GMs, how do you deal with Investigators automatically getting plot points handed to them?

[Moppy]

As a GM, I'm having a problem with the Investigator breaking plots.

It has a number of feats that automatically reveal information. Let's start with That's Odd. "When you enter a new location, such as a room or corridor, you immediately notice one thing out of the ordinary ... skipping obvious clues that can be easily noticed without a check."

Although it isn't as bad as Who Dunnit (which I see is PFS restricted) it's still causing me problems. In an adventure based on finding leads, the investigator automatically finds one, even if they just are just passing through and couldn't normally search. In a detective adventure, this is the equivalent of a dungeon crawl with a mob automatically dying as the party enters the room.

Can't I fix it by adding more clues?

If the clues are random and unrelated, the players will complain about being trolled by GM cheating. "We're here to investigate a murder. I learn that the Hand of the King has sneaked an extra cake from the kitchen while the cook wasn't looking. You literally just made that up to save your adventure, didn't you?". Or, the investigator can take feats like Red Herring which automatically eliminate false positives.

Can't I just design my adventure with multiple significant plots?

Thanks APG! How many more hours will that take? What do I do if I'm using a published adventure to save time?

[Rysky]

Your cake thief example doesn’t really have anything to do with the feat.

That’s Odd wrote:

When you enter a new location, such as a room or corridor, you immediately notice one thing out of the ordinary. The GM determines what it is, or whether there's nothing reasonable to pick up, skipping obvious clues that can be easily noticed without a check or specifically looking for them. You learn only that an area or object is suspicious, but not why it's suspicious. For example, if you entered a study with a large bloodstain on the ground, the bloodstain is so obviously suspicious it's evident to you already, so the GM might note that there's something suspicious about the desk drawer instead. You would then need to investigate the drawer further to find out what specifically is out of the ordinary. That's Odd doesn't reveal whether creatures are suspicious.

You don't typically get any benefit when you leave and come back to a place, though if a major change has happened there and time has passed, the GM might determine that you do.

PFS Note wrote:

GMs should provide a character with the That’s Odd investigator feat a hint whenever the character enters a room with hidden aspects, specifically with regard to hidden passageways (such as scuff marks near a bookcase that’s actually a swinging door), creatures or hazards (such as drippage on the floor from an unseen fungus growing on the rafters), or valuables (such as bunched carpet over a secret compartment in the floor that contains a bag of coins). The GM does not need to provide clues for rooms that have no significant secret or hidden features. These clues should indicate only that the character should investigate a given section of the room, not let them automatically uncover the hidden element or provide any additional information beyond signaling its presence.

[Revel]

Well I can’t speak to all of the investigators abilities as I haven’t read through it well enough and haven’t had a player run one before but as far as “That’s Odd” goes, noting that something is out of the ordinary does not mean you understand its significance. For example consider an investigator enters a room and notices some marks on the floor over by a painting.

Is there a secret passage there? Perhaps part of the wall moves and caused the marks.

Is there a loose stone or other secret compartment that is over there are the marks are because someone recently accessed it?

Did someone move furniture that was once there? Perhaps a chair was moved elsewhere to conceal a bloodstain.

Did a creature come out of the painting and the marks are from it coming and going at night?

In other words keep it vague. Think in terms of a murder mystery in which “ideally” the significance of the clues noticed may not be apparent until much later in the story.

Based on what Rysky pointed out you don't "have" to say anything except that something feels off or unusual about a certain area of the room though personally I'd prefer giving some sort of hint as in the example above. Still if you aren't sure how to to it without giving out to mush information it does give you an out of sorts.

[Deadmanwalking]

Yeah, 'That's Odd' just tells you where to look. You still need to figure out what the actual lead is, and how it's relevant, all on your own.

Inasmuch as an investigation is a series of Perception and Recall Knowledge checks, it's not even really an auto-success on a Perception check, just an indication that this is the right spot to make such a check.

