Read on Twitter
Currently, the rules for passive skills is fairly vague. When they apply and how is relatively open. Guidance on Dragon Talk from Crawford suggests using it “always on” as a floor. BUT... https://twitter.com/AndyDempz/status/1303699197561122817
Using passives as a floor will wreck most official adventures. Really, almost all adventures. Adventures are written with the idea that PCs don’t usually find everything, and the fun is in that variance.
Take a room with 3 traps. The fun in the scene generally expects a couple to not be found. Making passive Perception/Investigation your lowest score and always on doesn’t work with that design.
Compare with Gumshoe games. In that RPG, you have special always-on Investigative skills, such as forensics and biology. When you find a dead body, you are expected to know exactly what happened, based on what you do.
You examine the body, you have a point in Forensics, you know the cause of death. Clues are meant to be found in Gumshoe. The fun in that RPG is based on what you do with what you find. We see this in movies.
Indiana Jones finds the traps. He sees the darts, identifies them as poisoned. Sees the sunlight trap, points it out to the untrained hireling. Sees the idol is counterweights. That’s not the fun in the movie.
The fun in the movie is deciding what to do. First, guessing the weight of the idol. That’s your active check. Then, when it goes wrong, deciding what to do. Flee! Now we have active checks to escape all the stuff we found. Great fun!
It’s totally fine for DnD to shift to a “you find everything” system, but to do that we have to make two changes.
First, passive as a floor is problematic. If all players don’t game it, then we might actually miss clues designers and the game expect you to find. That’s why Gumshoe doesn’t use a number. It’s just success. Passive should go.
Second, we have to write for the new system. We have to write so the fun isn’t in surprises or finding, but in what you do with information you always find. That’s not how official (or other) 5E adventures are written.
Both must change for this to work. Given that 5E is here to stay for a long while, what can we do? Well, you can remove the guidance (it’s just guidance) that passives are a floor. Decide when they apply, the rest of the time, roll. Vary what applies when.
This keeps current adventure design relevant. Even when your party has passives of 20+, as many do, you vary when that pays off. It remains fun.
Or, change the adventures. That’s a lot more work. Retooling everything written for 20+ passives is rough.
(And, DMs, worth remembering that disadvantage gives -5 to passive. But don’t abuse that or it gets old quickly. “Fog, again?!!!”)
(And, DMs, worth remembering that disadvantage gives -5 to passive. But don’t abuse that or it gets old quickly. “Fog, again?!!!”)
