D&D General Should players be aware of their own high and low rolls?

[Mort]

Unless there's an actual ticking clock and the players care about that ticking clock, yes they can. There's effectively infinite food, water, light, and other resources for PCs so those will almost never be an issue. Depending on how you read the resting rules and combat, getting attacked while trying to rest effectively doesn't matter. Then there's things like Leomund's Tiny Hut, the genie lock's vessel, etc so getting a long rest is guaranteed. So none of those things matter. Leomund's Tiny Hut is a ritual so even if you're not taking a long rest, if the referee is enforcing the one long rest per 24 hours thing, the PCs can simply sit in their indestructible bunker and wait. So time is irrelevant unless the referee pushes time as a limited resource, and then only if the players actually care. In my experience, they'd rather let the entire world die in fire than go into a single easy fight with less than full power.

All of these are only true if time pressure isn't a thing. And if THAT'S true, why wouldn't, for ex., a PC convinced there is a secret door somewhere (they just can't find it) call over a friend if they can't find it. they're already looking for he secret door, a failed roll doesn't mean it is or not there, it means they see no sign of it? Who am I, as the DM, to stop them banging their head against the wall?

More importantly, if time pressure isn't a thing then dungeon crawling is a VERY different experience - the group is basically doing it for the fun of narrative exploration. And that's great, if that's what they (and the DM) want to do, but it has to be recognized that's what is going on.

Otherwise, for there to be a decent sense of tension, there has to be time pressure. That's all food, light sources, the inability to safely rest etc. really are - imposition of time pressure. If those are not a thing - the pressure has to be introduced in some other way (time clocks, random encounters etc.) otherwise you're right back to just exploring for the narrative fun of it.

 

[hawkeyefan]

When the player rolls something like bluffing the guard, I also roll a d6. If I roll even, the roll stands. If I roll odd, I reverse the roll. I don't do this until after I describe what is happening and the players have to choose.

So you change the results of rolls such that the player rolls a 3, believes he failed, you roll and turn it into a success, but don’t signal this in any way, so rhey charm the guard anyway?

What’s accomplished by the switch to a success? If I was a player in such a game I’d be really annoyed by that. It seems like it doesn’t even matter what I do.

There's no certainty. And there shouldn't be any.

The dice roll is the uncertainty. Knowing a character’s bonus on the roll is having a sense of how capable they are. Knowing the DC is having a sense of how difficult the task will be. Knowing both does not grant certainty. It grants a sense of the odds.

Which is what people will generally have. Not always and not in such a codified manner, you’re correct about that, but I’d say it’s a more accurate reflection than not letting a player know the odds.

 

[Xamnam]

An argument can be made that there are some edge cases where a character shouldn’t be able to make an accurate assessment of their performance. I think such cases should be few and far between, so it may be acceptable to roll secretly in such cases, but I still think the benefits of keeping that information in the open significantly outweigh the drawbacks.

Where does attempting stealth fall for you on this?

 

[DND_Reborn]

So you change the results of rolls such that the player rolls a 3, believes he failed, you roll and turn it into a success, but don’t signal this in any way, so they charm the guard anyway? What’s accomplished by the switch to a success?

No, he believes he fails because of the action the guard take next, and chooses to act on that belief. He could have waited to see what the guard did before prompting the wizard to cast charm person, and if he had waited, he would have learned he did succeed.

Allowing the 3 of the die roll to indicate he failed creates the metagaming the OP describes. This removes that. It makes it so middle-ground rolls with good bonuses leads to the PC learning the most regardless of my roll.

The DC was 10 in the example. Suppose the PC rolled an 10, with a +5 bonus would be 15. Now, if I reverse the 8 due to my roll to a 11, with +5 still beats the DC. So, the PC can be pretty certain he fooled the guard, since either way he would beat a DC 15 even!

If I was a player in such a game I’d be really annoyed by that. It seems like it doesn’t even matter what I do.

