For meta-gaming, dr. ciaran prescribes lightning bolts.
Seriously though, its a matter of who is at your table. Everyone has a level of meta-gaming, munchkining, cheese, etc. that is acceptable to them. My group had a conversation at the table some years back and cut it back quite a bit.
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As a player, my group selects the player with the highest perception and they're always "it" meaning they make all the rolls, the rest of us only roll to assist. The GM says there's a door, we all roll to aid and the "it" character rolls the actual check.
We rp this out as we're all trying to be super quiet so the ranger can listen.
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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 used to use a floating base. The Player would roll a die and so would I. More complicated but the player still got to roll something.
I GOT A 4!
Or just assume all players are taking 10 all the time, and when you need to roll and want to speed up things, roll once, and each player add it's own modifier.
Personally I don't like assuming take 10 as a "passive" check, because it makes no sense to me that half the time you'll do worse when you're actually trying to do something well than when you're not giving it any conscious thought.
I gotta say, lots of helpful ideas in this thread regarding ways to handle checks...
I am saying this primarily to dot for future reference :)
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Are your character peole who belive themselves to be infalible? As someone pointed before aventuring is a dangerous business, people double checking thing before procced is like the expected behavior.
I totally agree with you if that's done all the time. If everyone feels the need to try because they all saw the designated listener roll low, and that's the only time they double check, then that's just meta.
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I totally agree with you if that's done all the time. If everyone feels the need to try because they all saw the designated listener roll low, and that's the only time they double check, then that's just meta.
Are your character peole who belive themselves to be infalible? As someone pointed before aventuring is a dangerous business, people double checking thing before procced is like the expected behavior.
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I tend to use their Modifier+1 for Passive Rolls.
The Monk doesn't trust you and you are a little bit insulted.
I hate to nitpick, but this seems that you are taking control of a person's character. You probably just typed this for the sake of conversation, but just in case I'd like to let you know how this could be perceived.
Now, onto your question. I would roll all perception in secret.
it all comes down to your definition of meta gaming at that point, because having someone who does poorly on a perception check know that they don't feel confident about what they see/hear can be considered meta gaming
so it comes down to the preference of the people at the table, if you consider it meta gaming, then its bad
personally i hate inter-player communications NOT being dictated by things like a PC's CHA vs the other PC's WIS
NOT using those stats to influence how PC's interact, and forcing the players to communicate directly is imo GM instituting meta game, and any time the GM institutes meta game, its a bad scenario
(i know in my example that a certain player could 'abuse' his characters high CHA, but thats part of role playing)
i would take notice of the fact that the rogue isnt playing a role. i keep track and when a session ends the characters get no added incentives for great and compelling roleplay.
i ask for descriptions and want my players to be a grumpy, frivolic or typical loudmouth. play your character gains you more with me then rolling a few dice and such. the dice are mere tools to keep things going.
i always favor role well played above a good dice roll.
the rogue should be annoyed that a monk. A Monk!?!! wants to do his job. buzz off and go meditate you handwrapped fighting monkey!!
thats what i would expect. much more fun and way more realistic.
Ok, I'd probably just get right up and walk out of the game at that point. These characters LIVE in this world, they're going to know what things are unless it's something a lot more obscure than an orc, and these characters are right there looking at the thing, so 'big nasty dude' doesn't cut it. The character can guess it's height, see it's physique and features, etc etc etc.
Now, if you as the DM want to mix things up and restat creatures to keep your players guessing, that's totally cool. But please, we're here to roleplay in your world and share a story together. Don't try to use vagueness just because somebody at the table memorizes monster stats.
Until you make a knowledge roll, you can't say for certain whether a character can identify an orc on sight. The monster being common makes the DC to identify it 5 + CR, which will likely put the most common monsters in range of being able to make the check untrained.
Circumstances permitting, you might even be able to take a 10 and auto pass, unless your character dumped int pretty low. And would it really be all that unrealistic that a character that's dumb as a brick to not be able to call up the mental faculties to realize what something is?
For this kind of thing, I just start assuming the monk is listening to every door, but his result isn't necessary until the rogue fails.
There's no metagaming involved this way, and no one has to take revenge on eachother.
If players state "everybody of us/the two guys very good at Perception always listen at the door", then it's okay. But as the OP describes it, it really is pure metagaming and should be discouraged in the extreme.
Talk with the players and explain how their attitude destroys verisimilitude. If that doesn't work, take away rolling Perception from them altogether.
