Passive vs Active skill checks

[jbear]

I'd tend to disagree, here...

If you don't know the trap is there (ie, you haven't searched for them yet, or you searched and found nothing), there's really no tension at all. For traps, the tension comes during the period when you know the trap is there, but you haven't disabled or bypassed it yet... Or when the trap has already been sprung, and you are desperately trying to find a way to avoid or minimize the resulting damage.

That is to say, the excitement of a trap isn't usually in the finding of it, but in dealing with its potential effects once it's been found.

That's why I like using passive Perception the way I do... It actually increases the tension when the players know something is wrong, but don't know or understand exactly what is out of place and so must take risky action (possibly, inadvertently setting off a trap before it's found, in this case) to learn more.

I know what you are saying.

I didn't mean tension for the players, who are unaware of traps until found or discovered. I meant more from a DMs perspective :' Muahaha ... will they fall into my trap?!? Come closer little fly! Oh god I can't bare this delicious tension!'

I guess from a player's perspective if you have someone in the group that automatically detects every trap you will tend to preceed with less caution. This is maybe a good thing now that I begin to think about it.

I do like the idea that the passive check gives off a little indirect clue as you suggest.

I also agree that a trap is more fun when the difficulty doesn't lie in only detecting it, but dealing with its ramifications. Which means a little more work when designing traps or encounters with traps, which is often what I have to do because the elf detects pretty much everything all the time.

 

[Scribble]

I agree with Pbartender here. Passive gives you the "gist" of the situation, the basic idea that something is off.

The reason an active search is sometimes worse is because of "focus" basically. You actively try to find something, and your mind ignores the rest.

You're so focused on looking for "the crack in the wall" that you miss the discolored patch a few inches away, or your mind plays tricks on you and you're "sure" you see what you want to see even though it's not actually there.

 

[DEFCON 1]

I actually think making most traps into skill challenges is a good idea. For one reason... it allows you to not worry so much about the Perception thing. If you are a person who does the Passive Perception to discover traps... a failure on the party's part (because you assigned a Perception DC you knew the PCs wouldn't be able to make with their Passives)... that's only the 1st of 3 failures they get before the trap goes off. So in the context of the skill challenge... no one notices the pit trap (for example) with their Passive Perception, and the person in the lead hears the 'click' of the pressure plate he's just stepped on. So they now have one failure towards the trap going off. The rest of the party can now start using their other skills to try and get around it. Dungeoneering to know what parts of the area have been "built" so as to install the trap, Perception to find the gear box that houses the mechanics, Thievery to disrupt the trap mechanics, Athletics to yank the offending party member off the plate hopefully before it opens, etc. etc. And by the same token, you can give the party a free Success by setting the Perception DC low enough that one of the players notices it with their PassPer before anyone triggers it (and you can easily offset this free success by just raising the Complexity of the skill challenge if you wanted... so rather than a Complexity 1 Trap skill challenge, you make it a Complexity 2 and you let the players find it with that first PassPer success.)

You can then build in the penalties for the three failures, as well as give hints as to the mechanics of the traps themselves, especially for ones which are puzzles and such. So for puzzle-type traps... rather than letting the players themselves fumble about trying to figure the puzzle answer... you can let them use their skills to get clues to these puzzles. And what's good about that, is that you can make the puzzles harder to start with... knowing they probably will get some hints along the way to help them out (or to be even more devilish, you can give them bad hints when they fail one of their skill rolls as a skill challenge failure penalty.)

 

[jbear]

Yup... It's kind of like the "If the DM describes it, it must be important" scenario. You do have to be careful about how you present it. I certainly don't tell them that they've successfully made a Passive check, but in the description of the area try to add in that extra detail or two that puts them on their toes.

It might be the difference between, "The door ahead is made of thick oak bound in iron, and below the handle has an iron plate with a large keyhole set in it. A well worn and recently used path leads up to the door." (Passive Fail)

And, "The door ahead is made of thick oak bound in iron, and below the handle has an iron plate with a large keyhole set in it. Though a well worn and recently used path leads up to the door, the door handle is rather tarnished -- with that much traffic, you'd expect it be be a little more polished from use." (Passive Succeed)

There is, of course, a poisoned needle hidden on the door handle.

The idea is to use the passive check to give an extra detail that will get the players to pay attention to the door handle and possibly search it, without actually telling them it might be a trap.

Besides, the trick works for a lot of things, not just traps... Insight checks are another great example. I use Passive Perception to give the players little details about the mannerisms of someone they're talking to, so the players can get clues as to when to make Insight checks to detect a lie.

Passive Perception checks to give clues that might lead to secret passages.

Passive Perception checks to give clues about where treasure might be hidden.

Passive Knowledge checks to give clues into possible lines of investigation or research.

Passive Perception checks to notice interesting little details that are fun to describe but don't always have any real importance to the adventure.

Thinking about it, it is, in a way, a means of determining when to give the players an extra detail or two that says, "Hey! This is interesting!" Even then, they don't always notice or pay attention to the relevant detail.

Thanks for all your very good advice.

I'd give you more xp but I have to spread more around bla bla bla.

This is I think a very happy medium of rewarding my player for having such high perception and still having a trap pose a challenge to be discovered.