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It matters to me how long they're willing to take. If you're taking a quick look through the room or the desk, you might miss some things. If you take more time, you'll probably find most of the things that weren't immediately obvious, but also not hidden. And you have better chance to find the hidden things.
So for example, if you search the desk for a minute, you might not notice a letter in the middle of a stack of papers. Or you might. That's a good one for a die roll. But if you're taking an hour to sort through all the papers, you'll just find it for certain, no die roll required.
In general I go loosely on this. I don't like read-the-GM's-mind guessing games where you have to figure out exactly the right question. I prefer a bit more casual game where we assume the characters are pretty skilled so we can broadly say "they search the room" and that means they actually search the desk, the closet, the rug etc and we don't have to do a long back and forth.
I think it's a bit easy for the players to miss something "obvious" if the GM expects them to search specific parts of the room, without some kind of memory aid of what all the parts of the room are. Like, the PCs come into a room, the GM describes it and mentions ten things. Then the players investigate two of those things. Some of which lead to a digression with some skill checks, looking up something in a book. Then do the players still remember all of the eight other features of the room that should still be searched? Maybe not. The characters on the other hand are standing in the room and can still see those things.
Of course sometimes a room is really important. If it's like The Murder Scene, I might just make a drawing of the room specifically. Anything I want them to ask about examining should be on the drawing for them to see. That way you avoid the memory problem.
So yeah, it's fine also to vary your "camera"; do some rooms just as a "search the room" and other more special rooms really on a bit by bit basis.
I am not a DM of Pathfinder but I have been a DM of Vampire the masquerade for about 15 years so I hope this might have given me a bit of wisdom about this kind of problem.
I would say it depends. It depends on your intent and also it depends about if the object is out of sight, stored or hidden**.
If the object is out of sight but you don't particularly care either way if the player find a specific item or not, then A check about the room may be all that is enough to point toward interesting area of the room. Something about the way the furniture or something attracts your attention and rummaging through the papers on the desk and looking through each drawers you find...
While if the object has been hidden by someone in other word someone has actively put some effort in making sure no one finds the object then, I would wait for the player to ask more question and investigate until they may find something weird or out of place that may clue them to where the object may be hidden.
Ultimately though, there is always the issue of the item being very important like a magical artifact hidden in secret stash under the floor. You may think that if the player do not find the artifact the game will stall to no end, but feel that it would cheapen the experience if they find it right away.
You could always put some event that force the player to move on, but maybe a third party following the group to that area manage to find the stash and somehow clumsily and carelessly find himself at a tavern in the way of the party. Maybe the Party over hear a discussion between another party about a previous patron who left the tavern earlier bragging about how he stole the amulet right under the party nose and set up a hunt for the Thief and the magical amulet.
If you are rolling on a random table of content for what is in the room, then it doesn't really matter if they search a specific part or the entire room.(At least in my opinion).
Edit: as Ascalaphus mention in his post, time is also of great importance. More so if the object has been hidden or maybe the room is very large or something is interferring with the search like if the party has broken into an office and are trying to search while not being discovered or actively making stealth check to avoid being detected by a partolling guard. Or if the building is on fire and they need to leave now. Or if the room is a completely mess. Broken furniture, glass, papers foot and broken chairs everywhere.
Time players are ready to put into the search should definitely matter. Even more so if there is an element of time constraint or the room is just so large that superficial search would not be sufficient.
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Do the players just say "I'm searching the room" and then roll a perception check for whatever might be there? Or do the players say "I'm going to look through this desk" and roll for that?
I've always done the "searching the room" method, but I wonder if we're missing out on some of the fun of finding a thing behind a painting, or under a rug. But I'm concerned that if we start to do specific searches for different room features, it's just going to bog down the game when there's not really anything to find.
It depends if the room is important, if I want the search to be an important scene, or not.
If it's not an important search, then a single Perception check that every character can roll so I'm sure one will succeed is enough.But if the room is important, I use what they call an extended check in Warhammer. I let the PCs search the room, going into the details of their actions and rolling checks that are not always Perception (because rolling 5 Perception checks in a raw is a burden). And I count their successes (double for critical successes, -1 for critical failures). Every time they get to a certain milestone, I give them something.
I find this way of doing more interesting because:
- Everyone can use the skill they want if they find a proper idea, so the players are actively searching and not just saying "I search" and rolling a Perception check.
- Once the room is fully searched, they stop finding things. So I don't have to say "There's still something important to find" if they have missed the MacGuffin. They can know if there's still more to find.
