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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Charlaquin" data-source="post: 8724820" data-attributes="member: 6779196">The DM decides how to resolve actions based on their best judgment and their understanding of the rules. Based on my best judgment and understanding of the rules, I would resolve attempts to look around with passive perception, because people do that constantly. Maybe you would rule differently, and if I were playing at your table, I would accept your ruling, because that’s how the game works.That is indeed what I would do. I’m not sure why you assume otherwise.There are only two ways to search the room: surveying it generally, which I resolve with passive perception; or “manually” searching, which I need a declaration of goal and approach to resolve, so I can assess if the appropriate can succeed or fail to achieve the goal, and if both are possible, what roll to call for to resolve that uncertainty. If there’s nothing to be found in the room, that should be clear enough from the initial description, but if for some reason the players want to search “manually”, the results will indeed be failing to find anything without a roll.Just because there’s nothing going on involving Shar right now, doesn’t mean there might not be later. In fact, if I had placed the idol to Shar randomly, that might inspire me to add some sort of Shar involvement. Rolling prep is a big part of sandbox play. Of course, even if I do expand the campaign to include some Shar-related stuff, I don’t know when or if the players will encounter it. That’s not up to me.You don’t repeatedly use your senses to determine your surroundings? I find that hard to believe.I don’t prep plots.Any information could tell the PCs something they didn’t know before or confirmed something they suspected. Again, I know all sorts of information about the things I put in my campaigns, so if that’s what you mean by important, then I guess everything is important.What? I don’t see how by the definition you just used. Random treasure may convey all sorts of information the players didn’t already know.You’re going to have to be more specific about what plan I hypothetically heard for me to answer that. I was under the impression that the players said they wanted to follow the goblin and find where it was hiding (or something like that, it was like two days ago at this point, so I don’t remember the details perfectly). Bardic Inspiration could absolutely be useful in doing that. If I had known that the players hoped to try and find the goblin without entering the room it’s hidden in or interacting with anything in the environment at all, sure, I would probably have warned them that bardic inspiration is unlikely to help much.Wait, hang on. Their goal was to find out if there were any traps in the room, and their approach was to move to the center of the room? And there was a trap that is triggered by moving to the center of the room, which they didn’t notice with their passive perception? Then, yeah, when they get to the center of the room, I would describe the initial trigger being set off - what was it, a pressure plate? So I’d describe the feeling of something sinking under their weight and the sound of a click, then ask what they do. They could then tell me what they do to try and avoid the trap, which could result in them avoiding it without having to make a saving throw. If their action wouldn’t help them avoid the trap, I would still give them a saving throw to avoid it. So, again, there are many points at which they could have avoided the trap. I would first of all have telegraphed it in the initial description, which could give them enough information to know not to step in the center of the room. I would second of all have compared their passive perception to the DC to spot the trap, and if it was higher, just told them they noticed it. I would third of all have given them a chance to avoid the trap without a save after perceiving it’s initial activation and before taking any damage or other negative effects. And if they didn’t manage that I would finally have given them the chance to avoid it with a saving throw.So I can determine if their approach could succeed in achieving their goal or or fail to do so, and if both, set a difficulty and call for an appropriate check.In the case of a room with a trap in it, sure. In another case, such as a room with a concealed door, I also need to know what they’re doing specifically so I know if they find the concealed door or need to make a check to do so. There are many hypothetical scenarios where specificity I’d necessary to adequately determine results.Sure, that’s a way someone could do it, but that leaves the fictional action very abstract, which is not my preference.They don’t have to know to do it. They might do it anyway. Or they might not. That’s also ok.And I’d rather have zero chance of failure than some chance of failure. Especially since a failed roll always has consequences, whereas simply failing due to there being no chance of success often just means no change. But different strokes, you prefer to roll, I prefer to avoid rolling. It’s all good.What, by making all that background detail up before play even starts? No thank you. I’m not interested in reading a bunch of lengthy player backstories before play has even started; I find that very dull, and in my experience it leaves little room for the characters to grow during play; people get stuck on “what would my character do” based on things they already decided before the game even began, instead of acting organically and figuring out why their character did what they did.None of those things are relevant to making the decision to hide or where to hide. Yes, they are relevant to staying hidden, if that is uncertain, and are thus accounted for in the +17 when you make a stealth check.</blockquote>

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