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

[iserith]

Keeping things behind the screen adds verisimilitude and honest roleplaying by helping the players who can't help themselves to not metagame.

"Metagaming" isn't a terribly reliable way to play since a player's assumptions about what will happen may not be correct. So, in my view, it's self-correcting since it's generally more optimal to rely on what's going on in the fictional setting than fall back on what you know of the rules or the like.

As I tell my players, "metagame" all you want, but understand that you could very well be wrong and it's smart play to verify your assumptions through in-game actions before acting on them. Then it's up to them. The added benefit is I don't have to do anything at all to prevent it such as taking the dice from the players or what have you since I don't care at all about it occurring, and players do it at their characters' peril.

Setting aside my concern about "metagaming" was probably one of the best things I've ever done when it comes to DMing and playing.

 

[Charlaquin]

I prefer the dice to resolve uncertainty, not to create it. I want players to know what the DCs are and the stakes for success and failure prior to the roll, so they can make informed decisions.

As for situations where the roll itself gives something away to the player, this is an opportunity for the DM to use what the rules call "progress combined with a setback" when narrating the result of the adventurer's action. They succeed in some sense, but not totally. To build on your example, the guard at the gates leans in close and says, "No humble traveler I've ever seen has a sword that nice - for 50 gp, I'll look the other way." Progress. Setback. "What do you do?"

This. I think the player should always know the difficulty and the stakes before going into a roll, and they should always know if they succeeded or failed. This has several benefits: first, it allows players to act with confidence, which helps curtail waffling. Second, it can help a DM who may instinctively want to call for a roll simply because an action has been declared to stop and think through what the difficulty and stakes of the action are - if you can’t think of what to tell the player will happen on a failure, or if you think the DC should be really low, it’s probably not worth calling for a roll at all. Thirdly, it helps eliminate mismatched expectations - when a player thinks something is going to be easy and/or have low stakes but the DM thinks it’s going to be more difficult and/or have higher stakes, simply stating the difficulty and stakes out loud can avoid unpleasant surprises. This also feeds back into the first benefit, allowing players to act more confidently without fear of secret “gotchas.”

Usually the counter-argument is that “the player shouldn’t know things the character couldn’t know,” and to folks who care about such things, I say, stating the DC and consequences represents the character’s ability to assess a difficult task and make a prediction about their own capability of succeeding at it. That’s something the character should be able to do to a reasonable degree of accuracy, and DM description alone can easily fail to convey that information. Granted, it should also be possible for the character to make an incorrect assessment, and that is one of the factors that is covered by the random nature of the die roll. And, the player seeing the result of their roll represents the character’s after-the-fact assessment of their own performance, again something the character should know. 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. If for some reason I felt it was really important that the roll be kept secret, I would use a passive check, as advised in the PHB. But I struggle to imagine a scenario where I would feel that was necessary.

 

[beancounter]

No, not always. The example that comes up frequently in our games is finding traps. The layer will roll, but the DM will not reveal the DC, so if the DM says " you don't find any traps" the player doesn't know for sure if it's because there are no traps, or if he failed the roll. Otherwise that would be meta.

 

[overgeeked]

"Metagaming" isn't a terribly reliable way to play since a player's assumptions about what will happen may not be correct. So, in my view, it's self-correcting since it's generally more optimal to rely on what's going on in the fictional setting than fall back on what you know of the rules or the like.

As I tell my players, "metagame" all you want, but understand that you could very well be wrong and it's smart play to verify your assumptions through in-game actions before acting on them. Then it's up to them. The added benefit is I don't have to do anything at all to prevent it such as taking the dice from the players or what have you since I don't care at all about it occurring, and players do it at their characters' peril.

Setting aside my concern about "metagaming" was probably one of the best things I've ever done when it comes to DMing and playing.

While this applies to some metagaming, it doesn’t apply to all. You’re talking about things like assuming weaknesses of monsters, I’m talking about making or changing decisions based on die rolls. Like calling over an extra set of eyes to search for a secret door only because of a flubbed roll. I homebrew and reskin most of my monsters so players can’t metagame that. I roll behind the screen for the players in certain cases because they apparently can’t stop themselves from metagaming. Your approach works for one but not the other.

