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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 9832718" data-attributes="member: 6790260">My preferred solution is to not use hidden checks, and to not have mechanical situations where the player knows the truth but the character cannot.So a weak Perception check (say, rolling a 9 vs DC 10 to 15) would produce ignorance, or two+ conflicting pieces of information that the party has to try to reconcile (and for which none may actually be correct). A genuinely really bad Perception check means the players do learn something....and that something is bad.This often requires some adjustment of GMing practice, but not dramatically. That is, for "ignorance" to be a meaningful failure result, sometimes ignorance means they don't know a good/beneficial thing is there, other times, they don't know a bad/harmful thing is there, and plenty of times they don't know that there's nothing to see/find/know/etc.; you need to be willing to ask for checks, or to furnish opportunities where players would likely do something that requires a check, when there isn't actually anything there to check for. An excessive concern with efficiency--with only asking for checks when there's something worth detecting/knowing/etc.--contributes to the "aha, we failed, so we know we cannot trust whatever he said" problem.</blockquote>