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only if you accept the premise that the gm making rolls in secret is bad. Which won't be true for plenty of groups. Some players don't want the burden of second guessing whether or not they're metagaming and instead have the gm present the world and react accorsingly.Additional information from page 293, the one referenced:
Personally, I don't care, but the game says that both ways are fine.
The GM can make any check secret, even if it’s not
usually secret. Conversely, the GM can let the players
roll any or all of their checks even if they would usually
be secret, trusting players not to make choices based on
information their characters don’t have.
Well the game says transparency is acceptable once but secret checks and DCs are mentioned multiple times and even when transparency is mentioned as acceptable it’s even in the same paragraph that says the GM can decide any check can be taken out of a player’s hands.
That’s a problem.
According to the rules of the game, a GM could tell you that they’re going to roll your attacks and saves in secret, and there’s not a thing in the rules you can do to stop it.
The acceptable line may move around for different groups, but frankly too much power and responsibility is placed on the GM’s shoulders to be responsible for the player’s fun.
What about players being responsible for their own fun and their own characters actions and reactions?
How many GM’s will have their monsters and NPC roll Society checks on to Recall Knowledge about player characters? It’s a secret check, should the GM be handing the dice to the players and letting them adjudicate the GM’s Knowledge? Otherwise wouldn’t the NPCs and Monsters always be “metagaming” when they bypassed the fighter to kill the spellcasters first because they’re obviously the more dangerous threat?
If the GM can be trusted to not metagame for an entire universe of Non-Player characters, surely the players can be trusted to not metagame for the only thing they have to be responsible for: their one character.
One thing I've done before is for things like stealth and perception checks where asymmetrical knowledge is important, is have players roll a bunch (like 20) of checks in advance, write them on scraps of paper, put them in a paper cup with their name on it, then give it to me. When a player makes a check, I randomly pull a piece of paper out of that player's cup, and when the results of the roll are clear from circumstances, I give the player back their scrap of paper so they know which roll they used.
Like I've had problems with players sometimes hamming it up too much when they roll badly; I appreciate some of that, but sometimes people take it a bit far.
The problem with that is that circumstances may have change since then. Buffs may be up. Debuffs may be up. Counted buffs may have been terminated. Hero points are a thing in this system, and secret rolls eliminate the opportunity to use them.
Which is one of the bigger issues that secret rolls needs to address. How does this interact with reroll abilities. You can't have both without some form of transparency.Note that PF2 allows the use of hero points to reroll failed rolls. With secret checks, the player can no longer make the decision to spend those hero points.
A failed stealth roll may definitely be critical enough to spend a hero point on.
The rules say that if the GM makes the roll no reroll abilities are allowed.
The rules say that if the GM makes the roll no reroll abilities are allowed.Which is one of the bigger issues that secret rolls needs to address. How does this interact with reroll abilities. You can't have both without some form of transparency.Note that PF2 allows the use of hero points to reroll failed rolls. With secret checks, the player can no longer make the decision to spend those hero points.
A failed stealth roll may definitely be critical enough to spend a hero point on.
It's a little more complicated than that. If the Secret check is made without player knowledge they cannot use Fortune abilities.
"If a player knows the GM is attempting a secret check—as often happens with Recall Knowledge or Seek—he can activate fortune or misfortune abilities."
And that does create a bit of a grey area.
Personally, I think this would be made more clear by simply saying, regardless of who rolls it, Fortune abilities cannot be used with checks that have the Secret tag.
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To those saying it's taking away player agency; it is and it isn't. It isn't in that the player still makes their decision. But, it is because when that decision comes down to the GM (which may not be through a dice roll, and could easily be fudged for the GM's or the story's amusement), that the agency of rolling for your own fate (instead of having it automatically decided for you by the GM) becomes lost. In short, it's harkening more back to the older editions of D&D, where the GM always rolled the dice and the players simply said what they wanted to do in order to move forward, where GMs could be dicks and easily get away with it. (Thankfully, I'm glad it's evolved since then.)
