With the feat Observant (page 168) you gain an +5 bonus to your passive Wisdom (Perception) and passive Intelligence (Investigation) score.
This would mean, that you have an passive Perception check of 15?.
In this case you are almost allways better off with not looking active for something, because you will mostly not roll an 16-20.
Would it make more sense to give this +5 to active checks, and not to passive ?
According to my DM it is possible to have worser active checks than passive, so if i am careful, watching for an ambush and roll an 14, i just have bad luck, because if i am not careful i have an passive 15 (With this feat!). Makes no sense to me.
You are not either careful or not careful - you are assumed to always be being careful.
The difference between passive and active is whether you are spending an action or not - and if your passive score is high enough your character is so careful and skilled as to never need to dedicate an action.
AaronOfBarbaria wrote:
The difference between active and passive perception is whether or not the DM wants you to know there is something hiding in the shadows. LoL
Does anyone use passive Investigate? I've made note of it on my player cards, and I'm thinking it would be good for whether or not someone passively notices a clue that might lead them to a secret door, etc. Any other thoughts?
I use passive perception, investigation, and insight.
Mostly because I find there are certain people that are just more aware of their environment and the fine details, and those passive scores establish what I have experienced in real life - people that just notice, pretty much always, and don't seem to have to dedicate any effort to it.
AaronOfBarbaria wrote:
I use passive perception, insight, and knowledge.
There is no skill called knowledge, so do you mean intelligence or something else?
El_Condoro wrote:
El_Condoro wrote:
Danny_Montanny wrote:
AaronOfBarbaria wrote:
Coredump00 wrote:
AaronOfBarbaria wrote:
AaronOfBarbaria wrote:
I also use passive Arcana, History, Nature and Religion checks myself for a variety of things including:
- Monster Lore: How much information the PCs know about a random monster/NPC they just encountered.
- Memory: How much information the character has memorized in their specialty.
Passive Intelligence checks can also be used to give players clues regarding names/places/objectives the players may have forgotten about, as well as hints to puzzles or clues the players themselves are overlooking.
In comparison, active Intelligence/Knowledge checks represent the character searching their memory in an attempt to recall information they may have researched previously, or to provide greater information than what they know without effort.
I love seeding encounter descriptions with information the PCs have gained via passive knowledge, as it helps enliven the story, while providing players with a sense of accomplishment for their skill choices.
I also tailor the information through the lens of the characters race, class, and ethnicity. Even if two (or more) characters had the same proficiency bonus, I would reveal slightly different information based on their character.
For example
- Dwarf (history): I would focus on history surrounding ancient ruins and stonework, as well as sprinkle the odd reference to a famous dwarf involved in the construction, or a famous quarry from which the stone originated.
- Mage (history): I would focus on any arcane histories surrounding the structure - whether it had been home to any famous wizards, or whether there are rumors of any artefacts, spellbooks, or libraries within.
- Fighter (knight background): I would reveal how the structure once served as a garrison and watchpost during a great war, and how it had changed hands through several generations of nobility before being overrun.
For sake of argument, lets assume each of the above characters had identical history checks - yet despite this, they both recall different information. Helps liven things up IMO.
Excellent ideas, although if I had that much information prepared, there is no way I would rely on a passive score to tell it. I would make the DC 5 to make sure someone heard it all. 
But what you're saying is that a passive score might prompt the character to do more active investigation to unearth those details, if I understand correctly.
When using the passive score for knowledge checks, I increase the DC by 5 for all characters who do not have the Keen Mind feat, representing the increased difficulty of committing information to memory. I would then reveal what information they could gain via a passive check, flavoured through the lens of their race/class. I then allow players to make an active knowledge check as an action to recall additional information.
When preparing information for the scene, I tend to write down the results of each DC with multiple options with single-line clues that I then elaborate on at the table. Using my above example, my DM notes would look something like this:
History
- Stone quarried at Baraduul, a famous dwarven quarry.
- Powerful arcane enchantments were woven into the stonework, allowing it to withstand the test of time unscathed.
- The central tower was once home to a powerful warrior-mage by the name of Talzaluk, a wizard in the employ of the Royal Family of Szellza
- It was later expanded and converted into a border keep during the Draelmyr conflict.
- The stonework of the central tower is different from that in the rest of the structure. No toolwork marrs its perfect bricks.
- Legend says that Talzaluk raised his tower overnight with the help of a mighty Ifrit.
