Making Player Rolls

My GM uses open rolls, so it really doesn't matter who's rolling the dice. As a GM, I'd rather let the pcs make the rolls anyway. As long as you can trust your players not to metagame I don't see the problem.
 

log in or register to remove this ad

roguerouge said:
"Can you explain how this works?" he said, hijacking the thread for his own nefarious purposes. "When I pasted that formula into a cell, I got a random number, true, but when I did it in the next cell I got a random number that changed the prior random number."

That's an unfortunate property of Excel's RAND() function. It is calculated every time the sheet refreshes or is changed. The poster who suggested it seems to use it not for record-keeping purposes, but to generate pages of them at a time and print them out for use during the game.
 


Nail said:
Who's this "everyone" of which you speak? :lol:

Sometimes (especially for disabiling traps or opponent's hide checks) the DM should roll the check in secret. But really the vast majority of the time it's preferable to roll out in the open so that everyone can see the result.

Could you give us an example that you're having trouble with?

Me, I worry as much about DMs fudging the dice in our favor as I do having the DM stiff us on a roll. "Let the dice fall where they may."

Actually, by everyone, I meant the DMG.

I tried to make Will saves for the players in secret so that they wouldn't know certain spells were being cast to detect things about them (this was a while back, so I'm not sure exactly which ones I was trying at the time), but I need to do something like this again in my next game. A NPC is suspicious of their intentions but wants the PCs to feel like she trusts them and doesn't questions their intentions at all. She will try to use Sense Motive a lot against them, but if I tell them to make an opposed roll during the scene, they'll get suspicious - which kind of goes against the idea of avoiding suspicion.
 

Here's a thought. Get the players to roll. But never respond with "You see nothing".
Every time you call for a Spot/Listen/Search, give them a description of what they do notice.

As an Example:
DM: Make a spot check
Fighter: I got a 10
DM: [Knowing DC was 15 to see the Giant Spider] You see a desk in the corner of the room, you think it's made of oak.

If you do a good job of describing mundane items, your plays will be thrown off by being paranoid and you as DM can sit back and laugh as the spider bites the heads off of the metagamers busy casting detect magic on that desk.
 

backbeat said:
DM: [Knowing DC was 15 to see the Giant Spider] You see a desk in the corner of the room, you think it's made of oak.
Great idea, but if you do this, make sure it is something worth knowing, else it will just pique the player's attention to the possibility that something is amiss...

Maybe: '...scratches on the floor, like the desk has been moved...'
 


EP said:
Sounds good... now I just need to find a way to do the same for a Sense Motive opposed roll.

That's easy...

"This guy appears to be on the up and up."
"This guy seems to be hiding something."
"You can't put your finger on why, but this guys seems sort of shifty."

Later
silver
 

roguerouge said:
"Can you explain how this works?" he said, hijacking the thread for his own nefarious purposes. "When I pasted that formula into a cell, I got a random number, true, but when I did it in the next cell I got a random number that changed the prior random number."

As Tiberius said, I don't use it for record keeping. I print out an A4 sheet to use each time I need one since it gives me ~1450 rolls of d20. I don't use a PC at the game.

While useful, Excel's habit of re-calculating anytime you do anything with the sheet can be annoying. I'm sure that there is a 'locking' mechanism somewhere, but ending up with a different random number isn't a problem for me in this instance.
 

A NPC is suspicious of their intentions but wants the PCs to feel like she trusts them and doesn't questions their intentions at all. She will try to use Sense Motive a lot against them, but if I tell them to make an opposed roll during the scene, they'll get suspicious - which kind of goes against the idea of avoiding suspicion.

Ehm, isn't Sense Motive dependant on a Bluff being made? If the PCs tell the truth, no Sense Motive roll needs to be made by the NPC. On the other hand, if the NPC is trying to bluff her way into making the others trusting her, then only one Bluff check is required, made by the NPC. The PCs are then allowed to make a Sense Motive check once, and it shouldn't be too hard to make them roll it without raising their suspicion?
 

Remove ads

Top