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Message: <blockquote data-quote="iserith" data-source="post: 6729661" data-attributes="member: 97077">But that's okay because of the use of "progress combined with a setback" (Basic Rules, page 58). Every time you roll to find a secret door, you will find it, only at a cost or with a complication should you fail the check. "You find no secret doors" is not a result of a failed check in the method I prescribe, so there is no chance of a player looking at a low result and assuming that there must be a door because the DM asked for a roll. That is the sort of "metagaming" that posters in this thread are hoping to avoid and, by using the existing rules, we avoid it without the need for making ability checks secretly for the players.The times you won't find secret doors are when there are none, when you don't look for them or don't look for them in the right place, or when you don't commit enough time or effort to finding them. You won't roll in any of these cases. You just fail to find the secret door outright. Here the uncertainty that some posters desire can remain, but notice I didn't use the dice - a tool meant to resolve uncertainty - to create it.They're "gotchas" if they are not telegraphed in my view. If the DM provides some clue to the existence of the trap or secret door when describing the environment, this removes the perception that the trap or secret door is a "gotcha," even if the PCs run afoul of the trap or fail to find the secret door. If players are paying close attention to the description and interacting with the environment, they improve their odds of finding these things. If they are not paying attention and interacting or they draw incorrect conclusions, they probably won't find them. (In a game where I want to emphasize the exploration pillar, I also award XP for discovering traps and secret doors, as per the rules for non-combat challenges, DMG page 261.) But this is a whole other thread's worth of discussion...</blockquote>

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