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Message: <blockquote data-quote="iserith" data-source="post: 6508926" data-attributes="member: 97077">No. They have to be looking around, repeatedly, for hidden dangers and must have told you this (or have told you to assume as much unless they state otherwise). This isn't possible in some situations, such as if a member of the party is tracking, foraging, navigating, drawing a map, or doing some other "exploration task." In some cases, the DM may say that someone's passive Perception doesn't apply based on their position relative to the hidden threat. (For example, a trap in front of the person first in the marching order might not have a chance to be noticed by someone in the back of the line.)Raising the DC is not the answer to your issue with passive Perception. Raising the DC doesn't increase the challenge to the player. It only means they have to build characters with higher passive Perception scores.Actively searching around is what the game expects. It is part of the exploration pillar. Look at the basic conversation of the game on page 3 of the Basic Rules, "How to Play." The DM describes the environment. The players describe what they want to do. The DM narrates the results of the adventurers' actions. Passive Perception assumes that the players have described what they want to do as being "We're looking around for hidden dangers, repeatedly."This does not obviate your role of adequately describing the environment and telegraphing the threats therein. Nor does it obviate the players from describing what it is they want to do. At best it is a form of shorthand.I don't think Passive Perception really fits the D&D 5e paradigm, personally. It strikes me as legacy design and comes from a place where DMs are asking for too many checks e.g. "I look around, therefore I roll." That's not how this game works. The DM only calls for a check - or compares a passive check to a DC - when the result of a player's stated action has an uncertain outcome in the eyes of the DM. The DMG tells us that we have to be careful about asking for too many checks because this diminishes roleplaying by making players believe their rolls, not their actions and characterization, is what matters.You can house rule passive Perception out of your games fairly easily, if you want. Or just remember that it's just like any other check, but just the average result of a task performed repeatedly. It doesn't apply in all situations and requires at least some reasonable description on the part of the player to be useful.</blockquote>

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