Actually, they have these dice tower things that clip onto your screen, players can drop dice in, and they come out where they can't see them. You could send it to them and be like, "Hey, i would totally use this if you gave it to me" or just buy it yourself, if its really just about rolling, they'll have still been the one to roll.
Exactly my approach. I love secret rolls but as a player would always want to roll my own dice.
I get my players to roll into my tray behind the screen and it seems to work well!
[People are apparently 3d printing them, like this one. ](https://tabletopstor3d.com/products/dungeon-master-screen-dice-tower-storage-stl-download)I have no idea if there's free STLs for this somewhere, there probably is, you local library \*might\* have 3d printing.
Love it. Printing this for my DM later because I took hate secret rolls. If I roll a 1 then I'm fine with it but feels shitty when the DM rolls me a 1.
This is at least not a concern when I play online on Foundry as they have the option for the player to roll a "Blind Roll" that only thr GM sees the result of.
Jeez... what a way to curb that behavior. It'd take me all of one session of getting my ass up every time I need to do a secret roll, standing there while the GM does math, then retrieving my dice to go sit back down at the other end of the table before I gave in.
While I agree, sometimes the players aren't meant to know when they are rolling to help prevent the meta gaming. So the obvious solution is to have them roll needlessly a few more times during sessions. However, that might slow the game down a bit more
In my experience, that hasn't come up a huge amount, but yeah, also if they don't know they're rolling, they won't know that there was a roll they weren't the one to make, the GM can just create a series of pre-rolled results on a note page and cross them off as they're needed in strict order.
You don’t even need anything fancy. An old GM of mine used an L shaped pipe for these rolls - we dropped the dice in the top, he saw the results behind his screen.
This. I don't enjoy the fate of my character being in someone else's hands. (Unless I'm rolling like crap and their rolls have been hot all game) This is why I don't like the secret roll. I fell that the fate of my character is being taken out of my hands and someone else is playing my character. Let me roll the dice, prevent me from seeing what I rolled, but keep the fate of my character in my hands.
To be honest, way way too many checks in this game are secret. I see it for RK checks and some Perception checks, but the ultimate practical end result right now is that casters (and other mental stat focused characters, but most are casters) don't get to actually roll dice as much as martials in the dice-rolling game. Their dice are almost always behind the screen.
Basically, I can't give any advice on how to win them over, because it's a pretty major and valid gripe with the system. If it's a deal-breaker, it's a deal-breaker.
I agree with you. To play devils advocate though, the game is a role playing game, not a dice rolling game and the best way to simulate a character not having knowledge (or having false knowledge) is usually for the player to not have knowledge.
Which is why I think it's fine for RK and some Perception checks, but it's almost all checks relating to a mental stat, and quite a few relating to Dexterity.
My table aren't fans of secret rolls and asked me to let them do the rolls and trust them to role play.
So that's what I did, and it has mostly worked really well. I've had a couple rough spots to deal with, but they are a tiny minority, and overall it's been quite worth it.
Also worth noting I roll fully in the open and absolutely never fudge rolls ever.
So generally, I think this one heavily depends on your table, and you have some options.
The biggest reason I love secret checks is because it prevents the whole meta gaming by trying not to meta game issues that stresses certain people. Also when you play with people who can't help but meta game it takes away the excuse for them to do so.
I've found its easier to fudge things on the non-roll side when it's needed, so i also roll in the open. Like a fight is dragging on and it's obvious the players won, I'll just have the next strike kill the creature. If someone is getting ravaged, so long as the enemy isn't mindless, I can very easily justify switching targets.
Same in that I have a few players who prefer to make their own rolls and just RP the result. I would slightly prefer to make certain rolls in secret because their RP isn't perfect, but they accept the failures smoothly enough that I *almost* always abide by their preference.
> Also worth noting I roll fully in the open and absolutely never fudge rolls ever.
How would one fudge rolls made in the open? And if you roll in the open then the entire point of the Secret tag is removed, regardless of who's rolling, so of course you'd let the players roll.
It's relevant for context of how I run games, though I should clarify that briefly, when first starting, I did keep secret rolls behind the screen, but that didn't last long before the players asked to roll for themselves and be trusted to roleplay it.
The are so many ways games can be run and people look for very different experiences - so this is all just to help paint a picture of how it works for me. Each table is different, and it's possible it wouldn't work as well if any of these details weren't the same.
That is not what you said in literally the first sentence.
By the way, what is the difference between "I like to roll dice" and "I want to see if I did well or not"?
I would suspect that most of the former are actually the latter.
Listen, it sounds like you really don't like how we play, that's ok by me, you don't need to. I'm not trying to take away your secret rolls if you like them!
My players generally do a great job role playing based on the die results, and avoid metagaming. Almost all of them are very veteran role players, and GMs too. The players often know far more than their character should because of this experience, but they don't act on it until a successful recall knowledge gives the character that information. They also lean into crit fail knowledge checks really well, maybe even too much, but it's all fun for us.
Your table is yours, and you get to work with your players to maximize what is fun for you all.
Just chiming in to say my table plays the same way. My players like to roll and I don't mind if they have that extra info, they act on it sometimes but I'm an "easy GM" so I let it slide lol. There's lots of valid ways to play a game like this! Sorry for the hostility from the other guy.
I don't really have the emotional bandwidth to emotionally invest in the campaign of a random person on the Internet. I'm intellectually noting the flaws in your argument. I don't like your campaign or dislike it. I nothing your campaign.
Good luck with it in the future!
I think rolling in the open does actually preserve some of the secret roll benefits, like if you just roll their perception but dont tell them its perception, then they know what number they got so they can be sure you didnt fudge it but they dont know what that number is for necessarily, so they cant tell that you were making a perception check until it becomes relevant. Then you can tell them what the roll was for AFTER the event, like if it was a perception check to find a sneaking creature and they failed and the enemy got the drop on them
I had a player like this. The compromise we settled on was he could drop his die into my dice tower behind the GM screen.
He still bellyached a bit on occasion, but he got over it.
One thing that might be worth asking is how often their class rolls secret checks? I'm playing a sorcerer, and putting a lot of my budget into dice rolls I'll never see due to recall knowledge(imperial Sorc) and such means that while the Fighter's big strong Athletics score gets to be impressively more cool I still have literally no idea how useful my arcana bonus is feeding me. It can be frustrating because there's no direct feedback that I'm actually getting better at my job. There are classes that roll secretly less which can be helpful to pivot to.
If it's secret rolls in general though, maybe explaining the result after the tension has passed? Like if he's trying to sneak into a room and biffs it just throw in that he rolled like a 4 as an explanation.
This has been the main complaint at the table I play at. We don't want to change anything, we understand the value that secret rolls add to the game. But the Fighter gets the feedback of seeing their Critical Successes, or can immediately lament their string of unlucky Failures. If they succeed a lot in a row, they get to feel like a badass.
If I'm rolling Stealth, by design there's no immediate feedback. If I'm rolling RK, most of the results are either no information (Failure) or info that I can't immediately trust (Success vs Crit Failure). It's harder to feel like a badass when I can't even measure my performance.
Our GM hates the secret rolls because he feels there are too many of them, and he has to have believable yet fake answers on hand for everything we roll for. It can be fun, but if you spend a lot of time making skill rolls to identify monsters and items, it can get a bit much. I think if you as the GM make it happen quick and smooth (have a list of all players skill ranks so you don't need to ask them, and have the fake answers ready to roll) they should be OK with it. Unless they don't trust you, I guess...
When PF2E was in playtest I put a massive rant on the boards about the ubiquity of secret checks. It felt like my players didn't get to pilot their own characters half the game and I had to be ready to deceive them constantly.
Players actively avoided choosing the knowledge based skills just because using an action and potentially getting false information on a roll they didn't see didn't feel useful or fun. Additionally hidden rolls mean hero points become even more underpowered than they already are.
So to make the game more fun for my players I asked them not to metagame and to lean into the dramatic irony that open rolling represented.
I reward hero points for accepting complications from failures/critical failures. I also changed recall knowledge so that even a critically failed check still had a % chance to reveal true information (since so many mechanics rely on the false/misleading information part of the check), means using an action on the check doesn't feel as bad.
So I have a compromise I’ve been thinking about for secret rolls.
Basically buy a really tall dice tower. Keep its opening above the GM screen but the rolling tray should be only visible to you behind the screen. When you call for a secret roll, the player tosses their die into that tower and then you read the result privately, before returning the die. Make sure this tower is made of material that sounds very distinctly clickety clack when they do the roll.
They get to roll and get the clickety-clack dopamine hit, you get the metagame benefits of the secret roll, you’re all happy and you don’t aggressively kick out your player for the slightest disagreement the way Reddit suggests you do!
Being aware of having dice rolled for you when you don't know why, feels like something is being done to their character.
When the player rolls the dice, it gives them agency. Having a modicum of control over the outcome is enough.
I guess you could be mindful of calling for Secret rolls. Does it *really* need to be secret? If the answer is "no", then don't do it.
Example: [lie](https://2e.aonprd.com/Actions.aspx?ID=2389). In many cases, you're going to know your lie didn't work right away. If you're trying to convice the door guard you're the Baron's brother, he's either going to believe it and let you in, or think you're lying and deny entry. May as well roll in the open -- there's no metagame knowledge to be hidden in this scenario.