It has less in common with 'win an encounter' and more in common with 'automatically know when an encounter will occur', which is still a potent ability, but not one that actually negates the encounter itself (just as That's Odd doesn't negate the need for the Perception check or the other actual mechanics of investigating).

Who Dunnit? isn't really that much of a problem either, most of the time. Remember that the questions are 'Yes' or 'No', and more importantly are limited to the specific list provided in the Feat. Those are good and useful questions, but rarely solve the whole mystery. It's also Uncommon, so if you don't want to deal with it, don't allow PCs to get it.

I do think that adding extraneous clues just to invalidate these kinds of abilities is bad form. The player invested resources in being good at solving mysteries, let them be good at solving mysteries.

[BishopMcQ]

In the murder investigation scenario, there are the physical factors of where the murder happened, who did it, and how. There is also the motive behind it.

When the party comes into the study, they could find:
a- A painting is askew (there's a secret passage behind the portrait showing how the killer moves around the house unseen)
b- the ashes in the fireplace (Contains bits of burnt paperwork -part of the motive of killings)
c- a ribbon discarded under a chair (hinting that all of the guests were given presents)

Across the hall, the lounge is where the murder happened:
a - the door locks from the inside and the murder victim still has the key (suggests the murderer was already in the room)
b - body shows signs of blunt trauma to the head (rule out edged weapons)
c - a candle has fallen from the mantle (fireplace here is also a secret passage - candle fell when moving)

So now, the party has two secret passages to explore; a lead on motive something that was in those papers, but they don't know what yet; knowledge that the killer either was stealthy enough to open a secret passage without causing alarm or was able to hide/be invisible in the lounge; gifts were given to all the party guests - everyone had a weapon; killer used a blunt weapon - either was given it or able to get it away from the original owner unnoticed.

Plenty of clues in 2 rooms to lead toward the investigation without giving away that it was Colonel Mustard with the Lead Pipe and that he was being blackmailed for war profiteering.

[Kasoh]

A GM advice blog recently had something to say about passive skill DCs and whatnot and I feel like this segment is relevant:

The Angry GM wrote:

Beyond all that, I know every GM has a voice in their brain that complains every time the players succeed without having to roll a die. Every GM has a little “did they really earn that” sensor that goes off whenever they feel like the players didn’t have to work hard enough for something or didn’t burn enough character resources. And that sensor makes GMs do really crappy things. It stops GMs from ending fights early. It makes GMs demand initiative rolls and attack rolls and damage rolls when the rogue – on his own – sneaks up behind an unaware guard and just wants to garrote him dead. And it stops GMs from giving players information if they didn’t roll enough dice to earn the clues. But here’s the thing: dice rolls aren’t how you earn things. You earn things through player skill – making the right decisions – and avatar strength – having the right skills and abilities and using them. Dice have nothing to do with player skill or avatar strength. They’re random chance. They actually just take away things earned with smart decisions and well-built, well-used characters.

[ArchSage20]

Kasoh wrote:

A GM advice blog recently had something to say about passive skill DCs and whatnot and I feel like this segment is relevant:

The Angry GM wrote:

Beyond all that, I know every GM has a voice in their brain that complains every time the players succeed without having to roll a die. Every GM has a little “did they really earn that” sensor that goes off whenever they feel like the players didn’t have to work hard enough for something or didn’t burn enough character resources. And that sensor makes GMs do really crappy things. It stops GMs from ending fights early. It makes GMs demand initiative rolls and attack rolls and damage rolls when the rogue – on his own – sneaks up behind an unaware guard and just wants to garrote him dead. And it stops GMs from giving players information if they didn’t roll enough dice to earn the clues. But here’s the thing: dice rolls aren’t how you earn things. You earn things through player skill – making the right decisions – and avatar strength – having the right skills and abilities and using them. Dice have nothing to do with player skill or avatar strength. They’re random chance. They actually just take away things earned with smart decisions and well-built, well-used characters.

i wish i could like this a thousand time i had gm that clearly wanted me to roll that dice every 10 seconds as much as possible naturally even with ridiculous bonus sooner or later you gonna fail or critically fail something that as a player who likes to avoid risks and rolling was a nightmare to me

[Moppy]

It's not the dice roll being bypassed that concerns me. It's the creation of a themepark by a feat. I am OK with it if the players are, but a lot of them aren't.

