SnowleopardVK
First Post
I was running a game a few days ago, and the party was talking with an NPC. Now they didn't know it, but he was an NPC they'd been instructed to find, but the only description they'd been given of him was that he had a certain accent.
When he was first talking to them, I gave each PC a roll behind my screen to see if they recognized his accent as the one they were looking for.
One of the players was not happy. I roll occasionally when things happen so that the players don't know whether my rolls are actually doing anything or not, but when his character spotted the accent he concluded that I had been rolling for that and accused me of it.
He said that he should only get the roll to recognize this accent if he remembered to say that he was listening for it. Now I consider that ridiculous since they were face-to-face with and talking specifically to this NPC (and a thick accent isn't something you only hear if you're specifically listening for it), but normally I would say fine. If you want to only get these normally free rolls when you remember to ask for them, that's your choice and your loss.
The difficulty is that he's angry the other players are getting them too. He wants me to stop doing these rolls at all. Now that's where I refused because it would slow down the game if players had to roll sense motive every time an NPC talks "just to be safe", or roll knowledge every time they encountered anything new. Not to mention they'd probably get a great deal more paranoid, and one of the other players becomes very not-fun to play with when she gets overly paranoid.
He understands that it's the DM's call and has accepted my decision, but I keep hearing muted grumbling from him whenever my dice hit the table outside of combat. Does anyone know of anything that says where it's appropriate to roll for the players? If it says directly in any rules (we're playing Pathfinder by the way) then it'd be nice to just be able to point to the rulebook, because I'm quite sure that "this is how the rules say to do it" would stop his complaining. He's like that. Agrees with the rules without question even if he doesn't like them.
When he was first talking to them, I gave each PC a roll behind my screen to see if they recognized his accent as the one they were looking for.
One of the players was not happy. I roll occasionally when things happen so that the players don't know whether my rolls are actually doing anything or not, but when his character spotted the accent he concluded that I had been rolling for that and accused me of it.
He said that he should only get the roll to recognize this accent if he remembered to say that he was listening for it. Now I consider that ridiculous since they were face-to-face with and talking specifically to this NPC (and a thick accent isn't something you only hear if you're specifically listening for it), but normally I would say fine. If you want to only get these normally free rolls when you remember to ask for them, that's your choice and your loss.
The difficulty is that he's angry the other players are getting them too. He wants me to stop doing these rolls at all. Now that's where I refused because it would slow down the game if players had to roll sense motive every time an NPC talks "just to be safe", or roll knowledge every time they encountered anything new. Not to mention they'd probably get a great deal more paranoid, and one of the other players becomes very not-fun to play with when she gets overly paranoid.
He understands that it's the DM's call and has accepted my decision, but I keep hearing muted grumbling from him whenever my dice hit the table outside of combat. Does anyone know of anything that says where it's appropriate to roll for the players? If it says directly in any rules (we're playing Pathfinder by the way) then it'd be nice to just be able to point to the rulebook, because I'm quite sure that "this is how the rules say to do it" would stop his complaining. He's like that. Agrees with the rules without question even if he doesn't like them.