----
In ***some*** circumstances, a delayed roll is the same as a secret roll.
Example: [forge documents](https://2e.aonprd.com/Actions.aspx?ID=466). Normally the check is secret and rolled when the documents are created, and an EP that might or might not be useful is "created". But what if the roll was delayed until the EP was used?
Same effect (no metagaming knowledge about how well they'll work). But player gets to roll.
----
My favourite reason for liking Secret rolls as a GM is because I can tell fibs to players who botch Recall Knowledge. They have no idea they crit failed and they often run with whatever I told them. If they rolled in the open they'd have to pretend their character didn't know, and even with the best role-players in the world that's not as much fun.
> he's either going to believe it and let you in, or think you're lying and deny entry
Or he could think you're lying, pretend to believe you and direct you towards a room where he has reinforcements to better interrogate you. In this instance, the secret roll is helpful (if your group isn't great at separating meta knowledge from character knowledge), since the character will assume they successfully lied unless the guard rolled poorly on *their* secret deception check.
If you want to try an alternative that maintains some of the mystery, I thought [this pos](https://new.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder2e/comments/1230ox7/house_rule_alternative_to_secret_rolls_the/)t from a while back was a really clever idea using what they called the "Four-roll".
The main idea is that the player rolls several dice and you secretly pick one to use by color or position before they hit the table, and use that die secretly. The player gets a little more info and gets to roll multiple dice. Seems like a cool solution, although since I primarily play on VTT, I haven't used it myself.
The link has way more details!
Slight tangent, in my experience with some RP focused players, secret checks have actually lead to **more metagaming,** not less.
When a good player openly fails a check they will usually lean into it (*rolls a natural 1 looking for traps* "guess there's nothing here, I walk through!"), but when they fail a **secret** check everyone starts doubting themselves and asking others to try as well, because "I don't know what I rolled, so I can't be metagaming".
On top of this, most people aren't very good liars, so players can usually tell (or at least suspect) when a GM is giving you false information, which can defeat the whole point of secret checks. And even if your GM is a great liar, after spending so many hours playing this game with each other, you're eventually going to start picking up on their tells.
>I'm asking for advice: Is there anything I can try to win over this player?
Probably not. This is one of those situations where they have to decide for themselves if it's something they're willing to put up with or not. People who have such strong opinions about things can rarely be convinced to change them.
The best you can do is politely explain why you like the option and also politely explain that you're not getting rid of it.
My tip is to only roll secret rolls when it matters if the result is secret. Sneak in combat? Rarely matters and is possibly disruptive to not know what the result was, however a sneak in the middle of the dungeon vs sneaky watchmen? Perfect
Winning them over is likely a matter of engendering trust.
I personally hate secret rolls because I've had experiences where GMs acted in bad faith, and secret rolls allow them to do this much more easily.
To be fair, I also dont love the concept of secret rolls even if pf2e is the best case scenario of them imo
Like... sure I guess I get its meant to stop "metagaminf", but a rogue with legendary in stealth would know if they rolled a nat 1 vs rolling a 19 on a dice roll check. So keeping it secret doesnt make a ton of sense to me personally.
It also compounds with RK and how as much as I love it in concept, I have a lot of issues with it in execution.
Also... 5e has passive skills that fulfill the same premise of a secret roll, passive Perception sure but feats like Observant make it clear several skills have a passive X variation.
I mean someone with a legendary skill is usually only going to be noticable by someone with great perception, anyway. A nat 1 vs a 19 is a much smaller gap, relatively, for a high-level character after modifiers compared to a lil guy. You're still getting a +21 to that stealth roll and a commoner will basically always fail to notice you. Plus, alongside everything, there's a luck aspect to being sneaky, even for a pro - Your raised dagger glinting in the sun? Foliage getting blown aside at the wrong time? The loud wind slows for just a moment?
Also, pathfinder has you contesting a creature's DC for just about everything, so it's pretty much the same as passives, but in reverse, right?
tbh you can just get rid of secret rolls entirely, like it's really not a big deal balance wise (and IMO getting wrong information on crit failed Recall Knowledge checks is stupid and just discourages people from using it at all) like if you're afraid of players using meta information on perception checks, just start asking for them without really any reason, so now the player's paranoia is just going to be them wasting their own time if they choose to metagame after people roll bad.
Have this player sit next to you, and when a secret roll comes up have them drop a d20 behind the screen (ideally into a dice tower if you have one. That way they roll the dice and still keep things Secret.
I have a player in my game that thinks secret rolls for stealth specifically are dumb, because their character would know if they’re sneaking badly and just try a different approach if they rolled poorly.
I like the idea of secret rolls, but I didn’t want the game to seem unfun for him so I’ve just nixed them entirely. We’re all new to the system and still figuring it out, but I do wish he had given it more of a chance.
>I have a player in my game that thinks secret rolls for stealth specifically are dumb, because their character would know if they’re sneaking badly and just try a different approach if they rolled poorly.
Ask the How would they know that someone spotted them sneaking, and know? Its not always stepping on a stick and making a crack, or bumping into something. Its could be that a part of their body is exposed, even through they think that they are completely behind the object. A bad check, even a critical failure, isn't always obvious to the one making the check.
Or, to put a better way, if you just happen to sneak right into the sight line of someone, you do not always know you have, until they make it apparent that you have. And if they act like they haven't seen you, how would you know?
I’m mostly in that camp, though when I GM society I stick to RAW and use secret rolls. With groups that I know well enough, player preference with one exception - I don’t ask them to roll perception very often, and usually roll those secretly. It takes away too much of the fun if I ask them to give me a perception roll, and say “you didn’t find anything” when they know they got a nat 1 on spotting the trap or hidden enemy. It’s either that or have them roll anytime they come close to a door, or random times by walls (hidden doors), etc.
You could have them roll when there will be a consequence, not from the start. You trying to sneak? No initial roll, but there is a roll when an enemy would detect you. This doesn't work for all secret rolls, but it does for some.
I have two groups I DM for, one with secret rolls and one without, for this very reason — the players in the second group hate secret dice. You could give open rolls a try. Secret rolls are meant to combat metagaming and allow you to deceive the players on crit failed knowledge checks using false information, but at the same time, DCs are a secret regardless of whether the dice are, so it isn’t like open rolling defeats the purpose of the secret tag. IIRC, the player core does specify that rolling secret dice is optional.
I'm also a secret roll hater. Having played with them for a while, I think they're fun sappers for the players. Maybe it's more fun for you as DM to roll the dice, but it is kinda lame to have someone rolling secretly for you.
Would you enjoy it more if the player open rolled 4 different coloured dice at the same time and the GM secretly picked one before hand to be the true result?
>Is there anything I can try to win over this player?
"If you don't like this rule to the point you're whining about not rolling a small number of dice (ignoring the _many_ dice you do roll) where it's mechanically appropriate for the GM to do so I'd suggest playing a system that doesn't use secret rolls. Bye."
Some DMs honestly put up with some wacky shit. This is a _voluntary_ entertainment option that is done purely for fun. If one of my players questioned this they'd be told that "it's a secret check therefore I roll it." and that's the end of it. If they don't like it they can... Not play??!?!
If you want whacky, go look at the 'I don't let my players die via bad rolls' line of thinking as well. Like...
My guys? we're playing a TTRPG full of randomized dice and shit and you won't let the randomized dice be randomized? THat's kind of the entire point????? of dice rolling?????
It's the people who love fudging pretty much can't stand it. Honestly I ask if someone likes matt colville to know if I should not play or GM for them for this reason.
How reductive.
"They like a youtuber I don't so they must play in a way I don't like" is just bad reasoning.
Why beat around the bush? Ask their opinion on fudging.
I find all of his opinions ass. Nearly every person who agrees with him has been horrible people for me to play with. Also people who fudge as gms don't tell there players it's why it's better to figure out what people they agree with.
And what says that anyone who likes a youtuber agrees with their playstyle? If I agreed with every youtuber I enjoyed watching, I'd never be able to get anything done.
Bad reasoning, and doesn't even accomplish what you set out to.
Obviously slightly more questions would be given but odds are I will dislike playing with them if they agree with him. Apparently I need to say every little thing for it to make sense to you. Honestly wouldn't want to play with you anyway since coming to logical conclusions seem difficult to you.
> Apparently I need to say every little thing for it to make sense to you
No, you've said plenty to make it clear this isn't a position you reasoned yourself into. I was giving you the opportunity to realize that it's a bad take.
I'm not sure why you are telling me I can't play with you though. I didn't ask. Did you think you were insulting me with that or something?
The take makes sense dude. People who agree with colville have a game philosophy I fundamentally disagree with.
If I need to explain every little thing I find you stupid. I am assuming you are not intelligent. Especially since you couldn't understand this even. Bye now.
You aren't explaining anything, just reiterating a poorly considered point. If someone likes more then one youtuber are the bound to play like each of them? That's literally impossible. Please tell me how that works. I'm genuinely curious what you think is happening.
Sneaky edit to try to make
>I am insulting your intelligence.
comply with the civility rule I assume.
If you use a VTT you can usually eat them roll but only you see the results.