That being said, I'd rather players be rolling their dice on the table with anticipation than throwing their dice at me with anger and frustration because they aren't given the opportunity to roll them in the first place. (They might throw them anyway due to unfavorable results, but that's a whole other issue.) It's their dice. They wasted however much money they cost (have you seen the price on some of those fancy-looking dice sets?!) and aren't given the opportunity or privilege to use them to determine their fate in the game because "The GM has to make the dice roll?" In those cases, I'd be upset too.
If it makes players more happy to roll their dice, I'm all for it. I shouldn't have to shackle myself to the rules just because some text says so; if my players enjoy rolling their dice so it feels more like they are deciding their fate instead of being at the whims of the GM (which they basically are every other time, such as when rules disputes come up, or any other rule that says "the GM has the final say"), I'm all for it. A GM's main goal (and perhaps only goal) is to make sure the players are engaged and entertained, and if lack of dice rolling gets in the way of that, then a good GM would do something about it.
Read as plaintext, this is quite possibly the silliest clause I have ever read in a rulebook.
If a player knows the GM is attempting a secret check
Hah. Indeed.
Though technically it is the result of the roll that is secret rather than the fact that the GM is making the roll.
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I don't particularly care either way as a player, but as a GM this rule would really annoy me. The GM already has plenty of stuff to keep track of without also needing to reference the skill modifiers of four or more characters. It's simply more convenient to have the players keep track of their own modifiers and tell me what they roll.
Agreed 100%. After running 1 session with having to roll Stealth checks for all my players, I was thoroughly annoyed. GMs have enough stuff on their plate, don't add more!
I'm also in the camp that prefers to roll openly as much as possible. I honestly don't think that there is much that the GM has to hide from their players. If players are metagaming a lot, then that's an issue stemming from being bad players.
The only times I think GMs should amke secret rolls is when the players absolutely has no ability to affect the outcome, which are thankfully few and far between. Spells like teleport and augury come to mind, and seem appropriate.
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There's basically never a need for secret rolls except when a bad roll may give misinformation. So, for an augury, or the Dubious Knowledge feat. Failing dubious knowledge, a knowledge check shouldn't give false information on a critical fail, it should just prevent you from making another knowledge roll about that subject until either you increase your skill bonus or do more research in play.
Stealth works just fine rolled openly. The way I always play it is that the party declares they are sneaking, then the roll isn't actually made until it would become contested. That way there is no temptation to meta game actions and movement / positioning based on an early roll. Any similar situation is easily handled the same way.
Craft should definitely be open, I know when I make something well vs when I screw up.
There's basically never a need for secret rolls except when a bad roll may give misinformation.
Even that isn't an absolute necessity; good role-players can meta-know that the information is bad, but still run their characters as though they believed it to be true.
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According to the rules of the game, a GM could tell you that they’re going to roll your attacks and saves in secret, and there’s not a thing in the rules you can do to stop it.
If your relationship with your GM is that adversarial, that's a problem with your GM, not the system. The GM can also say your level 1 party gets attacked by a Balor and there's not a thing in the rules you can do to stop it.
How many GM’s will have their monsters and NPC roll Society checks on to Recall Knowledge about player characters? It’s a secret check, should the GM be handing the dice to the players and letting them adjudicate the GM’s Knowledge? Otherwise wouldn’t the NPCs and Monsters always be “metagaming” when they bypassed the fighter to kill the spellcasters first because they’re obviously the more dangerous threat?
If the monsters always attack the weakest party member that is, again, a sign of a bad GM, because the GM's responsibility is to create fun. You act like GM metagaming and player metagaming are the same thing, but they are REALLY not because GMs and players have very different responsibilities. The GM's job is to create fun by challenging the party, and the player's job is to have fun and overcome challenges.
Your position is also a bit silly IMO because you are just arbitrarily defining what you are considering metagaming. Do you tell the PCs before hand the identity of every monster in a dungeon and the location of every trap? Why not? That's information that you have that they don't - isn't that unfair?
For the record, by the way, I tried it your way, as you suggested: When I ran my first session of PF2e, I told my players I wanted to try having them roll all their own rolls openly, no secret rolls what-so-ever. Their unanimous response was "ew, no, gross, secret rolls make it easier to roleplay".
So I guess my players are just broken since according to your earlier comments secret rolls are only ever fun for the GM?
