Why don't the following exploration activities have the secret trait?

[McMaverick]

Help me understand why the following exploration activities do not have the secret trait.

* Avoid Notice
* Investigate
* Search

[Taja the Barbarian]

They probably decided not to put the trait on the activity itself because (in theory) it might contain both both secret and non-secret checks, so they just included 'secret' as needed in the relevant text in the interest of consistency / avoiding confusion.

RAW, Avoid Notice does not involve any secret checks despite the fact that all the listed Stealth Skill Actions (at this time) are 'Secret'.

[The Gleeful Grognard]

The checks you make with the activity have the secret trait.

Parent actions/activities don't have the traits of their dependents.

Look to high jump, and then look at leap :P

[Mathmuse]

None of the basic exploration activities on pages 479 through 480 have the Secret trait. However, both Investigage and Search mention they might use secret dice rolls. I suspect they avoided the Secret trait because they used subordinate activities that had the Secret trait, so the check was already marked as rolled in secret. There is no need to repeat the trait on the overarching exploration activity when the die roll is already labeled Secret.

Investigate involves using the Recall Knowledge action, and that action has the Secret trait. Search involves using the Seek action, and that action has the Secret trait.

Avoid Notice does not have secret checks. It makes Stealth checks without involving a subordinate exploration activity, though it can be modified by the Swift Sneak and Legendary Sneak feats that ordinarily affect the Sneak acton, which has the Secret trait. However, Legendary Sneak does say, "When you employ an exploration tactic other than Avoiding Notice, you also gain the benefits of Avoiding Notice unless you choose not to," so putting Secret on Avoid Notice would have no effect on characters with Legendary Sneak, because they no longer would use plain Avoid Notice.

I suspect that Avoid Notice has less need to hide information from the players than Sneak. In general, a party can tell when they have messed up avoiding notice during exploration. They accidentally rattled their armor while jumping down from a wall or they sprinted across an open field in sight of a sentry. That provides a roleplaying activity, "Bob rolled only a 7 on his Stealth check. As he looked through a break in the trees, he saw a lookout tower with a boggard atop it and momentarily locked gazes with the boggard sentry. You hear the sound of a signal horn." The Sneak action does not have as many ways to detect that the Sneak was messed up.