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<blockquote data-quote="iserith" data-source="post: 7513584" data-attributes="member: 97077">Interestingly, especially within a couple of years of the game launching, there were a ton of complaints about Observant on the forums, specifically around it being too powerful - nothing gets past the character. Taken as a whole, the rules don't suggest this is how it should be handled. Characters can only focus, generally speaking, on one task at a time (except for rangers in favored terrain). This takes Observant down to the level where it's more reasonable and (I think) more in line with interpretations of other feats. The Observant character will rarely be surprised or fail to spot the trap... if he or she is alert to danger to the exclusion of other tasks that may distract from that effort. The Observant character will almost always find the secret door... if he or she stops being alert to danger and focuses on finding secret doors. (Again, ranger may be an exception.) That means the Observant character is awesome - at one thing at a time.Observant kicks in when the character is engaged in an ongoing task because that is what a passive check is, in part, for. Unless the character's task is searching altars in an ongoing basis (to continue using that example) which seems pretty edge case, then he or she will have to make Wisdom (Perception) check to search this one altar right here, if the outcome is uncertain and there's a meaningful consequence of failure. Which is not to say you're doing anything wrong. That's just my read on the rules, the result of many, many forum interactions on this topic, and experience from actual play.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="iserith, post: 7513584, member: 97077"] Interestingly, especially within a couple of years of the game launching, there were a ton of complaints about Observant on the forums, specifically around it being [I]too powerful[/I] - nothing gets past the character. Taken as a whole, the rules don't suggest this is how it should be handled. Characters can only focus, generally speaking, on one task at a time (except for rangers in favored terrain). This takes Observant down to the level where it's more reasonable and (I think) more in line with interpretations of other feats. The Observant character will rarely be surprised or fail to spot the trap... if he or she is alert to danger to the exclusion of other tasks that may distract from that effort. The Observant character will almost always find the secret door... if he or she [I]stops being alert to danger[/I] and focuses on finding secret doors. (Again, ranger may be an exception.) That means the Observant character is awesome - at one thing at a time. Observant kicks in when the character is engaged in an ongoing task because that is what a passive check is, in part, for. Unless the character's task is searching altars in an ongoing basis (to continue using that example) which seems pretty edge case, then he or she will have to make Wisdom (Perception) check to search this one altar right here, if the outcome is uncertain and there's a meaningful consequence of failure. Which is not to say you're doing anything wrong. That's just my read on the rules, the result of many, many forum interactions on this topic, and experience from actual play. [/QUOTE]

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