Universes of Imagination™ - Adventures

What's the use of a DC 45 secret door if just a couple of rounds of detect secret doors inevitably reveals the door?

That's the issue I'm facing with the current Shorn campaign. I have a ‘delightful’ ancient underground level filled with very high CR interlopers with some fun secret passages. It doesn't really matter whether I hide the secret entrances behind high DCs or magic… one character has a permanent detect magic aura and several can do detect secret doors or its equivalent for ‘hours’ on end! And its the same for all the detect spells—they seem to be, at this level (14+), a GM's nightmare. I think they also destroy some of the suspense for the party, also.

So, what to do?

This one is going to take some work and I'm not sure I have a low level party with the right make-up currently to experiment with game balance. So whatever I suggest here as a house rule is going to need some tweeking.

Proposal

1. Round 1 of a detect spell works as it is currently written.
2. Round 2 reveals number but no additional information unless an appropriate check is made with a bonus equal to caster level (or a straight caster level check if using detect magic).
3. Round 3 requires an appropriate check with a bonus equal to the ability modifier used by the caster.

So, let's take the detect secret doors spell as an example.

A 14th level wizard casts detect secret doors and wanders down the passage. She detects the presence of a secret door in round one. In round two, she discovers that there is only one secret door and rolls a Perception check with a +14 bonus to find the door. She rolls enough to beat the DC 35 of the door. She decides to continue with the detect spell to try to find the mechanism. This time, round three, she can only add the +5 of her Intelligence modifier to her Perception roll to find the lock mechanism. She fails this time, but her friend, the thief in the party, finds it easily now that he knows the location of the door.

+14 feels like a huge bonus to the Perception roll in round two. But half the caster level equals only +1 for the first three class levels. A Perception check against a DC 20 secret door by a 3rd level wizard (with a low Wisdom and Perception as a cross-class skill) is hard enough anyway. A bonus of +3 is considerably more helpful than a bonus of only +1… As I said, we will probably need to do a lot of tweeking.

I will edit this post later to fill in the details for all the detect spells.