An example of why I love "Secret" rolls for certain things. (DD Part 2 Spoilers!)


General Discussion


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So the party I run for had gotten to the point where they found the Gnoll Camp across a river. Our Bard (or maybe it was the Ranger, I don't recall) and Druid asked to roll for knowledge on them. I asked for their Society modifiers and made the d20 rolls where they couldn't see. One player made the D.C. to know they were from the Al'Choraviik Tribe, same tribe as the hyenas from before belonged to. Druid got a Nat 1. So I told her she had heard that this tribe of Gnolls was one of the only groups of Gnolls that were said to be relatively civilized and friendly, or at least non-hostile. As a result the party ended up approaching the river bank and hailing the camp instead of trying to get around into an advantageous position or sneak by or something (except for one party member who was distrustful in-character despite the Druid's claims, he hid in some bushes with his bow as a precaution).

A couple of arrows later the party was attempting to cross the river or back off to a safer range (this resulted in a hilarious scene due to the Barbarian having Raging Athlete and Sudden Charge, he basically ran across the river and slammed one of the Gnolls with a crit). In addition the Barbarian was fighting nonlethally at first due to still thinking there was a misunderstanding (no one spoke Gnoll so we didn't know they were calling us fresh meat). Then partway through something happened that prompted me to give the Druid a reroll on her check and I informed her after the successful roll that the rumor she heard from that one drink guy may not have been reputable. The battle proceeded from there, not op many troubles aside from the Bard losing half her HP on an early crit, and it was the end of the day after that fight anyway so we were good.

In the end that bit of faulty knowledge made the encounter MUCH more enjoyable and unique than it would have been normally, the players loved it. And the secret aspect of the knowledge Roll made the experience. No one knew the info was wrong, so there was no going into the situation with irritation knowing that the info was going to cause trouble and they couldn't do anything about it (and conversely there was also no attempts to rationalize or find ways to ignore the bad intel), instead everything flowed naturally in and out of character and while it made the fight a little harder everyone liked the experience.

(I know that in a more severe situation bad intel could have worse results but that's true whether you know out of character or not. And it's no different than any other catastrophe caused by a bad roll, either the party suffers the consequences or the GM pulls a punch to avert a bad situation if no one would be happy with it.)

Liberty's Edge

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Personally, I profoundly hate misinformation. Players have more than enough against them (especially in this edition) without lying to them about stuff. I much prefer letting telling players nothing over actively feeding them lies.

Designer

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Other than Jason's famous drinking of a misIDed McGuffin in an adventure he had written and forgotten, one of my favorite situations was a run of Rose Street Revenge at Origins wherein multiple PCs successfully identified a clue, but it was fairly far-fetched sounding so they were convinced they had all critically failed. When they got to the finale and discovered they were right, they were so amused and excited!


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Pathfinder Maps, Pathfinder Accessories, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Maps, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber

I like the idea of secret rolls, but feel like pf2 is going a bit too far in making too many things secret. To the point that I feel i need most of my PC's character sheets in front of me at all times. From a "realistic", "avoid metagaming", and/or "good narrative" perspective its great. But there have been times when it feels like I'm rolling a large number of checks against myself which slows down the game/makes the players feel like they don't control what happens.

I love the dubious knowledge feat though (as that's explicitly a character opting in to receive false information).

Designer

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NielsenE wrote:

I like the idea of secret rolls, but feel like pf2 is going a bit too far in making too many things secret. To the point that I feel i need most of my PC's character sheets in front of me at all times. From a "realistic", "avoid metagaming", and/or "good narrative" perspective its great. But there have been times when it feels like I'm rolling a large number of checks against myself which slows down the game/makes the players feel like they don't control what happens.

I love the dubious knowledge feat though (as that's explicitly a character opting in to receive false information).

Yeah, sometimes there's a lot of them, so that's why we made sure the rules for secret checks explicitly allow the GM to opt out and have the PCs roll them. The reverse situation, where the GM has to opt in to roll a secret check, can lead to some weird interactions and meta-meta stuff in comparison.

Liberty's Edge

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I don't like secret rolls being so prevalent, and while I'd like to see it a little reduced from what it is now, can see the point to it. However, I'd really, really like the critical fail state of Recall Knowledge to go.

Dubious Knowledge is perfect. You opt in to that. You're asking for that misinformation thing because you, as a player, want to fiddle with it. Great.

I just don't like it for all checks. My experience so far has been that it just muddies things with every check resulting in a number of PCs with true information and a number with false information. And not always the ones that you would have expected to be right or wrong. It gets to the point that the PCs are better off not trying to recall information and just guessing.


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My problem with Dubious Knowledge and critically failed knowledge check is that I'm a terrible bluff IRL. My players can usually read me and know that they're getting inaccurate information. It's just not something I'm capable of doing in a face-to-face game.

Lying NPC's are usually a bit easier, since I know ahead of time that they're going to be lying and am prepared to deliver that. If I'm put on the spot in the heat of the moment by a roll, though, and I'm probably going to give an obvious tell.


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Dasrak wrote:

My problem with Dubious Knowledge and critically failed knowledge check is that I'm a terrible bluff IRL. My players can usually read me and know that they're getting inaccurate information. It's just not something I'm capable of doing in a face-to-face game.

Lying NPC's are usually a bit easier, since I know ahead of time that they're going to be lying and am prepared to deliver that. If I'm put on the spot in the heat of the moment by a roll, though, and I'm probably going to give an obvious tell.

