Can you point me towards a final adjudication on Passive vs Active Perception? It REALLY doesn’t make sense to me that actively looking should be HARDER than noticing things.
I summon elder @Wizards_DnD statesmen by name: Is the intent to only have characters roll for difficulties higher than their passive?
Because the rationale would be that you have a baseline 50/50 chance of noticing something (10+ modifiers) and rolling gives you a CHANCE to notice decently hidden?— B. Dave Walters @TheoKairos DM (@BDaveWalters) July 4, 2018
A check requires an action. So, PC enters room. Passive notices anything there. Check needed for anything that has DC above passive.
— Mike Mearls (@mikemearls) July 4, 2018