Hriston
Dungeon Master of Middle-earth (he/him)
Don't ever do hidden rolls. There are better solutions.
Especially in your example "rolling survival to see if the halfling gets lost", I don't even see the need to hide it in the first place. What would you do on a failure? Tell the halfling that he found the trail and but really make him follow the wrong one? Don't do that. Golden DM rule: Don't lie to the player.
Better:
Failure:
Player: "I want to follow the trail."
DM: "Roll survival."
Player: "1."
DM: "You travel deeper into the forest, following the trail. Eventually you realize you can't find any signs of a trail anymore and you've no clue where you are."
Success:
Player: "I want to follow the trail."
DM: "Roll survival."
Player: "20."
DM: "You travel deeper into the forest, following the trail. Eventually you reach a small hut."
As you can see in both cases there was no need to hide the result.
I agree, hidden rolls are not desirable for my playstyle, and a passive Survival check in this case doesn't work either given that I use a static DC depending on terrain type to resolve uncertain navigation. I don't want some characters to always get lost while others never do.
My solution is to narrate success as the character receiving confirmation, through landmarks or astronomical information, etc., that they are on the right path. A failure is narrated as the absence of any such confirmation, although I still have the problem that the players know at that point that their characters have moved in the wrong direction.