Excessive dice rolling is always a problem, whether t's the GM making people roll for everything, or the players that make perception checks every minute.

[Rysky]

Moppy wrote:

It's not the dice roll being bypassed that concerns me. It's the creation of a themepark by a feat.

Huh?

[shroudb]

the feat doesnt even bypass the die roll.

all it does is saying to the player "yes, there's indeed something weird/relevant *here*" without saying what that is or why it is weird or relevant.

If anything, it makes my work as a GM easier, and is a refreshing change from all those internal headpalms for every time i've put some obvious "search here" thing in my stories only to have the party march right through that.

[The Raven Black]

Way I read it, if there is nothing out of the ordinary, you do not need to add something that was not there first. You just tell the player that their PC's Investigator sense is not tingling.

Now, if there is something beyond the obvious, you tell them where it is, but finding and interpreting it is left to them.

[Castilliano]

There was a PFS1 scenario that had the party running around a city searching for clues (& more victims). The key clue, the one leading to the culprit's den, required examining a broken object mentioned as part of a lengthy description. If the party didn't call out that object specifically they could not roll; general searches wouldn't do it. I'd have loved to have had that Investigator feat then...and I was the GM. Luckily there wasn't an in-game timer (and we ran through the other parts swiftly IRL) so the party was able to backtrack to that site and go piece by piece through the room's description.

That's of course a flaw on the part of the writer IMO (and it being a public PFS game, requiring RAW), the writer assuming that players liked games where you clicked your cursor over every object rather than talked in broad narrative terms about doing the same. And the object then had to be reassembled to read, so I can understand it not simply being a "one roll & done" situation. But that complexity didn't increase enjoyment. Nobody felt a sense of accomplishment for their thoroughness.

So I can appreciate a feat that nudges without shoving or skipping.

[Ascalaphus]

How does the GM deal with the investigator?

By reading the class abilities carefully, and not letting them do more than they actually say they do.

[The-Magic-Sword]

Castilliano wrote:

There was a PFS1 scenario that had the party running around a city searching for clues (& more victims). The key clue, the one leading to the culprit's den, required examining a broken object mentioned as part of a lengthy description. If the party didn't call out that object specifically they could not roll; general searches wouldn't do it. I'd have loved to have had that Investigator feat then...and I was the GM. Luckily there wasn't an in-game timer (and we ran through the other parts swiftly IRL) so the party was able to backtrack to that site and go piece by piece through the room's description.

That's of course a flaw on the part of the writer IMO (and it being a public PFS game, requiring RAW), the writer assuming that players liked games where you clicked your cursor over every object rather than talked in broad narrative terms about doing the same. And the object then had to be reassembled to read, so I can understand it not simply being a "one roll & done" situation. But that complexity didn't increase enjoyment. Nobody felt a sense of accomplishment for their thoroughness.

So I can appreciate a feat that nudges without shoving or skipping.

Whats super interesting about this, is that from what I've read, calling out how you search to be able to find things by paying attention to the GM's description is very much the old school way of doing it, and I've been thinking I'd like to lean more in that direction: just like you have to tell the GM how you're trying to convince an NPC, or hide, or whatever, you have to give them an idea of how you intend to search. It also stops searching from being super rote, and makes it more interactive, you aren't just throwing numbers at a scene and getting a success pop, you're interacting with the physical space of the scene.

