D&D 5E (2024) How can I do a Charisma-Investigation (or a Strength/Dexterity-Investigation if I can't use Charisma) to find a secret door?

[ECMO3]

Ok we are in a Dungeon full of secret doors that you need an Investigation check to find. The whole party dumped Intelligence. We do have a Rogue that has expertise in Investigation, so he is pretty good at it, but he is out for 2 weeks. The rest of us have a -1.

The DM lets us use other abilities if we can explain how we do it. My Warlock 4/Fighter 1 has a +2 Strength, +2 Dex and +4 Charisma. The problem is I can't think of a creative way to use those abilities looking for secret doors.

 

[DrJawaPhD]

Wisdom (Perception) seems like the most obvious workaround here but sticking to the actual question:

I can't think of any rationalization for charisma that I would accept as a DM, unless there are sentient denizens of the dungeon that you could capture and interrogate. Charisma would actually be the obvious choice there

I could see rationalization of a Strength check for going around randomly pushing walls and trying to budge a secret door you don't see

 

[Deset Gled]

I could see rationalization of a Strength check for going around randomly pushing walls and trying to budge a secret door you don't see

Strength works to find secret doors, holes, or passages by pushing on everything, but gives you Disadvantage on any saves against traps you trip while doing it.

Dexterity works by running your hands lightly over everything and feeling for seams or other mismatched construction. But any time you roll a natural 1, you take minor damage for bashing or scratching your hands. Yes, I know fumbles don't normally apply to skill checks, but you're pushing the limits of reasonable here, bub, so just deal with it. Also, Disadvantage on saves against any poisons or diseases you pick up with those filthy hands (no gloves allowed, you can't feel properly through them).

Wisdom (Perception) works as an alternative, but will only find doors that are directly visible. Anything that's a bit on the complex side might be missed.

The Charisma DC to find a hidden door is 50. Use the "exploding Critical" variant. So, with a +10 mod (Cha + bonuses) you need to roll 2 natural 20s in row to succeed. Any PC with a lower than +10 mod will need three natural 20s in a row. On a success, you stare that door straight on and Derek Zoolander it open. Upon leaving the dungeon, you are affected by a Geas spell, Wisdom DC equal to the number of times you attempted this. On a failure, you are magically commanded to assassinate an NPC of the DMs choosing.

 

[Sulicius]

You're asking us to find a way to convince your DM to use CHA to find secret doors? Maybe just accept you have a party of dum-dums and roll with it?

 

[Horwath]

carry lots of water and pour it down the walls and see if it drains somewhere in walls or floor, or just take a maul and bash on every wall.

also carry several corpses of orcs or similar so you can tie a rope around it and throw down the hallway to trigger any traps while you are dragging it back towards you.

 

[SableWyvern]

If you can just use any stat you want for any task you want, you might as well just dump the lot and give everyone a single, fixed "competence" value.

 

[Clint_L]

So, that's a challenging party composition for a DM, and it's about a lot more than secret doors. All kinds of lore-based plot hooks and puzzles are fairly inaccessible for the party. And, if players are roleplaying their characters with their attributes in mind, then it's going to feel kind of same-y. There's a reason that in fiction, teams usually have a mix of strengths and weaknesses.

Obviously a DM can build adventures for a party of dumb-dumbs, but it seems kind of lame. Grog Strongjaw works great because there's only one of him, but if your whole party is Grog, it's gonna lose its entertainment factor pretty quickly.

If I was the DM I would have addressed this at session 0, to make sure that everyone, including me, was up for that sort of dumb and dumber campaign. Of course, if we're all on board, then I would absolutely double down on things like secret doors that the party is hopeless at finding, puzzles they horribly fail to solve, etc. and play up the entertainment value of these incompetents muddling through. And that's what I would do in this situation - just let the party fail. Let their choices be meaningful. It's a story, and failures can be as fun as successes, or even more so, as long as they lead to entertaining consequences.

Also, I'm kinda surprised that, seeing that all the other characters were going to be stupid, one player didn't jump at the chance to be the party genius.

 

[Lakesidefantasy]

Is the rogue no longer there? Did he just disappear into thin air or did he just not enter the dungeon with you at all?

 

[Teemu]

I don’t know if your group is fully using the 2024 rules but the new DMG actually offered guidance on the Investigation vs Perception issue. I remember there being a fair amount of confusion or disagreement on when to use the former vs the latter, especially when dealing with dungeon elements. The 2024 DMG says

Don’t use the Investigation skill to determine if a character notices something—that’s the purview of Perception. For example, a successful Wisdom (Perception) check allows a character to find a secret door or something that betrays its presence, such as thin seams marking the edges of the door. If the secret door is locked, a successful Intelligence (Investigation) check would allow a character to figure out the trick to opening it—by turning a nearby statue so it faces the door, for example.

So you can argue that you should be rolling Wisdom checks instead.

 

[Charlaquin]

I’m philosophically not keen on players actively wanting to make rolls. Rolls mean a chance of failure, which should be an acceptable compromise to the alternatives of automatic success or automatic failure, rather than a desirable thing in and of themselves. But, my cloud-yelling-at aside, I’m trying to imagine a situation where a player describes an action whose goal is to find a secret door, where their approach would lead to me asking for a Charisma check, and… I’m coming up pretty blank. Charisma is used “when you try to influence or entertain others, when you try to make an impression or tell a convincing lie, or when you are navigating a tricky social situation” according to the 2014 PHB. I guess if you’ve got someone familiar with the dungeon, like a Meepo-esque humanoid-monster-turned-ally or even a captive, you could try to influence them to point the secret doors out to you. Or just to look for the secret doors in your stead if said NPC has better Intelligence, Wisdom, Investigation, and/or perception. That’s all I can come up with for a social action that might reveal secret doors in a dungeon.