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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Hawk Diesel" data-source="post: 9832694" data-attributes="member: 59848">Something I have previously struggled with as a DM is how to hide the success or failure of a check from the players. Obviously, there is the hidden roll where the DM makes the roll on the player's behalf behind the screen. But in my experience, it's more fun for the player to roll their own dice. Also, if you are on a VTT, it's a pain as a DM (at least for me) to roll for the player and keep it hidden. But allowing the player to roll can ruin the fun of a check. For example, if a player rolls low on an Arcana check to determine the nature of a scroll, they are gonna assume that the info you give them is suspect. Meanwhile, a player rolling high on a perception check is going to maintain confidence that when they don't see anything in the shadows, there really isn't anything there. So how do you allow the player to roll, while maintaining the mystery of the check?My solution, randomly invert the scale. Prior to calling for the roll, I secretly roll a d4. Evens, the scale is normal. Rolling a 15 is a 15. But if I roll odds, the scale gets inverted. A 20 is treated like a 1. Modifiers also get inverted. A +3 modifier becomes a -3, and vice versa. Now, if a player rolls high, they can't automatically assume the the information the DM provides is accurate. Likewise, the player can also get a better sense of their character's confidence in the check. Checks closer to 10 are lower confidence, but checks closer to 1 or 20 are higher confidence, even when they may be completely wrong.Of course, this isn't meant for checks where success or failure is obvious. If you make an athletics check to clear a ravine, you know if you made it or not. But for information given to your players that could plausibly be uncertain, I've found this to be a fun system. The mystery is maintained, but the players still get to control rolls relevant for their own PCs.I'm interested to hear people's thoughts, whether others have encountered this issue in their own games, and if there are alternative ways people have tried to address it.</blockquote>

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