If players state "everybody of us/the two guys very good at Perception always listen at the door", then it's okay. But as the OP describes it, it really is pure metagaming and should be discouraged in the extreme.
Talk with the players and explain how their attitude destroys verisimilitude. If that doesn't work, take away rolling Perception from them altogether.
Assume they always hear both, and the monk doesn't need to roll if the Rogue already suceed, just like Adamantine Dragon has just said.
Honestly, I don't see all the fuss about this. I think making a mountain out of a molehill from it is more disruptive for the game than simply making the two rolls. I don't see how does it benefit the story that the PC fail the perception check.
If players state "everybody of us/the two guys very good at Perception always listen at the door", then it's okay. But as the OP describes it, it really is pure metagaming and should be discouraged in the extreme.
Talk with the players and explain how their attitude destroys verisimilitude. If that doesn't work, take away rolling Perception from them altogether.
Assume they always hear both, and the monk doesn't need to roll if the Rogue already suceed, just like Adamantine Dragon has just said.
Honestly, I don't see all the fuss about this. I think making a mountain out of a molehill from it is more disruptive for the game than simply making the two rolls. I don't see how does it benefit the story that the PC fail the perception check.
The problem is in the execution. If players say "we always do that", then it's covered. But since the Monk only uses Perception on the door when the Rogue fails ( which the Monk doesn't know, only his player does ), then it's metagaming.
I'm a bit flummoxed that so many people don't seem to grasp the difference.
Personally, when a character's die roll would possibly give away to him some information, like a perception check listening at a door, I roll it behind the screen and give them the information.
If the monk wants to help the rogue, he still only adds +2 to the rogue's roll, if successful.
Examples of things I roll.
Perception when listening at doors and searching for traps.
Disable device when disarming a trap.
Perception for surprise? Player's roll it. They cannot aid each other.
Things like Diplomacy and Bluff? Roleplay it first. Whoever leads the roleplaying has the 'real' roll, and whomever else participates in it gets an assist.
But since the Monk only uses Perception on the door when the Rogue fails (which the Monk doesn't know, only his player does), then it's metagaming. I'm a bit flummoxed that so many people don't seem to grasp the difference.
Or grasp the difference perfectly well, but disagree.
Rogue (rolls 19): "I don't hear anything, but I'm pretty sure there's nothing. I'm really good at this, and this particular door isn't too thick."
Rogue (rolls 3): "Man, I don't know... that last fireball is still making my ears ring on and off. I can't hear anything right now, but maybe next time."
BOTH examples are completely in character.
Personally, I feel that many people are WAY too eager to play the "metagaming" card; I make those kinds of accusations only when it's pretty egregious -- stuff that there's absolutely no way the character could know -- and it's actually interfering with the game. But a character doing very badly at something he/she is normally good at? That seems like something he'd know.
Overall I find that if I actually, you know, trust the players instead of treating them like little kids that I need to constantly try to "catch" at something, the whole game goes a lot better. That's not a DM rule, just a basic interpersonal interaction one. YMMV.
The problem is in the execution. If players say "we always do that", then it's covered. But since the Monk only uses Perception on the door when the Rogue fails ( which the Monk doesn't know, only his player does ), then it's metagaming.
I'm a bit flummoxed that so many people don't seem to grasp the difference.
It's really easy to ignore the difference if all you're looking at is the effect it has on the perception roll. To differentiate the two, you have to ask "What happens if the floor panel before the door is trapped?" or "Will both of them have to make stealth to avoid being heard by the monsters sitting with their ears to the other side of the door?".
While I think rolling behind the screen can help, I think you still get a metagaming effect if your players just hear you roll a die behind the screen, unless you start doing it at random times for no reason to throw them off and they catch onto that.
The only thing I roll behind the screen is Disguise checks, because the player really shouldn't know how well they are disguised.
For Sense Motive when they roll low I just say they have no way of knowing if the person is lying or telling the truth (I only let them roll sense motive when they have reason to doubt or if they decide to. The character could just take everything they hear at face value).
With perception, most of the time it's story related things, so I just give the notice to whoever got the highest roll. If everyone did poorly, no one gets it.
We had a couple of serious metagaming opportunities in a 3.5 session last Tuesday, and the GM introduced the rule that too much metagaming causes llamas to appear.
One was just like this example: listening at the door. As a Druid with maxed out Spot and Listen, I'm the party's go-to guy for listening at doors, but in this particular case, someone else listened at the door, rolled badly, then another player listened at the door, and rolled somewhat better, but not excellent. Then they asked me to listen. I said: "Look, you guys already listened. Did you hear anything?", because I really try not to metagame. The last one actually did hear something, but couldn't quite make it out. That was enough reason for me to give it a try, but had they heard nothing at all, I wouldn't have listened at that door.
