Here's an example that's been coming up a lot in my games.
Rogue: I listen at the door.
GM: Make a Perception check.
Rogue: 24.
GM: You hear nothing on the other side.
Everything is fine. Players open the door. But...
Rogue: I listen at the door.
GM: Make a Perception check.
Rogue: Uh-oh... 7.
GM: You hear nothing on the other side.
Monk: Watch out. I listen at the door.
So, the monk listens at the door only when the rogue rolls badly. And if the Monk rolls badly, then the next character steps up and makes a roll. Repeat, until someone gets a good roll or we run out of PCs.
I try to hint at it.
GM: Rogue, you just listened at the door and heard nothing. The Monk doesn't trust you and you are a little bit insulted.
Rogue: Whatever, he's helping me.
GM: He didn't help you before...
This is just one of the many things that happens. A player flubs a roll and another player runs up to try and get a better roll.
I don't know. Maybe this is a minor issue that annoys me a bit and I should just let it go and expect everyone to make a Perception check at every door, every time.
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Make a perception check for whatever is behind the door to hear the PCs all wasting time and arguing about how many people are listening at the dang door as they do their silly perception conga line thing.
If the thing(s) behind the door can hear/detect the PCs during their shennanigans, then they do something suitably sneaky in return like line up on each side of the door, or hang from the ceiling, or move into the next room, etc
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I think all opposed checks should be rolled secretly by the GM (Perception v. Stealth, Sense Motive v. Bluff, Disguise v. Perception, Linguistics v. Linguistics for forgeries.)
The exception might be Sleight of Hand v. Perception, because the character immediately realizes whether the mark noticed, typically.
1) I do many perception rolls myself, behind the screen. It's not the kind of roll a player should always know the exact result of. You might try that method.
2) Presumably when the first character is trying to listen, all of the others are staying intentionally quiet. It would be entirely valid, and much quicker, to simply tell everyone to roll at once.
3) Whoever is on the other side of the door could hear the party approach, and the more time the party spends shuffling around and discussing who's going to listen next, the more likely they are to be detected. I'd start calling for stealth checks.
I actually don't see a big problem with what's going on -- when he rolls a 7, the rogue obviously has an earache or congestion from a cold or something (or his ears are still ringing from that last fireball he avoided using evasion). So he gives it a try, realizes he's not on his game for whatever reason, and asks the monk what he thinks.
In other words: I don't really consider it "metagaming" if there's a perfectly justifiable in-game explanation.
+1 to Rufus, that's how my groups have generally done it.
Wait
When you guys talk about the GM making the check do you mean that if one of the PCs asks to listen, the GM rolls a D20 behind the screen and asks the PC for their Perception score, to add to the roll that only the GM can see?
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Wait
When you guys talk about the GM making the check do you mean that if one of the PCs asks to listen, the GM rolls a D20 behind the screen and asks the PC for their Perception score, to add to the roll that only the GM can see?
In principle, yes, although a GM who does it this way will write down before the game starts each character's modifier for Perception, Sense Motive, Bluff, Stealth, and Disguise.
Some GMs like to write down Knowledge scores also (although typically these are still rolled by the players,) so they don't have to say "roll Knowledge religion" and give away that the thing is undead.
I tend to make it to where I have a list of their Skills that way I know what they can handle and can't handle.
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First, keep in mind that you may be dealing with the good kind of meta-gaming: the party assumes that they are being super-paranoid at all doors, but when they know out of character that the coast is clear they stop wasting everyone's time with the whole routine.
As to actual solutions, a technique I've been trying recently for checks that I don't want to give second chances at is that a failed check doesn't just mean you don't succeed, it means there's a reason you don't succeed. Some examples:
Rogue: "I listen at the door"
GM: "A few termites have gotten into the door, and their chewing obscures whatever faint sounds you might otherwise be able to see."
Barbarian: "I lift the gate open"
GM: "It starts to budge, but the loose gravel under your feet shifts and you are unable to find enough traction."
This also has the beneficial side effect of not periodically making all characters look like incompetent fools due to a string of bad dice.
Being that they are adventurers and are fully aware that something could be behind that door that could kill them I don't see any issue with the characters trying a couple times to listen at the door. If the first person doesn't hear anything it makes complete sense that someone else might try. It certainly is paranoid, but as adventurers who want to survive they have good justification for being so.
... :O
I love you guys because just when I start to get jaded I learn something new
Just to be clear, though, not all groups are big into the whole "hidden dice" thing, especially for checks like Perception that can end up being life-or-death.
In my home game, ALL rolls are made in the open, including mine (as referee). If someone rolls low and wants to act on the knowledge that they rolled low, an in-game explanation for how the character knows he's not performing well (like the examples above) suffices. Of course, I generally have fairly experienced players who are OK with that kind of setup.
I just tell them to Roll a d20 when I need them to roll stealth (if they are sneaking around) or to roll Perception.
That is another reason I have a Skill Reference table handy.
I see this type of "metagaming" as primarily trying to move the game forward. You could have multiple people listen at the door, every time, and that would make sense in character but I think most people feel like it would be a waste of time to roll for something when the outcome (OOC) is already known.