The issue is that if they say "I search the desk" after I tell them something stands out about the desk in the general description, I'm unclear on what the role of perception should be in that-- should it be before I describe the room, to see if they notice that there's something about the desk in the first place? That seems like the expectation from the adventures I've read in DND and stuff. In which case, this bypasses the perception role for one of the room's secrets-- which I'm actually completely fine with. Alternatively, it would be when they tell me to search the desk, which has the oddity of inflicting a random binary on whether or not they can find the thing once they choose to investigate it. Add to this that searching is a basic exploration activity (meaning something you do on an ongoing basis) and it gets a little weird.

There's advantages and disadvantages to each approach.

[shroudb]

The-Magic-Sword wrote:

Castilliano wrote:

There was a PFS1 scenario that had the party running around a city searching for clues (& more victims). The key clue, the one leading to the culprit's den, required examining a broken object mentioned as part of a lengthy description. If the party didn't call out that object specifically they could not roll; general searches wouldn't do it. I'd have loved to have had that Investigator feat then...and I was the GM. Luckily there wasn't an in-game timer (and we ran through the other parts swiftly IRL) so the party was able to backtrack to that site and go piece by piece through the room's description.

That's of course a flaw on the part of the writer IMO (and it being a public PFS game, requiring RAW), the writer assuming that players liked games where you clicked your cursor over every object rather than talked in broad narrative terms about doing the same. And the object then had to be reassembled to read, so I can understand it not simply being a "one roll & done" situation. But that complexity didn't increase enjoyment. Nobody felt a sense of accomplishment for their thoroughness.

So I can appreciate a feat that nudges without shoving or skipping.

Whats super interesting about this, is that from what I've read, calling out how you search to be able to find things by paying attention to the GM's description is very much the old school way of doing it, and I've been thinking I'd like to lean more in that direction: just like you have to tell the GM how you're trying to convince an NPC, or hide, or whatever, you have to give them an idea of how you intend to search. It also stops searching from being super rote, and makes it more interactive, you aren't just throwing numbers at a scene and getting a success pop, you're interacting with the physical space of the scene.

The issue is that if they say "I search the desk" after I tell them something stands out about the desk in the general description, I'm unclear on what the role of perception should be in that--...

the way i do it depends on time spend.

if the group wants to collectively spend an hour to tear apart a room, let them tear it apart.

if they want to search only for a limited time, like 10minutes, i'd ask where they search or if they do anything in particular.

[Moppy]

Searching for me isn't a problem. It's when players get told to search automatically on entering a location when they wouldn't normally think of it. You just walk in a cake shop to get a cake, as soon as you enter "oh we should search under the counter".

[shroudb]

It's not that much different than a dwarf with stonecunning walking into the cake shop and spotting that there's a secret door in the side though.

Like the dwarf is instinctively trained to keep an eye out for unusual stonework, the investigator is instictively trained to keep an eye out for stuff pertaining to his cases.

[Ubertron_X]

Finds all the randomly hidden clues loot...

Spoiler:

I am not against this class/feat per se, however I do rate an automatic "if to search" as very impactful when designing and GMing adventures.

[BishopMcQ]

My take on it is "That's odd" tells the players they need to spend time in the area and nudges them in a direction. Sometimes they will be in the middle of something else and have to remember to come back, other times they will be able to look into the matter immediately. If there are multiple things to find in an area, it gives them one of them.

There's also the fact that by choosing to be an investigator to be good at finding clues, they are making the choice to not be a different class or if they multiclassed into Investigator not having other dedications.

Some of the more advanced feats are also labeled as Uncommon, meaning that before "Who Dunnit" gets added to the game, the GM has to decide it's something they want.

[AnimatedPaper]

Moppy wrote:

Searching for me isn't a problem. It's when players get told to search automatically on entering a location when they wouldn't normally think of it. You just walk in a cake shop to get a cake, as soon as you enter "oh we should search under the counter".

Talk to your players. Tell them what kind of story you're trying to tell, and how that feat makes it harder on you. Then let the player that took it get a free retraining to a different feat, and ban it at your table.

Not only is honesty the best policy, this is about as clear as it gets to telling your players, "I have made an Easter egg hunt for you. Find them eggs." They'll probably start looking everywhere as a matter of course, but it sounds like you want that to happen.

