Suggested new rule for *hostile* rerolls.


Homebrew and House Rules

Scarab Sages

When players get an ability that lets them force an enemy reroll, I kind of HATE the metagaming. A lot of DMs hide monster rolls and only announce totals, which seems kind of the way things should be done.

But once someone is at the table with hostile rerolls, the DM must announce the die roll every time. This is annoying.

Instead, I have a suggestion for hostile rerolls:

When a player has a hostile reroll, hide the die roll but announce the result (success, failure, or critical threat). Then the player must decide whether to force a reroll on that information. If their party did not make a knowledge check to know what the enemy's strong save is, for example, the enemy might succeed on a 4, and the player has to decide if they really want to force a reroll with little chance of changing the outcome.

I just find the metagaming behind "you know the die roll and have to guess whether it's a success" to be incredibly annoying as I don't like forcing my DM to have to reveal all their rolls.

An example of this kind of reroll is the Dual Cursed Oracle's "Misfortune" revelation.

When these types of abilities are used on allies the current wording is fine, since the players don't necessary know the DC or the enemy's AC etc. And changing to my suggestion above would make the hostile version mechanically very similar.


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I find the idea of DMs hiding their rolls strange and archaic. Around here we let our dice roll proudly onto the table for all to see and fear!

If the DM hides the dice I guess your idea could work, but you're giving the players less information to go on, so it could be frustrating. On the other hand, players would never waste a reroll power on an enemy who rolled fairly high but failed anyhow.

Liberty's Edge

Hostile re-rolls are inherently meta-gamey because they require jumping between roll and result, which is a distinction that only exists in the meta-game. So in that sense I agree, I guess.

But I agree more with Devilkiller: Dice are meant to be rolled in the open, their potential results simultaneously drawing fear and hope in the moments before the superposition collapses to bring joy or pain. Or both.

EDIT: That said, if these meta-game rolls are to exist, I would prefer they came AFTER results are announced and are explicitly noted as meta-game abilities (e.g. a representation of being lucky or divinely protected).

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