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Message: <blockquote data-quote="iserith" data-source="post: 8543063" data-attributes="member: 97077">What would it look like to you for a player to "abuse" the Observant feat? I'm not really following your train of thought on this except a general notion that you have some sensitivity to players being effective at playing the game.I don't understand what you mean by passive Perception "invalidating" the exploration process. The player establishes they are keeping watch for monsters and traps while traveling the adventure location. (Or, alternatively, secret doors.) Because this is a task being performed repeatedly, passive checks apply, if there's a check at all. If they are in the position to notice the monster, then they might avoid surprise. If they are in the position to notice the trap (usually front of marching order), then they might notice the trap. They can't do anything else during this time including tracking, foraging, navigating, mapping, or other tasks that are at least as distracting. And if they are in the front of the marching order, they may be at risk of being attacked more easily than other PCs.So let's say they notice the trap. Great! Now it's on to the rest of the exploration challenge - figuring it out (perhaps requiring an Intelligence (Investigation) check) and disarming it (perhaps requiring a Dexterity (Thieves' Tools) check). The exploration process, as you call it, begins at the detection or even before that at the establishing of the characters' ongoing tasks. It doesn't end there.Where then is the invalidation occurring? Is a trap only valid if the PCs set it off? What am I missing?As I stated, I think the DM can rule either way here based on the particulars of the situation - sometimes the wolf can work together with the PC and other times not. What I am interested in is figuring out where your objection is to this exactly. The rules certainly allow for working together, so there's no abuse there, particularly as the DM can just say (per the rules for Working Together) that the wolf doesn't lend advantage to the task. And given that the game is based on imagination, there's plenty of ways to arrive at a reason for why it can help or why a particular PC's passive Perception is so high. I gave an example of natural selection as a potential reason to explain why a PC might be very perceptive, which you rejected. I guess it's easier to say it's "metagaming" and therefore "bad" and "abuse." Can you think of no other reason why it would make sense in the context of a world based on make believe?</blockquote>

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