I would provide the most basic and generic information as a DC10 passive check. For every 3 points higher than this, I will reveal one additional detail to the character. Characters who are proficient in the skill receive an extra 2 details which are tailored to their background/race/class, etc.
None of the above information is important to the adventure, but it does add noticable flavour to the encounters and scenes - as such, I reserve information such as this for flavor purposes.
Key information (that is, information that would be listed in a published module as a static DC X History check) still requires an active check. If no such information is present in the current location and the player chooses to make an active check, I elaborate on the kind of information they recall from the list of flavour options. For example, I might go into additional detail about the quarry of Baraduul and other famous structures its stones now support, or might elaborate on the history of Talzaluk.
Anything I make up ad hoc, I note down for future reference to maintain consistency.... If I invent characters on the spur of the moment, such characters may play a role in future storylines - either as a figure of history, a relative of an important NPC, or some other detail. In any event, it breathes life into the world around the PCs.
I tried allowing characters to use passive Intelligence (Investigation) to detect secret doors and traps when they are moving at a slow pace (since it seems like there was supposed to be a rule that you could passively search for traps at a slow pace that somehow got cut from the rules without the references to it being cut). However, I discovered that being able to automatically detect most secret doors just by walking by them was undesirable. I now require active checks to find secret doors.
I allow character to choose whether they are using passive Wisdom (Perception) or Intelligence (Investigation) to keep their eyes open for traps, when they are taking the trap searching option.
I think secret doors and traps are an interesting predicament when it comes to the game.
The ideal is that the party finds and interacts with them, but feels like there was some level of mystery or trick in doing so (for secret doors) or some danger present (for traps).
Neither of which are accomplished by the binary pass-fail of a passive score compared to their DC, and neither of which benefit from requiring a player to remember to specify their character is keeping an eye out and thus either having a complete lack of chance to find them (not trying) or have a "boring" die roll giving them swingy chances of noticing or not noticing.
I've actually found it a lot more rewarding to not bother having any secret doors or traps in general, and when electing to include them keep die rolls out of the mix, except as a way to generate hints for the player, to simply telegraph the presence of the secret door or trap through my description of an area and allow the player to directly interact - you find the secret door by choosing to interpret the radial scratch mark pattern on the floor as evidence that something moves, and by stating what your character does with the potential trigger elements of a wall-mounted candlestick or bookshelf filled with various tomes and fancy bookends, or you sort out how to disable or bypass the trap by the description of whatever elements it is made up of (holding up a shield in front of the numerous small holes in the walls of the hall so that the darts flying out would have to pierce through the shield to affect anyone, for example).
It's one of the few areas of the game where I feel like letting character skill be the primary mode of resolution is the utmost boring - especially all the times before I adapted to the methods I currently use that secret doors went entirely unnoticed because my players didn't find taking the time to search everywhere to fit their idea of "cool adventure" and so only the characters which were entitled to automatic checks even had a chance of noticing anything, and then rarely did... so many a neat treasure or special sub-section of dungeon were effectively not even part of the adventure.
Yeah, it's tough to get the feel right.
I only allow the passive checks for traps if the characters are moving at a slow pace and specify that they are taking a "search for traps" exploration task. It also only applies to trap that they might have a chance of stumbling into and automatically setting off. Basically they are keeping an eye out for trigger devices. Anything that they aren't accidentally going to set off (including secret doors or manually activated traps) requires an active search.
Worked fine for the special Halloween adventure I cooked up. Now we'll be back to LMoP and see how it works changing it up from the adventure that lets you pretty much auto-detect secret doors just by being nearby.
for passives, I take the higher of the two, passive or active. how can some one actively looking or studying something do worse then what they do passively? this makes observant and other sources that raise your passive scores much more valuable. just my house rule though.
I think that's actually the intended rule. As long as a situation warrants passive use of an ability check, active use can only increase your chances, not decrease it. The trick is that you can't always make passive checks, and that's when you might roll worse than a passive check.
Sword_of_Spirit wrote:
IRL I find it incredibly difficult to find anything I am actively looking for (even if it's right in front of me), yet at the same time - I have amazing perceptive skills at spotting obscure details without effort.
Translating this into 5E mechanics, I would state the following:
- Selective Blindness: I make active Investigation and Perception checks relying on sight with disadvantage.
- Observant: I have the Observant feat.