Different groups have different tastes. As I said before, I think PF2e might have gone slightly too far on which rolls are secret by default. But they fixed that by explicitly including a rule instructing GMs to tweak secret rolls to fit their group. A GM that doesn't do that, and instead runs things to their own taste at the expense of their group, is again, a bad GM, and no system is going to fix that.
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I think the large thing people are overlooking with this. These rules weren't written for every table, they were written for PFS play.
At your table, where you have control over which players you play with, PFS and other events have no such control. Secret rolls are less a GM vs Player arguement in this case, but a bad metagame player with the capability of ruining it for the other players. By having secret rolls as standard, it means the GM has that as a tool in order to curb that behavior without it being a massive rules arguement or a "well my character knows they did bad, I wanna sit and redo it" situation.
I ran into this problem twice with the D&D 4e Encounters program. One was a player who min-maxed everything at the cost of other players. I couldn't kick him because it was an open event, but there was one encounter he was playing a tiny character and using other players as cover, and another where he spent five rounds sitting at the beginning of a dungeon to prep long term effects on himself because he'd read the AP and built a character immune to everything. The second was a guy who had a specific interpretation of Intimidate rules and what he could do, which came down to fine reading it and determining the effect he was referring to was "GM's discretion of what happens" not the player getting to pick.
So by having it as a base rule, but optional to remove, it makes it easier for a GM with a problem player who could take fun away from the other players with metagaming.
I think the large thing people are overlooking with this. These rules weren't written for every table, they were written for PFS play.
Secret rolls are even worse for PFS because they slow down the game. There's no logic in ruining the game by default for all players in order to reign in a minority of troublemakers that will likely make the game less fun in other ways, anyway.
Most skill checks that have the Secret trait don't even need secret rolls. Who cares if the player knows what he rolled on his Recall Knowledge or Stealth check? He has little idea what the check DCs are.
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I think the large thing people are overlooking with this. These rules weren't written for every table, they were written for PFS play.Secret rolls are even worse for PFS because they slow down the game. There's no logic in ruining the game by default for all players in order to reign in a minority of troublemakers that will likely make the game less fun in other ways, anyway.
Most skill checks that have the Secret trait don't even need secret rolls. Who cares if the player knows what he rolled on his Recall Knowledge or Stealth check? He has little idea what the check DCs are.
In our home games, the GM has a sheet recording the perception, sense motive, and stealth of all the PCs for secret checks; for us, it greatly helps immersion if we can’t subconsciously metagame our reactions to results.
In my experience, most gamers can’t help themselves from meta-gaming, sometimes even very subtly. I’ve seen it at least once at every table I’ve played, convention and home games, that someone makes a low roll on an attempt to spot or hide or sense motive, and the next second two more people want to jump in and roll too - or vice versa, someone rolls a super-high check on said spot or sense motive, and suddenly a ton of people are no longer interested in trying the same check. The table who has never let meta-knowledge alter their reactions to a thing is an exceptional table of players.
I’ve seen it at least once at every table I’ve played, convention and home games, that someone makes a low roll on an attempt to spot or hide or sense motive, and the next second two more people want to jump in and roll too - or vice versa, someone rolls a super-high check on said spot or sense motive, and suddenly a ton of people are no longer interested in trying the same check.
That just seems like efficient rolling to me. Does it give them some kind of unfair advantage over a group where everyone rolls Perception / Sense Motive every time?
Though I guess in a 'secret rolls' game some of the PCs might stand around doing nothing because having the GM roll five Sense Motive checks is slow and boring.
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Speaking as someone who often runs on Fantasy Grounds, I always use secret checks. Its called "rolling in the Tower" there. The player drags their dice into the dice tower and the DM sees the results but the player doesn't.
Helps to curb lots of metagame stuff.
Not sure I get the OPs indignation. This sorta thing has been around for forever. Its just called out in a tag now.
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Stuff
Hi MaxAstro, I think we're talking past each other here so I want to address some things.
1) When the rules allow a perfectly legal way of hiding attack rolls, and the like from the players, it feels like a violation of the social contract. I as a player do not have recourse within the rules to roll my own dice within the rules of the game. It feels bad.