The other case (just before that, in fact), ended up costing one PC's life, because I refused to use out of character knowledge. We all had Waterbreathing, with me Wild Shaped to a giant octopus, dragging the heavy armoured clerics behind me, and we were swimming into an illusion-hidden cave that we suspected was the backdoor of a mansion/palace/fortress we wanted to infiltrate. (We were right, it's the backdoor, but it was supposed to be the exit, so now we're doing the dungeon backwards. We already killed the end boss.)
In the cave lived a gigantic lobster that attacked us. I should be the main combat guy as the water-mobile octopus, but his first attack brought me to 6 HP. Now the goal was to get me safely to land. Heavily armoured fighter-cleric starts drawing the beasts attacks of opportunity, then sinks to the bottom, I fail at a spell, eventually the other cleric commands it to flee for one round. Everybody quickly rushes ashore in various ways, except for the guy that sunk. He walks to near the shore, and the lobster returns to attack him. Big question: do we know where he is? The water is dark, but we do see the lobster near the shore. Sunken guy draws attacks of opportunity from the lobster so I can use a tentacle to get him out, but I realize I don't actually know that he's there, and even less that he's emptied the lobster's attacks of opportunity. Wizard quickly uses his telepathic familiar to get that information to me, but the GM has the familiar turn into a llama for excessive metagaming. I don't save him. Sunken guy dies.
(I'll try to reincarnate him tomorrow. He might refuse because he decides it's against his god's tenets.)
The sudden llama is a pretty clear sign that in-game reality has stopped mattering. It confuses everybody, gets everybody out of the game for a moment, but then we can all get back into the game the right way.
That's a fairly uncommon interpretation of the rules, I think. I've always assumed the randomness in the rolls was not clear to the character.
I agree that it's uncommon. How common an interpretation is, though, isn't necessarily indicative of how well it actually works. Mine is logically consistent and allows me to treat the players like grown-ups, so I find it's better all around for my games.
If other referees actually have players who constantly try to cheat at everything? I'd prefer to simply screen prospective players more carefully, rather than spend my gaming time playing hall monitor.
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Seems the question that divides it is if the player knows they performed poorly.
If they don't in your concept, you should make that roll for the player behind a screen and tell them what happened without revealing the roll.
If the do in your concept, let them roll it and there is no metagaming, because the player knows how they did.
This will vary from situation to situation, GM to GM, but so will many things in the game. That isn't a bad thing.
If you, as a GM, feel like the players shouldn't know the outcome and you have players who you feel will use out of game knowledge, that is why there is a GM screen.
Probably been said, but I am too lazy to look through the whole thread for it, but I will put it down here just incase.
My DM has us pre-roll about 30 pereception checks, for every level. It takes just a few minutes to get them for the whole table. Then he can go back and reference that list at anytime. Just cross off one after you have used it. Sure you have to apply the modifiers yourself, but its the ultimate in blind rolling because we dont even have a chance to see him pick up dice.
For this kind of thing, I just start assuming the monk is listening to every door, but his result isn't necessary until the rogue fails.
There's no metagaming involved this way, and no one has to take revenge on eachother.
That works great until something bad happens to the Monk because he was listening at the door. Then, all of a sudden, you hear:
"I never said I was listening at the door."
For this kind of thing, I just start assuming the monk is listening to every door, but his result isn't necessary until the rogue fails.
There's no metagaming involved this way, and no one has to take revenge on eachother.
That works great until something bad happens to the Monk because he was listening at the door. Then, all of a sudden, you hear:
"I never said I was listening at the door."
This is why I preface things with "So, you're both up front, listening to the door, right?"
When the monk is like "no," then shrug and keep on going. But when he moves up to listen to the door when the rogue rolls a 2, then I'm going to be asking him-- directly-- how he knows the rogue rolled bad this time and why he isn't listening to every door, why this one is special.
Then, just get on with the game after this short and direct conversation.
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For this kind of thing, I just start assuming the monk is listening to every door, but his result isn't necessary until the rogue fails.
There's no metagaming involved this way, and no one has to take revenge on eachother.
That works great until something bad happens to the Monk because he was listening at the door. Then, all of a sudden, you hear:
"I never said I was listening at the door."
This is why I preface things with "So, you're both up front, listening to the door, right?"