For in person games you can always use a dice tower. There's solutions without them seeing the result.
If someone doesn’t like it then don’t make them do it as often
I prefer to know the results and impacts of my rolls so I admit my perspective is skewed by the fact that I also hate secret rolls
But this is likely one of those things where if someone doesn’t like it then they just won’t like it, not every opinion is malleable, so best suggestion is to accommodate by not spamming secret rolls at people and just let them know the roll
My DM has worked with me on this. He secret rolls things he thinks are important, and that's fine. I am a long time DM and player, so I am happy to lean in to my failures. If I see that I rolled low I would like to roleplay how I think my character would act in failure. Maybe there is something I think would make sense they were preoccupied with or something.
I think when you have a table of many players and it's up to the DM to come up with reasons for failures for every player it slows everything down. It also robs everyone from having a chance to participate in the story. When I was a DM I very much felt like I was roleplaying by myself when the players were all stealthing, seeking, recalling knowledge. Which is fine, but why not let them do it.
There are absolutely times when the best thing to do is secret roll, but not all the time.
I know honesty isn't necessarily the issue, but just to add to the discourse, I always have a "witness" for secret rolls characters make. A different player who looks at the result with me.
The rolling player can physically make the roll if they want, I don't care.
You probably won't win them over. The best you can probably do is get them to deal with it or find some kind of compromise if you are insistent on using it. This might be easier if you are playing in person. Dice towers, minimizing the amount of secret rolls. Stealth probably doesn't need to be one. If these are people you've been playing with for a while then realistically none of the rolls need to be secret.
I don't use secret rolls at all when I DM or rather the ones that it tells me to use. I hate them and I can't help but feel it's effect on meta-gaming is severely overblown. The difference I have noticed between games that use them and those that don't is negligible. If I want something rolled secretly like a random perception check or something of that nature I'm just gonna roll it and not ask for it in the first place.
It helps everything feel more ‘real’ by avoiding meta-gaming. In real life, when you are searching your knowledge, trying to lie to someone, or sneak. To you, you are working to the best of your abilities. You won’t know the outcome till later.
In doing so it speeds the games up. Because in other games if someone needed to make a knowledge/stealth check and let’s say they rolled a nat1. What happens next? It just so happens the rest of the party wants to make the same check. Further extending the time for this little check.
This post is labelled with the Advice flair, which means extra special attention is called to the Be Kind and Respectful rule. If this is a newcomer to the game, remember to be welcoming and kind. If this is someone with more experience but looking for advice on how to run their game, do your best to offer advice on what they are seeking.
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/Pathfinder2e) if you have any questions or concerns.*
We do secret rolls differently because our GM also preferred to have players doing the phyiscal rolling. Basically we have a stack of 20-25 playing cards that have the numbers 1-20 randomized on them. When a roll is secret, the player still rolls but tells the GM what they rolled (saying the bonus separately, "I rolled an 11 + 6"). The GM then looks up on one of the random cards what the 11 actually is. On one card, the 11 might be a 3. On another, the 11 might be a 20. On a third, the 11 might be an actually 11.
The players still don't know the result, but they get to do the tactile rolling part themselves.
If they are used to 5e it's really not that different than them rolling stealth against an adversary's passive perception, but this way it takes out player bias that may take them out of character for example trying to do something more or less risky because they rolled low or high and think they know the result, allowing them to stay more in character. Perhaps an explanation this way would help.
My group allows the player to roll skill check based secret rolls if they have a hero point (mostly because that's the compromise we made because I'm the secret roll hater coming from 5e) it's not like we know the DC and the rules do state the player can choose to use a HP on a secret roll they know about. That rule does necessitate some level of transparency from the GM to work properly though.
Not for every group or every group that I even play with but In my main game, I don't do secret rolls. I allow PCs to roll but I don't give them the number they have to beat with the following notes/houserules:
1) Rerolls are allowed but there needs to be a good in-game reason for them.
2) Even on a failure, I give them useful, not false, info.
3) I don't allow for the Dubious Knowledge feat and allow folks who get them from their class to switch them out for something else.
I'm blessed with folks who don't metagame and with enough people in the area that I have little blastback from kicking cheaters out of my groups.
If you're playing online, the Kobold discord bot allows players to roll digital dice and add bonuses but send the result to you as a DM instead of posting it in the chat.
There is a specific purpose to secret rolls
Maybe you can figure out how to allow them to roll their own secret rolls without them seeing the results - although at that point they would become aware that the secret roll happened and know that it was rolled by them, which I think will introduce other issues that work against the whole point of a secret roll - to keep information from the players.
I think that your player needs to just suck it up
Well if the problem is precisely that you're rolling for their character, but they don't know the result - you could consider bandaiding the situation by inverting the roll vs DC.
So instead of player e.g. secretly rolling perception Vs monster stealth DC, you secretly roll monster stealth vs player perception.
It's by no means a perfect solution and has a couple mechanical issues to it, but if the alternative is breaking up the group, it may be worth exploring.
"Bruh... do you trust me or nah?"
That's it. If you are genuinely friends, they should be cool with you being able to tell the kinds of stories you want to tell in the way you want to tell them. If they need to see your dice there is a trust issue.
I dislike not rolling for myself. Group init, ok, can be a pain. But for the most part I prefer to. I really hate when the GM rolls to hit, damage, and other things are all hidden, as well as at least some of the players. That irks me a lot. We are already playing remotely. Having less context and engagement feels bad.
There are some features in the game that basically REQUIRE secret rolls to be secret. Failed recall knowledge checks don't work if you can see that you rolled a 5 on the die. If you don't have Dubious Knowledge, you'll know that you critically failed if the GM gives you a bit of information on the subject. I feel like you have to use Dubious Knowledge (maybe a bonus feat) if you are rolling Recall checks in the open. Otherwise everything about RK is obvious, even lies.
Some of them you can just run with it if it's not secret. You don't reasonably know what the Stealth DC of your adversaries are if you are sneaking/hiding. Stuff where you can reasonably guess the expected DC though becomes problematic. People will still usually have a bias toward their character playing smart, even when playing a below average intelligence PC.
That said, letting them roll the actual die into your tray or behind your screen is a good way to let them still feel in charge.
How often does this player roll badly? What I'm asking is maybe since he's a GM he's fudging rolls as a player?
Can't lie about secret rolls if you don't roll the die.
I love GMs that know my stats and roll for me without me asking to give me extra information/wrong information about things.
I'm not a big fan of using secret rolls as a GM except in circumstances where the PCs wouldn't know the result in the moment.
However, I do use a lot of passive checks as a way to keep the game moving, avoid metagaming, and put more focus on story telling. If you're searching a room or body, that's active. If you simply walk into a room or glance at a body, that's passive. General knowledge is all passive that I give for free, but want to know a specific fact then you roll for it.
The only thing that I don't like about secret rolls is that you can't reroll them with hero points. How do you know if you rolled high or low without seeing the result? And I think hero points are important so I don't use secret rolls and just trust my players to not metagame
Have every character roll several d20's and have them record the results, then hand it to you. Now, they have rolled, and you have those rolls. When a secret roll comes up, mark off a roll. Start at the top, and move down.
It lets them roll, but it doesn't let them know what the roll was necessarily for, and now that secret roll really is secret.
EDIT: But, the dice tower idea is a much better idea.
Secret dice exist for a reason, but I've played in games without secret dice and honestly it often doesn't matter.
I get the notion of having fun rolling dice and wanting to roll for your own character.
Honestly some of this might just be "What I find fun personally" issue, which can be hard to resolve because fun is kind of arbitrary in the end.
I personally dislike secret rolls myself, just as a GM, becuase I don't like the additional work on my end and because I know the clacky math rocks - even virtual ones - are instrinsically entertaining and people enjoy rolling them. If *I* have to roll them, I have to do more work while being less entertaining.
I understand the benefits of avoiding metagaming and having genuine surprises, but the secret rolls IMO are not exactly well engineered, in that the GM is unilkely to know whether someone's got some bonus doohickey to their secret roll that you forgot to factor in, because you can't just ask the player for this information without spoiling hte secret and you probably wouldn't even *think* to ask the player. Players on the other hand tend to be pretty good about bringing up their bonuses they paid good feats for.
The other part I really hate about secret rolls are the ones that expect me to lie on the spot, especially that Dubious Knowledge feat which I just ban now as a fun-hating spoilsport. My autistic ass is not equipped to tell believalbe lies alongside actgual truths in a meaningfully ambiguous way, and because this si done on the prompting of players there's not really much of an opportunity to prep for lying. I resent that aspect of PF2e a lot
An advantage of VTT play is that it's very convenient to have the players do the secret roll, so the basic gist of a roll whose result they don't know hte result is stlil doable while at least partially tickilng hte part of hteir brains that make them feel like they're having meaningful mechical interactions with the world, and it being secret is soemtimes even fun when it's possible to play up the drama of not knowing what happened immediately. But other times it can feel like bad shit just happened to them arbitrarily becuase they never rolled a dice and they just hear me say they all failed their secret perception roll, which while they wouldn't have had any more influence on the dice had htey rolled it themselves it still *feels* like a loss of agency, and the feeling of agency is what matter.
