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Message: <blockquote data-quote="DND_Reborn" data-source="post: 8824643" data-attributes="member: 6987520">It depends on what you are doing. Sometimes yes, but the point is (normally) you are always trying to do your best, right?In the guard example, the PC would try to be as convincing as possibly when lying to the guard. Will the guard buy it or not?This is the problem with d20 rolls. The result is BINARY. Succeed or fail, that is it. Beyond that, the number shouldn't matter.The roll was a 3, with the +5 bonus an 8 total. Maybe the guard is gullible and that was the DC, or maybe it was higher.After the roll is made, the DM describes the immediate outcome. The player then reacts or not before the scene moves on.Now, I suppose in the guard scenario, a roll of 3 and the DM describe your attempt at bumbling and the guard obviously doesn't believe you. But then the DM is giving away additional information. Do you need an Wisdom (Insight) check to read the guard's reaction to know if you succeeded or not? Maybe. Or perhaps you use Passive Insight for that? It is up to each DM to decide how they want to run it, really.Certainly sometimes success or failure is obvious. Trying to pick a lock, for example. Either it opens (you succeed) or doesn't (you failed). Arm wrestling someone--you win or lose--success or failure is obvious. But many things like searching for traps are not obvious. At best, you believe there aren't any traps, but until you proceed you won't know for certain.Consider this example: a PC searches for traps and rolls a total of 21. The "belief" the PC has is pretty confident, right? Why...? Because the player knows the roll and thinks the DC was 20 or less.Now, returning to the guard example, the player rolls a 3 (8 total), and probably thinks they failed. So, they react and ask for the charm person before the DM indicates the guard IS actually fooled because the DC was actually 8! If they had waited for more information, their reaction might have been, "Boy, I can't believe that actually worked!!!"True story in AD&D: I had a player try to convince a patrol that he was also a guard, just out of uniform. The player bumbled his role-playing and said (and I quote!), "If I'm not a guard, then where's my sword?" I rolled the guards reactions and the result was abysmal! So, it actually worked! We still laugh about it. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f923.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":ROFLMAO:" title="ROFL    :ROFLMAO:"  data-smilie="18"data-shortname=":ROFLMAO:" />Which brings me to my final thought about all this: the player shouldn't roll, period. This is where passive scores should be used. Assume the player has 10 (or 11, maybe 15 with advantage, etc.) and the DM rolls to see if the guard is fooled. The PC always tries their best, right? So, maybe that would be a better way.  <img class="smilie smilie--emoji" alt="🤷‍♂️" src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f937-2642.png" title="Man shrugging    :man_shrugging:" data-shortname=":man_shrugging:" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" /></blockquote>

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