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Message: <blockquote data-quote="iserith" data-source="post: 6807601" data-attributes="member: 97077">The latter is a potential outcome of treating passive Investigation as an "always-on radar." Which is not to say you can't always been poking around for illusions, if you want, but there should be a trade-off, cost, or consequence in my view.I would refine this to the character needing to state a goal and approach to discerning the illusion, if there is one. Simply suspecting isn't sufficient - what are you doing exactly to deduce that thing before you is an illusion? The goal and approach to discerning the illusion offered by the player may succeed, fail, or have an uncertain outcome at which point the DM can call for an ability check. Physical interaction often allows for automatic success in determining whether something is an illusion or not, so canny players will likely go this route. I know I would, if it was a viable option.I'm not a fan of the DM rolling for the player, so I would suggest the failure condition be "You are unable to discern if the thing before you is an illusion or not..." rather than "You don't think it's an illusion." (Imagine a player hearing the latter from the DM and staring at a low result on the die.) Though really I'd prefer success at a cost or with a complication on a failed check.The passive check may come into play if the player has described the character as performing the task repeatedly and, despite this, the DM still finding the outcome uncertain. I imagine this is going to be a thing that a character chooses to do while traveling about through the adventure location, not unlike being constantly searching for secret doors, keeping watch for hidden threats, tracking, foraging, navigating, map-making, etc. Point is, you can do it, but you might not be able to do other activities at the same time while traveling.Another thing to consider in discussions like these is whether players at the table ask to make checks or whether they simply describe their goal and approach and wait for the DM to decide on success, failure, or uncertainty. I advocate the latter while many people play in the former fashion, perhaps because of the influence of previous editions.</blockquote>

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