D&D 5E Saves for Secret Charms

[beaumontsebos]

DMs, how do you handle something like this... a creature is acting friendly to the PCs but is actually trying to charm one or more of them which requires a saving throw.

How to do the save without making them suspicious? Would you just use a "passive" save and not make them roll anything to alert them?

 

[iserith]

I don't really concern myself with worrying about whether the players are suspicious. So I just describe what's going on as appropriate, ask for the roll, and resolve normally. What the characters do after that is up to the players.

 

[Dragongrief]

If it's a drawn out interaction, I would ask for the save(s) at a random point and note the result. Try to have the roll be away from any "ask" the creature might make of its victims.

Unless success makes the characters aware of the attempt, or failure would make them act/feel significantly different, the exact timing of calling for the save isn't too important.

 

[Shiroiken]

Fortunately, I have a great group that roleplayes out the results, no matter how much it might suck for the party. I had a charm/dominate effect occur in a high level game, and the player did her best to try and kill the party. If a player makes a bad roll, they try to explain why it was so bad, or why they would have failed (a failed perception check, for example means they were simply looking somewhere else).

If you really need to keep it hidden, the best method would be to must make the roll yourself. If you really feel the need to do so, you can convert the DC into a check by subtracting 12 from the DC against the passive DC of their save (you can subtract 11 if you just want to surpass the passive DC). Both of these, of course, require you to actually know their current save modifier.

 

[ccs]

I don't worry about making secret checks, saves, etc.

So if at some point a character needs to Save vs {something}? Then I just tell the player to make the save.