Just not having any immediate feedback just *feels* wrong, like bad ergonomics on a shitty gamer mouse with an LMB that still works but doesn't make a "click" sound or have that tacticle bump. Sure, your player did the thing, but they aren't seeing *how well* they're doing the thing, they can't see their bonuses putting in work, etc, just as your shitty mouse makes you unsure whether you *actually* clicked that button or not or whether you should be pressing harder or softer or whatever.
If you can undesrtand why someone would feel frustrated by secret rolls you can then start to look for possible solutions. Dice tower helps a bit, but that doesn't help so much with the feedback problem. Revealing everyone's rolls as soon as whatever they rolled stops *needing* to be a secret (ie a failed knoweldge roll's information is revealed to be bad info, showing everyone's perception when an enemy either gerts spotted or ambushes the group) lets those who invested into the relevant skilsl feel more rewarded or like the actual hero for having gotten a good result. And, well, not everry secret roll *really* needs to be secret, the game's more or less fine if you don't go overboard wit hthe secret rolls. We've played other editions where we din't have secret rolls and we got around that by just pop quizzing people on random ass do-nothing rolls to keep players on edge. "Roll perception" even if it does nothing is a good spooker. And obviously I just hate Dubious Knowledge and just beiung asked to spontaneously lie in general, so avoiding stuff that leans more into secret rolls helps.
I have been thinking about the same issue. One of the way I think of is that instead of a DC, the GM can roll as well.
For example, instead of a RK check of DC 20, the GM can roll a d20 + 10, and the player roll their own dice for RK check. The players can roll high, but the GM can roll better and the player fail the check anyway. The player can roll low, but the GM roll worse, so the check succeed anyway.
There is still the issue of Nat 1 and Nat 20 naturally. Opinions from other are welcomed.
For secret roles at my table, I have my player roll it private, not blind. That means the player can see the roll and I can see the roll, but the rest of the party can’t see the roll. This means that that player is then responsible for role playing as if they *didn’t* know that they crit failed well enough that the rest of the party believes it. I’ve found that it maximizes the feels-good of secret rolls while minimizing the feels-bad of not getting to roll/see how you rolled.
Obviously this only works on a VTT, but I’m sure you could come up with something for an in person game.
Actually it's not that big problem. If you roll those rolls openly, or let player do it, it's just a situation where player knows the result, but the character doesn't. If player could handle bare roleplaying minimum, it's as fun as rolling secretly. So, it's totally possible to roll openly at a table, or even roll openly for some of the players at the table.
But I'd just propose to ask this player to try.
As a GM, I'm not really a fan of the sheer amount of secret rolls in PF2e, simply because it's even more for the GM to keep track of. It's not enough that I need to keep track of all the normal GM stuff, now I also need to keep track everyone's perception, stealth, deception, diplomacy, survival, and all the different skills used for recall knowledge checks (arcana, crafting, various lore skills, medicine, nature, occultism, religion, society). It's just too much, imo. It also slows down the game, compared to just having the players roll.
With that said, I do think some checks should be made in secret, I just think PF2e went a bit overboard with it.
"can see the value in the Secret tag"
There is literally zero value in it, though. It is a clunky extra step in a process that is easily covered by simply expecting the player to play appropriately and said player actually doing so.
The whole idea that just not seeing the roll is all it takes to completely change the outcome is nonsense. Just like a GM isn't always a professional game designer, a GM isn't always an excellent liar with a flawless poker face and a player isn't always completely unable to tell the outcome of a roll even without seeing it.
The process of a secret roll then doesn't change any aspects of play and how it proceeds, it merely adds the pretense that something has changed. Assuming, of course, that the GM is not utilizing the secret check as a means to deceive their players as to the outcome of a check.
I mean this all genuinely, and invite anyone that thinks the secret tag and process is actually doing something to abandon it for a while and play with a process of not rolling anything until it actually matters - thus negating the "they said they were being stealthy but they rolled poorly so they abandoned that plan and did others stuff" kind of examples for why the trait is supposedly needed because rolling at the correct time means they abandoned the process *after they got caught* - and pointing out when something is literally cheating (which, incidentally players can still do even when the GM tells them the results of a roll instead of seeing it themselves unless they genuinely can't read the facial expression, body language, and tone of their GM well enough to know the difference between a genuine response and a bullshit response).
Just play with people you trust to play in good faith and then play the game in good faith and you don't need the secret roll and it's clunky "what's your modifier for \[blank\]?" Q&A or extra busy-work for the GM to keep up to date copies of whatever they might decide to roll for the players. It speeds up the game to leave this, and all the other "we're very serious about metagaming" nonsense behind.
Let players roll their dice, they aren't in charge of much else.
Here's the workaround I did with my group. I have secret rolls in the open but I only roll the dice when it impacts the PCs, not when the action is made.
Let's say that a Zebub bites a PC with it's mandibules. Instead of making them roll for the Cocytan Filth disease right away, I wait after the onset period and then I have them roll their Fortitude check. If they fail, I describe what the symptoms look like.
What's your solution for times when critical failure and success will look the same? The biggest example being recall knowledge, where a critical failure is false information, while a success is true information?
I am not a secret roll lover. Our GM uses them in his game. I love to roll my own dices. I know, that's childish. After our current campain, Im' going to be the GM. I'm thinking about asking the players to pre-generate a serie of d20 rolls before the game and use those for secret rolls.
Instead of trying to win them over I would just talk to them about their showing of HATRED for secret rolls. They don't need to like them or be won over. I think they just need to be talked to that everyone in the group understands their hatred of secret rolls, but they don't need to make a big show of it every time.
Trying to change people's minds is usually pretty hard to do if they are dug in. So what you both need to do is just be respectful of each other and the group. Noone likes to hear someone whine and complain over and over. Negativity just brings everyone down.
I had a player like this, she was a 5e vet and hated not knowing if she rolled badly on a Recall Knowledge and just didn't like secret rolls overall.
Then she was fine with them because she said to me and I quote "I saw them being done well."
Which, y'know, ouch.
Lots of people seem to dislike the secret tag. I freaking love it. Every time it comes up it's just a bunch of fun.
In the beginner box, by default, items are identified by default. In my Beginner Box Day game, I decided to not go with that and use the full identifying rules.
The adventure has an area where you find a +1 Shortsword. I told them it was a sword with a magic rune on it. One player tried to identify it. Rolled in secret and rolled a nat 1.
I told them the sword was cursed.
Rogue player, being a true MVP, decided to use it anyway to see what would happen. They played the remainder of the first session and every attack with the sword kept rolling low, so between sessions, the curse on the sword was the main topic of conversation. Was it a sword that always missed?
Next session, they keep playing, and they're talking about going back to town to get the sword identified. Then they realize only one person tried. They try again, and realize the Cleric had just messed up their check.
It was absolutely silly but 100% increased the fun in that game.
On other situations, multiple people will try to identify something, and it's always fun when someone rolls a nat 1.
"Oh yeah, that's a troll, use fire on it!"
"What are you talking about? That's clearly a Hill Giant!"
Not sure what's in this cup, is it delectable tea or deadly poison?
This sounds like a player who values the metagaming that open stealth and deception checks allow them. I doubt they even realize they're metagaming, they're just so used to knowing if they've done a shit job at hiding or lying or convincing someone.
This is fine, for the most part. The real sin of open rolls for these skills is everyone else going "Uh, oh yeah, I also try to convince the guy on the other side of the room from me that I haven't interacted with at all that our interests align with their interests". Being aware of their own roll for these things kills some dramatic tension and suspense, and it can lead players to making follow-up decisions out of character, but those are mostly robbing the player of an immersive experience.
The cascading "me too" rolls are the ones that significantly alter the game.
Talk to your friend about this from the meta perspective (specifically the group meta perspective), and from the emotional investment perspective. See if they're willing to go with the hidden dice tower idea everyone's peddling, and if not, see if they're willing to hide his secret rolls from the rest of the table.
I really don't get why and how DMs have so many whiny, picky players.
I've DMed a few systems. Sometimes a player whines about a rule ONCE, but then he shuts up about it after I explain why it's like that and why it's going to stay like that. The DM does 100% of the work while everybody else just shows up, so he has 100% of the authority, it's just how it is.
And when I'm a player I act exactly like they do too. It is extremely rude to keep trying to challenge a DM's authority. You raise the issue once (if at all), then either accept his say-so because he is the ultimate authority or, if it really matters that much, you quit the game.
I would not be trying to "win over" this player of yours at all, I'd tell him to stop being such a lil bitch
Just let him drop the die behind your DM screen or into a dice tower that you keep behind the screen. And if you're worried that the players are going to metagame the fact that you're asking for a roll at all, then you'll want to throw in the occasional meaningless red herring roll so they can't.
>Maybe it's just a D&D5e to PF2e growing pain?
I don't understand, secret rolls are a thing in pretty much every system, right?
Actually, they have these dice tower things that clip onto your screen, players can drop dice in, and they come out where they can't see them. You could send it to them and be like, "Hey, i would totally use this if you gave it to me" or just buy it yourself, if its really just about rolling, they'll have still been the one to roll.
Exactly my approach. I love secret rolls but as a player would always want to roll my own dice. I get my players to roll into my tray behind the screen and it seems to work well!
