it's not actually secret.

Making it so that some of the doors are findable with passive perception and some are not just seems likely to lead back to Option 1, except with even fewer successes to break the monotony.

It seems like there's got to be a sweet spot somewhere, where the players can drive the search and finding the doors is still a product of their own initiative, but where they don't get bored spending a large proportion of the time on unsuccessful searches.

Maybe dividing up the dungeon into segments larger than one room (or length of corridor) at a time might work? Have them explore a portion of the dungeon first and then either make a roll at the end to see if anyone noticed anything along the way or tell the character with the highest passive perception, "You remember noticing a crack in the wall three rooms back."

There's also the wand of secrets, but it only has a range of 30 feet and it has a limited number of charges.

The way I do it is a given exploration task - find traps, search for secret doors, loot, forage, track, etc. - over 10 minutes covers 1000 square feet of area. If you're using a VTT, you can create an asset with an aura of that size and the players can just drop it on the area the character is searching. If the secret door is in that area, then they have a chance of finding it.

 

[77IM]

Option 1: "We check the east wall. Any secret doors?" (Optional: "Roll Perception." "12.") "No, you don't find any." "We check the west wall." "No doors." "Okay, we move 10 feet south. Any doors on the east wall?" This is excruciatingly tedious, and you can sense that everybody at the table is bored, but they don't want to miss a door.

Option 2: "You see a 30-foot hallway leading south. Player A with the high passive perception score, you notice a secret door in the east wall." This completely negates the point of having a secret door in the first place, because it's not actually secret.

Making it so that some of the doors are findable with passive perception and some are not just seems likely to lead back to Option 1, except with even fewer successes to break the monotony.

One of my mottos is, a game is a series of interesting decisions. I think your problem is, neither Option 1 nor Option 2 involve any interesting decisions. In Option 1, there's no reason NOT TO search for secret doors, and in Option 2, there is no reason TO search for secret doors. So you might reframe the problem as: Given a dungeon environment, what would encourage the players to search for secret doors in some places but not others?

The whole thing about rolling vs. passive is a red herring. IF you have the players deciding where to look and deciding where NOT to look, then whether you roll or just make the finding automatic is kind of secondary.

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

And what do you do if the players suspect there's a secret door but the PCs' auto check isn't high enough to find it automatically?

Those people need to remember to keep player and character knowledge separate. It does not matter if the player thinks there "has to be" something there, if the character has no reason to suspect it, or has not been given a clue by the DM to suspect it, then the player should not cross that line.

But in your situation, that would not be the case once more than a couple of them have been found. One secret door is unique, two is a fluke or coincidence, but once they find that third one? Then they will be on watch for them everywhere and will likely want to backtrack to the start and search again. Or there are rumors that whoever built this place loved secret doors and that makes them expect to find them. Then you could even give them a bonus on their passive check.

And for clues there is a door nearby, there are the odd scratches or scrapes on the floor by a wall, or a book that looks out of place on a bookcase, or the one torch/oil lamp on the wall that is not lit, the odd little draft, condensation on the wall or floor by a wall. odd smell of smoke in a room with no torches/lamps, a statue or ornamental suit of armor that looks off and is hiding a switch.

 

[Stormonu]

Honestly, I hate passive Perception, and I ignore it my games for the most part - at least for things like finding secret doors (I do sometime use it for determining surprise).

When it comes to detecting secret doors, if the players are specific in where/how they check, I don’t make a roll. If they make a general check, then I roll. Conversely, I try to ensure that any secret door has a “tell” so its more likely that players only check those areas that actually have a secret door in the first place and aren’t wasting time with constant rolls. If they are persistent, I go with the prior “take 20” rules so we aren’t wasting an unacceptable amount of time rolling for checks.

This is clearly against the rules as written, but in this case I find those rules to be tedious and unfun.

 

[iserith]

Those people need to remember to keep player and character knowledge separate. It does not matter if the player thinks there "has to be" something there, if the character has no reason to suspect it, or has not been given a clue by the DM to suspect it, then the player should not cross that line.

The player decides what the character suspects since in this game the player decides how the character thinks. It's just the character may be wrong in that suspicion and could waste valuable time or resources searching for something that may not be there.

 

[jayoungr]

One of my mottos is, a game is a series of interesting decisions. I think your problem is, neither Option 1 nor Option 2 involve any interesting decisions. In Option 1, there's no reason NOT TO search for secret doors, and in Option 2, there is no reason TO search for secret doors. So you might reframe the problem as: Given a dungeon environment, what would encourage the players to search for secret doors in some places but not others?

That's very well put.

So ...

Anyone got an answer to that question? Because I'm stumped.

 

[iserith]

That's very well put.

So ...

Anyone got an answer to that question? Because I'm stumped.

Yes, I thought I answered it basically throughout the thread.

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

The player decides what the character suspects since in this game the player decides how the character thinks. It's just the character may be wrong in that suspicion and could waste valuable time or resources searching for something that may not be there.

Not if it is some area of knowledge that the character would have no clue how something works.

 

[iserith]

Not if it is some area of knowledge that the character would have no clue how something works.

How do you figure? The game says the player decides how the character thinks, what it does and says. There's no prohibition on what those thoughts or actions can be. If I want my character to search a wall for secret doors for any reason or no reason at all, that's my business. It just may not be a good use of my time if there's no secret door there.

 

[Quickleaf]

That's very well put.

So ...

Anyone got an answer to that question? Because I'm stumped.

I'd love to help, but when I approach this same dilemma in my own games, it depends on the specifics of the adventure. I think that's what myself and @Stormonu are driving at. We get that you're stumped, but to better help us to help you, could you share a bit about the adventure you're running? And specifically how secret doors are being used in that adventure?

Sometimes when I ask this question, I get back an answer that is vague or frustrated, either because the DM doesn't understand my question OR because the adventure doesn't really give any thought to the meaning/implementation of secret doors in the specific context of that adventure. In the former case, I can present some very specific targeted questions once I know the gist of the adventure. In the latter case, then it's more about introducing something new or a fresh spin in order to make those secret doors more engaging.