Perception checks

[Lauberfen]

I just don't like things to be that absolute I suppose. I prefer to write the world, then have a mechanism by which physics sorts things out. I agree that you do mostly decide the likely outcome by setting the DC, in either case. I don't like the idea of making a decision like that. To me it feels no different to just deciding that the PCs don't spot a hidden monster, for example. When it's a trap you're dealing with, it's quite equivalent.

Another annoyance is that if no rolls are made, it will always be the same person/people who notice traps (plus or minus some characters as DC changes). This again seems dumb.

Anyway, this was not my main gripe, as that's easily sorted out by teh DM, and only really matters to him. My main issue is that because passive perception is average perception, you generally don't improve on you're knowledge of a hidden door/trap by searching for it- you might as well say, I haven't spotted it passively, so I probably won't spot it actively, so why spend 5 minutes for a (likely) false sense of security and trigger it in the end anyway.

Active searching just should be better than walking past without looking on average.

Maybe the answer is in the modifiers (badly underused I think) mentioned above. This could easily make the difference so that searching is a bit better than passive perception.

 

[Nail]

Another annoyance is that if no rolls are made, it will always be the same person/people who notice traps (plus or minus some characters as DC changes).

Good point. Then again, generally only one or two PCs have Perception trained anyway. So even if you roll, it's still the same person/people who notice secrets.

Maybe the answer is in the modifiers (badly underused I think) mentioned above.

Right. It might be nice to have a flat mod (+2?) if you are "searching actively". Just be sure there's a downside to "searching actively", or everyone will always do it.