Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Toben the Many" data-source="post: 4457395" data-attributes="member: 19273">I do both. Sometimes I tell the player the DC, sometimes I don't. Typically, I tell the player the DC, if there are incremental results that might arise from their check. For example, I might say, "You'll find out okay information on a 15, better information on a 20, and really good information on a 25." I usually do this with things like Knowledge checks, Gather Information checks, etc. This is because I feel that most people generally know if they know something or not. For example, you might realize that you don't know that much about cars, but you know a good bit about computers. The way I see it, this provokes a great deal of mystery for me as the DM. Because once I've laid out the DC, I can't take it back. So when the player rolls the die, I honestly don't know what's going to happen next. Am I going to be making a big revelation, or am I just going to give them a little hint about something. As a DM, I like not knowing what is going to happen next in my own game. Like some people here, I like to do that so that the player knows I'm not BSing them. Too often as a player, I have rolled only to see in the DM's eye that he's probably not going to tell me something unless I roll really, really well, or that he's going to give it to me anyway unless I roll pretty poorly. I dislike that, because it makes me feel like my skills don't really mean anything and that whether or not I succeed is really the result of the DM's fancy. Now, I won't give DCs when it is necessary to maintain a certain mystery. For example, I'm not going to tell someone their DC for a Hide or Move Silently check - as far as they're concerned, they are moving as silently as possible. Occasionally, too, I'll keep the DC secret if I want to preserve a bit of mystery to the results.</blockquote>

Verification