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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 5278987" data-attributes="member: 82106">I would go with what vic20 is saying as well. I think that is the way the 4e Perception thing was intended to work. That being said there are a lot of reasons a trap might appear in an adventure and a lot of different appropriate levels of Perception that might be appropriate depending on why it was placed there. Some types of traps are also just best avoided entirely (or made easy to find and avoid and are there just for show basically).The first question you want to ask is obviously why does the trap exist? Is it part of a larger encounter? Is it an encounter all of its own that has some meaningful amount of difficulty to overcome? Does it exist for story purposes? Is it in a place that logically someone might likely search?If you put hard to find traps around randomly the chances are the players will start using active Perception constantly. This can get dull fast. Put them on doors and such so that the players have a good idea of when to spend table time using active checks. More significant traps might well go just about anywhere, but in that case I'd generally allow some hint to be garnered by passive Perception like "You notice that the area in the center of the room seems oddly free of dust" or something. If a trap is going to be part of an encounter with monsters, then you have more leeway. A simple trap in that case can just be out there waiting to get someone (though that is usually somewhat boring). More interesting alternatives include something that the rogue might burn turns on disarming (in which case probably he should see it passively) or something the PCs can turn against the enemy if they are clever (again probably best easily seen). A simple example is a pit. As a closed and concealed trap it is going to basically just whack someone, which is OK but not super exciting. If instead it is open and in plain sight it becomes terrain to move around or push enemies into (though it is not really a trap at that point either, but that's a whole other discussion...).</blockquote>

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