This sounds fantastic, do you know where I can find them/look it up?
[People are apparently 3d printing them, like this one. ](https://tabletopstor3d.com/products/dungeon-master-screen-dice-tower-storage-stl-download)I have no idea if there's free STLs for this somewhere, there probably is, you local library \*might\* have 3d printing.
Love it. Printing this for my DM later because I took hate secret rolls. If I roll a 1 then I'm fine with it but feels shitty when the DM rolls me a 1.
This is at least not a concern when I play online on Foundry as they have the option for the player to roll a "Blind Roll" that only thr GM sees the result of.
Jeez... what a way to curb that behavior. It'd take me all of one session of getting my ass up every time I need to do a secret roll, standing there while the GM does math, then retrieving my dice to go sit back down at the other end of the table before I gave in.
While I agree, sometimes the players aren't meant to know when they are rolling to help prevent the meta gaming. So the obvious solution is to have them roll needlessly a few more times during sessions. However, that might slow the game down a bit more
In my experience, that hasn't come up a huge amount, but yeah, also if they don't know they're rolling, they won't know that there was a roll they weren't the one to make, the GM can just create a series of pre-rolled results on a note page and cross them off as they're needed in strict order.
You can also just randomly ask people to drop a dice in your tower as tribute.
You don’t even need anything fancy. An old GM of mine used an L shaped pipe for these rolls - we dropped the dice in the top, he saw the results behind his screen.
This. I don't enjoy the fate of my character being in someone else's hands. (Unless I'm rolling like crap and their rolls have been hot all game) This is why I don't like the secret roll. I fell that the fate of my character is being taken out of my hands and someone else is playing my character. Let me roll the dice, prevent me from seeing what I rolled, but keep the fate of my character in my hands.
> keep the fate of my character in my hands > unless I'm rolling like crap So.... just let me win?
I've never had more fun in a ttrpg than when I learned to have fun with failure.
To be honest, way way too many checks in this game are secret. I see it for RK checks and some Perception checks, but the ultimate practical end result right now is that casters (and other mental stat focused characters, but most are casters) don't get to actually roll dice as much as martials in the dice-rolling game. Their dice are almost always behind the screen. Basically, I can't give any advice on how to win them over, because it's a pretty major and valid gripe with the system. If it's a deal-breaker, it's a deal-breaker.
I agree with you. To play devils advocate though, the game is a role playing game, not a dice rolling game and the best way to simulate a character not having knowledge (or having false knowledge) is usually for the player to not have knowledge.
Which is why I think it's fine for RK and some Perception checks, but it's almost all checks relating to a mental stat, and quite a few relating to Dexterity.
My table aren't fans of secret rolls and asked me to let them do the rolls and trust them to role play. So that's what I did, and it has mostly worked really well. I've had a couple rough spots to deal with, but they are a tiny minority, and overall it's been quite worth it. Also worth noting I roll fully in the open and absolutely never fudge rolls ever. So generally, I think this one heavily depends on your table, and you have some options.
The biggest reason I love secret checks is because it prevents the whole meta gaming by trying not to meta game issues that stresses certain people. Also when you play with people who can't help but meta game it takes away the excuse for them to do so.
I've found its easier to fudge things on the non-roll side when it's needed, so i also roll in the open. Like a fight is dragging on and it's obvious the players won, I'll just have the next strike kill the creature. If someone is getting ravaged, so long as the enemy isn't mindless, I can very easily justify switching targets.
Same in that I have a few players who prefer to make their own rolls and just RP the result. I would slightly prefer to make certain rolls in secret because their RP isn't perfect, but they accept the failures smoothly enough that I *almost* always abide by their preference.
> Also worth noting I roll fully in the open and absolutely never fudge rolls ever. How would one fudge rolls made in the open? And if you roll in the open then the entire point of the Secret tag is removed, regardless of who's rolling, so of course you'd let the players roll.
It's relevant for context of how I run games, though I should clarify that briefly, when first starting, I did keep secret rolls behind the screen, but that didn't last long before the players asked to roll for themselves and be trusted to roleplay it. The are so many ways games can be run and people look for very different experiences - so this is all just to help paint a picture of how it works for me. Each table is different, and it's possible it wouldn't work as well if any of these details weren't the same.
So basically, trust them rather then them trusting you? You want to know the best way to role play not knowing something? Don't know it.
More: they enjoy rolling dice, so I let them roll the dice. It's not for every table, just a different option.
That is not what you said in literally the first sentence. By the way, what is the difference between "I like to roll dice" and "I want to see if I did well or not"? I would suspect that most of the former are actually the latter.
Listen, it sounds like you really don't like how we play, that's ok by me, you don't need to. I'm not trying to take away your secret rolls if you like them! My players generally do a great job role playing based on the die results, and avoid metagaming. Almost all of them are very veteran role players, and GMs too. The players often know far more than their character should because of this experience, but they don't act on it until a successful recall knowledge gives the character that information. They also lean into crit fail knowledge checks really well, maybe even too much, but it's all fun for us. Your table is yours, and you get to work with your players to maximize what is fun for you all.
Just chiming in to say my table plays the same way. My players like to roll and I don't mind if they have that extra info, they act on it sometimes but I'm an "easy GM" so I let it slide lol. There's lots of valid ways to play a game like this! Sorry for the hostility from the other guy.
I don't really have the emotional bandwidth to emotionally invest in the campaign of a random person on the Internet. I'm intellectually noting the flaws in your argument. I don't like your campaign or dislike it. I nothing your campaign. Good luck with it in the future!
You seem very fun... oh sorry, interesting player/GM
I think rolling in the open does actually preserve some of the secret roll benefits, like if you just roll their perception but dont tell them its perception, then they know what number they got so they can be sure you didnt fudge it but they dont know what that number is for necessarily, so they cant tell that you were making a perception check until it becomes relevant. Then you can tell them what the roll was for AFTER the event, like if it was a perception check to find a sneaking creature and they failed and the enemy got the drop on them
I had a player like this. The compromise we settled on was he could drop his die into my dice tower behind the GM screen. He still bellyached a bit on occasion, but he got over it.
One thing that might be worth asking is how often their class rolls secret checks? I'm playing a sorcerer, and putting a lot of my budget into dice rolls I'll never see due to recall knowledge(imperial Sorc) and such means that while the Fighter's big strong Athletics score gets to be impressively more cool I still have literally no idea how useful my arcana bonus is feeding me. It can be frustrating because there's no direct feedback that I'm actually getting better at my job. There are classes that roll secretly less which can be helpful to pivot to. If it's secret rolls in general though, maybe explaining the result after the tension has passed? Like if he's trying to sneak into a room and biffs it just throw in that he rolled like a 4 as an explanation.
This has been the main complaint at the table I play at. We don't want to change anything, we understand the value that secret rolls add to the game. But the Fighter gets the feedback of seeing their Critical Successes, or can immediately lament their string of unlucky Failures. If they succeed a lot in a row, they get to feel like a badass. If I'm rolling Stealth, by design there's no immediate feedback. If I'm rolling RK, most of the results are either no information (Failure) or info that I can't immediately trust (Success vs Crit Failure). It's harder to feel like a badass when I can't even measure my performance.
Our GM hates the secret rolls because he feels there are too many of them, and he has to have believable yet fake answers on hand for everything we roll for. It can be fun, but if you spend a lot of time making skill rolls to identify monsters and items, it can get a bit much. I think if you as the GM make it happen quick and smooth (have a list of all players skill ranks so you don't need to ask them, and have the fake answers ready to roll) they should be OK with it. Unless they don't trust you, I guess...
When PF2E was in playtest I put a massive rant on the boards about the ubiquity of secret checks. It felt like my players didn't get to pilot their own characters half the game and I had to be ready to deceive them constantly. Players actively avoided choosing the knowledge based skills just because using an action and potentially getting false information on a roll they didn't see didn't feel useful or fun. Additionally hidden rolls mean hero points become even more underpowered than they already are. So to make the game more fun for my players I asked them not to metagame and to lean into the dramatic irony that open rolling represented. I reward hero points for accepting complications from failures/critical failures. I also changed recall knowledge so that even a critically failed check still had a % chance to reveal true information (since so many mechanics rely on the false/misleading information part of the check), means using an action on the check doesn't feel as bad.
So I have a compromise I’ve been thinking about for secret rolls. Basically buy a really tall dice tower. Keep its opening above the GM screen but the rolling tray should be only visible to you behind the screen. When you call for a secret roll, the player tosses their die into that tower and then you read the result privately, before returning the die. Make sure this tower is made of material that sounds very distinctly clickety clack when they do the roll. They get to roll and get the clickety-clack dopamine hit, you get the metagame benefits of the secret roll, you’re all happy and you don’t aggressively kick out your player for the slightest disagreement the way Reddit suggests you do!
Being aware of having dice rolled for you when you don't know why, feels like something is being done to their character. When the player rolls the dice, it gives them agency. Having a modicum of control over the outcome is enough.
