I've noticed as I go through my adventures that I have an awful lot of situations where I use Observation or, to a lesser extent, Intuition to resolve things. The group notices an ambush, spots a secret passageway, notices a strange smell, etc.

The issue I have is that I am concerned about making one ability "required" for my adventures. Currently, we have a Roadwarden who is very skilled in Observation; her character ends up finding a lot of the clues while the other players fail on checks again and again. I through some easy checks out there as well and have those players roll first in order to give them a sense of accomplishment, but I'm looking for solutions to this in order to bring the focus on some of the other abilities.

It may just be a matter of Observation being an obvious skill to find uses for, but I want to encourage diversity rather than the cookie-cutter Observation/Intuition/Weaponskill character.

Senses-based skills are always at the top of the most-used skills in most (all?) RPGs. I guess it's because you can role-play a conversation, a barter, hell even a combat, but you can't possibly role-play your character's senses so you must rely on checks to know what sensorial information your character gets.

Really, I'm not sure I got good answers on how you can rely less on this skill, but I guess you could give more information in general and keep observation checks for extra details/hidden things.

For example, instead of having your players make an observation check to notice an approching ennemy, you can tell them "you hear something moving in the woods" and their observation check are to spot his location (precisely or average, depeding on the check). That way, those who don't have observation will still be able to take actions (hide, prepare for battle, don armor/shield, etc) and won't feel useless.

Another example, the group arrive in a room, they feel a small breeze coming from one of the wall. They automatically know there's a secret passage but unless they find it with role-playing actions ("I try to pull down the torch"), they must make an observation check to pinpoint how to open it.

Hope this helps a bit!

Just because someone is good at observation, doesn't necessarily mean that they understand what they observe. This is a way you can bring other skills to the table.

For example - the Roadwarden might spot the cryptic rune buried in moss on a standing stone, but it's the party's scholar who has the knowledge to decipher it. Or she might recognise something as a hidden trap without really understanding it, but another character has the skulduggery skill to understand how it works and how it can be disarmed....

Darrett said:

I've been down this road before in the past with RPG's so I thought I'd share my thoughts. There are two things you can do to make everyone else have a strong input in the situation, but still change up the dynamics of who actually spots. The first is change how you manage the check itself. 3e better than any other system gives a great ability to include players into an action and giving them something "to do" even though one person is way ahead in terms of a particular skill. The first thing you have to ask yourself is the silliness of having 8 people roll to spot something. Sure, they are all technically looking around or capable of sensing it, but what you end up with is scenarios where you have to explain you two guys smell it, but you other three don't smell it. It makes it a little awkward without really adding much to the story. Instead, what we do now is everyone else who is actively assisting contributes white. So if a smell wafts over your party have the person with the best stat roll, and give assist dice. Then you can pick and choose who notices it, based on their relevance. So the Wizard may smell the smoldering components, the Road Warden notices enemies, etc. I have found this can also handle the party not spotting something as well a little better as a 3 purple 2 black difficulty is easier to fail than a group of players all rolling the same roll...someone will make it, it's just a question of who. This mechanic also speeds up game play as well and gives everybody something to do when you pick and choose who gets to notice it as well. 3e is about a party, it's not so much about an individual in my opinion; the party card serves to reinforce that idea.

With that being said, the second simple solution is to cut back on the mechanical element you are over-using and find new ways to build mystery or suspense to the game. Is it important only one person smells something or sees something, or is it important they all do, you know? Your over use of the mechanic or the concept is at the heart of the problem if you feel that way. In my opinion, your situation sounds like in your gut, I want new ways to open up and explore these elements in the game more so than I use spot checks all the time. If you think about it, people are pretty observant and there's not a whole lot of times where spotting something is all that critical in our day to day lives, not like it is typically addressed in RPG's. The choice should always be: what do you need for the story? Is it better they spot these guys right away? Is it really useful to the story to keep this aspect a mystery requiring spot or is the presence of the thing what I want my story to focus on? It's what you want from the narrative, the rest is just fat to dress it up...spotting, in my opinion, being one of the most extraneous; only when it's absolutely necessary (like spotting an assassin for instance) or strengthens the narrative should it apply. So yes you could simply use the smell this way: "Something smells rotten in the dungeon." Highlighting the concept and if they don't take it bring it up again and again until a player takes action on it or you could say "Johanne you smell achrid, rotten filth in the dungeon and it repulses you, take a stress as you wretch." Then the other players will ask what's wrong etc. This way you build a sort of tension around the smell, rather than a spot check, you get my point?

ditto on pretty much all of that. unless you want to bust out the event tracker and turn your search into a story, overuse of observation will make you feel like you are playing an unarmed dude trying to escape the dungeons of the slave lords w/o having a roper devour half your party.

I'd say to take look at all the characters and note what each characters strongest skills/abilities are. Then make sure that the adventure includes close to equal amounts of tests that each character is good at.

And to cut down on Observation/Intuition checks, just take the easiest checks and make them automatic successes. If you're overusing Observation/Intuition there's a good chance your making them roll for things that are so obvious the characters should just notice it without a test.

I use the assist mechanics a great deal regarding observation.

I use the highest observation of the chars involved in the act, and then each char that contributes in some way, adds 1 white, but they get to roll it themselves. If the test is a succes, then who ever rolled boons discovers it. Thus the char we base it of usually has the highest chance, but a few black dice and his chances sink, while the others chances raise. Notice that it's often the chars who doesn't contribute to the success who'll discover it. May sound weird, but I see it as one person saying "What an odd bird-call..." then the one who got the boon says "That's no bird!!!"

Examples:

1) Party is walking through a forest tainted by chaos, thus everyone is observant. Everyones adds white to the highest observation char.

2) Normal wood, only highest observation of RURAL char is used, and only RURAL chars adds dice.

3) Party is walking through a city. As above with woods, but Urban instead.

4) Library, only chars with some sort of careers in this field (bureaucracy and such) can roll/assist.

I don't allow the "We're very observant" rule apply, well I do, but then I slow their progress down to snail speed, which quickly makes them stop that.

Because English is not my native language and because I was to lazy to carefully read the skill list descriptions, I made a really cool misunderstanding that lower the importance of Observation :

That's how I misunderstood the difference between Intuition and Observation :

• Intuition is when you rely on your instinct and senses, not only to detect lies, but also to hear, see, feel something when you're not aware of it.
• Observation is when you investigate a room, you actively search for something, when you're ready to see something coming.

With that distinction between the two skills, Observation and Intuition are more balanced, so we kept these definitions.

What do you think about it ?

Notably, in some of the recent adventures, checks like Observation are often done only once for the group, with whomever has the highest ability making the roll, as opposed to having each PC roll.

Other skills can be used to the same effect.

What about throwing in a few folklore or education checks?

For example only someone skilled in literature may recognise that a certain volume on a library shelf doesn't belong -> entrance to secret passage. Something that wouldn't be ordinarily recognised by observation.