- If there's time pressure, I just put the important items first and later the items that may give interesting information but not ones that are adamant to the adventure.
- Because they are all searching, I can sometimes delay a milestone so the PC I want get the item (the knife is certainly not hidden under the rug, but there will be another PC searching an appropriate place to hide it).
- They don't miss an item because they didn't search this very specific place they all keep forgetting about.
- They can search the same place multiple times if they think they haven't found everything in there. I can allow multiple checks for a single piece of furniture, for example. Of course, if they keep searching the same piece of furniture over and over again I stop giving them successes.
I find that it makes the whole scene a very active one. Still, you should avoid to repeat it too much as it quickly gets old (once the players have understood the underlying rules).
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Specifics can kill the narrative in my experience.
There's an otherwise solid adventure for PFS1 where the players/PCs have to search the bottom of a specific broken item on the floor and cannot find the clue through a general search. Most annoying, even if an investigative scenario. It was effectively saying that "search everything" didn't mean "everything", no matter how long the players let their PCs search. I had PFS officials playing at my table and they had trouble, having to revisit other sites around the city before finally circling back to the singular clue to progress. Oy. (The adventure was older at that point or I feel they might have submitted an official complaint.)
Same w/ some earliest D&D adventures, where searching became like surprise puzzle solving when there might not even be a puzzle. It was the player, not the PC, effectively doing the search, and based on ya' know, not being in the actual room. It's like having the player demonstrate how they swing their sword at empty air, then judging whether it was too high or low to hit. Not fun.
That said, I do appreciate the flavor of a good "you turn the torch sconce" or "pulling the book about architecture opens up the opposite wall", more so if it's more original than those examples. And if a particularly hard DC, then maybe something even beyond Sherlock Holmes to show one's legendary levels of perception. That'd be neat, though hard to fabricate for the author.
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Plot progress should not be gated heavily by single rolls. Too much risk of having the plot fail to progress.
And the players are not the characters, they just play them on the board. Finding things or failing to find them should be based on the character's stats and the dice rolls, not player knowledge or attention to detail.
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With parties generally pausing for 10 minutes intervals to Treat Wounds or Refocus anyway, I tend to default to a thorough search of a room taking 10 minutes. Most people who aren't busy with one of those activities will usually spend it searching. No need for folks to specify where they are searching if they are being that thorough, IMO.
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I usually just use the Search exploration activity to adjudicate this, and they find what the Perception check of the PC searching would reveal. If they specify that they’re searching a room beyond the exploration activity selection, I just do more Perception checks.
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Yeah the Search activity is for doing some poking around while you're moving. The Seek action that it's based on doesn't have any rule against trying again. (Which makes sense; in combat you use that same action to keep track of invisible enemies. Just because you couldn't find them in round 1 doesn't mean you can't try again in round 2.)
So essentially if you have a lot of time and believe this room is really important, you could search it several times, making lots of checks, until you find something or decide there really isn't anything interesting.
I think asking for a die roll mainly makes sense if there's an element of risk. If there's a trap and you don't spot it on time, you might trigger it. If you're walking through the forest and don't make your Perception check, you don't notice the ambush. If you're walking through the castle and fail the check, you walk right past the secret door and go into the next room.
But if there's no risk, then the roll might not be needed. Or if the players have some time and are really determined, maybe the check should be about how long it takes to find the thing, not whether they find it at all.
As a GM it's good to take a step back and think: just because there's a mechanic for searching, doesn't mean finding things always needs to require a check. Maybe it's enough that the players came to that place and decided to search it. Then they find the clue that points to the next phase in the plot. You need them to find the clue. They already worked for it by going to this place (and talking/fighting their way in). Does the plot really need a check? What happens to the plot if the check fails?
With parties generally pausing for 10 minutes intervals to Treat Wounds or Refocus anyway, I tend to default to a thorough search of a room taking 10 minutes. Most people who aren't busy with one of those activities will usually spend it searching. No need for folks to specify where they are searching if they are being that thorough, IMO.
Me too.
Usually my players stop to Refocus and/or Treat Wounds and those who aren't involved in these activities can do a general search in the room and do the Perception checks. If they don't stop to do search in the room they are unable to check for anything hidden except if they have some feat that allows automatic checks.
This also gives a good metric of how much time they use to do a check in the entire room and the objects in there and make easier my time count.
I avoid specific object checks unless it's obvious like a safe in the room also I don't hide thing essential to game progression but I hide things that may make it easier.