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Here's how I see it:
1) Do you want to play a mechanic style game where the person who knows the rules the best can usually get out ahead? This is what modern day sports games are like - those who know obscure rules can use them to their benefit, even if they're the losing team (like what happened at the superbowl this year). In this case it's perfectly ok to break role in order to roll a new perception check with a different character. This would also be the game where you use knowledge of the game mechanics to help your character out in-game.
2) Do you want to play a theatrical style game where you are acting out the role of your characters and trying your best to perform actions as they would see it? This is like being in theater. This is where you have your character perform actions that are bad for him/her simply because that's what they would do in that situation - even though you know that because of the mechanics of the game it'll harm your character.
3) Or do you want something in-between those two extremes? If that's the case, decided where you'd like to break the role and where you wouldn't. Basically, you have to figure out where you draw the line between what you're comfortable with and what you are not.
Once you know that for yourself you can ask the other members of your gaming group the same question and allow them to think on it a bit (give them a week - or however long you have between gaming sessions). Once everyone has had enough time to think about it, discuss as a group how you all want the game to be played and what is enjoyable for everyone there.
For your scenarios, at my table we decided that whenever we have multiple people making the same check, we have all involved roll. Those who get a 10 or better aid (add a +2) to whoever rolled the highest. This is using the game mechanics rather than a theatrical style, but we're all ok with it. We actually started doing this for knowledge checks, because in Pathfinder APs there are lots of background information that is hidden behind knowledge checks, and we were tired of not getting the cool storyline. This progressed to other skills over time, such as perception.
Despite all that, one of my favorite movie scenes is in Pitch Black when Riddick failed a perception check.
Riddick: Looks clear.
[A creature lunges out and almost decapitates Johns before taking flight into the dark]
Johns (Panting): I thought you said it was CLEAR!
Riddick: I said it looks clear!
Johns: Well what does it look like now?
Riddick: … Looks clear.
Why do you want them to spend more table time rolling perception checks? I mean if you tell the Monk he can’t roll if the Rogue rolls poorly, then he’ll just always roll. And isn’t he always listening anyway?
Why not do as follows;
“I will assume you both make a perception check at the door, I’ll let you know if you hear anything”.
@uriel -- Do your players know that's what's going on? And they agreed to it? Because otherwise -- if you're intentionally making them believe that something hinges on a throw of the dice, but in fact it doesn't matter what they roll and their fate is always pre-determined -- that's not good for building trust in the group. Someone is likely to ask why you don't just save them a lot of time and effort, and just tell everyone what's going to happen at the end of the campaign.
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In this specific case, I'd adopt a policy of rolling everyone's per rolls for them in secret. It's the only way you can really get around players who can't keep OOC and IC knowledge separate.
Similarly, if you have players who love memorizing monster stat blocks and acting on it, the only real way around it is to give vague descriptions of what they're fighting. i.e. "It's a big nasty dude with green skin." Could be an orc, could be a troll, could be one of several other things. If someone wants to make a knowledge local check, THEN you can get more specific.
One thing that I do, say for looking for traps, is after the roll has been made, I will say, You dont think that there are any traps.
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This is a lot of work for the GM to be making secret rolls - something I keep restricted to Sense Motive only.
With your listening to the door thing, if that kind of thing becomes a problem, I'd ask if anyone else is going to be listening to the door, and have them make the roll before the result is revealed.
Then the result is what the best listener in the party hears, without the metagaming. It also means they should become more aware of how much time they are spending listening to every single door they want to do that on, if that's a factor.
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I've done the secret roll for opposed checks thing, and the only player who complained was the one I often caught lying about his rolls.
A couple times, just for fun, I got copies of the character sheets and made a list of checks I knew the party was going to have to make during a session. Just before the session, I had the players all roll a bunch of d20s but I didn't tell them why. As they reported the rolls, I wrote them down next to each check and, as the game progressed, I used the results without the players ever knowing. Most of the checks were passive skills like Perception, but a few were social and, I think, there was at least one Will save.
The first time I did that, I didn't tell the players until after the session. The second time, I told them we were going to do it again. I just didn't tell them which checks the specific rolls represented. Of course, the cheater's rolls seemed much better the second time.
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You aren't wrong. If they're doing this repeatedly they're being poor roleplayers and metagaming which you have the right to enforce. If I fail a perception roll I still do what my player would have done and hope someone else saw/heard it because that's just good form. If they want to check every single door and take 10 have them hear nothing and still get ambushed because the person was waiting for them. Or even better have them with their ears on the door as someone spartan kicks the door and smashes all of them for damage and surprise.
You could always do secret per. rolls as well and do fake rolls for stuff...your situation seems like its going to lead quickly into a Gazeebo +20 if that continues.
Sure, or they are just trying to speed up the game. The DM could just say "Rocks fall, everyone dies".
It's not really metagaming.
If it annoys the DM he can follow several suggestions made here or just say "Hey, Bob, Dave, that sort of thing kinda annoys me, so can we have less of it? Thanks." You know, that wild and crazy out of left field idea of sitting down and talking about things like adults.
In our group we will sometimes have multiple people make a check -- after the first time they fail badly and it bites the party.
Once we have multiple people making the check we just about always have multiple people make the check as we ridicule the last character that failed us (please note NOT the player).
It could just as well be a attempt to speed up the game. In his mind, they are both listening at every door, but why bother to slow the game down and make that second roll if the first is good?
Put an ear seeker or two in random doors. That will keep them from listening at doors all the time!
@bookrat: Gotta love the failed checks.