D&D 5E (2014) Are players always entitled to see their own rolls?

Sezarious · Oct 13, 2015

This is what I told myself after going to sleep and seeing the extra 7 pages of post since I last replied...

RCanine · Oct 13, 2015

iserith said:
My process of adjudication for this kind of situation is as follows. Player describes his or her character as searching for a secret door...

...and there is no door - PC fails to find a door, no roll.
...and there is a door, but the PC isn't looking in the right place - PC fails to find a door, no roll.
...and there is a door and the PC is looking in the general area of the door - PC may or or may not find it, roll.
...and there is a door and the PC is searching exactly where it is - PC finds it, no roll.

So IF a PC announces they would like to search for a door, then by asking for a roll, the PCs know there is a door.

This is probably ok for the right group, but for others I don't think that will work.

My personal opinion is that secret doors and traps are generally gotcha mechanics that are not really all that fun, and their existence should generally be hand-waved.

wedgeski · Oct 13, 2015

the Jester said:
I feel that uncertainty improves the game;

I might go one better and say that it's a pillar of the game...at least as far as the DM/player relationship goes. It's the questions, the mysteries, and the motives that drive the drama. I'll never enjoy a module or adventure more than the first time I play it.

Sezarious · Oct 13, 2015

Soooo, um, can I just ask for final clarification from those who disagree with secret rolling. If you had a DM who you trusted who wanted to do secret rolling with you for something in particular, no funny business and was even willing to take photos of the rolls for you to see later, would you outright refuse to play, or just kind of grumble about it a little and give it a try? The goal of the DM was purely to try and enhance emersion in his own way.

iserith · Oct 13, 2015

RCanine said:
So IF a PC announces they would like to search for a door, then by asking for a roll, the PCs know there is a door.

But that's okay because of the use of "progress combined with a setback" (Basic Rules, page 58). Every time you roll to find a secret door, you will find it, only at a cost or with a complication should you fail the check. "You find no secret doors" is not a result of a failed check in the method I prescribe, so there is no chance of a player looking at a low result and assuming that there must be a door because the DM asked for a roll. That is the sort of "metagaming" that posters in this thread are hoping to avoid and, by using the existing rules, we avoid it without the need for making ability checks secretly for the players.

The times you won't find secret doors are when there are none, when you don't look for them or don't look for them in the right place, or when you don't commit enough time or effort to finding them. You won't roll in any of these cases. You just fail to find the secret door outright. Here the uncertainty that some posters desire can remain, but notice I didn't use the dice - a tool meant to resolve uncertainty - to create it.

RCanine said:
My personal opinion is that secret doors and traps are generally gotcha mechanics that are not really all that fun, and their existence should generally be hand-waved.

They're "gotchas" if they are not telegraphed in my view. If the DM provides some clue to the existence of the trap or secret door when describing the environment, this removes the perception that the trap or secret door is a "gotcha," even if the PCs run afoul of the trap or fail to find the secret door. If players are paying close attention to the description and interacting with the environment, they improve their odds of finding these things. If they are not paying attention and interacting or they draw incorrect conclusions, they probably won't find them. (In a game where I want to emphasize the exploration pillar, I also award XP for discovering traps and secret doors, as per the rules for non-combat challenges, DMG page 261.)

But this is a whole other thread's worth of discussion...

iserith · Oct 13, 2015

Sezarious said:
Soooo, um, can I just ask for final clarification from those who disagree with secret rolling. If you had a DM who you trusted who wanted to do secret rolling with you for something in particular, no funny business and was even willing to take photos of the rolls for you to see later, would you outright refuse to play, or just kind of grumble about it a little and give it a try? The goal of the DM was purely to try and enhance emersion in his own way.

For me, it's not a matter of trust. It would just be clear that we don't share the same values, priorities, and agenda when it comes to playing the game. As well, I believe that each person is in control of his or her own immersion and that emotionally identifying with my character (how I view immersion) is not aided nor hindered by the DM rolling my ability checks for me in secret. It would be a game I choose to take a pass on. Nothing personal.

the Jester · Oct 13, 2015

iserith said:
Would you explain where you start "metagaming" here?

The way you describe it, the break point is where you decide to roll a door, but it doesn't matter, since I'll find that door anyhow. Interesting. Still not to my taste, and you sound like you require more specificity than I have typically found DMs (including myself) require when searching.

iserith said:
I believe "story" is emergent and is created during play. How do you see it?

Very much the same way. I find it interesting how far apart we are on the secret dice thing, yet how similar our overall playstyles sound.