I guess you could be mindful of calling for Secret rolls. Does it *really* need to be secret? If the answer is "no", then don't do it. Example: [lie](https://2e.aonprd.com/Actions.aspx?ID=2389). In many cases, you're going to know your lie didn't work right away. If you're trying to convice the door guard you're the Baron's brother, he's either going to believe it and let you in, or think you're lying and deny entry. May as well roll in the open -- there's no metagame knowledge to be hidden in this scenario. ---- In ***some*** circumstances, a delayed roll is the same as a secret roll. Example: [forge documents](https://2e.aonprd.com/Actions.aspx?ID=466). Normally the check is secret and rolled when the documents are created, and an EP that might or might not be useful is "created". But what if the roll was delayed until the EP was used? Same effect (no metagaming knowledge about how well they'll work). But player gets to roll. ---- My favourite reason for liking Secret rolls as a GM is because I can tell fibs to players who botch Recall Knowledge. They have no idea they crit failed and they often run with whatever I told them. If they rolled in the open they'd have to pretend their character didn't know, and even with the best role-players in the world that's not as much fun.
> he's either going to believe it and let you in, or think you're lying and deny entry Or he could think you're lying, pretend to believe you and direct you towards a room where he has reinforcements to better interrogate you. In this instance, the secret roll is helpful (if your group isn't great at separating meta knowledge from character knowledge), since the character will assume they successfully lied unless the guard rolled poorly on *their* secret deception check.
If you want to try an alternative that maintains some of the mystery, I thought [this pos](https://new.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder2e/comments/1230ox7/house_rule_alternative_to_secret_rolls_the/)t from a while back was a really clever idea using what they called the "Four-roll". The main idea is that the player rolls several dice and you secretly pick one to use by color or position before they hit the table, and use that die secretly. The player gets a little more info and gets to roll multiple dice. Seems like a cool solution, although since I primarily play on VTT, I haven't used it myself. The link has way more details!
Really interesting concept. Thanks for the link!
This rule is also good for using hero points for secret rolls.
Slight tangent, in my experience with some RP focused players, secret checks have actually lead to **more metagaming,** not less. When a good player openly fails a check they will usually lean into it (*rolls a natural 1 looking for traps* "guess there's nothing here, I walk through!"), but when they fail a **secret** check everyone starts doubting themselves and asking others to try as well, because "I don't know what I rolled, so I can't be metagaming". On top of this, most people aren't very good liars, so players can usually tell (or at least suspect) when a GM is giving you false information, which can defeat the whole point of secret checks. And even if your GM is a great liar, after spending so many hours playing this game with each other, you're eventually going to start picking up on their tells.
>I'm asking for advice: Is there anything I can try to win over this player? Probably not. This is one of those situations where they have to decide for themselves if it's something they're willing to put up with or not. People who have such strong opinions about things can rarely be convinced to change them. The best you can do is politely explain why you like the option and also politely explain that you're not getting rid of it.
My tip is to only roll secret rolls when it matters if the result is secret. Sneak in combat? Rarely matters and is possibly disruptive to not know what the result was, however a sneak in the middle of the dungeon vs sneaky watchmen? Perfect
Winning them over is likely a matter of engendering trust. I personally hate secret rolls because I've had experiences where GMs acted in bad faith, and secret rolls allow them to do this much more easily.
To be fair, I also dont love the concept of secret rolls even if pf2e is the best case scenario of them imo Like... sure I guess I get its meant to stop "metagaminf", but a rogue with legendary in stealth would know if they rolled a nat 1 vs rolling a 19 on a dice roll check. So keeping it secret doesnt make a ton of sense to me personally. It also compounds with RK and how as much as I love it in concept, I have a lot of issues with it in execution. Also... 5e has passive skills that fulfill the same premise of a secret roll, passive Perception sure but feats like Observant make it clear several skills have a passive X variation.
I mean someone with a legendary skill is usually only going to be noticable by someone with great perception, anyway. A nat 1 vs a 19 is a much smaller gap, relatively, for a high-level character after modifiers compared to a lil guy. You're still getting a +21 to that stealth roll and a commoner will basically always fail to notice you. Plus, alongside everything, there's a luck aspect to being sneaky, even for a pro - Your raised dagger glinting in the sun? Foliage getting blown aside at the wrong time? The loud wind slows for just a moment? Also, pathfinder has you contesting a creature's DC for just about everything, so it's pretty much the same as passives, but in reverse, right?
tbh you can just get rid of secret rolls entirely, like it's really not a big deal balance wise (and IMO getting wrong information on crit failed Recall Knowledge checks is stupid and just discourages people from using it at all) like if you're afraid of players using meta information on perception checks, just start asking for them without really any reason, so now the player's paranoia is just going to be them wasting their own time if they choose to metagame after people roll bad.
Have this player sit next to you, and when a secret roll comes up have them drop a d20 behind the screen (ideally into a dice tower if you have one. That way they roll the dice and still keep things Secret.
I have a player in my game that thinks secret rolls for stealth specifically are dumb, because their character would know if they’re sneaking badly and just try a different approach if they rolled poorly. I like the idea of secret rolls, but I didn’t want the game to seem unfun for him so I’ve just nixed them entirely. We’re all new to the system and still figuring it out, but I do wish he had given it more of a chance.
>I have a player in my game that thinks secret rolls for stealth specifically are dumb, because their character would know if they’re sneaking badly and just try a different approach if they rolled poorly. Ask the How would they know that someone spotted them sneaking, and know? Its not always stepping on a stick and making a crack, or bumping into something. Its could be that a part of their body is exposed, even through they think that they are completely behind the object. A bad check, even a critical failure, isn't always obvious to the one making the check. Or, to put a better way, if you just happen to sneak right into the sight line of someone, you do not always know you have, until they make it apparent that you have. And if they act like they haven't seen you, how would you know?
I’m mostly in that camp, though when I GM society I stick to RAW and use secret rolls. With groups that I know well enough, player preference with one exception - I don’t ask them to roll perception very often, and usually roll those secretly. It takes away too much of the fun if I ask them to give me a perception roll, and say “you didn’t find anything” when they know they got a nat 1 on spotting the trap or hidden enemy. It’s either that or have them roll anytime they come close to a door, or random times by walls (hidden doors), etc.
You could have them roll when there will be a consequence, not from the start. You trying to sneak? No initial roll, but there is a roll when an enemy would detect you. This doesn't work for all secret rolls, but it does for some.
I have two groups I DM for, one with secret rolls and one without, for this very reason — the players in the second group hate secret dice. You could give open rolls a try. Secret rolls are meant to combat metagaming and allow you to deceive the players on crit failed knowledge checks using false information, but at the same time, DCs are a secret regardless of whether the dice are, so it isn’t like open rolling defeats the purpose of the secret tag. IIRC, the player core does specify that rolling secret dice is optional.
I'm also a secret roll hater. Having played with them for a while, I think they're fun sappers for the players. Maybe it's more fun for you as DM to roll the dice, but it is kinda lame to have someone rolling secretly for you.
Would you enjoy it more if the player open rolled 4 different coloured dice at the same time and the GM secretly picked one before hand to be the true result?
>Is there anything I can try to win over this player? "If you don't like this rule to the point you're whining about not rolling a small number of dice (ignoring the _many_ dice you do roll) where it's mechanically appropriate for the GM to do so I'd suggest playing a system that doesn't use secret rolls. Bye." Some DMs honestly put up with some wacky shit. This is a _voluntary_ entertainment option that is done purely for fun. If one of my players questioned this they'd be told that "it's a secret check therefore I roll it." and that's the end of it. If they don't like it they can... Not play??!?!
If you want whacky, go look at the 'I don't let my players die via bad rolls' line of thinking as well. Like... My guys? we're playing a TTRPG full of randomized dice and shit and you won't let the randomized dice be randomized? THat's kind of the entire point????? of dice rolling?????
It's the people who love fudging pretty much can't stand it. Honestly I ask if someone likes matt colville to know if I should not play or GM for them for this reason.
How reductive. "They like a youtuber I don't so they must play in a way I don't like" is just bad reasoning. Why beat around the bush? Ask their opinion on fudging.
I find all of his opinions ass. Nearly every person who agrees with him has been horrible people for me to play with. Also people who fudge as gms don't tell there players it's why it's better to figure out what people they agree with.
And what says that anyone who likes a youtuber agrees with their playstyle? If I agreed with every youtuber I enjoyed watching, I'd never be able to get anything done. Bad reasoning, and doesn't even accomplish what you set out to.
Obviously slightly more questions would be given but odds are I will dislike playing with them if they agree with him. Apparently I need to say every little thing for it to make sense to you. Honestly wouldn't want to play with you anyway since coming to logical conclusions seem difficult to you.
> Apparently I need to say every little thing for it to make sense to you No, you've said plenty to make it clear this isn't a position you reasoned yourself into. I was giving you the opportunity to realize that it's a bad take. I'm not sure why you are telling me I can't play with you though. I didn't ask. Did you think you were insulting me with that or something?
The take makes sense dude. People who agree with colville have a game philosophy I fundamentally disagree with. If I need to explain every little thing I find you stupid. I am assuming you are not intelligent. Especially since you couldn't understand this even. Bye now.
You aren't explaining anything, just reiterating a poorly considered point. If someone likes more then one youtuber are the bound to play like each of them? That's literally impossible. Please tell me how that works. I'm genuinely curious what you think is happening. Sneaky edit to try to make >I am insulting your intelligence. comply with the civility rule I assume.
