D&D General A Way for Players to Roll Hidden Checks

[Sorinth]

I wouldn't invert the d20 test. Part of the fun of rolling, is the instant gratification of rolling high which you've now taken away.

The players rolling but not seeing their roll is probably the best solution to this problem. However if with these knowledge/insight type checks you want to occasionally provide misinformation then I would maybe do something like success is 2 truths and 0 lies, failure is 1 truth and 1 lie. So even though the player knows they likely failed the check, they still have to debate which is the truth and which is the lie. You can even add a secret DM roll that makes occasionally makes failure 0 truths and 2 lies.

 

[jayoungr]

At the beginning of a session, have players roll a bunch of results in advance (e.g. d20s in D&D). The GM writes down the results for each player, in an order different than how they were rolled. Then when a secret die roll is required, the GM takes the next result for that player off the list. The advantage of this method is that the player doesn't even know when a die roll is called for, to avoid the "The GM's having us roll dice, my character is going to draw their weapons and look around extra good" situation. (For D&D, the introduction of Passive Perception greatly reduced the incentive for this method.)

This is the way I like to do it. It depends on being prepared in advance, though.

 

[CreamCloud0]

dice result meta-knowledge has never really been something that's quite sat right with me on certain kinds of checks, people like to claim they'd be able to tell, but how can you really be sure you did or didn't convince that guard?

 

[Hawk Diesel]

I wouldn't invert the d20 test. Part of the fun of rolling, is the instant gratification of rolling high which you've now taken away.

I disagree. From the reaction I have seen at my table, players now get excited by rolling really high and rolling really low. It has literally doubled the fun, from that perspective.

 

[Lakesidefantasy]

How about this as an idea.

The Player rolls a d20 in front of the screen and the Dungeon Master rolls a d20 behind the screen. Then the Dungeon Master adds their roll to the Player's roll but you roll over the count back to 1 if if the sum is more than 20.

Examples:

Player = 1, DM = 6, Final = 7
Player = 15, DM = 15, Final = 10
Player = 20, DM = 11, Final = 11