[Quandary]

"even if they just are just passing through and couldn't normally search" just feels absurdly contrived.
You are complaining about hypothetically making more content to deal with Investigator, but you are OK spending time on creating clues you don't expect anybody will have time to investigate? And are angry Investigator will notice them?

Stonecunning seems the most relevant example. None of this is really about revealing something anybody else couldn't have seen. None of this stuff seems much different to somebody having Independent Familiar/Eidolon for 2nd Exploration action on Search.

I mean, if you are worried about a Feat breaking something, then you can ban the Feat, but I don't really see why.

[Ice Titan]

Moppy wrote:

Searching for me isn't a problem. It's when players get told to search automatically on entering a location when they wouldn't normally think of it. You just walk in a cake shop to get a cake, as soon as you enter "oh we should search under the counter".

Yeah. The PC is playing a class called the Investigator. They should be able to play a character who is very good at investigating without having to be very good at investigating in real life.

Do you make the fighter kick open doors to see if he can pass strength checks, or the wizard recite spells to use magic?

Why does the investigator player have to be unusually prescient to play an investigator?

[Ubertron_X]

Quandary wrote:

Stonecunning seems the most relevant example. None of this is really about revealing something anybody else couldn't have seen. None of this stuff seems much different to somebody having Independent Familiar/Eidolon for 2nd Exploration action on Search.

Stonecunning is related but imho not most relevant.

In case of stonecunning you get a free, automatic but ultimatively secret check, so depending on the outcome of the check you might find a door hidden in a stone wall or might not notice its presence at all.

In case of "That's odd" however you will automatically get told that there is something amiss with that very wall. You will probably still need a successful check to be able to find the door, however given enough time and ressources the player(s) will eventually find the door if they don't give up or get bored.

The difference is that automagically knowing when to look for additional clues is much, much more potent than any free but secret roll.

If the BBEG hideout is beneath a maze of 10 identical looking empty rooms, one of which however contains a hidden trap door, the stonecunning dwarf may never find it without outside help whereas the Investigator with that's odd will be handed this very information on a silver plate.

Dwarf: "I went through all the rooms and double-checked for secret doors, nothing to report."
Investigator: "My spider senses went of for the eastern wall in room number 8, lets take a second look there."
Dwarf: ...

Note that as stated above it probably still is a necessary feat for people that are no Sherlock Holmes in real life, however I do agree that it will pretty much change your adventure and GM options.

[shroudb]

the thing is, that "let's give a second look there" is functionaly not doing anything different than saying to the dwarf: "let's check again" apart from saving time for the group that they dont have to research the whole facility once more.

If "however given enough time and ressources the player(s) will eventually find the door if they don't give up or get bored" is true for the search that you need to do as an investigator, then it's also true for the search that you can do as a Dwarf.

Again, "that's odd" doesn't give you any sort of check result, success or othrwise, it just tells you "where" to do said checks. "That's odd" will never tell you "there's a secret door there".

[Ubertron_X]

shroudb wrote:

Again, "that's odd" doesn't give you any sort of check result, success or othrwise, it just tells you "where" to do said checks. "That's odd" will never tell you "there's a secret door there".

Agreed, the ability itself does not let you by-pass any checks, however in some cases (not all) the information that there *is* something worth checking can be even more beneficial than the check itself, especially in those cases when you are not looking for something specific.

The advantage of knowing if and where to look and not having this information is huge, be it murder mystery clues, concealed passageways or hidden treasures.

[SuperBidi]

I like That's odd, as you can give tons of story information to your players. Often, I like to put details that are not necessary to the story but add depth. With an investigator, I can hint at looking at them.

"You enter the inn. There are numerous items lined up on the walls and on furniture: Swords, Books, pieces of armor from diverse origins."
Without Investigator: "Ok, let's sit and have a drink."
With Investigator: "You say I find these items weird? Let me check them.
- These items come from many origins and are mostly adventuring gear."