 

[iserith]

While this applies to some metagaming, it doesn’t apply to all. You’re talking about things like assuming weaknesses of monsters, I’m talking about making or changing decisions based on die rolls. Like calling over an extra set of eyes to search for a secret door only because of a flubbed roll. I homebrew and reskin most of my monsters so players can’t metagame that. I roll behind the screen for the players in certain cases because they apparently can’t stop themselves from metagaming. Your approach works for one but not the other.

In the case of secret doors or situations similar to what you describe, that's not a problem in my games because if someone else wants to search, they're free to do so, just like they were free to do so from the jump. They don't need any particular reason to decide to do it, and it's none of my business why a player wants to have their character do a thing. I'm just there to adjudicate and narrate the result. However, it takes another 10 minutes, which means we're that much closer to a wandering monster check or the doom clock running out. Again, as I mention above, it's the player's risk to take or resource to spend.

And if I'm not running a classic dungeon crawl like that where time matters a lot, then it goes right back to "progress combined with a setback." You find the secret door with a failed check, but [complication]. "What do you do now?"

 

[Charlaquin]

No, not always. The example that comes up frequently in our games is finding traps. The layer will roll, but the DM will not reveal the DC, so if the DM says " you don't find any traps" the player doesn't know for sure if it's because there are no traps, or if he failed the roll. Otherwise that would be meta.

This is a common go-to example, but in my experience it doesn’t actually come up. If a player is actively searching for traps in my game, they almost certainly already know there’s a trap to find. This is because I telegraph the presence of traps because I want players to interact with them. Of course, sometimes the players won’t pick up on the telegraphs, in which case they won’t likely think to check for traps, and will have passive perception to fall back on.

 

[overgeeked]

This. I think the player should always know the difficulty and the stakes before going into a roll, and they should always know if they succeeded or failed.

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.

This has several benefits: first, it allows players to act with confidence, which helps curtail waffling.

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

Second, it can help a DM who may instinctively want to call for a roll simply because an action has been declared to stop and think through what the difficulty and stakes of the action are - if you can’t think of what to tell the player will happen on a failure, or if you think the DC should be really low, it’s probably not worth calling for a roll at all.

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.

Thirdly, it helps eliminate mismatched expectations - when a player thinks something is going to be easy and/or have low stakes but the DM thinks it’s going to be more difficult and/or have higher stakes, simply stating the difficulty and stakes out loud can avoid unpleasant surprises. This also feeds back into the first benefit, allowing players to act more confidently without fear of secret “gotchas.”

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.

Usually the counter-argument is that “the player shouldn’t know things the character couldn’t know,” and to folks who care about such things, I say, stating the DC and consequences represents the character’s ability to assess a difficult task and make a prediction about their own capability of succeeding at it.

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.

That’s something the character should be able to do to a reasonable degree of accuracy

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.

and DM description alone can easily fail to convey that information.

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.

Granted, it should also be possible for the character to make an incorrect assessment, and that is one of the factors that is covered by the random nature of the die roll.

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

And, the player seeing the result of their roll represents the character’s after-the-fact assessment of their own performance, again something the character should know.

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.

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.

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

 

[iserith]

This is a common go-to example, but in my experience it doesn’t actually come up. If a player is actively searching for traps in my game, they almost certainly already know there’s a trap to find. This is because I telegraph the presence of traps because I want players to interact with them. Of course, sometimes the players won’t pick up on the telegraphs, in which case they won’t likely think to check for traps, and will have passive perception to fall back on.

Yes, and this is similar to the secret door example I mention in my last post. Sure, go ahead and look for traps some more. That seems like a prudent thing to do. It'll be another 10 minutes. Can you afford that time?

 

[overgeeked]

Yes, and this is similar to the secret door example I mention in my last post. Sure, go ahead and look for traps some more. That seems like a prudent thing to do. It'll be another 10 minutes. Can you afford that time?

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.

 

[Maxperson]

Ah, the days of "roll behind the screen", how I miss thee.

I agree with @Umbran though - this isn't a simulator, it's a game. Hiding the results doesn't really add enough to be worth the effort. Better to let players look at the results and move on.

I agree. Back during 1e I tried hiding the results and rolling the rolls myself. It turned out to be both more of a pain in the rear for me and less satisfactory for the players. I quickly dropped those ideas and haven't looked back.