Of course the common sense solution is to communicate with your GM and fellow players and come up with a solution that works for everyone. However, I'm a 33 year old man who plays with friends.
Not for instance a 13 year old trying tabletop RPGs for the first time because they've only seen them played on streams. Weird corner cases should be mentioned.
2) If a kobold readies a tanglefoot bag against the unarmored wizard or sorcerer for if they try to cast a spell is that a fair adjudication?
As a GM I could justify that kobolds know how spellcasters work because the tribe has faced adventurers before.
However, if a player saw a kobold in robes, holding a weird symbol aloft they need to spend an action and the GM makes a secret Society check in order for the player to know whether that kobold is a spellcaster or just someone who really likes robes.
If they readied a tanglefoot bag in case the kobold starts spellcasting a GM could wag their finger about "metagaming", I mean what's the value of "Recall Knowledge" if players are just going to use their character knowledge.
Metagame knowledge is always arbitrary.
I think the real issue is: Why is there no mechanism in the game for a player to decide whether or not a roll should be secret. All of that adjudication and decision-making is put on the GM's shoulders.
I hate secret rolls. But if a player asked me to roll their check in secret, to assist them with making natural choices in game, then that's not a problem.
However, if a player who bought a new set of dice and is excited to play a loremaster full of all knowledges comes to the table and their GM tells them: "According to the rules I don't have to let you roll." You can see the excitement drain from their faces.
I want players to feel like they have a semblance of control over the game, even if it is just deciding when they can roll their own dice.
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I like it when there is no GM screen, nothing separating me from the players. I like dice rolls that everyone can see. It's more exciting that way.
If I don't want the dice to decide, I'll play a game that isn't dice-based.
Also stuff
Firstly, I want to apologize for getting a little heated. I felt like my players were being attacked and it made me defensive.
I definitely see where you are coming from. My feeling is that the callout stating that the GM should adjust which rolls are secret to fit the needs of their group resolves those concerns for any not-terrible GM - it means that the rules say the GM is supposed to work with the players, which gives players recourse, at least in my opinion.
As far as your kobold example, again, I think it's a bad GM that doesn't allow players to apply common sense. Sure, they don't know the kobold is a wizard, but they can guess. And sometimes they might guess wrong. My players actually just got thrashed in a fight because the sneaky ratfolk skulking around in the shadows with a knife turned out to be a full cleric, not a rogue. :) (Ironically that situation doesn't even apply to this conversation - because they knew said ratfolk was the head of a guild of assassins, my poor players were so convinced she was a rogue they didn't even bother to make any knowledge rolls...)
I would argue that the other method actually hinders player choice more: If you roll the knowledge check openly, and the player can see that they failed the knowledge roll, do they now feel constrained to act like they don't think the kobold is a wizard, even though common sense would tell them otherwise?
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The DM isn't God--it's a collaborative endeavour--but to me, secret rolls make a lot of sense, I've always done them and to have them included in the mechanics is something I really like. The DM knows some things the player doesn't--that's not about being a God--and, for me, that should absolutely include how well players have succeeded at some tasks. It doesn't just make sense in a narrative sort of way, it helps build tension.
Meanwhile, while rolling is a lot of fun--it's one of the things that hooked me--I don't think players are really substantially lacking many other opportunities to roll, and get that fun, and the dramatic tension secret rolls help support is well worth the sacrifice, for me.
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Player agency isn't quite the right term for this, but it's pretty close. The convention in TTRPGs for a fairly long time is that the player gets to control exactly one thing (their character) and that you should let them control it absolutely. Secret rolls very directly take one of the few things PCs get to do (rolling skill checks) and put them in the hands of the GM. This isn't a new thing in Pathfinder, but it was far from this widespread in PF1. A lot of things that used to be checks aren't even player checks anymore. That doesn't particularly bug me, but it does make it even more pointed that the things the PCs aren't being allowed to roll on are things they are actively attempting to accomplish.
