I've been looking through the CoT AP, and I've noticed there are some places where the party *must* locate a secret door to continue. This got me thinking about secret doors in general, and wondering how others manage them.
In 3.5, using the search skill to check a 5'x5' section of wall took a full-round. In PF, you can use perception as a move action, but there is no guidance as far as how much area you can examine with that action. Any thoughts for how much area you can search in PF?
How do others handle secret doors? Do you require active searching on every wall square, or have them revealed with much less effort?
More importantly, what do GMs do when a party *must* find a secret door, but didn't take any actions to find it, or rolled too low to notice it? Clearly at some point you have to throw them a bone, otherwise the party may resort to taking 20 on every flat surface throughout the dungeon, or decide there is something they need to do elsewhere and move on.
<rant>
It seems that if the party must find a secret door, making it secret in the first place isn't a great idea. They'll either stumble upon it with blind luck, or the GM reveals it to them anyway. I can see secret doors being used to help the movement of bad guys, or hide treasure that amounts to a bonus if players find it. But, when secret doors are required to be located, they really can't stay secret if the players don't find them.
</rant>
I've been looking through the CoT AP, and I've noticed there are some places where the party *must* locate a secret door to continue. This got me thinking about secret doors in general, and wondering how others manage them.
In 3.5, using the search skill to check a 5'x5' section of wall took a full-round. In PF, you can use perception as a move action, but there is no guidance as far as how much area you can examine with that action. Any thoughts for how much area you can search in PF?
How do others handle secret doors? Do you require active searching on every wall square, or have them revealed with much less effort?
More importantly, what do GMs do when a party *must* find a secret door, but didn't take any actions to find it, or rolled too low to notice it? Clearly at some point you have to throw them a bone, otherwise the party may resort to taking 20 on every flat surface throughout the dungeon, or decide there is something they need to do elsewhere and move on.
<rant>
It seems that if the party must find a secret door, making it secret in the first place isn't a great idea. They'll either stumble upon it with blind luck, or the GM reveals it to them anyway. I can see secret doors being used to help the movement of bad guys, or hide treasure that amounts to a bonus if players find it. But, when secret doors are required to be located, they really can't stay secret if the players don't find them.
</rant>
In 3.5 I violently hated secret doors. I still kind of do, but a little less. The whole thing stems from playing an adventure that was a published one, where there was like a billion secret doors that lead to nothing of consequence. It took hours to get through this damned dungeon, because every hall had like 3 secret doors. And half of them were trapped so we had to be real cautious. The amount of time it took the rogue to find, search, disable and open lock or whatever was just unreasonable. If there is a secret door, it should have a purpose. However, I would never, ever EVER, make it required to find a secret door to progress the plot. That is just bad design. I dont normally run published adventures, but if i did, and there was a secret door the party 'had' to find, I have a simple solution. Crossing out the S on the map and making it a Door. Maybe throw in an extra special trap just to emphasize its important but a secret door to progress the adventure would never exist in my game.
In 3.5 I violently hated secret doors. I still kind of do, but a little less. The whole thing stems from playing an adventure that was a published one, where there was like a billion secret doors that lead to nothing of consequence. It took hours to get through this damned dungeon, because every hall had like 3 secret doors. And half of them were trapped so we had to be real cautious. The amount of time it took the rogue to find, search, disable and open lock or whatever was just unreasonable. If there is a secret door, it should have a purpose....
Ditto. Instead of making it a secret door, make it a regular door with a tough lock and/or trap. If you go the locked door route, make sure there is a key located someplace difficult to get it from.
As you said, secret doors should be for facilitating bad guy movements, getting around trapped hallways, and/or hiding bonus treasure. At least that's how I view them. And for land's sakes, don't have a hallway that goes 40' and dead ends with no doors visible anywhere but, lo and behold, has a secret door at the end of it! Those never fool anyone hehe. Good luck!
Makes for a good trap, tho.
