Does a Wand of Secrets still point to a revealed secret or sprung trap?

Question

If a secret door has been found or a trap sprung already and then a Wand of Secrets is used nearby either of those, does the Wand of Secrets still point to them? Or does it know they are no longer a secret?

This has happened when a secret door was found and then the PC wanted to know if there were any more secret doors, so they used their Wand of Secrets while still standing near the just opened secret door. If another undiscovered secret door or trap was nearby, but not closer than the one just opened or sprung, which will the wand point to?

Answer 1

Perspective is the key issue here

There is no in-game term that specifically defines what is a "secret", and for simplicity's sake I'll assume here that "trap" refers to a hidden hazard, and not get into the whole argument of the definition of the word "trap" in the english language.

It's all a matter of perspective : a secret door might be secret to anyone who does not know its location, but to its owner or creator it isn't much of a secret.

There is not even a proper way to decide whether something is or isn't a secret. For some characters, a hidden door could be a secret because it cannot be found easily, while for characters with very high passive perception, it wouldn't even qualify as secret since they notice it without any effort.

Since there is no objective way to designate what is or isn't a "secret", when the wand is used, someone's perspective has to be used. Taking the perspective of the wand's user probably makes the more sense, since otherwise the wand could designate something the user doesn't even think of as a secret, which would make the wand pretty much useless.

With that in mind, any "secret" the user already found out about wouldn't be a "secret" anymore, and wouldn't be indicated by the wand.

Answer 2

The wand will point to the unrevealed one.

The description of the item says (emphasis mine):

While holding it, you can use an action to expend 1 of its charges, and if a secret door or trap is within 30 feet of you, the wand pulses and points at the one nearest to you.

Once a secret door has been revealed to the wand bearer, it is no longer secret, just as a sprung trap is no more a trap: the wand will point to the next secret door or trap, if present, closest to the wand bearer.

Answer 3

Entirely up to your DM

Unless there is a Sage Advice piece that I'm missing, there is no clear mechanical description of what constitutes "secret" in RAW. As such, your DM and only your DM can tell you what this means for your particular game. That said, it becomes a question of how to run a game more so than item mechanics.

I would personally rule that a discovered door is no longer secret, and a trap that is sprung (unless it's static like a pit trap) is no longer a hazard. The goal of the game is to have fun, and at most tables wasting several minutes trying to not waste a charge and/or get burned a DM's overly literal monkey's paw interpretation only slows the game down and causes frustration for the players.

Answer 4

It will still detect the revealed ones

A sprung trap does not stop being a trap, just because it was sprung. It still is a trap, and in some cases can be rearmed. You can even buy a hunting trap in the equipment list of the PHB (p. 190). It is clearly a trap even when not set. It's in the name. A secret door does not stop being a secret door, just because it has been discovered, it still is a secret door that when closed cannot be easily discovered by casual inspection.

If the wand was to detect only undiscovered secret doors, or armed traps, it would need to say so, and it does not.

The case Eddymage makes that a known secret door is no longer secret is problematic: unless the creators are long dead and gone, a secret door or is always known by the party that set it up or uses it. It can be known by some, and be secret to others. If you follow that logic, the wand would behave differently, depending on the knowledge of its user, because being undiscovered is not an inherent property of the trap or door.

In my experience, playing it like that — that traps spring and secret doors discovered will register for the wand — does little to lessen the wand's usefulness. We have such a wand, and nearly all of the time use it to search for secret doors in rooms or corridors that apparently have none. In the rare case where we already found one and are looking for more simple positioning yourself away from it to scan neighboring areas often does the trick.

Still, this makes the wand less useful, because you can set up a situation where one secret door or trap blocks it from discvering another. The DM may conclude that this is no fun, and decide to interpret it as only discovering secret doors and traps that are unknown to the user.