Couple this with the fact that the GM is allowed to fudge the dice as he/she sees fit and it feels like the dice themselves are meaningless. It makes me, as a player, feel powerless to determine my character's fate, and that's the only lever of control I have in the game. Even something as simple as changing the wording to "the GM may choose to make this check a Secret roll when it would be beneficial to the story" from the default state would be fine. I wouldn't mind one in ten rolls being secret. Just... not ten in ten.
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Also stuffFirstly, I want to apologize for getting a little heated. I felt like my players were being attacked and it made me defensive.
I definitely see where you are coming from. My feeling is that the callout stating that the GM should adjust which rolls are secret to fit the needs of their group resolves those concerns for any not-terrible GM - it means that the rules say the GM is supposed to work with the players, which gives players recourse, at least in my opinion.
As far as your kobold example, again, I think it's a bad GM that doesn't allow players to apply common sense. Sure, they don't know the kobold is a wizard, but they can guess. And sometimes they might guess wrong. My players actually just got thrashed in a fight because the sneaky ratfolk skulking around in the shadows with a knife turned out to be a full cleric, not a rogue. :) (Ironically that situation doesn't even apply to this conversation - because they knew said ratfolk was the head of a guild of assassins, my poor players were so convinced she was a rogue they didn't even bother to make any knowledge rolls...)
I would argue that the other method actually hinders player choice more: If you roll the knowledge check openly, and the player can see that they failed the knowledge roll, do they now feel constrained to act like they don't think the kobold is a wizard, even though common sense would tell them otherwise?
It’s totally fine. I get it, I feel like the game is attacking my players and our style of distributive gaming.
At my table if you fail your check to identify the kobold in robes I’d ask the player: “What makes you think this kobold is no real threat?”
The character can answer that question however they like:
“I’ve never heard of a powerful kobold spellcaster, so I’m going to ignore this cantripper for the greater danger of the kobolds with knives.”
“I heard in a tavern kobolds can’t cast any spells that aren’t illusions.”
Whatever they like, the failed check gives me permission to ask a leading question or make a hard move, the player determines the answer so they can play accordingly.
It’s not me presenting an answer for the player to be dictated to, it’s presenting a question the player can answer to their own (and the table’s satisfaction).
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Cool stuff
That's a neat way of handling it. Totally would not work for my table, but it sounds like fun for yours.
Ultimately my premise is that the current way Paizo is handling it fits both our tables. Every roll that could conceivably be secret is marked as secret, not because it must be secret, but because a GM new to the system will have a guideline for what rolls might typically be secret and which aren't. And the cutout on adjusting secret rolls handles the rest.
After considering this discussion, though, I would like to see that paragraph expanded a bit and made more prominent. New GMs should be aware that the decision on what rolls to make secret or not is a major one that affects table feel, and that they should have a discussion with their table about it.
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Ultimately my premise is that the current way Paizo is handling it fits both our tables.
Really, any method is going to end up being fine for home games. That's what house rules are for. I'm going to have everything rolled out in the open and someone else is going to have the GM roll every single check.
Where my primary concern lies is outside my home game. I dislike secret checks enough that I'll probably avoid PFS in PF2, just because of them. I don't like how they change the feel of the game.
I used secret checks in 3.x and P1E.
Where my primary concern lies is outside my home game. I dislike secret checks enough that I'll probably avoid PFS in PF2, just because of them. I don't like how they change the feel of the game.
That's fair. I have no real opinion about PFS.
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Where my primary concern lies is outside my home game. I dislike secret checks enough that I'll probably avoid PFS in PF2, just because of them. I don't like how they change the feel of the game.That's fair. I have no real opinion about PFS.
PFS hates table variation. I expect them to mandate secret rolls. I really, really hope that they mandate for them NOT to occur
If the idea of having the dice taken out of your hand issue to you personally, why wouldn't you consider buying your own dice tower if your PFS group doesn't have one, and rolling your own dice in the tower and then stating their bonus out loud?
the only really messy issue they need to resolve with secret rolls is how to handle rerolls and abilities that boost rolls after the roll but before the results are mentioned.
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Cool stuffThat's a neat way of handling it. Totally would not work for my table, but it sounds like fun for yours.
Ultimately my premise is that the current way Paizo is handling it fits both our tables. Every roll that could conceivably be secret is marked as secret, not because it must be secret, but because a GM new to the system will have a guideline for what rolls might typically be secret and which aren't. And the cutout on adjusting secret rolls handles the rest.
