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Message: <blockquote data-quote="iserith" data-source="post: 6986629" data-attributes="member: 97077">Being observant is a great thing - but a character can't be observant to all things all the time. The player needs to declare what he or she is doing. Keeping watch for hidden monsters and traps so as to avoid surprise? Great! But you have no chance of spotting secret doors. Want to find all the secret doors while you're traveling the dungeon? Awesome. But you will be surprised if a monster sneaks up on the party. You have to choose one task or another, not both. (Unless the character is a ranger, of course.) Marching order also plays into this. If the character is not in the position to notice something, such as in the case of a hidden pit trap ahead of the party and the cleric is in the middle or back ranks, then the cleric simply fails to notice the trap.So one thing I make sure I do when the players set off onto adventure is to ask them to describe what they are doing "in general" while going about the business of adventuring. Do you keep watch for danger? Do you search for secret doors? Do you draw a map? Do you navigate? Forage or track? Something else? The observant character will want to either keep watch or search for secret doors generally speaking. And that comes with the opportunity cost of not being able to do anything else. You can't have it all.Remember, "passive" in "passive check" doesn't mean you're not actively doing something. It just means there's no die roll.</blockquote>

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