D&D 5e or 5.5e Passive abilities · Game Master's Laboratory

D&D 5e or 5.5e Passive abilities

How do you use the passive abilities in D&D: passive perception, passive investigation and passive insight? I know passive perception are things that a character automatically (or passively) notices whenever they enter a situation/encounter with no roll needed e.g. a player with a passive perception 13 will notice that an NPC appears to be out of breath, has some welts that haven't yet turned into bruises, is in shock, and is missing the purse that usually hangs from his belt. Ok that's all well and good. Other examples could be perceiving things in a room that look out of place, seeing signs of travel through a location.

But how do you use the other passive abilities. A quick look in the PBH and DMG didn't really come up with a great answer. So this is what I came up with.

Passive investigation is what a character automatically notices about what is happened in the past. With the NPC example I gave before a player with the requisite passive investigation will take that information and deduce that the NPC was probably just beaten and robbed and managed to escape and depending on what the players know about the NPC and the characters passive investigation the player might even know who did it. The point is they can take what they see and already know and deduce what has happened in the PAST. Some other uses could be finding hidden doors and traps, determining if anyone had been this way before and how many.

Passive insight on the other hand focuses on the future. A character with a high enough passive insight will know that the NPC is likely to do next whether it be to run, hide, get his own weapons and rob someone else, find his own gang and take revenge or call the city guard. Passive insight is the ability to deduce what is going to happen NEXT. Other examples could be knowing that if a trap door is opened a firebolt will shoot out or that the group that came this way before left things behind so they will probably be coming back or vice.

There are some strengths if this approach that springs to mind

1. it provided justification to just give players information rather than let information gathering bog down game play.

2. it rewards players and makes use of their skills.

It encourages cooperative game play. If a player with a high passive perception tell all he/she notices then players with higher passive investigation/insight will know more about the past/present respectively. (I know the numbers are off. Skool doesn't like "3." for some reason.

The biggest downside are that all three seem to be based on perceived information(perception)and then deducing things about the past (investigation) and future (insight) it could quickly get complicated if you have to plan different levels of information based on all 3 at once. Still this isn't an exact science and hopefully it won't be any more demanding that making up DC on the fly.

The other downside I can see especially when it comes to insight is that you could quickly paint yourself into a corner. Eg you tell the players the initial NPC is going to get his gang and take revenge you either probably have to have that happen unless the players intervene.

Anyway I'd be happy to hear your thoughts on this. I think it's an interesting approach.

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D&D 5e or 5.5e Passive abilities