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<blockquote data-quote="Charlaquin" data-source="post: 7800771" data-attributes="member: 6779196"><p>That makes sense, I can see why you would do it that way.</p><p></p><p></p><p>Again, telegraphs are missable. My ideal for telegraphs is the “hard but fair” feel of the soulsborne games. Where you may well miss the hint and walk into a trap, but if you do you can easily realize what the hint was. The reaction to falling into a trap, in my opinion, shouldn’t be “damn, if only I had rolled better/had higher passive Perception” but rather “Oh, I should have seen that coming.”</p><p></p><p></p><p>Well the dungeon’s inhabitants generally know where the traps are, and may well have set them up. I don’t get a lot of PCs making traps. But if I did, or if like the PCs brought an NPC hireling into the dungeon with them or something, yeah, I’d set a passive Perception for them to realize a trap is present, and then have them roll Perception or maybe Investigation to see if they can find how to avoid or disable it. It wouldn’t be very fair for me to have NPCs notice traps without reference to their stats because I actually do know their locations.</p><p></p><p>I’m also not terribly worried about this method being “PC plot armor.” I’m more interested in creating a desired experience than in preserving ”simulationist” consistency between the rules for PCs and NPCs.</p><p></p><p></p><p>The idea behind the already triggered trap with the dead person next to it is purely to be a telegraph. It signals that there are traps of this nature in the dungeon and to watch out for them. That kind of thing is likely to be encountered once, early on in a dungeon, but further in you’ll have to rely more on context cues.</p><p></p><p>I suppose if you need a diegetic explanation for that, the guy who got killed by that early trap was probably an adventurer or other grave robber, but the traps further in are untriggered because other adventures haven’t successfully delved this deeply yet. Or maybe some of the traps are self-resetting, maybe the monsters in the dungeon reset them. It’s not really terribly important to my mind, because again, my goal is to create a desired experience, not a simulation of a real place. </p><p></p><p></p><p>I mostly use passive scores as the DC for actions NPCs take against PCs. So, if an urchin tried to pick your pocket, he’s going to have to make a Dexterity (Sleight of Hand) check against your passive Wisdom (Perception), and on a failure, I’ll narrate his hand making a grab for your coin purse, or give some other kind of clear signal that he’s doing it. If an NPC lies to you, he has to make a Charisma (Deception) check against your passive Wisdom (Insight) and if he fails I’ll describe him stammering, or his voice cracking, or sweat glistening on his brow or something to indicate that he’s nervous.</p><p></p><p>For a while I did also use Passives to gate telegraphs as well - you’d only feel the draft coming from the secret door if your passive Wisdom (Perception) was high enough, for example. But what I found was that it only served to make certain features of the environment impossible to find. Either I set the DC higher than the highest passive Perception in the group and they would never find it, or I set it lower and play proceeded as described above, where players might or might not find it depending on if they pick up on the hint. Pretty soon I found myself not setting any DCs higher than the highest passive Perception in the group, and not long thereafter I realized there was no point in setting those DCs in the first place.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Charlaquin, post: 7800771, member: 6779196"] That makes sense, I can see why you would do it that way. Again, telegraphs are missable. My ideal for telegraphs is the “hard but fair” feel of the soulsborne games. Where you may well miss the hint and walk into a trap, but if you do you can easily realize what the hint was. The reaction to falling into a trap, in my opinion, shouldn’t be “damn, if only I had rolled better/had higher passive Perception” but rather “Oh, I should have seen that coming.” Well the dungeon’s inhabitants generally know where the traps are, and may well have set them up. I don’t get a lot of PCs making traps. But if I did, or if like the PCs brought an NPC hireling into the dungeon with them or something, yeah, I’d set a passive Perception for them to realize a trap is present, and then have them roll Perception or maybe Investigation to see if they can find how to avoid or disable it. It wouldn’t be very fair for me to have NPCs notice traps without reference to their stats because I actually do know their locations. I’m also not terribly worried about this method being “PC plot armor.” I’m more interested in creating a desired experience than in preserving ”simulationist” consistency between the rules for PCs and NPCs. The idea behind the already triggered trap with the dead person next to it is purely to be a telegraph. It signals that there are traps of this nature in the dungeon and to watch out for them. That kind of thing is likely to be encountered once, early on in a dungeon, but further in you’ll have to rely more on context cues. I suppose if you need a diegetic explanation for that, the guy who got killed by that early trap was probably an adventurer or other grave robber, but the traps further in are untriggered because other adventures haven’t successfully delved this deeply yet. Or maybe some of the traps are self-resetting, maybe the monsters in the dungeon reset them. It’s not really terribly important to my mind, because again, my goal is to create a desired experience, not a simulation of a real place. I mostly use passive scores as the DC for actions NPCs take against PCs. So, if an urchin tried to pick your pocket, he’s going to have to make a Dexterity (Sleight of Hand) check against your passive Wisdom (Perception), and on a failure, I’ll narrate his hand making a grab for your coin purse, or give some other kind of clear signal that he’s doing it. If an NPC lies to you, he has to make a Charisma (Deception) check against your passive Wisdom (Insight) and if he fails I’ll describe him stammering, or his voice cracking, or sweat glistening on his brow or something to indicate that he’s nervous. For a while I did also use Passives to gate telegraphs as well - you’d only feel the draft coming from the secret door if your passive Wisdom (Perception) was high enough, for example. But what I found was that it only served to make certain features of the environment impossible to find. Either I set the DC higher than the highest passive Perception in the group and they would never find it, or I set it lower and play proceeded as described above, where players might or might not find it depending on if they pick up on the hint. Pretty soon I found myself not setting any DCs higher than the highest passive Perception in the group, and not long thereafter I realized there was no point in setting those DCs in the first place. [/QUOTE]
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