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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Gradine" data-source="post: 7081033" data-attributes="member: 57112">I liked the Angry GM's suggestion of using 8 as a baseline for passive checks instead of 10. This allows you to use passive checks when they make sense while still giving advantage to direct character action. I combine this with the fact that I never give away everything with passive checks, only clues or hints to direct the player to resolve the situation actively. I don't ever use passive perception to tell someone when they see a trap, but I'll give them something to investigate further.If I'm writing an adventure what I'll typically do is bracket off information with a minimum passive score, such as:[Passive Perception 14]: "You notice one of the bricks in the wall is lighter shade of red than those around it"[Passive Insight 12]: "As he speaks, his voice wavers, and you notice he seems to be avoiding eye contact"[Passive History 13]: "You remember hearing about that battle once... where was it again?"Then the player chooses how they proceed to gather more information (Investigation or Perception for searching the wall; Insight for reading tells on the liar, maybe Perception to spot that bead of sweat rolling down; likely History for the long-term memory recall). Throw in enough red herrings or variations on theme to not tip the players off every time they get some extra info from a passive score; though in theory the players should never know when you're checking their passive scores, in practice it becomes fairly easy to tell. Maybe that brick is hiding a trap switch, maybe it was just recently replaced; maybe he's not lying, he's just nervous about something else.So yeah, I do passive insight. Also passive knowledge. Angry DM says all knowledge skills are passive and recall doesn't really work because of some armchair psychology but that's nonsense. Recall is definitely active and is a skill (which can in fact be trained) and I think both the Intelligence ability and skill proficiency reflect not just your knowledge base (what you've been exposed to, which is what I'd use passive knowledge for) as well as your ability to recall said knowledge on command (the active roll). Just as passive insight or perception reflect what you naturally pick up without even thinking about it, whereas active uses involve putting those skills into deliberate practice.The important thing here is that passive checks are meant to give the player the clue to use their active skills, but they don't need to succeed the passive check in order to do so. Thus, you don't need to design your passive checks such that you need to be sure at least PC will succeed. Nothing's stopping them from making an active Insight check if they think the guy is lying, they just don't pick up on the tells passively. Likewise, the passive knowledge check is just my prompt to tell the player they might know something more about this particular piece of lore. They might decide they might know it themselves and roll.This might not be necessary or even useful with more seasoned players, but I find it works wonders with newer players.</blockquote>

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