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Message: <blockquote data-quote="TaranTheWanderer" data-source="post: 8134580" data-attributes="member: 15882">I added numbers to your quote to make it easier to organize:1. For the most part, yes. If there is secret information, I rely on passive skills.For Knowledge checks, I use their passive knowledge skill (History, for instance) to give them the basic information their character would know.  Research and rolls could provide more information.For secret doors and exploration, I primarily use the Passive Investigation of the person searching.  I might use the Passive Perception of someone to give them clues about stuff (you notice a breeze in this alcove) if it's high enough.Anyone else who isn't actively searching is assumed to walk into a trap but I make the assumption that they are alert for danger (passive perception).Example (This might not be a complete example, but I'll try)"You enter a room that appears to be a bunk room for the orcs.  There are several messy beds and cots along one wall a pile of barrels, boxes and supplies in the far corner and a beat-up desk along the north wall.  The brick work in the room is crumbling.  There are several stuffed heads, mostly big game animals, that line the west wall, placed there as trophies."So, let's say this is an orcs bunk-room.  Treasure:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">A pouch with 20gp under the blankets of one of the cots (DC 10)</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">A potion behind a loose brick.  on the wall by the beds(DC 15)</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">50 gp and a Healing Kit and a potion of Healing in a barrel in the corner amongst the barrels and boxes (DC 12)</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">A set of lock picks in the mouth of one of the heads. On the west wall, Put there, just in case. (DC 15)</li> </ul>-There's a secret door on the South Wall. (DC 20)-There's some information on the desk about an enemy in the complex.  There's a secret drawer with gems.(DC 12)Lots to find.The party comes in to this room.  They want to search the room so I ask them how long they want to spend.  I figure, a thorough search of the room will take 20 minutes.  Two members have active spells and they say, "We only spend 5 minutes."I tell them, to search the room thoroughly, it's going to take more time than that, do you want to focus your search?One person says, I'll search the boxes in the corner.One person says, I'll just search as much as I can starting from the North Wall.One person says, I'll ransack the beds.I rummage through the desk looking for a secret drawer. "Ok, 5 minutes has passed"-The person searching the room gets disadvantage.  There isn't time to find anything with a cursory glance.  "You don't find anything"  (they could have found the lock picks but they were too rushed)-The person searching the boxes fails to find the Healing potion in the barrel because their PP isn't high enough. They haven't gotten around to that barrel.- The person who ransacks the beds auto-succeeds and find the coins-The person rummaging through the desk auto-finds the papers and locates the secret drawer.  If their PP isn't high enough, I'd give them a roll to see if they can roll higher and locate the drawer (because they were specifically trying to locate it).  If they fail the roll, I tell them about the papers so they think their roll located the information."You have yet to open the drawer.   Do you want to spend more time searching?  How long?"  If the answer is yes.<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">I give advantage to the guy searching the barrels, he's taking more time.  He locates the potion and healing kit</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The person doing a general search might locate one of the secrets.</li> </ul>-Nobody finds the secret door.  (but given more time, they might note a draftiness in the room which might make them want to spend more time - and burn more duration on their spells)If they take the full allotted time to search the whole room, they will come across all the treasure and might, possibly, get advantage for people who declared they were looking for specific things (20 minutes looking through the desk, for instance or 20 minutes to someone specifically searching for secret doors.)So that's an imperfect example because a lot of the time I'm just making it up as I go, trying my best to adjudicate fairly.  In that example, I can just tell everyone what they find and they can choose to spend as much or as little time as they want searching.  If there is no time crunch and they are just resting, then there's less need for all the specifics.  I can just compare it to the highest passive perception.  Anyone specifically looking for secret doors might get advantage and I may even ask for a roll to see if they get a lucky high roll(assuming no-one has a PP high enough to detect the door.2.  I'm finding dungeon crawls, both as a player and as a DM, very frustrating and slow when playing online.  I'm experimenting with ways to make things smoother and limit excessive dice rolls.  It seems to be working well and it still awards players who are creative and are listening to the scene description.3.  If I feel there is information to be garnered (like someone is lying or the PCs might benefit from trying to figure out an NPCs motives, I will use deception vs Passive Insight.  I have a character with expertise in Insight and it's annoying when I forget to tell the DM that I'm trying to suss out or read an NPC - and it's hard to find creative, narrative ways to describe it.  Therefore, as a DM, when it's important, I leave it up to passives.  Example:  they beat a bunch of orcs and found the leader.  They are trying to avoid a fight and intimidate the leader (they'd already killed the leader's Ogre Master).  They tell the leader that they've already killed 5 of his men.  At that point, my NPC was taking a tally of how many men he had left to see if retreating, then mustering the survivors would give him a shot at defeating them.  This fact seemed important enough that I'd want to see if the players could notice.I decided what the DC would be to determine that and then compared it to the passsive Insight of people who were paying attention.  Someone succeeded."You can see his eyes stare out and up to one corner and then he looks down at his finger - like he's counting or tallying up something."PC:  "Does it seem like, if we let him go, he'll come and attack us later.""You're not sure, but it makes sense that, since you told him how many you killed, that he's doing the math.  He might, if he has the numbers but you don't know how many orcs are left in the complex"</blockquote>

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