TheFindus · Oct 13, 2015

Sezarious said:
Soooo, um, can I just ask for final clarification from those who disagree with secret rolling. If you had a DM who you trusted who wanted to do secret rolling with you for something in particular, no funny business and was even willing to take photos of the rolls for you to see later, would you outright refuse to play, or just kind of grumble about it a little and give it a try? The goal of the DM was purely to try and enhance emersion in his own way.

No, I would not play like this. I have to add: anymore.
I feel that it is not the DMs responsibility to enhance my immersion by rolling dice for me because I am (and any player IMO) responsible for my own immersion. So if I have a problem with immersion, it is foremost my problem. Also, what I am getting out of this thread is that a lot of people use the secret rolls in exactly the way I use the Passive Perception/Passive Insight mechanic. Which has been around for many many years. Why people do not use this mechanic, I do not know. It's there and it solves much of the "metagaming" problem without the need to roll any dice.
Plus, it seems to me (I might be wrong about that, though) that those who argue for secret rolls in this thread do not use the "fail forward" approach or let the players succeed with a drawback. But this stuff is in the rules of the game and has also been around for many years.
And last but not least, I find the notion that a trained specialist can never be sure about the existence of traps, at least mechanical traps, utterly unbelievable. This gets even weirder with rogues of a high or very high level IMO.

Now, 30 years ago, when I did not know any better and these mechanics did not exist (at least not to my knowledge), I was fine with playing like this (and I did). But once mechanics that solved the perceived problem of "metagaming" (with which I do not have a problem to the same extent as others seem to have) had been created, I used and loved them. Especially because now they have been part of the D&D chassis for years. For years! So still rolling secret rolls in 2015 feels like taking away some of the rules because of what.... tradition? Argumentum ad antiquitatem, anyone? That is not enough for me, sorry.

What bothers me most, as I have said in the beginning of this thread, is that I (as a DM or player) believe that any player has the right to own that roll of the die. It is part of the action resolution and of the PCs action and directly connected to the PC. And I do not think any DM should take that away, however benevolent the DM might feel.

So all of this boils down to the fact that somebody who proposes this does not seem to be on the same page with me, if he or she insists on playing with that homebrew rule.

But let me ask you a question: If you are the DM and you want to play that way and roll secretely but the other players do not want you to but want to roll for themselves and actually see the result (and you know they would not "metagame") - would you DM for that group?
If somebody asked me to DM and roll secret rolls for them, I know I would refuse and not DM for that group if they insisted on this.

Ristamar · Oct 13, 2015

TheFindus said:
Plus, it seems to me (I might be wrong about that, though) that those who argue for secret rolls in this thread do not use the "fail forward" approach or let the players succeed with a drawback. But this stuff is in the rules of the game and has also been around for many years.

I don't mind success at a cost if I think the circumstances support it, but I find that to be the exception rather than the rule. I don't have a problem with PCs simply failing and having to find another approach or solution.

Also, as I mentioned in an earlier post, the DM rolling for a player in secret is detailed within the rules. A player can't simply claim the right by RAW to always roll every skill check. Of course, if these sort of disagreements are a sticking point at the table, the overall game likely has much larger problems.

iserith · Oct 13, 2015

the Jester said:
The way you describe it, the break point is where you decide to roll a door, but it doesn't matter, since I'll find that door anyhow.

It does matter - it's just that the stakes may not be what you're used to. In the way you play it, I imagine the stakes for the ability check are: (Success) You find the secret door or (Failure) You do not find the secret door. In my game, the stakes for the ability check are: (Success) You find the secret door or (Failure) You find the secret door at a cost or with a complication.

But in any case, you have to put yourself in the position of finding that secret door in the first place by way of articulating your goal and approach before I call for a check (or narrate outright success).

the Jester said:
Interesting. Still not to my taste, and you sound like you require more specificity than I have typically found DMs (including myself) require when searching.

To be clear, I'm not into pixelbitching. I only require a reasonable amount of specificity in line with Basic Rules, page 61, "Finding a Hidden Object."

the Jester said:
Very much the same way. I find it interesting how far apart we are on the secret dice thing, yet how similar our overall playstyles sound.

Shot in the dark, but it might have something to do with how much we individually value tradition. I certainly used to roll dice for players for exactly the reasons posters in this thread are offering - I probably picked up that trick sometime in AD&D 2e or D&D 3.Xe. But now that we have these new tools in the game as [MENTION=75791]TheFindus[/MENTION] says, I find that the use of this technique is no longer justified. If a technique I have used can no longer justify itself to me, I get rid of it.