New System for Making "Secret" Rolls

[EOL]

My opinion is that people in RL generally know how well the performed a particular task, so it's fine to let the PC's roll as long as they role-play the result. However once in a while in RL you're completely wrong, so I was thinking of a system, and I'll probably post this over in House rules but essentially when the players rolled a check I would also roll, and if I rolled a 20 then the players die is inverted 20's become 1's a 6 would become a 15, just to represent one of those times when their feel for how well they did was completely off.

I wouldn't do it on those occasions where everyone is making a listen check and 3 players have already made the DC, but I think it would keep the players from meta-gaming DC's more.

A minor change, but potentially a significant one, what do you think.

 

[Randolpho]

too significant, IMO. Better to make all checks where secrecy of the check might be important behind the screen.

 

[wolfpunk]

I like the idea, but I think I would only use it in situations where reality is twisted. Perhaps whenever trying to see through an illusion. Or perhaps when trying to fight off some mind affecting spell. I think most of the time, people who are trained to do what they do are always aware of how well they are doing, unless somehow they are not allowed all the information.

Generally, I roll secret rolls behind the screen. This could however make it more interesting, but I see the potential for people being upset that their "20" was turned into a "1" by my "20" of course they wont think that my "20" could turn their "1" into a "20".

 

[billking]

I have found that, in real life, people OFTEN have mistaken ideas of how well they perform mentally. Simply put, stupid or unwise people think of themselves as at least decently intelligent and wise.
As such, this house rule applies much better to mental activities: generally those skills with Int, Wis, or Cha as the key ability. Of course, I'd imagine that a very intelligent person would know when they have something wrong more often than your average half-orc, and that a rogue well-trained in listening would have a better idea if a sound was truly heard. All this means that your system doesn't actually factor in the character's ability in the inverting, it just happens randomly, which is not the case in real life.

A better system is simply to roll for the character whenever a mental skill roll is particularly difficult (i.e. the player would need a 15 or higher to succeed). If your roll for the player fails by 10 or more, play some trick on the player, such as not having him roll at all or having him make a roll that simply doesn't count. That should be sufficient.

 

[EOL]

I was at GenCon a couple of years ago (the GenCon 3E was released at) and Dave Noonan made a point that has always stuck with me. He said that "Part of the fun of D&D or any role-playing game, is getting to roll the dice." Or something to that effect.

Since that time I've been leery of making too many of the players rolls because I think it's more enjoyable for them if they get to do it themselves. So even though having the DM make all the rolls is the heavily favored option in the poll I posted on the subject, (http://www.enworld.org/messageboards/showthread.php?s=&threadid=6499) I'm trying to avoid that.

So I'm looking for a system where the player still rolls, but there is still the element of uncertainty. I was hoping the other thread might provide it, but since it hasn't if anyone has any ideas I'm all ears.

 

[wolfpunk]

I don't know if this is a solution to our problem but I will present it anyway, and let you be the judge.

I used to have a problem with players forgetting important details, or more importantly forgetting to right down important details. Now it wasn't so much a big deal for a character with an 8 intelligence, they probably would have forgot anyway, but what about that character with an 18 intelligence, chances are he would have remembered even though the player didn't.

So I created a little system for factoring intelligence.

Factoring Intelligence

In order for the character to remember a crucial bit of information players must roll a check to see if it is a piece of information that sticks in their memory. This is an easy way to help players play their character's Intelligence stat.

Intelligence_____Remember on a roll of:
3-5___________1
6-8___________1,2
9-11__________1,2,3
12-14_________1,2,3,4
15-17_________1,2,3,4,5
18+ __________Always

In situations where I did not wish for an automatic success, I simply assign an appropriate penalty to the roll to see if it succeeds. A 1 is treated as a 20 and is always a success.

This could be used in situations where you want the player to see if they understand the situation correctly. You roll the die 6, If they succeed they know how well they did, if they didn't succeed then they do not know how well they did.

Hope this might present some sort of solution to the problem.

 

[EOL]

Thanks wolfpunk I think it's a step in the right direction, I'll have to think about it.