If this critical failure thing stays (I'm neutral on whether it does or not, FYI), any published adventures need to have the bad info PCs get included... right on the mini-table where they get the rest of their results. There should also be a general list of bad, setting-appropriate info included where you publish a lot of the actual setting information for the GM to hand out as needed.

The beauty of including the bad info is that a) you don't get inconsistent results from a bad liar GM or a really good liar GM, and b) you can string some of those red herrings along for a really long time. It's hard, on the fly, to make up misleading info that holds up or can be 'confirmed' by a later critical failure in a way that doesn't derail the game or make the players feel cheated. Or to use bad results to foreshadow by giving false info now (that's a vamprire!) that will actually be true much later on (when a vampire actually appears).

One of my favorite published adventures from the days before skill checks, a particular D&D2E Ravenloft module, was partly amazing because it was a mystery that included a lot of bad info for the party to discover and sift through. Most of it was even true info, but completely irrelevant to the mystery at hand.


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Requielle wrote:

If this critical failure thing stays (I'm neutral on whether it does or not, FYI), any published adventures need to have the bad info PCs get included... right on the mini-table where they get the rest of their results. There should also be a general list of bad, setting-appropriate info included where you publish a lot of the actual setting information for the GM to hand out as needed.

The beauty of including the bad info is that a) you don't get inconsistent results from a bad liar GM or a really good liar GM, and b) you can string some of those red herrings along for a really long time. It's hard, on the fly, to make up misleading info that holds up or can be 'confirmed' by a later critical failure in a way that doesn't derail the game or make the players feel cheated. Or to use bad results to foreshadow by giving false info now (that's a vamprire!) that will actually be true much later on (when a vampire actually appears).

One of my favorite published adventures from the days before skill checks, a particular D&D2E Ravenloft module, was partly amazing because it was a mystery that included a lot of bad info for the party to discover and sift through. Most of it was even true info, but completely irrelevant to the mystery at hand.

100% agree.


Don't forget, "Bree-Yark" is Goblin for "I surrender."

Loved those early D&D lists of rumors. 32 page adventures still had space to fit in 20 or so rumors of various worth. And this is a decade before bartenders in computer RPGs were spouting out their text.

Love misinformation, mainly because I disliked the certainty players had when they saw their dice, so they know whom to believe and to what degree.

Also it's been pretty funny. I have veteran players give advice they know is ridiculous, and sometimes it works. Example, when the Rogue used a bad weapon against skeletons, but rolled a crit so of course thought he'd gotten sound advice. "Piercing DOES work!"
Or when four people all thought a different god was tied to the evil icon and had to figure out who was right. None of them were right.

Pretending to make up stuff when I'm giving correct information is pretty fun too, especially with some of the new abilities monsters have.
"They can do what?!" "OMG, they really can do that!"

And secret rolls are optional, plus there's even a skill feat to avoid critical failures for info. So if unfun, misinformation can be avoided.

Cheers

Silver Crusade

Pathfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

We played without Secret Checks and still approached the shoreline to try and parley with the gnolls across the river since this was ostensibly their territory we were crossing.
Then I rolled a natural one on my Diplomacy check to make an impression. The Gnolls assured us we could cross safely, but they botched their bluff checks, which we played as the gnolls couldn't stop laughing/giggling as they told us they were fetching a rope.
Figuring that these gnolls were acting in bad faith, my alchemist threw a bomb which I had palmed with thievery and combat kicked off across the river.

We didn't need secret checks to make an interesting and fun encounter. We just used the dice to inform our roleplaying.

Silver Crusade

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I am somewhat ambivalent towards secret rolls in general. They can be fun, they can be disastrous.

In the OP example, I'm not completely sure why the group believed the Druid and not the Bard. It should have been obvious to everybody that one was wrong.

And I know that eventually I'd get pretty irked if I was playing the Bard and everybody kept not believing me :-) :-). Unfortunately, the numbers are close enough that you can't just decide to trust the obviously more knowledgeable dude.

When something similar happened in a game I was running, the group argued for 10 minutes who they should believe. That was less fun :-(

I also am cynical enough to believe that the player reaction may well have been different if the false knowledge killed a character or otherwise seriously impacted the game.

But I am all but certain that this will make PFS a game that I don't want to run. Unless the writers are VERY careful then fumbles on knowledge checks are going to result in lost time as characters chase red herrings. This has ALREADY occurred in my playtest sessions.

Home games can afford to go down blind alleys (as long as the players enjoy that). But in PFS time pressure is important.

And writing scenarios so false knowledge is likely to not disrupt things is very, very hard. It is a burden on the writers that, quite frankly, I think few will be able to overcome perfectly.


It becomes very difficult with Monster identification. Coming up with interesting, believable false Information on the spot is real hard, and will rarely be in adventures. And even now my Players know a lot of the time beforehand which info is wrong, because there are a lot of Players that read the bestiary as well.
To be honest, currently I don't even know what to tell them on a success.

Scarab Sages

I have more issue about the fact that you need an action to remember something.

IRL I don't need to stop 2s to know that the thing before me is a tiger, a predator than run fast, climb tree, is solitary and use claw and maw.

But I guess more exotic things could be harder to remember so... maybe ?

Maybe since monsters have rarity level and Knowledge have proficiency it could be tied together one way or another ?

Untrained : 1 action to remember common monsters.

Trained : Free roll to remember common Monster. 1 action for Uncommon monsters.

Expert : Free recall roll for Uncommon. 1 action for rare.

Master : Free recall roll for rare. 1 action for Legendary.

Legendary : Free recall roll.

Something like that ?
Although you could say everyone should know a bit about dragons even if they are not common.

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