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Message: <blockquote data-quote="KarinsDad" data-source="post: 5119365" data-attributes="member: 2011">So your argument is that an inferior game mechanic from the new version is good because it is superior to the inferior game mechanic from the previous version? <img src="http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/laugh.png"  class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":lol:" title="Laughing    :lol:" data-shortname=":lol:" />Precisely. The skills become more difficult.That does not mean that there should be a bunch of automatic stuff lying around which if the player actually rolled the dice, wouldn't be automatic.Where is the Passive History rule? The Passive Arcana rule?They don't exist. Someone at WotC thought that auto success should occur for Perception and Insight, but forgot about Athletics, History, Stealth, and a bunch of others.Why? Because auto success doesn't make sense until it really is auto. When rolling a 1 is a success, then it should be auto success.Not before. And that rarely happens in the game system because the DCs increase as the PCs go up level. As you yourself said, the DM increases the difficulty to allow the skilled PC to be awesome.But if the player says "I am going to look around" and rolls a 2 on his Perception, do you as DM say "Well, he failed the roll, but his Passive Perception would have noticed xyz, so I will tell him xyz even though he failed the roll?"Effectively what you are doing here is turning his failure into a success, his 2 into a 10. You are removing the randomness from the game which is what allows for unusual and interesting things to happen.The Ranger misses the pit trap and falls into it. Now the situation is interesting. This doesn't happen if the DM makes the pit trap an auto-detect.It matters not if it is Climbing or Perception. If there is a chance of failure for the skill, then there should be no automatic.The game should be consistent. If a DC 20 is needed and the PC does not have at least +19, then a roll should be used. The skill should not be automatically successful. The skill system should work the same regardless of which skill we are discussing. Roll dice, add modifier, see what DC you made.Precisely. One puts difficult secret doors in as a bigger and badder challenge, one does not put in simple secret doors that can be spotted with Passive Perception.Let me ask you a serious question. Would you be arguing that Passive Perception is a good rule if the rule did not exist at all? Would you be on the House Rules Forum writing that it was a cool idea?I sometimes wonder if people who support some of the weaker WotC rules do so because they are actually in print.Why is autodetect a good rule? Why not roll the dice and sometimes, the Ranger rolls a 3 and misses something?Why should the Ranger get an auto-success with a +10 Perception against DC 20 when the climbing Fighter does not get an auto-success with a +10 Athletics against a DC 20 wall.Why should the player of the Ranger get a free pass here that other players do not?What's so special about Perception and Insight that they effectively become "Roll a D20, if you roll 9 or less, it becomes a 10"? Why such a hefty skill boost for these two skills?Note: I am not arguing that the DM should not reveal obvious stuff. I'm arguing that PCs should not auto-detect traps and secret doors and other such game elements because if they auto-detect them, then they weren't secret to begin with. Duh! In that case, it's not a secret door, it's a door. <img src="http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/erm.png"  class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":erm:" title="Erm    :erm:" data-shortname=":erm:" /></blockquote>

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