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Message: <blockquote data-quote="iserith" data-source="post: 7793616" data-attributes="member: 97077">The key word in what you quoted is "may." Or as the rules say "The DM might decide that a threat can be noticed only by characters in a particular rank..." (emphasis mine). An example is then given as to why that might be so. So it's up to the DM. I choose to use it chiefly because it makes marching order a more meaningful choice and I think games benefit by having more meaningful choices for the players to make.There is no "active" perception. "Passive" does not mean that you're not actively doing something as it did in the previous edition of the game. The rules for passive checks say nothing like that in D&D 5e. Passive refers to there being no dice rolled; the task is being performed repeatedly.I'm not sure how acting in the game world to notice stuff "screws" the character with high passive Perception. Such a character, provided he or she is not distracted enough to no longer be able to notice threats, is more likely to avoid being surprised and to notice traps before stumbling into them than characters with lower passive Perception scores. And if they have to make an ability check as a result of undertaking a task to notice things which has an uncertain outcome and a meaningful consequence for failure, more likely than not, the character with the higher passive Perception will also have a higher bonus to the ability check.When the DM describes the environment, this necessarily includes the basic scope of options that present themselves. When the DM is done describing the environment, the players describe what they want to do and the DM narrates the results. Then that cycle repeats. There is nothing "Mother May I" about that. It's how the game is played per the rules.</blockquote>

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