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<blockquote data-quote="prospero63" data-source="post: 4575208" data-attributes="member: 16014">Yeah, I actually make it a point to keep the skills and various circumstance modifiers of the PC's in a spreadsheet (actually, it's largely their responsibility to update me with relevant info as I have a &quot;the spreadsheet never lies&quot; policy) and handle many of the spot, listen, search and related checks without the players knowing. As I have mentioned, it seems like no matter how good the players are, when you say something like &quot;give me a spot check&quot; it just tips them off that something is going on. IMO it defeats the purpose of things like surprise, etc. In fact, I have even been known to make saving throws on their behalf, again so as to not tip the players as to things that might be going on that they shouldn't know about (and I do take into account that the PC knows when they make a save... but I can handle that privately in IM, again keeping the facade up, or letting the player respond as they desire). In fact, we had a funny thing a session or so back where a player knew that something was illusiory and failed to tell the party. One of the players got a little upset with me that they should have known, blah, blah, blah. I finally broke down and said &quot;you know, your PC has no way of knowing this, but I told so and so and they chose not to tell the rest of you, so go chew on him for a while&quot;. <img src="http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/paranoid.png"&nbsp; class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":uhoh:" title="Paranoid&nbsp; &nbsp; :uhoh:" data-shortname=":uhoh:" />Sorry for the hijack.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="prospero63, post: 4575208, member: 16014"] Yeah, I actually make it a point to keep the skills and various circumstance modifiers of the PC's in a spreadsheet (actually, it's largely their responsibility to update me with relevant info as I have a "the spreadsheet never lies" policy) and handle many of the spot, listen, search and related checks without the players knowing. As I have mentioned, it seems like no matter how good the players are, when you say something like "give me a spot check" it just tips them off that something is going on. IMO it defeats the purpose of things like surprise, etc. In fact, I have even been known to make saving throws on their behalf, again so as to not tip the players as to things that might be going on that they shouldn't know about (and I do take into account that the PC knows when they make a save... but I can handle that privately in IM, again keeping the facade up, or letting the player respond as they desire). In fact, we had a funny thing a session or so back where a player knew that something was illusiory and failed to tell the party. One of the players got a little upset with me that they should have known, blah, blah, blah. I finally broke down and said "you know, your PC has no way of knowing this, but I told so and so and they chose not to tell the rest of you, so go chew on him for a while". :uhoh: Sorry for the hijack. [/QUOTE]

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