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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Xetheral" data-source="post: 8203599" data-attributes="member: 6802765">That's cool. Thanks for sharing!Personally, I find my houserules helpful at my table partially because I run a very player-driven, game with a heavy emphasis on simulation. (Those two go together--the heavy emphasis on simulation makes the game world more predictable, which in turn gives the players more agency to control their influence on the game world.)So some of the techniques you use at your table to make the written rules work well are less usable/relevant at my table. Unless the party has screwed up somehow and lost the strategic initiative, there are rarely hidden threats for them to notice: they are the threat. Sure, there might occasionally be a group of bandits trying to ambush whomever comes next along the road,* but deliberate ambushes are rare, unless the PCs have let their enemies know when and where they'll be. Keeping alert while travelling is still invaluable, but I suspect there are fewer potentially hidden threats to notice at my table than at yours. Similarly, secret doors will rarely lead to treasure or places to rest at my table (they're more likely to be emergency exits, spyholes, or mere conveniences), the party will often already have purchased a map (trying to plan encounters strategically is a lot harder if you don't already know the terrain) or talked to locals in advance to get the lay of the land, and tracking isn't a source of XP since I don't award XP per-fight. (Also, XP is a purely OOC concept at my table, so seeking it out IC would be frowned on.)(*And unless they're desperate or stupid, the bandits probably aren't going to attack a small, heavily armed group. Such targets are often dangerous, and unlikely to have much in the way of trade goods or easily marketable loot. Sure, some PCs carry godly amounts of cash, but the bandits don't know that.)And my emphasis on simulation makes some of the abstraction in the written rules less palatable. I don't want players of Observant characters to feel like they have to deliberately frame their action declarations as a repeated task so that they can get a Passive-check-only bonus--it feels artificial and thus hampers verisimilitude. For example, why should an Observant trapfinder be better at searching for traps repeatedly than she is at searching for traps one at a time? Given my style preferences, I'd rather houserule than handwave that inconsistency.As far as investigation, I do find myself having to go of my way to makes traps that require investigation of their mechanisms. Likely, that's because my emphasis on simulation means I'm usually going to use very simple traps that would be very easy for whomever built them to afford, and the mechanism of such traps are simple to understand. Traps with obscure mechanisms would be rare and expensive, and if well-designed would be impossible to notice in advance. Sure, I can come up with plausible explanations for badly designed (i.e. noticable) traps with complicated mechanisms, but I'm not going to do that just to make Investigation proficiency useful: I'd rather just houserule in expanded uses for the skill.In the end, I know I'm not running a typical game. While I firmly believe my style of play was intended to be (and is!) supported by 5e, since it's not a common style I expect to need to houserule on occasion. Hence, my houserules for Observent and Investigation. They're broad enough that they could be useful in a variety of playstyles, so I shared them in case anyone concerned with the issues discussed in this thread find them a palatable solution.</blockquote>

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