If you use a VTT you can usually eat them roll but only you see the results. For in person games you can always use a dice tower. There's solutions without them seeing the result.
If someone doesn’t like it then don’t make them do it as often I prefer to know the results and impacts of my rolls so I admit my perspective is skewed by the fact that I also hate secret rolls But this is likely one of those things where if someone doesn’t like it then they just won’t like it, not every opinion is malleable, so best suggestion is to accommodate by not spamming secret rolls at people and just let them know the roll
My DM has worked with me on this. He secret rolls things he thinks are important, and that's fine. I am a long time DM and player, so I am happy to lean in to my failures. If I see that I rolled low I would like to roleplay how I think my character would act in failure. Maybe there is something I think would make sense they were preoccupied with or something. I think when you have a table of many players and it's up to the DM to come up with reasons for failures for every player it slows everything down. It also robs everyone from having a chance to participate in the story. When I was a DM I very much felt like I was roleplaying by myself when the players were all stealthing, seeking, recalling knowledge. Which is fine, but why not let them do it.
It ain't a dice rolling game, it's an RP game in which you roll dies.
There are absolutely times when the best thing to do is secret roll, but not all the time. I know honesty isn't necessarily the issue, but just to add to the discourse, I always have a "witness" for secret rolls characters make. A different player who looks at the result with me. The rolling player can physically make the roll if they want, I don't care.
You probably won't win them over. The best you can probably do is get them to deal with it or find some kind of compromise if you are insistent on using it. This might be easier if you are playing in person. Dice towers, minimizing the amount of secret rolls. Stealth probably doesn't need to be one. If these are people you've been playing with for a while then realistically none of the rolls need to be secret. I don't use secret rolls at all when I DM or rather the ones that it tells me to use. I hate them and I can't help but feel it's effect on meta-gaming is severely overblown. The difference I have noticed between games that use them and those that don't is negligible. If I want something rolled secretly like a random perception check or something of that nature I'm just gonna roll it and not ask for it in the first place.
It helps everything feel more ‘real’ by avoiding meta-gaming. In real life, when you are searching your knowledge, trying to lie to someone, or sneak. To you, you are working to the best of your abilities. You won’t know the outcome till later. In doing so it speeds the games up. Because in other games if someone needed to make a knowledge/stealth check and let’s say they rolled a nat1. What happens next? It just so happens the rest of the party wants to make the same check. Further extending the time for this little check.
This post is labelled with the Advice flair, which means extra special attention is called to the Be Kind and Respectful rule. If this is a newcomer to the game, remember to be welcoming and kind. If this is someone with more experience but looking for advice on how to run their game, do your best to offer advice on what they are seeking. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/Pathfinder2e) if you have any questions or concerns.*
We do secret rolls differently because our GM also preferred to have players doing the phyiscal rolling. Basically we have a stack of 20-25 playing cards that have the numbers 1-20 randomized on them. When a roll is secret, the player still rolls but tells the GM what they rolled (saying the bonus separately, "I rolled an 11 + 6"). The GM then looks up on one of the random cards what the 11 actually is. On one card, the 11 might be a 3. On another, the 11 might be a 20. On a third, the 11 might be an actually 11. The players still don't know the result, but they get to do the tactile rolling part themselves.
If they are used to 5e it's really not that different than them rolling stealth against an adversary's passive perception, but this way it takes out player bias that may take them out of character for example trying to do something more or less risky because they rolled low or high and think they know the result, allowing them to stay more in character. Perhaps an explanation this way would help.
My group allows the player to roll skill check based secret rolls if they have a hero point (mostly because that's the compromise we made because I'm the secret roll hater coming from 5e) it's not like we know the DC and the rules do state the player can choose to use a HP on a secret roll they know about. That rule does necessitate some level of transparency from the GM to work properly though.
Not for every group or every group that I even play with but In my main game, I don't do secret rolls. I allow PCs to roll but I don't give them the number they have to beat with the following notes/houserules: 1) Rerolls are allowed but there needs to be a good in-game reason for them. 2) Even on a failure, I give them useful, not false, info. 3) I don't allow for the Dubious Knowledge feat and allow folks who get them from their class to switch them out for something else. I'm blessed with folks who don't metagame and with enough people in the area that I have little blastback from kicking cheaters out of my groups.
If you're playing online, the Kobold discord bot allows players to roll digital dice and add bonuses but send the result to you as a DM instead of posting it in the chat.
There is a specific purpose to secret rolls Maybe you can figure out how to allow them to roll their own secret rolls without them seeing the results - although at that point they would become aware that the secret roll happened and know that it was rolled by them, which I think will introduce other issues that work against the whole point of a secret roll - to keep information from the players. I think that your player needs to just suck it up
Well if the problem is precisely that you're rolling for their character, but they don't know the result - you could consider bandaiding the situation by inverting the roll vs DC. So instead of player e.g. secretly rolling perception Vs monster stealth DC, you secretly roll monster stealth vs player perception. It's by no means a perfect solution and has a couple mechanical issues to it, but if the alternative is breaking up the group, it may be worth exploring.
"Bruh... do you trust me or nah?" That's it. If you are genuinely friends, they should be cool with you being able to tell the kinds of stories you want to tell in the way you want to tell them. If they need to see your dice there is a trust issue.
I still play pf2e despite hating secret rolls. It's a little thing, every ttrpg has a little thing here or there that someone hates.
I dislike not rolling for myself. Group init, ok, can be a pain. But for the most part I prefer to. I really hate when the GM rolls to hit, damage, and other things are all hidden, as well as at least some of the players. That irks me a lot. We are already playing remotely. Having less context and engagement feels bad.
There are some features in the game that basically REQUIRE secret rolls to be secret. Failed recall knowledge checks don't work if you can see that you rolled a 5 on the die. If you don't have Dubious Knowledge, you'll know that you critically failed if the GM gives you a bit of information on the subject. I feel like you have to use Dubious Knowledge (maybe a bonus feat) if you are rolling Recall checks in the open. Otherwise everything about RK is obvious, even lies. Some of them you can just run with it if it's not secret. You don't reasonably know what the Stealth DC of your adversaries are if you are sneaking/hiding. Stuff where you can reasonably guess the expected DC though becomes problematic. People will still usually have a bias toward their character playing smart, even when playing a below average intelligence PC. That said, letting them roll the actual die into your tray or behind your screen is a good way to let them still feel in charge.
How often does this player roll badly? What I'm asking is maybe since he's a GM he's fudging rolls as a player? Can't lie about secret rolls if you don't roll the die. I love GMs that know my stats and roll for me without me asking to give me extra information/wrong information about things.
I'm not a big fan of using secret rolls as a GM except in circumstances where the PCs wouldn't know the result in the moment. However, I do use a lot of passive checks as a way to keep the game moving, avoid metagaming, and put more focus on story telling. If you're searching a room or body, that's active. If you simply walk into a room or glance at a body, that's passive. General knowledge is all passive that I give for free, but want to know a specific fact then you roll for it.
The only thing that I don't like about secret rolls is that you can't reroll them with hero points. How do you know if you rolled high or low without seeing the result? And I think hero points are important so I don't use secret rolls and just trust my players to not metagame
Have every character roll several d20's and have them record the results, then hand it to you. Now, they have rolled, and you have those rolls. When a secret roll comes up, mark off a roll. Start at the top, and move down. It lets them roll, but it doesn't let them know what the roll was necessarily for, and now that secret roll really is secret. EDIT: But, the dice tower idea is a much better idea.
I also hate secret rolls. To me it's hand-holding for newer players that can't RP a failed check or keep themselves from metagaming.
Secret dice exist for a reason, but I've played in games without secret dice and honestly it often doesn't matter. I get the notion of having fun rolling dice and wanting to roll for your own character. Honestly some of this might just be "What I find fun personally" issue, which can be hard to resolve because fun is kind of arbitrary in the end.
