Skill Checks: Who Should Run Them?

[Nullzone]

Hi there, I had a DM recently that did something interesting that I thought I might pick the brains of the collective wisdom here about.

This DM has an interesting rule that I'm waffling about incorporating myself: skill rolls are all done by him, behind his screen; we just provide our check bonus to the particular skill we're trying to use, and then he narrates the result.

I'm still on the fence about it; on the one hand, it allows a potentially better narrative for skill actions in general, since the DM can fudge a failure for a skill action he otherwise thinks is prohibited rather than telling the player No, and also prevents reverse engineering the DCs by watching the die results, which is too meta and breaks immersion for the less math-headed players who really like to imagine the scene...but on the other I can't shake the feeling that it's taking something away from the player that they should get to have control of, though I'm not really sure why I feel that way.

So my question is, is this worth doing? Would any of you do it or object to having such a rule at the table? Do you think it would streamline or encumber the game in any particular ways?

Thanks for reading; thoughts and input (especially from the other side of the screen!) are appreciated.

 

[OnlineDM]

The case for having the DM roll the skill check: The players don't know if they succeeded or failed on the roll. If the player uses Perception and gets a result of 8, they probably know that it's quite possible there's something to find, but they just didn't find it with their low roll. A player who can't separate player knowledge from character knowledge might ask their buddy to come look, too. If the result is a secret and the DM says, "You look around, but you don't find anything interesting," it's easier to move on in-character without having to worry that you missed something.

The case for having the players roll the skill checks: It's fun for players to roll dice! Let's face it: If you're a role-player, you probably like rolling dice. The more the DM takes those dice out of your hands, the less you have the chance to roll for yourself, exulting in your crits and moaning over your failures.

Personally, I say let the players roll their own dice whenever possible. It's fun, and that's reason enough to do it. If your players are really bad about separating character and player knowledge, maybe it would be better for the game to try having the DM secretly roll skill checks for a while, but I would definitely err on the side of letting players roll dice whenever you can.

 

[Anathos]

If he doesn't want the check to fail so much that he lies about the die roll why doesn't he just say they succeed automatically? And the reverse-engineering bit is nonsense; if a player figures out the DC of a check and then finds his immersion broken he deserves what he gets. Let the player decide if knowing the DC of the check is more important to him than maintaining his (extremely fragile) sense of immersion.

 

[Nullzone]

The metagame issue is more a concern for the other players who don't care about these things as much. Player A is a math head and likes to reverse engineer DCs, player B is a roleplayer who just wants to get into the mindset of his character and run with it. My concern was that player A's habits kind of messes with player B's experience.

 

[OnlineDM]

The metagame issue is more a concern for the other players who don't care about these things as much. Player A is a math head and likes to reverse engineer DCs, player B is a roleplayer who just wants to get into the mindset of his character and run with it. My concern was that player A's habits kind of messes with player B's experience.

Yes, that's a reasonable concern. Is it enough of a concern to not let Player A roll dice? No, not in my opinion.

The best outcome would be for Player A to embrace being more of a role-player and less of a roll-player. Some people never get there, of course, but it's something that perhaps Player A and the DM can talk about outside of the game. He's not doing anything WRONG by saying, "Okay, I got a 16 and that was a success, but your 14 was a failure; we've narrowed down the DC to 15 or 16..." However, it's not in the SPIRIT of role-playing. If he could get into that spirit, he might have more fun.

 

[delericho]

I have my players roll their own dice, and even tell them the DC up-front. I trust them to have their characters react appropriately to the result.

It's just quicker and easier that way.

That said, I wouldn't particularly object to a DM who wanted to make the skill rolls himself. It doesn't seem a particularly major issue.

(Disclaimer: I run 3e by choice... but I don't see how that would really change with 4e.)

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

So what if a player is working out what a DC is? If that's part of the fun for them then so be it. Why is that fun of some lesser quality than the fun of what the DM considers to be "better role-playing". Often I don't find the people interested in numbers to be inferior role-players anyhow. The whole concept is some sort of mythical concept that you can only be interested in mechanics OR role play, it just ain't so.

There are good arguments for either hidden or open checks though. The concept of a passive check is one of the nice things that helps there. It avoids a lot of situations where active checks would give things away. Mostly though, just trust your players. If they start exploiting knowledge their characters shouldn't have, just point it out (assuming you're really gunning for a very authentic characterization). OTOH if there's a situation where you can make the check as DM and remove the temptation for the player to meta-game, then go for it. Just don't make major die rolls that decide someone's fate behind the screen, that one is a no-no.

 

[Prestidigitalis]

It's an interesting concept. Anything that makes it less of a chore and more of a roleplaying experience would be good. As it is now, every time I hear "this is a skill challenge", I groan inwardly and fix a false smile on my face. Worst of all are the skill challenges that help you avoid a combat -- wait a second, combats are actually fun!

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

It's an interesting concept. Anything that makes it less of a chore and more of a roleplaying experience would be good. As it is now, every time I hear "this is a skill challenge", I groan inwardly and fix a false smile on my face. Worst of all are the skill challenges that help you avoid a combat -- wait a second, combats are actually fun!

Yeah, but DMs who are just saying "this is a skill challenge" are not really doing a very good job of using the SC system. That same DM might be good at running a fun combat encounter, but a DM that is bad at those won't make them very exciting either.

 

[Nullzone]

It's an interesting concept. Anything that makes it less of a chore and more of a roleplaying experience would be good. As it is now, every time I hear "this is a skill challenge", I groan inwardly and fix a false smile on my face. Worst of all are the skill challenges that help you avoid a combat -- wait a second, combats are actually fun!

Yeah, skill challenges in general just aren't really interesting. I generally rewrite them to either involve combat directly (meld the challenge with an adjacent combat encounter) or boon/penalize the players in the next combat, rather than just have an instant "fail, lose 2 healing surges" or "pass, the goblins all run away".

Good point on the player trust Abdul. That's probably why I kept having an icky feeling about implementing it and just couldn't put my finger on it.