Good thing you aren't, then.

 

[overgeeked]

Who am I, as the DM, to stop them banging their head against the wall?

That’s exactly why you roll it behind the screen.

If the player rolls low, they know they flubbed the roll so everyone dogpiles until there’s a high roll. Metagaming the outcome.

If the player rolls high, they know for a fact that if there’s a door to find they’d have found it. So they leave it alone and move on. Metagaming the outcome.

If the player is convinced there’s a secret door to be found, who am I to stop them from wasting time looking for one?

The only way to do that is not let them know the outcome of the roll. They have to decide for themselves. Knowing the result of the roll removes the ambiguity and gives them certainty.

 

[Oofta]

I try to minimize what I communicate to the player things that the PC would not know. If they roll poorly on an insight check the best they're going to get is a "you can't tell" or "they seem to be honest". Occasionally I'll even allow an insight roll even if the NPC is being truthful [yeah, I know, heresy] because the PC doesn't know beyond a shadow of a doubt what the emotional state of the NPC is.

On the other hand, I still allow the players to roll most of the time because my players find it more enjoyable. I've considered rolling for them but it's more of a hassle than I want to deal with most of the time.

 

[Swarmkeeper]

Where does attempting stealth fall for you on this?

I'm not @Charlaquin but, for our table, we only roll when there is a meaningful consequence for failure. In other words, if the party is trying to be stealthy and there's no one around to notice them, they automatically succeed for the time-being. Once there is an NPC/monster around who could potentially spot them, there may then be an opposed roll or a roll vs. that creature's passive perception. Succeed and they pull it off and get past/whatever. Fail, they are spotted and we move on to what happens next.

 

[overgeeked]

The dice roll is the uncertainty.

Uncertainty of outcome, yes. But that’s not the only place uncertainty should exist.

Knowing a character’s bonus on the roll is having a sense of how capable they are.

Yep.

Knowing the DC is having a sense of how difficult the task will be. Knowing both does not grant certainty. It grants a sense of the odds.

Not quite. Having a sense is fine. Knowing with mathematical certainty is not. The character cannot possibly know down to 5% increments their chances of accomplishing a task. That’s not a “sense of the odds,” that’s certainty they couldn’t possibly have.

Which is what people will generally have. Not always and not in such a codified manner, you’re correct about that, but I’d say it’s a more accurate reflection than not letting a player know the odds.

Giving a range of the DC would be more accurate. Or the DC actually having a range would be more accurate. Say 10+1dX. More difficult tasks get bigger dice. A d4 through a d12 would work. The referee rolls when the player rolls.

 

[iserith]

Unless there's an actual ticking clock and the players care about that ticking clock, yes they can. There's effectively infinite food, water, light, and other resources for PCs so those will almost never be an issue. Depending on how you read the resting rules and combat, getting attacked while trying to rest effectively doesn't matter. Then there's things like Leomund's Tiny Hut, the genie lock's vessel, etc so getting a long rest is guaranteed. So none of those things matter. Leomund's Tiny Hut is a ritual so even if you're not taking a long rest, if the referee is enforcing the one long rest per 24 hours thing, the PCs can simply sit in their indestructible bunker and wait. So time is irrelevant unless the referee pushes time as a limited resource, and then only if the players actually care. In my experience, they'd rather let the entire world die in fire than go into a single easy fight with less than full power.

In my experience, time as a resource makes the whole game work better and in a way where I don't have to protect players from themselves when it comes to "metagaming." All the risk is on their end and their choice. I also don't experience any of the issues you seem to do with food, water, light, or resting.

And as I stated above, if the DM isn't using time as a resource, then "progress combined with a setback" on a failed check works just fine to avoid the issues you seem to care about. That's already in the rules, too.

 

[Swarmkeeper]

Not quite. Having a sense is fine. Knowing with mathematical certainty is not. The character cannot possibly know down to 5% increments their chances of accomplishing a task. That’s not a “sense of the odds,” that’s certainty they couldn’t possibly have.

