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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 4791345" data-attributes="member: 82106">The DMG basically says to just assume that if the party thoroughly searches an area then you should assume they keep looking around until they get a 20 on a perception check. At that poing they are sure they have found anything they have any hope of finding.Thus a party can take 10 and just be assumed to be wandering around in a fairly normal fashion, or they can search thoroughly and take 20. In between if they want to be moving with caution but not searching constantly then they will need to make active perception checks. Generally active checks WILL be a lot better than take 10 simply because you will have 5 die rolls. You can expect one of those to be well above 10. As for secret doors I think the thing to do is look at the whole problem differently. In general if you want the party to find a secret door, then they should. If you don't want them to, then they shouldn't. Set DC accordingly.If you want the door to be something they CAN find which will give them an advantage, then you probably want to do more than just put a door there with a DC on it. Maybe the party finds clues in different places. Maybe they can find clues by making perception checks to notice OTHER things, like tracks on the floor or even non perception checks that let them know something funny is going on. "Wait, how did that Orc get over there when we were blocking the way?"The door itself can be impossible for them to perceive or else just difficult and in a spot they wouldn't likely search in the normal course of things. If they pick up the secondary clues, then they'll search and then the door will be found.There just isn't really a whole lot of reason to have secret doors, traps, etc which the party finds by the luck of winning the dice roll lottery. Thus there really isn't a mechanism for that in the rules. That is there is a mechanism in that perception will tell you how to adjudicate it, but there is no standard automatic "maybe you found it" mechanism like the old "roll 2+ on a d6" kind of thing that was in 1e/2e. 4e assumes things are story driven and serve the plot of the adventure and that random happenings are not really a suitable mechanism for that.</blockquote>

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