And now, time for passive abilities

After discussing active abilities a little while ago I've been thinking more about passive features and ways to make them interesting. 

Many mischaracterize passive abilities as being boring or forgettable and then use an example like "the players aren't going to care if they find a ring that grants +1 to a single save." But using something like that as an example like saying active abilities are boring or forgettable because no one cares if they acquire a feature that lets them mimic the sound of a cow 1/day. Actually I know some people that would totally get a kick out of that, but the point both active and passive features can be engaging if they have some consequential impact on how a player approaches the game. Here are three thoughts I have on giving passive features more consequence:

1. Conditions

A condition that must be satisfied before a passive feature is applied lends it a bit of dynamism. "You can travel 3x as fast in complete darkness," "You never have to rest when below half health," "you get +5 to attacks and damage while on fire" — on its own a feature might be bland, but building in a necessary condition allows you to play with tradeoffs, flavor, and scale. 

+2 to using an undead as an improvised weapon when standing naked in a field

2. Capabilities, not statistics

If your players find a feather that lets them jump 20' into the air and land safely I guarantee they won't forget about it—even though it's technically a passive, numerical bonus. Why? Because it effects the PC's capacity to explore and interact with the game world. 

There are undoubtably many exceptions to this but the conclusion I've come to is that the aspects that have the most bearing on how PCs exist and interact with the game world have greater capacity to promote different approaches than the aspects of characters that deal in abstractions, like saving throws and ability scores.   

3. Distinction through specificity

I don't like features that just amount to tacking on modifiers to a roll. An easy way around this is to just use dice modifiers (+d4) instead of flat numbers (+2), but that doesn't really get to the root of the problem, which is the lack of some resonance to make the feature stand out. This resonance can be approximated through adding specific details that add thematic heft. Being able to smell all magic is kind of vanilla, but being able to smell magic cast by elves, or magic cast by those with positive intentions, or being able to tell what someone fears based on how their magic smells, all add a dimension of particularity to the feature. Adding these kinds of details takes a bit more thought, but they also allow you to convey more of whatever theme the feature was meant to embody.