At our table, the heroic adventurers do have a sense of their capabilities with that certainty. So, yes, possible.

Giving a range of the DC would be more accurate. Or the DC actually having a range would be more accurate. Say 10+1dX. More difficult tasks get bigger dice. A d4 through a d12 would work. The referee rolls when the player rolls.

Extra rolling and time spent for no real payoff for our table, IMO.

 

[Xamnam]

I'm not @Charlaquin but, for our table, we only roll when there is a meaningful consequence for failure. In other words, if the party is trying to be stealthy and there's no one around to notice them, they automatically succeed for the time-being. Once there is an NPC/monster around who could potentially spot them, there may then be an opposed roll or a roll vs. that creature's passive perception. Succeed and they pull it off and get past/whatever. Fail, they are spotted and we move on to what happens next.

Yeah, that's how I've started running it as well, and it feels a lot more natural. Pretty sure I took that inspiration from an Alexandrian article.

 

[Charlaquin]

I couldn't disagree more. It's not possible for the character to know those things so there's no reason for the player to know those things. Unless they're obvious in the fiction. You want to swing across a bottomless pit on a makeshift rope swing, you clearly know what the stakes are. You're prowling around an unknown location, you couldn't possibly know what's lurking there. You can guess it might be guards, sure. But you don't know. There's no certainty. And there shouldn't be any. For me one of the goals is getting the game out from between the player and their character. Not centering the game.

You don’t have to tell the player that it’s guards. From your use of “prowling” I’m guessing you’re imagining a stealth situation? The context leading up to the check should make it clear that the character is in danger of being seen by something (same as how the context leading up to a perception check should make it clear there’s something to perceive, etc). You can just say “make a DC 14 Stealth check. On a failure something will hear you.” Simple.

So it removes the realism and verisimilitude of uncertainty. That's not a benefit. The characters should be uncertain.

If the outcome is certain, there shouldn’t be a roll in the first place. The nature of the dice roll insures that the player will not be certain of the outcome. But they should have some idea of what’s at stake and how likely they are to succeed, just as the character would.

I agree with the not calling for too many rolls, and not bothering with low DC rolls, but as the characters cannot possibly know the stakes with certainty, the players shouldn't either to prevent metagaming and so they're roleplaying more authentically.

Personally I don’t have any interest in judging the “authenticity” of anyone’s roleplaying. But even if I did, I don’t agree that telling the player the stakes gives them any more certainty than their character ought to have.

In some cases that's great and I'd agree. You need to be on the same page for a lot of things. If the player didn't hear you say it's a fancy, obviously magical lock or misheard that there's a thousand-foot drop off...then that's worth pausing and making sure everyone knows what's going on before any rolls or consequences are presented. But doing that all the time utterly obliterates all those moments where there's no way the character could know something. It's not worth giving that up.

I’m not convinced there are any such moments.

The trouble is the character isn't perfect but you're providing the player with perfect information. The player will inevitable act on that perfect information in game, i.e. metagame. That's bad.

Simply knowing the DC and stakes is not perfect information, because you don’t know what the result of the d20 roll will be.

That phrase is doing all the lifting. And again, a reasonable degree of accuracy is not perfect knowledge. "The DC is between 10 and 16" is a reasonable degree of accuracy "The DC is 15" is perfect knowledge.

“The DC is 15” only lets you know your odds of success. This bridges the gap between what the character should know (being aware of their own capabilities and being able to directly perceive the environment) and what the player can know (being limited to abstract game mechanics and the DM’s verbal description of the environment) in order to approximate the character’s ability to guess if they’ll be able to accomplish the task or not. The die roll represents (among other things) the possibility that the character’s assessment was wrong.

Of course. That's why you do the best you can in describing things and everyone gives each other slack and mulligans on things that should be obvious.

Or you cut right to the chase and say what the stakes and odds are. No risk of such misunderstandings, no need to “mulligan”
Anything.

