D&D 5E Secret Doors

[Sword of Spirit]

Use the PCs Passive Wisdom(Perception), or Intelligence (Investigation) if you prefer (I do). Have these numbers recorded on your DM cheat sheet.

When the party comes within detection range, you roll for the secret door. Mathematically if you want to have it work out the same, you need to add a bonus of DC -11, and unless the result is higher (you have to subtract 12 for equal) than the characters passive score, characters who are taking the exploration action to search for traps and secret doors spot evidence of the door. Otherwise, the players never know there was anything to find. But they need to know you are using this rule so that they don't spend time telling you they are checking every section of wall--this is the result of them doing that.

If the players are suspicious of a particular location, you can allow them to stop and spend time making a more thorough check (ie, the PC makes a normal roll themselves). Each retry takes a progressively longer time increment. 1 minute > 1 hour > 1 day.

You can also describe any features that might clue them in to the presence of a particular secret door. They either find it automatically if they correctly interact with that feature, or it just serves to tell them they should try an active check if they don't.

These three things should work.

 

[Umbran]

Is it in-genre/expected/reasonable for the PCs to go over every inch of wall?

• If it's not, then you need some consequence for doing it.

As a design consideration - putting in an element for them to engage with, and then giving "consequences" for doing so seems a bit... mean spirited.

 

[Quartz]

There's another that completely divides the two halves of the floor--you can't go from the ballroom to the throne room without passing through a secret door!

It was quite common in some eras for doors - particularly servants' doors - to be concealed. Similarly it might not be immediately obvious that a decorated wall is actually a partition that opens, especially if it hasn't been used for a long time. Both qualify as secret doors.

 

[Quickleaf]

It was quite common in some eras for doors - particularly servants' doors - to be concealed. Similarly it might not be immediately obvious that a decorated wall is actually a partition that opens, especially if it hasn't been used for a long time. Both qualify as secret doors.

That might be a brilliant way to make various tool proficiencies relevant. For example, if it's this era of murals follows a triptych pattern, but there are four painted panels in a room, then maybe a PC proficient with painter's supplies recognizes the discrepancy.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

As a design consideration - putting in an element for them to engage with, and then giving "consequences" for doing so seems a bit... mean spirited.

I guess it depends on how severe the consequences are. I mean, in some ways, engaging with the consequences of your actions is what D&D is all about!

 

[Li Shenron]

I'm running an adventure with a lot of secret doors right now, and I'm struggling with how to keep them from becoming monotonous on the one hand or trivial on the other. I don't want to slow down the game while the players go over every inch of wall, but just allowing the characters with high enough Passive Perception to see them automatically means they're not actually secret at all. (Someone in my group has PP 15 at level 1.)

Does anyone have any suggestions on how to keep them engaging?

1) Go through the rulebooks and find all rules related to finding hidden things, gather them together in some reference document
2) Study the rules accurately, make sure you understand the nuances and learn them like the back of your hand
3) Throw all said rules in the toilet

More seriously... the best (maybe only) way to make hidden non-monster stuff INTERESTING is to handle the process narratively. No amount of rolls or bonuses or resolution mechanics is really interesting. Unfortunately this means you have to put the players' skills under the spotlight, which inevitable makes the characters' skills somewhat less important. But that's what it should be, just like you can't seriously expect to handle all social interactions with rolls AND be interesting. There is always a symbiosis between players' skills and characters' skills, even in combat (the characters swing the sword an shoot the arrows, but the player makes the tactics), but it's way too common to emphasize the importance of rules, rules and more rules for exploration (or social interaction) and then oh what a surprise exploration sucks.

You have to shift back some emphasis on players' decisions, for example use more detailed descriptions of the environment to invite observations, encourage some free interactions with the environment without using rules, do not make the players roll for everything and especially make them roll after not before... so don't allow blanket tasks such as "I check the room for hidden doors/traps" but instead make your players tell what their character does and eventually* have them check after to see if their character's abilities succeed or fail at supporting the character's intention (i.e. the player's). Keep in mind that some blanket rules like passive perception are actually designed for players who hate exploration and don't want to bother with it.

*and not necessarily always, I think a good approach is to think that rolls are only needed when the DM is undecided on the outcome, but I digress...

 

[Stalker0]

Doesn't that just lead to "Option 2" above?

And what do you do if the players suspect there's a secret door but the PCs' auto check isn't high enough to find it automatically?

The reason its different from Option 2 is its an active roll not a passive score. So sometimes it hits and sometimes its doesn't.

And to the notion of "my character thinks there may be a secret door there", again that's what the free check is for. I have basically told my players "I get it, your all super paranoid adventurers that want to check every inch for traps". So instead of doing that and wasting a bunch of time, I just give them an automatic check when they get close to something worth looking at.

But the compromise is, if they fail the check they keep going. They can't go.... "hmmm, for some reason I'm REALLY suspicious here, and I want to check it again". They already looked and didn't find anything, so they move on.

 

[77IM]

As a design consideration - putting in an element for them to engage with, and then giving "consequences" for doing so seems a bit... mean spirited.

That's one way to do it. If the consequences are a surprise, or a punishment meant to discourage behavior (like, the consequence is boredom from fighting yet another encounter with 1d4+1 ghouls), then yes, it's mean. If you've experienced such mean DMing in the past, your trauma is understandable.

I meant "consequence" in the sense of, "don't let the players roll the dice unless there's a consequence for failure." A lot of ink has been spilled over that piece of advice so I'm not going to repeat it here except to say that I find it excellent advice and applicable to the secret-door debate.

 

[Umbran]

That's one way to do it. If the consequences are a surprise, or a punishment meant to discourage behavior (like, the consequence is boredom from fighting yet another encounter with 1d4+1 ghouls), then yes, it's mean. If you've experienced such mean DMing in the past, your trauma is understandable.

I meant "consequence" in the sense of, "don't let the players roll the dice unless there's a consequence for failure." A lot of ink has been spilled over that piece of advice so I'm not going to repeat it here except to say that I find it excellent advice and applicable to the secret-door debate.

In that sense, yes. But also in that sense then... as always, the GM has to ask themselves if they want there to be such consequences at that time. That comes back around to the question of why that door is there, and why is it secret?

If that door, for example, is there because the Evil Marquis uses it to escape, then note that sufficient delay by guards/monsters is equivalent to just not finding the door - in either case, the Marquis gets away. And then, getting beaten up my monsters and the Marquis getting away is really a double-consequence - which is starting to look like punishment...

The point of "consequences for failure" is NOT an admonition to make sure there is a cost to trying things. It is a QUESTION - is there any cost for failure? If not, then just let it happen, and don't bother rolling dice at all.

 

[Arvok]

I think the easiest way to lead players to look for a secret door is to give them clues about what they might find in the dungeon. If all the legends and rumors they've heard speak of the villain's great wealth or his torture chambers or whatever, when the PCs clear all the bad guys and don't find those things they're going to start poking around. Similarly, when they're pursuing a rogue in his hideout and the rogue and all his underlings pop out of nowhere and then disappear the party should start to suspect secret doors.

Keep in mind, there should be some reason for a secret door (this can prevent the session from getting bogged down by PCs painstakingly searching every square inch of the dungeon). Constructing a secret door involves a good amount of time and effort so each one should provide the resident of the place some advantage. A secret hiding place should be reserved for something so valuable that locking it in a chest just isn't good enough protection. Such an obvious storage place might be trapped and the real treasure is behind a hidden compartment.