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General Tabletop Discussion
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Should players be aware of their own high and low rolls?
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<blockquote data-quote="Charlaquin" data-source="post: 8824163" data-attributes="member: 6779196"><p>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.”</p><p></p><p>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 <em>should</em> 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 <em>should</em> 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 <em>significantly</em> 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.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Charlaquin, post: 8824163, member: 6779196"] 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 [I]should[/I] 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 [I]should[/I] 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 [I]significantly[/I] 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. [/QUOTE]
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Should players be aware of their own high and low rolls?
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