That's not how it works. The incorrect assessment is the DC not being accurate. The character's attempt is the random roll.

Why not? No reason it can’t, and doing it that way has a lot of benefits, as I’ve already innumerated.

Again, no. The character cannot possibly know the result of some of their actions. Finding secret doors, for example. They have no way of knowing if they missed something or if there's nothing there to find. That distinction is obliterated if you do things your way.

Just like with traps, if they’re looking for secret doors in the first place, they should already know there’s a secret door to be found, because they’ve picked up on something in the description of the environment that indicates it. If they mistakenly think they’ve picked up on something, no need to roll due to no chance of success. They just spend the necessary amount of time and fail to find anything. If they’re searching everywhere as part of their standard operating procedure, use a passive check, as the PHB recommends.

Not edge cases, standard things in D&D...like sneaking and searching for secret doors.

See the above paragraph.

 

[Charlaquin]

Where does attempting stealth fall for you on this?

Generally, the context leading up to the roll should make it clear that there’s something to hide from. Either you’re trying to sneak past a snoozing guard or something along those lines, or you’re trying to hide from something that’s searching for you. I’ve noticed a lot of DMs will call for a group stealth check as soon as the players say they’re trying to move stealthily, and “let the result ride” until they come upon something that might perceive them, and then compare the result to its passive perception. I don’t do this, because I only call for rolls when there are immediate stakes. When the party says they’re moving quietly down the dungeon corridor or through the underbrush or whatever, I say “ok,” and make note of that fact. Then, if they come upon something that might perceive them, I telegraph its presence (e.g. “you hear footsteps echoing from beyond the range of your vision in the dark corridor” or the like) and ask the players what they do. At that point if they try to hide, I’ll call for stealth checks, and from that context the stakes should be pretty self-evident. Though I still state them out loud, for good measure. “Ok, make a DC 14 Dexterity check - stealth proficiency applies if you have it. On a failure, you’ll be heard.”

 

[overgeeked]

In my experience, time as a resource makes the whole game work better and in a way where I don't have to protect players from themselves when it comes to "metagaming." All the risk is on their end and their choice. I also don't experience any of the issues you seem to do with food, water, light, or resting.

You must be house ruling things or severely restricting things as 5E is not designed for time to matter.

Food & Water. Outlanders get free food & water enough for the party everyday. Druids get goodberry. Foraging is a low DC with big rewards. Clerics get create food and water. Several races require neither. Unless you restrict or house rule those things, food & water is meaningless by the book.

Light. About 3/4 of the races have darkvision, so unless you make color a big part of your game, light doesn’t matter. There’s also easy access to two cantrips that have unlimited light. So again, doesn’t matter.

Resting. To interrupt a long rest you have make a single, continuous fight last more than 600 rounds, unless you house rule it. There’s also Leomund’s Tiny Hut. And simply barring a door. No matter how loud, sound doesn’t interrupt a long rest.

I get the feeling we’ve argued this before.

Tracking time with these resources (food, water, torches, etc) is meaningless. PCs are all but guaranteed long rests, so that’s a non issue. So the only way to make time matter is to house rule the game, ask your players to not pick these obvious low-hanging fruit options, or to use something else to introduce time pressure. And that all depends on the players. Yours might rush to save the dragon from the nasty princess, but mine will gladly let him die if it means not taking the risk of going into even an easy fight with less than full resources.

And as I stated above, if the DM isn't using time as a resource, then "progress combined with a setback" on a failed check works just fine to avoid the issues you seem to care about. That's already in the rules, too.

The rules get in the way of the things I care about.

 

[Mort]

You must be house ruling things or severely restricting things as 5E is not designed for time to matter.

Food & Water. Outlanders get free food & water enough for the party everyday. Druids get goodberry. Foraging is a low DC with big rewards. Clerics get create food and water. Several races require neither. Unless you restrict or house rule those things, food & water is meaningless by the book.

