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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Swarmkeeper" data-source="post: 8134624" data-attributes="member: 6921763">Thanks for the in-depth answers [USER=15882]@TaranTheWanderer[/USER].  Helps me better understand how things operate at your table, even if the example is incomplete.  Honestly, I don't think any example of play at the table (physical or online) is easy to translate perfectly into text here on the forums.I'm going to pick out just a few quotes to shorten this response (EDIT: well that failed... my response is getting longer by the moment!) - hope I'm not taking things out of context too much:If someone is actively searching/investigating, why would you not have them roll Wisdom (Perception) or Intelligence (Investigation)?  I mean, passive ability scores are intended to tell you what they notice without trying, right?As I've mentioned upthread, this type of adjudication seems to be a consequence of failure that is non-meaningful.  Preserving the status quo feels uninteresting and not worthy of dice rolls, IMO.  Yes!  So much making it up as we go, right?  Part the of the fun, really.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />I'd love to see a thread started that talks about tips for helping run online games more smoothly.  We've all had so much experience at this point, there are definitely ideas to share that have been very successful (or utter failures) at our respective virtual tables. If you are rolling for the NPC, though, don't the players know something is up?  This seems to be invoking the need for phantom rolling that we just don't employ at our tables.  Here's the rub for me with Passive checks:  to me they are very gamey and easy to manipulate (outside of surprise).  I know what the Passive numbers are for the players, so I can set the DC to whatever I want to let them succeed or make them fail.  I'd rather award auto-success or invoke auto-failure than fall back on Passive checks.  Now, in this situation, if the players are declaring actions for their PCs that indicate they are paying attention, I might call for one or more of them to make a Wisdom check (they can apply whatever skill they feel is appropriate) opposed by the NPC's Charisma check (and I might apply an ability if I feel it appropriate).  If they succeed, I let them know if the NPC is lying.  If they fail, I still might let them know if the NPC is lying, but something bad will accompany it ("progress combined with a setback" PHB p174)This is a fun example, by the way.  I really like the idea of an enemy trying to weasel his way out of the party's clutches and then struggling to do math while under scrutiny to figure out his odds.</blockquote>

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