After considering this discussion, though, I would like to see that paragraph expanded a bit and made more prominent. New GMs should be aware that the decision on what rolls to make secret or not is a major one that affects table feel, and that they should have a discussion with their table about it.
:)
If you like that, I should probably recommend Dungeonworld and Masks: A New Generation to you. Powered by the Apocalypse Games have been a big help in expressing shared storytelling not just for me, but also my players.
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I think secret rolls preserves player agency. If I roll Lore in the open and I see I crit fail, the GM gives me information that I know is wrong. But if I don't act on it, I'm metagaming. My agency was reduced by the open roll.
If I search for traps and don't know the result of my check (but the GM tells me I don't find anything), I can still say "hey, it looks fine, but maybe the guy with the best saves should open this door". If I rolled in the open, got a 1, and do that, everyone is looking at me like I'm trying to cheese the game.
By not getting metagame knowledge that I'm not supposed to act on, I stay more free to make my own choices, guesses and gambles.
As a GM I just couldn't handle this. Our home-game style runs to big parties (5-6) and larger fights than most Paizo products. Last night's key _Azlant_ battle had dozens of opponents coming into the village from different sides, and at least 12 on the initiative track at one time, plus 6 PCs.
I am just not up for rolling for the PCs when I already have 12 NPCs to track, and when the PCs are using spells and feats and so forth that change their numbers so I can't just rely on a fixed set of numbers. I have limited brainpower as a GM. I needed to use it to keep the initiative track straight (screwed this up once) and to keep the subtle differences between enemy leaders and followers straight (screwed this up once too).
I asked for some Perception rolls partway through the fight for no reason the player could see. The PCs failed them. The player just ignored this: he is very good at not metagaming.
One thing that helps avoid metagaming issues is establishing standard PC procedures before they are needed. At the start of the wilderness journey, set the watch order. Don't wait to set it the night an attack happens. If the PCs need to check for faceless stalkers, ask them how they do it right away: then a month later when they fail some perception checks, you don't have to wonder if their subsequent behavior is normal, because you will know what normal is.
For me one of the biggest flaws of PF is that it is slow, and players can tune out and take out the cell phones, which for me ruins the game. I am not willing to adopt any rules that make the game slower, and I would really resent this rule if it had that effect (and I don't see how it wouldn't--in our games it's almost always the GM who is overloaded, not the players.)
If I roll Lore in the open and I see I crit fail, the GM gives me information that I know is wrong. But if I don't act on it, I'm metagaming.
This is why I don't like 'give bad information on a low roll' systems.
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It's metagaming in the sense that seeing what a dice roll is can influence the player's decisions based on what that dice result is. If a player sees a 20 being rolled, they will act with more confidence than usual compared to if they were unsure of the actual result. If a player sees a 1 being rolled, they will be more prone to shirk away from whatever trial lies before them compared to being unsure of whether they failed by a bad roll or not.
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But... thats not how it works?
If I roll a 1 and the GM tells me that my character doesn't see any traps. Then I nor my character literally have no knowledge of the state of the trappedness of the door. It could be trapped, it could not be trapped. Neither the player nor the character knows. Any decision is still a valid decision. Open it, don't open it. Whichever!
Its perfectly fine on rolling a 1 for a character to say "I don't think its trapped, but I could be wrong."
Its perfectly fine on rolling a 20 for a character to say "I don't think it's trapped, but I could be wrong."
Neither option is metagaming.
In addition to Darksol's point It is also metagaming because the character may decide to check the door again if they see that they roll a one, while they would have no reason to if they roll a 20. You are taking away the opportunity for the players to decide whether to be careful or not if they see all of their rolls, because the GM shouldn't allow the player who rolled a 1 and saw it to check again. Forcing players to act on false knowledge reduces fun. Allowing players to make decisions based upon what they know about the situation is far more exciting and enjoyable.
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You know, right now, in PFS the gm can do private rolls right?
My experience has been that secret rolls in PF1 (PFS or not) were the exception rather than the norm, which is probably fine for me. Where I have issue is when 2/3 of the skill checks I attempt during a given session are rolled by someone else.