Later in the adventure:
Investigator: "Wait! You say adventurers disappeared in the area? Let me check all these items once again. Do I think they could be the equipment of the said adventurers?"

Very often, official adventures are written so any party can solve them without thinking too hard and as such most parties miss many details relevant to the story. With an Investigator, I can give hints to get a better grasp on the whole story. In my opinion, it add depth and a feeling that everything's connected.

When I played Plaguestone, we forgot to inspect one single room. We missed a big part of the story. The DM had to explain us what happened afterward... An Investigator avoids that and I think it's better than asking for the tenth time "Where do you search exactly?". If something is in the adventure, it's there to be found. If not, just remove it.

[Aswaarg]

The searching method varies from table to table. My players want it to be handwaved, even when I try to reconduct them to a more detailed search. Usually, afetr exposing a room in the map, the game goes like this:

GM: Read the ambient text of the room

Player 1: I check the room

GM: Wich part?

Player 1: All in general.

GM: Consult the rest of the players what they want to do in 10 minutes.

GM: (After doing checks) Ok you take 10 minutes, you don´t find anything interesting.

Player 2: Ok I have refocused, and the others need to get healed, so the next 10 minutes, I will search the room too.

GM: Wich part?

Player 2: The room in general...

Now, if the party has an Investigator, It´s going to be:

They enter the room, I read the ambient text, then:

A) If there is something hidden, I will tell the party were to search. And they also will need to look in other parts of the room too (maybe there are more secrets, traps, etc).

B) There is nothing hidden in the room, so I will say nothing to the Investigator, so they will not waste time looking in that room.

In case A, if they try to search and fail again and again, I will rule that they need to get a new aproach (new information, equipment, some time past, etc).

In the end, I dont see how "Thats odd" can grant the players free plot points. They have to pass the check and sometimes theres going to be more than 1 hidden thing in a room (can be a hidden treasure, a trap and a clue for the murder), and you as GM don´t need to tell the Investigator the most important one.

[shroudb]

Aswaarg wrote:

The searching method varies from table to table. My players want it to be handwaved, even when I try to reconduct them to a more detailed search. Usually, afetr exposing a room in the map, the game goes like this:

GM: Read the ambient text of the room

Player 1: I check the room

GM: Wich part?

Player 1: All in general.

GM: Consult the rest of the players what they want to do in 10 minutes.

GM: (After doing checks) Ok you take 10 minutes, you don´t find anything interesting.

Player 2: Ok I have refocused, and the others need to get healed, so the next 10 minutes, I will search the room too.

GM: Wich part?

Player 2: The room in general...

Now, if the party has an Investigator, It´s going to be:

They enter the room, I read the ambient text, then:

A) If there is something hidden, I will tell the party were to search. And they also will need to look in other parts of the room too (maybe there are more secrets, traps, etc).

B) There is nothing hidden in the room, so I will say nothing to the Investigator, so they will not waste time looking in that room.

In case A, if they try to search and fail again and again, I will rule that they need to get a new aproach (new information, equipment, some time past, etc).

In the end, I dont see how "Thats odd" can grant the players free plot points. They have to pass the check and sometimes theres going to be more than 1 hidden thing in a room (can be a hidden treasure, a trap and a clue for the murder), and you as GM don´t need to tell the Investigator the most important one.

it's fine if a group wants to abstract to such a degree, but it's also fine, as a GM to simply say:

sure, you can search the whole room, but not in 10minutes. it'll take X amount of time (depending on size and how many things can be searched in said room)

As an example, for an average 20x20 room with desk, chest/wardrobe, bed, and etc "searchables", and if the group wants to check floors and walls as well, i usually rule it takes about an hour to be fully searched.