Light. About 3/4 of the races have darkvision, so unless you make color a big part of your game, light doesn’t matter. There’s also easy access to two cantrips that have unlimited light. So again, doesn’t matter.

Resting. To interrupt a long rest you have make a single, continuous fight last more than 600 rounds, unless you house rule it. There’s also Leomund’s Tiny Hut. And simply barring a door. No matter how loud, sound doesn’t interrupt a long rest.

5e is designed for typical RESOURCES not to matter, that's VERY different from time not mattering!

There are a myriad of ways to ensure time still matters in 5e.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Uncertainty of outcome, yes. But that’s not the only place uncertainty should exist.

Yep.

Not quite. Having a sense is fine. Knowing with mathematical certainty is not. The character cannot possibly know down to 5% increments their chances of accomplishing a task. That’s not a “sense of the odds,” that’s certainty they couldn’t possibly have.

Giving a range of the DC would be more accurate. Or the DC actually having a range would be more accurate. Say 10+1dX. More difficult tasks get bigger dice. A d4 through a d12 would work. The referee rolls when the player rolls.

The accuracy of the math substitutes for the absence of full information.

And as I said, having an idea seems more likely than not having an idea, so over time, it’s actually more realistic/accurate/whatever-you-want-to-call-it than not having the info.

 

[iserith]

You must be house ruling things or severely restricting things as 5E is not designed for time to matter.

Food & Water. Outlanders get free food & water enough for the party everyday. Druids get goodberry. Foraging is a low DC with big rewards. Clerics get create food and water. Several races require neither. Unless you restrict or house rule those things, food & water is meaningless by the book.

Light. About 3/4 of the races have darkvision, so unless you make color a big part of your game, light doesn’t matter. There’s also easy access to two cantrips that have unlimited light. So again, doesn’t matter.

Resting. To interrupt a long rest you have make a single, continuous fight last more than 600 rounds, unless you house rule it. There’s also Leomund’s Tiny Hut. And simply barring a door. No matter how loud, sound doesn’t interrupt a long rest.

I get the feeling we’ve argued this before.

I'm not house ruling or severely restricting anything where this discussion is concerned, and yes, we have discussed this before. In that discussion, and all similar discussions in which I have participated, I've shown with specificity all the trade-offs those things bring with them which the rules themselves lay out and from which logical, genre-appropriate repercussions can ensue.

The rules get in the way of the things I care about.

The rule you're quoting actually helps mitigate the thing you seem to care about by resolving tasks in a way where "metagaming" (as you define and present it) doesn't work. Remember, in almost all cases, the DM is the one who sets the stage for "metagaming" to happen. To then demand the players not engage with the "metagaming" opportunity the DM has presented seems rather like creating the PCs sick and commanding them to be well.

 

[Yora]

If the character can't see the result, then I'm not going to tell the player either.

We're not collaboratively writing a thrilling story for an external audience. We are playing character dealing with situations to the best of their ability. And dealing with imperfect information is an integral part of that ability.

 

[Charlaquin]

Giving a range of the DC would be more accurate. Or the DC actually having a range would be more accurate. Say 10+1dX. More difficult tasks get bigger dice. A d4 through a d12 would work. The referee rolls when the player rolls.

Just assume the lower 4 numbers on the d20 account for that same variable difficulty as that +1d4 to the difficulty would.

 

[Charlaquin]

If the character can't see the result, then I'm not going to tell the player either.

We're not collaboratively writing a thrilling story for an external audience. We are playing character dealing with situations to the best of their ability. And dealing with imperfect information is an integral part of that ability.

But it’s also a game. In my experience, knowing the stakes and the odds strikes the best balance between roleplaying (making decisions as you imagine your character would in the fictional situation) and game (in particular, a dice-based game od push-your-luck). It allows you to take precautions to try to minimize the chance of failure and take calculated risks when you can’t eliminate it completely.