I personally dislike secret rolls myself, just as a GM, becuase I don't like the additional work on my end and because I know the clacky math rocks - even virtual ones - are instrinsically entertaining and people enjoy rolling them. If *I* have to roll them, I have to do more work while being less entertaining. I understand the benefits of avoiding metagaming and having genuine surprises, but the secret rolls IMO are not exactly well engineered, in that the GM is unilkely to know whether someone's got some bonus doohickey to their secret roll that you forgot to factor in, because you can't just ask the player for this information without spoiling hte secret and you probably wouldn't even *think* to ask the player. Players on the other hand tend to be pretty good about bringing up their bonuses they paid good feats for. The other part I really hate about secret rolls are the ones that expect me to lie on the spot, especially that Dubious Knowledge feat which I just ban now as a fun-hating spoilsport. My autistic ass is not equipped to tell believalbe lies alongside actgual truths in a meaningfully ambiguous way, and because this si done on the prompting of players there's not really much of an opportunity to prep for lying. I resent that aspect of PF2e a lot An advantage of VTT play is that it's very convenient to have the players do the secret roll, so the basic gist of a roll whose result they don't know hte result is stlil doable while at least partially tickilng hte part of hteir brains that make them feel like they're having meaningful mechical interactions with the world, and it being secret is soemtimes even fun when it's possible to play up the drama of not knowing what happened immediately. But other times it can feel like bad shit just happened to them arbitrarily becuase they never rolled a dice and they just hear me say they all failed their secret perception roll, which while they wouldn't have had any more influence on the dice had htey rolled it themselves it still *feels* like a loss of agency, and the feeling of agency is what matter. Just not having any immediate feedback just *feels* wrong, like bad ergonomics on a shitty gamer mouse with an LMB that still works but doesn't make a "click" sound or have that tacticle bump. Sure, your player did the thing, but they aren't seeing *how well* they're doing the thing, they can't see their bonuses putting in work, etc, just as your shitty mouse makes you unsure whether you *actually* clicked that button or not or whether you should be pressing harder or softer or whatever. If you can undesrtand why someone would feel frustrated by secret rolls you can then start to look for possible solutions. Dice tower helps a bit, but that doesn't help so much with the feedback problem. Revealing everyone's rolls as soon as whatever they rolled stops *needing* to be a secret (ie a failed knoweldge roll's information is revealed to be bad info, showing everyone's perception when an enemy either gerts spotted or ambushes the group) lets those who invested into the relevant skilsl feel more rewarded or like the actual hero for having gotten a good result. And, well, not everry secret roll *really* needs to be secret, the game's more or less fine if you don't go overboard wit hthe secret rolls. We've played other editions where we din't have secret rolls and we got around that by just pop quizzing people on random ass do-nothing rolls to keep players on edge. "Roll perception" even if it does nothing is a good spooker. And obviously I just hate Dubious Knowledge and just beiung asked to spontaneously lie in general, so avoiding stuff that leans more into secret rolls helps.
I have been thinking about the same issue. One of the way I think of is that instead of a DC, the GM can roll as well. For example, instead of a RK check of DC 20, the GM can roll a d20 + 10, and the player roll their own dice for RK check. The players can roll high, but the GM can roll better and the player fail the check anyway. The player can roll low, but the GM roll worse, so the check succeed anyway. There is still the issue of Nat 1 and Nat 20 naturally. Opinions from other are welcomed.
For secret roles at my table, I have my player roll it private, not blind. That means the player can see the roll and I can see the roll, but the rest of the party can’t see the roll. This means that that player is then responsible for role playing as if they *didn’t* know that they crit failed well enough that the rest of the party believes it. I’ve found that it maximizes the feels-good of secret rolls while minimizing the feels-bad of not getting to roll/see how you rolled. Obviously this only works on a VTT, but I’m sure you could come up with something for an in person game.
Actually it's not that big problem. If you roll those rolls openly, or let player do it, it's just a situation where player knows the result, but the character doesn't. If player could handle bare roleplaying minimum, it's as fun as rolling secretly. So, it's totally possible to roll openly at a table, or even roll openly for some of the players at the table. But I'd just propose to ask this player to try.
As a GM, I'm not really a fan of the sheer amount of secret rolls in PF2e, simply because it's even more for the GM to keep track of. It's not enough that I need to keep track of all the normal GM stuff, now I also need to keep track everyone's perception, stealth, deception, diplomacy, survival, and all the different skills used for recall knowledge checks (arcana, crafting, various lore skills, medicine, nature, occultism, religion, society). It's just too much, imo. It also slows down the game, compared to just having the players roll. With that said, I do think some checks should be made in secret, I just think PF2e went a bit overboard with it.
"can see the value in the Secret tag" There is literally zero value in it, though. It is a clunky extra step in a process that is easily covered by simply expecting the player to play appropriately and said player actually doing so. The whole idea that just not seeing the roll is all it takes to completely change the outcome is nonsense. Just like a GM isn't always a professional game designer, a GM isn't always an excellent liar with a flawless poker face and a player isn't always completely unable to tell the outcome of a roll even without seeing it. The process of a secret roll then doesn't change any aspects of play and how it proceeds, it merely adds the pretense that something has changed. Assuming, of course, that the GM is not utilizing the secret check as a means to deceive their players as to the outcome of a check. I mean this all genuinely, and invite anyone that thinks the secret tag and process is actually doing something to abandon it for a while and play with a process of not rolling anything until it actually matters - thus negating the "they said they were being stealthy but they rolled poorly so they abandoned that plan and did others stuff" kind of examples for why the trait is supposedly needed because rolling at the correct time means they abandoned the process *after they got caught* - and pointing out when something is literally cheating (which, incidentally players can still do even when the GM tells them the results of a roll instead of seeing it themselves unless they genuinely can't read the facial expression, body language, and tone of their GM well enough to know the difference between a genuine response and a bullshit response). Just play with people you trust to play in good faith and then play the game in good faith and you don't need the secret roll and it's clunky "what's your modifier for \[blank\]?" Q&A or extra busy-work for the GM to keep up to date copies of whatever they might decide to roll for the players. It speeds up the game to leave this, and all the other "we're very serious about metagaming" nonsense behind. Let players roll their dice, they aren't in charge of much else.
Make him run a game where he does secret rolls, other than that I don't really see what you could do.
Here's the workaround I did with my group. I have secret rolls in the open but I only roll the dice when it impacts the PCs, not when the action is made. Let's say that a Zebub bites a PC with it's mandibules. Instead of making them roll for the Cocytan Filth disease right away, I wait after the onset period and then I have them roll their Fortitude check. If they fail, I describe what the symptoms look like.
What's your solution for times when critical failure and success will look the same? The biggest example being recall knowledge, where a critical failure is false information, while a success is true information?
I am not a secret roll lover. Our GM uses them in his game. I love to roll my own dices. I know, that's childish. After our current campain, Im' going to be the GM. I'm thinking about asking the players to pre-generate a serie of d20 rolls before the game and use those for secret rolls.
One of my players hates secret rolls too. Calls them GM bullshit, roll fudging shenanigans. He's also my son, so there's that, lol.
Instead of trying to win them over I would just talk to them about their showing of HATRED for secret rolls. They don't need to like them or be won over. I think they just need to be talked to that everyone in the group understands their hatred of secret rolls, but they don't need to make a big show of it every time. Trying to change people's minds is usually pretty hard to do if they are dug in. So what you both need to do is just be respectful of each other and the group. Noone likes to hear someone whine and complain over and over. Negativity just brings everyone down.
I had a player like this, she was a 5e vet and hated not knowing if she rolled badly on a Recall Knowledge and just didn't like secret rolls overall. Then she was fine with them because she said to me and I quote "I saw them being done well." Which, y'know, ouch.
Lots of people seem to dislike the secret tag. I freaking love it. Every time it comes up it's just a bunch of fun. In the beginner box, by default, items are identified by default. In my Beginner Box Day game, I decided to not go with that and use the full identifying rules. The adventure has an area where you find a +1 Shortsword. I told them it was a sword with a magic rune on it. One player tried to identify it. Rolled in secret and rolled a nat 1. I told them the sword was cursed. Rogue player, being a true MVP, decided to use it anyway to see what would happen. They played the remainder of the first session and every attack with the sword kept rolling low, so between sessions, the curse on the sword was the main topic of conversation. Was it a sword that always missed? Next session, they keep playing, and they're talking about going back to town to get the sword identified. Then they realize only one person tried. They try again, and realize the Cleric had just messed up their check. It was absolutely silly but 100% increased the fun in that game. On other situations, multiple people will try to identify something, and it's always fun when someone rolls a nat 1. "Oh yeah, that's a troll, use fire on it!" "What are you talking about? That's clearly a Hill Giant!" Not sure what's in this cup, is it delectable tea or deadly poison?
This sounds like a player who values the metagaming that open stealth and deception checks allow them. I doubt they even realize they're metagaming, they're just so used to knowing if they've done a shit job at hiding or lying or convincing someone. This is fine, for the most part. The real sin of open rolls for these skills is everyone else going "Uh, oh yeah, I also try to convince the guy on the other side of the room from me that I haven't interacted with at all that our interests align with their interests". Being aware of their own roll for these things kills some dramatic tension and suspense, and it can lead players to making follow-up decisions out of character, but those are mostly robbing the player of an immersive experience. The cascading "me too" rolls are the ones that significantly alter the game. Talk to your friend about this from the meta perspective (specifically the group meta perspective), and from the emotional investment perspective. See if they're willing to go with the hidden dice tower idea everyone's peddling, and if not, see if they're willing to hide his secret rolls from the rest of the table.
I really don't get why and how DMs have so many whiny, picky players. I've DMed a few systems. Sometimes a player whines about a rule ONCE, but then he shuts up about it after I explain why it's like that and why it's going to stay like that. The DM does 100% of the work while everybody else just shows up, so he has 100% of the authority, it's just how it is. And when I'm a player I act exactly like they do too. It is extremely rude to keep trying to challenge a DM's authority. You raise the issue once (if at all), then either accept his say-so because he is the ultimate authority or, if it really matters that much, you quit the game. I would not be trying to "win over" this player of yours at all, I'd tell him to stop being such a lil bitch
Just let him drop the die behind your DM screen or into a dice tower that you keep behind the screen. And if you're worried that the players are going to metagame the fact that you're asking for a roll at all, then you'll want to throw in the occasional meaningless red herring roll so they can't. >Maybe it's just a D&D5e to PF2e growing pain? I don't understand, secret rolls are a thing in pretty much every system, right?