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<blockquote data-quote="Lanefan" data-source="post: 7004827" data-attributes="member: 29398">Secret DC and secret roll - in other words, player says she's trying something (check the door for traps), then the DM rolls some dice and narrates success, failure, or something in between...any one of which might be put in more or less vague terms.&nbsp; &quot;You check it and are sure there's nothing there&quot; is a lot different than &quot;You check it and you think there's nothing there, but can't be sure&quot;.Main reason for doing it this way is to hide the difference between complete failure to find an existing trap and complete success in finding out there's no trap there at all, as in the character's eyes the end result is exactly the same - she finds nothing but has no way of knowing if there's really nothing there or if she simply missed it.&nbsp; Which means the run of play thenceforth should also be the same, which it probably would not be if the player knew she had rolled a '2' on her find-traps instead of a '19'.Which is just how it should be: the character (usually) doesn't know the difficulty of what she's up against until she tries to deal with it.&nbsp; If it's something she can look at ahead of time e.g. how hard will it be to climb this wall then sure, she can get an idea of what she's facing.&nbsp; But most of the time she'll have no way of knowing in advance how tough it'll be to disarm a trap or find a secret door (if there's any there to find at all), and nor should she.Same with social interactions - sure, the guard may have just broken out in a sweat; which could mean he's lying...or that the slow-acting poison in his lunch is taking hold (most of the other guards look a bit uncomfortable too, if anyone bothers to look)...or just that he really needs to pee.A perfect end result, I'd say. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile&nbsp; &nbsp; :)"&nbsp; data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />Lan-&quot;the trick is to ask oneself 'what would the character see?' and go from there&quot;-efan</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Lanefan, post: 7004827, member: 29398"] Secret DC and secret roll - in other words, player says she's trying something (check the door for traps), then the DM rolls some dice and narrates success, failure, or something in between...any one of which might be put in more or less vague terms. "You check it and are sure there's nothing there" is a lot different than "You check it and you think there's nothing there, but can't be sure". Main reason for doing it this way is to hide the difference between complete failure to find an existing trap and complete success in finding out there's no trap there at all, as in the character's eyes the end result is exactly the same - she finds nothing but has no way of knowing if there's really nothing there or if she simply missed it. Which means the run of play thenceforth should also be the same, which it probably would not be if the player knew she had rolled a '2' on her find-traps instead of a '19'. Which is just how it should be: the character (usually) doesn't know the difficulty of what she's up against until she tries to deal with it. If it's something she can look at ahead of time e.g. how hard will it be to climb this wall then sure, she can get an idea of what she's facing. But most of the time she'll have no way of knowing in advance how tough it'll be to disarm a trap or find a secret door (if there's any there to find at all), and nor should she. Same with social interactions - sure, the guard may have just broken out in a sweat; which could mean he's lying...or that the slow-acting poison in his lunch is taking hold (most of the other guards look a bit uncomfortable too, if anyone bothers to look)...or just that he really needs to pee. A perfect end result, I'd say. :) Lan-"the trick is to ask oneself 'what would the character see?' and go from there"-efan [/QUOTE]

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