I have very mixed feelings on secret checks. One the one hand, they make a lot of sense, they seem like they really help roleplay and being in character, and they generate suspense and uncertainty.
On the other hand, I like rolling my pretty math rocks. I’m a minor dice goblin, and my expensive RNGs demand to be rolled!
Which is fine, I’m the GM at my table, but if I were on the other side of the screen, I think it’d drive me a little crazy.
I also know that they’re a controversial topic more generally, and some players have really, really strong negative reactions to them.
So, how do you feel? Does your table use them? If not, why not? If so, how do they feel? Do you have anyone at the table with very strong feelings about them? If so, how have they articulated those feelings?
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I mostly roll on the table and tell players the target numbers.
Part of that is I don’t want them to think I’m fucking with them if I roll really hot or really poorly. Sometimes the dice just want to spite the players, and I’m not going to unilaterally fudge it.
I’ve also taken to telling the players what the target number is before they roll. Part of that is because it feels bad at a player to be like “17!” And the dm goes “ooh sorry I was looking for an 18.” I’m like, “were you, though? Or did you just want me to fail?”
But also I’m playing Fate now, where players have more clear tools for adjusting their rolls. “I’m gonna follow the guy, quietly, and see where he takes the package. Stealth? I rolled a… two. /looks at character sheet/. Ah, but I’m a Jaded Detective, I know a thing or two about being followed. How about I spend a fate point on that and bump it up?”. That mechanic doesn’t work as well if the targets or rolls are secret.
Personally I prefer if the dm does all the roles but im a theater of the mind kinda guy and prefer to just build my character and then say what they do.
As a GM, I use them fairly regularly. Any time I think the player character would reasonably not know whether or not the outcome was successful, I roll it for them…if I remember to. So that’s all perception checks, especially Sense Motive. Usually I let them roll lore checks themselves because critical failures are rare enough and the price of a regular failure is usually just “you don’t know” (so it’s obvious to the PC that they failed).
I might sometimes use it for things like Deception and Stealth, especially if the NPCs their trying to deceive wouldn’t immediately notice/react. But usually I let the players roll these themselves.
Mostly the thing that bothers my players is when they roll before I tell them I’m going to roll, and they got a good result. But if they got a bad result they’re glad about it, so I think it balances out.
I like them, but I use FVTT, so they are effortless to include for me. Particularly for RK, it’s fun to play with players’ expectations when they roll that nat 1
I am a GM and don’t do secret checks because I don’t feel they add anything to the game. If the players know I am rolling for something, they might as well be doing the rolling because they already know something is being randomized. I want players to roll with good and bad rolls without metagaming, so I don’t see a need to hide anything from them.
The biggest benefit is that there is less tedious rolling because why randomize a lot of common tasks the players should be good at when they are not under pressure? If the characters are competent they will take care of the small things the players might not think to say every time. If the players have creative ideas, let them succeed unless there is some kind of barrier or opposition.
What that leaves is still a lot of rolling, but in circumstances where they fail cooking breakfast on a sunny morning. They might fail in a snowstorm, or on rough seas, but then they also feel rewarded when they succeed on a roll against apparent odds.
They wouldn’t get that feeling if the roll was secret.
Wait… Is cooking a secret check, RAW? I’ve never bothered to look into the cooking guidelines.
It is a common example of “lol you fail 5% of the time any time you do a minor task” to mock the d20 system.
That’s one of the things levelled proficiencies helps with, though. It’s also what Assurance feats are for. At some point, they’re proficient enough that failure isn’t a reasonable option, and you just take Assurance.
Or, as a GM, you bypass Assurance and just not ask them to roll, because failure is not likely or interesting.
But I don’t know what this has to do with Secret checks. Cooking doesn’t have the Secret tag.
Unless meta gaming is a problem, there’s no need. If meta gaming is a problem, it’s a bigger problem than this, and needs to be addressed. But I run a table for kids and I’m teaching them how all this works, it’s a little easier to tackle the meta gaming issue with the authority of being a parent.
For certain things, like recalling knowledge where a critical failure leads to false information, secret checks I feel are necessary. I usually try to make it so that the false knowledge isn’t detrimental and they can usually figure it out after the first time. Things like stealth, perception, and social skills are important for players not to know the result. Partly, it prevents meta gaming, but mostly it keeps things moving smoothly. Using a VTT makes it trivial and I usually let the players roll the check, with me rolling on rare occasions for when the players should be looking for something, but don’t explicitly say they are.
I’ve debated adding them for one group I do, and I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s too much extra work for us, personally. I will ask them to roll, let them react with RP if it’s low, and not state the target (unless they are all rolling for something at once). They are good at rolling with the punches.
…inverted rolls (modifier = active DC-12) for passive checks (DC = ability modifier+10) are mathematically identical and can be rolled behind your screen all day long, with a single d20 roll serving everyone in the group to boot, so there’s no dogpiling…