When the monk is like "no," then shrug and keep on going. But when he moves up to listen to the door when the rogue rolls a 2, then I'm going to be asking him-- directly-- how he knows the rogue rolled bad this time and why he isn't listening to every door, why this one is special.
Then, just get on with the game after this short and direct conversation.
If I expect to have a conversation with a player about metagaming, I won't try to passive-aggressively trap him mid-session, I'll just have the conversation. Preferably not during game.
Of course, I've never actually had to have a conversation about matagaming with any of my players, they simply never do it. And if a new player slips up, the other players will explain character knowledge vs. player knowledge to them before I have a chance to.
As far as assuming a players actions, as a general rule I never do this unless a player has specifically asked me to always assume their player is going to do a particular thing.
But since the Monk only uses Perception on the door when the Rogue fails (which the Monk doesn't know, only his player does), then it's metagaming. I'm a bit flummoxed that so many people don't seem to grasp the difference.Or grasp the difference perfectly well, but disagree.
Rogue (rolls 19): "I don't hear anything, but I'm pretty sure there's nothing. I'm really good at this, and this particular door isn't too thick."
Rogue (rolls 3): "Man, I don't know... that last fireball is still making my ears ring on and off. I can't hear anything right now, but maybe next time."BOTH examples are completely in character.
Personally, I feel that many people are WAY too eager to play the "metagaming" card; I make those kinds of accusations only when it's pretty egregious -- stuff that there's absolutely no way the character could know -- and it's actually interfering with the game. But a character doing very badly at something he/she is normally good at? That seems like something he'd know.
That's a fairly uncommon interpretation of the rules, I think. I've always assumed the randomness in the rolls was not clear to the character. I thought there was some mention of rolling secretly in skills, but the only place I found it was in Disable Device: "When disarming a trap or other device, the Disable Device check is made secretly, so that you don’t necessarily know whether you’ve succeeded."
I suppose that could be an exception to the general rule that you know roughly how well you did.
Pretty much this. To me, too, the rules always read as if characters are not aware that "they rolled low". My players have always operated under the same assumption as well, so it's not a case of me forcing this interpretation on them.
That's always been my understanding as well.
The first ever PC I killed was fully due to the player rolling extremely low on a Perception check, cue a few moments of OOC groaning about "I'm totally going to walk into a trap", then entering the room anyway and yes it was a trap, she got riddled with holes from hidden crossbowmen.
As a GM, part of my job is to provide the characters with the sensory input they get. The player's job is to provide the actions and reactions to this by the characters.
In this case, the sensory input is dependent on the roll, meaning usually that a high roll can let you get some extra information. The action from the player is to decide whether to listen at the door or not, and the reaction is what to do with what information the listening got you.
Given this, I find it pretty much ludicrous to claim that "since I rolled low, I want to try again". The PC listens at the door. The GM rolls the die without telling the specific roll (so no "Hmmm, I have a +20 Perception and I rolled 18, so anyone hiding would need at least +18 Stealth, meaning they are at least level 15 - Dex mod, ouch, we don't want to fight that guy!") Then the GM informs the player listening what the result of the listening is. The player decides what to do about it.
Every roll where success or failure are basically unknown at the time needs to be rolled hidden, or, yes, you will get stupid amounts of metagaming. It is different if the players did not initiate the action, such as if the group could hear something or notice something. I often call for a Perception check and find out the highest result. If nobody gets past the DC, "Nothing. Let's move on." The group gets a bit wary, someone may suspect they are being stalked, they will post extra guards... but that's fine with me.
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All PCs should get to roll Perception (or even better : you roll it for them).
Or even even better : they all take 20.
In such a situation, I believe every character would be doing his best to hear what is going on the other side of the door. No reason to make that only 1 of the PCs.
Problem solved.
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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.
Sometimes, I make rolls for the players. These are situations where knowing the result of the roll might influence their actions. Things like perception rolls to search for traps, disable traps, some knowledge checks. I usually make the decision on the fly depending in the circumstances at hand.
Another situation where I roll for the players are saves where they don't necessarily know they're saving against some effect, like disease. In this case, I'll roll the save on the and if they fail, I'll tell them sometime after the encounter (at the end of incubation) that they aren't feeling well or whatever.
-Skeld
That's a fairly uncommon interpretation of the rules, I think. I've always assumed the randomness in the rolls was not clear to the character.I agree that it's uncommon. How common an interpretation is, though, isn't necessarily indicative of how well it actually works. Mine is logically consistent and allows me to treat the players like grown-ups, so I find it's better all around for my games.
I dissagree, they are metagaming but you're letting it slide.