[Ascalaphus]

The-Magic-Sword wrote:

Whats super interesting about this, is that from what I've read, calling out how you search to be able to find things by paying attention to the GM's description is very much the old school way of doing it, and I've been thinking I'd like to lean more in that direction: just like you have to tell the GM how you're trying to convince an NPC, or hide, or whatever, you have to give them an idea of how you intend to search. It also stops searching from being super rote, and makes it more interactive, you aren't just throwing numbers at a scene and getting a success pop, you're interacting with the physical space of the scene.

I think that can be interesting sometimes, but I think sometimes rote perception also has its uses. For example, your players are doing a big dungeon, say about four maps with twenty rooms each. Do you really want to have an in-depth discussion about searching each room?

Suppose that in the first room of the first floor there was a really nasty trap that hurt the party a lot. And now they're paranoid and want to check everything for traps all the time. Can't really blame them. But do you really want to do a detailed interaction to search the remaining 79 rooms one 10x10ft square at a time?

I'm not saying all searching should be all abstract all the time. I think it's best if you can be abstract to speed some stuff up, letting a lot of the rote searching happen off-camera, but then have a good way to focus the camera again when you get to an interesting place.

The-Magic-Sword wrote:

The issue is that if they say "I search the desk" after I tell them something stands out about the desk in the general description, I'm unclear on what the role of perception should be in that-- should it be before I describe the room, to see if they notice that there's something about the desk in the first place? That seems like the expectation from the adventures I've read in DND and stuff. In which case, this bypasses the perception role for one of the room's secrets-- which I'm actually completely fine with. Alternatively, it would be when they tell me to search the desk, which has the oddity of inflicting a random binary on whether or not they can find the thing once they choose to investigate it. Add to this that searching is a basic exploration activity (meaning something you do on an ongoing basis) and it gets a little weird.

There's advantages and disadvantages to each approach.

I think it's best if much of the rote searching comes before the interactive searching.

Suppose the party comes into a room. You read the ambient text and mention, among other things, a desk. Some of the players were in Searching mode, and maybe one of them rolled well. At this point you could say different things:

- "something about the desk catches your attention but you'd have to examine it more to find out what's going on with it"
- "one of the drawers is a little more open than the rest" (it's got a spring-loaded trap that'll trigger if someone pulls it open to look in it)
- "you notice a trap on the desk"
- "you notice a spring-loaded trap on that desk drawer"

Now suppose nobody passed the Perception check. It's still possible one of the players says "hey, you mentioned a desk, let's go examine it", which might trigger a new Perception check. Even though the players failed the Perception check to know the desk was significant, they might still want to examine it;
- they're looking for a letter and a desk seems a logical place to look for it
- they're just curious what's in the desk
- they think there should be something significant in this room and it might be in the desk, of all places
- your description of the desk made it stand out

A third option is that an Investigator with That's Odd walks in - then all you'd really say was "there's something about that desk", but he doesn't know if it's got treasure or a trap in it.

---

Circling back to the first one, the successful Perception check, as it relates to looking for traps as you go along. When using Searching as a tactic on the move through the dungeon, players expect it to find any traps before they step into them. But does that extend to risks they'll only be exposed to if they swerve from their path? Do they need to do secondary search checks or should the first one cover it?

I think it can be okay to call for secondary checks, especially in big complicated rooms. One check to notice that the fifth desk is more significant than the other 19 desks. Another to examine that desk specifically.

However, you should make sure you're communicating clearly about that with your players. If they think they already searched it for traps, and you think they didn't already search it for traps, someone's feelings *(and hit points) are going to get hurt. That's the sort of adversarial GMing gotcha! that gives old school gaming a bad name.

---

Interactive searching is an interesting flavor of play. Fooling your players about what rules you're using is less shiny :)

[The Raven Black]

Moppy wrote:

Searching for me isn't a problem. It's when players get told to search automatically on entering a location when they wouldn't normally think of it. You just walk in a cake shop to get a cake, as soon as you enter "oh we should search under the counter".

Why put clues in adventures if the PCs cannot find them?

BTW, your example is off. They would know something is odd in the cake shop. Not that they have to search under the counter.