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<blockquote data-quote="Bill Zebub" data-source="post: 9545298" data-attributes="member: 7031982">Agreed, and it should scale based on the size of the 'reward'.&nbsp; E.g., if the secret door leads to an exit that might be useful later, then maybe just discovering it is enough.&nbsp; If it's a major treasure room, I would add additional complexities: door is hard to open, traps, etc.As I said elsewhere, I prefer to do traps the same way I do secret doors: either easy to find and hard to bypass, or hard to find (but still telegraphed!) and easy to bypass.I mean, this isn't the movies, so I don't think there's a perfect solution.&nbsp; Eventually players realize that if you include a feature (&quot;there are scorch marks...&quot;) they know what's going on.&nbsp; But replacing that with dice rolls, or passive Perception checks, has never been satisfying to me, either.&nbsp; For years I did it, but never liked it.I believe that at its core, the 'game' part about the game should be making hard decisions.&nbsp; A totally generic &quot;I search for traps&quot; followed by a die roll, with no consequence for failure, just isn't a hard decision.&nbsp; Or, the only decision is &quot;how much of our game time should I take up with rolling to find traps and secret doors?&quot;</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Bill Zebub, post: 9545298, member: 7031982"] Agreed, and it should scale based on the size of the 'reward'. E.g., if the secret door leads to an exit that might be useful later, then maybe just discovering it is enough. If it's a major treasure room, I would add additional complexities: door is hard to open, traps, etc. As I said elsewhere, I prefer to do traps the same way I do secret doors: either easy to find and hard to bypass, or hard to find (but still telegraphed!) and easy to bypass. I mean, this isn't the movies, so I don't think there's a perfect solution. Eventually players realize that if you include a feature ("there are scorch marks...") they know what's going on. But replacing that with dice rolls, or passive Perception checks, has never been satisfying to me, either. For years I did it, but never liked it. I believe that at its core, the 'game' part about the game should be making hard decisions. A totally generic "I search for traps" followed by a die roll, with no consequence for failure, just isn't a hard decision. Or, the only decision is "how much of our game time should I take up with rolling to find traps and secret doors?" [/QUOTE]

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