Well, that and the removal of the "lie to them on a crit fail" stuff.
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As I noted in an earlier comment, this isn't, exactly, about player agency. This isn't taking direct control of a character's actions away from a player.
What it's removing is the tactile "rolling dice" satisfaction that a lot of people derive from the game. It also removes the illusion that you have control over your character's fate through the dice.
Worse yet, it's addressing something that almost all groups already figured out how they were going to deal with. If you roll a 1 on a check, your table almost certainly already has the "acceptable" way to react to that worked out.
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You know, right now, in PFS the gm can do private rolls right?My experience has been that secret rolls in PF1 (PFS or not) were the exception rather than the norm, which is probably fine for me. Where I have issue is when 2/3 of the skill checks I attempt during a given session are rolled by someone else.
Is it likely that a player would lose 2/3 of their skill checks? I get that it could be fairly common in some circumstances; perception (other than initiative), knowing-stuff rolls and stealth, for example, but a bunch of other rolls won't be secret (including the soon-to-be-much-more-common medicine rolls under update 1.3). Additionally, as I mentioned earlier, I think it adds to the dramatic tension in a way that's typically a very fair trade for losing the fun of rolling dice and seeing the result.
The fairness of the trade is obviously a personal issue--we'll all have different opinions about it--but I think it's got a reasonably long heritage in RPGs; I remember a lot of us of my age doing it pretty soon after we started in the early 80s (although there were obviously also skill-based games around before that, like Runequest and Traveller) for precisely the reason mentioned by someone above, that the number on the dice gives you additional information over and above what the DM tells you, reducing the "do I succeed/fail?" excitement that comes with rolling dice in the first place. I like getting that excitement back through the unknown roll but I also can't see a better way of doing it, given the way most games (including PF and D&D) are set up, given that the DM has information players do not and controlling the reveal of that, in response to character actions is a big part of successful DMing in most games.
the character may decide to check the door againJust don't let them do that? The roll represents the character's best effort at finding a trap. Checking again doesn't find anything further, because they have already rolled fro the sum total of their checking.
I don't really understand the aversion to making sub optimal choices. Sure you the player might think the whatever is trapped, but if the character doesn't, let them make a mistake! If you trust your GM (and if you don't, why are you playing with them) you can make those poor choices for your character with the knowledge that the _player_ won't be punished for them (even though the character might)
For example, one of my characters follows Hanspur, the vaguely murderish river god. When the party encountered a pack of Hippo's (the most deadly river creature in existance!) he got unreasonably excited and ran in to give them a hug. I the player knew this was a horrible idea, but the character (with his 8 wisdom) was none the wiser. Sure enough, the character got trampled to death (and was breath of lifed by the party) and a good time was had by all!
Some times its fun to make bad choices.
Obviously, I am most happy with the idea that each table is allowed to decide for themselves whether secret checks are worth the experience or not.
For example, almost everything about what you describe in that scenario of running in to try to hug hippos is the opposite of a "good time," for me as a player. I will not try to break down why except to say that if one player makes a character that must be played in a way that means making destructively terrible choices, that is not a good character for most long term RPGs (as in, the players expect their characters generally to live, to risk their own lives for each other, and to solve problems together over the course of more than a one off adventure).
If the player doesn't see the result (because they rolled the dice in a dice tower, for example), then the GM doesn't have to worry about creating artificial boundaries on what the character does with the best knowledge they have available to them.
Checking things more than once is a logical thing to do, and characters should be capable of being logical and knowing that they are capable of making mistakes without always being forced into knowing whether the mistake was made before acting on that mistake. Having no secret rolls takes that away from players.
I have had a lot more fun recently with a GM that has each player make their own secret sense motive check for sense motive checks, and then tells us who believes the NPC and who doesn't, and then leaves it to us to role play that social encounter out and decide if our characters announce their trust or not or try to communicate it secretly. It makes it much more fun than knowing X rolled a 18 + 2 while I rolled a 1 with a +13 and thus, even though my character usually has a better sense of these things, he is wrong about this person.
What it's removing is the tactile "rolling dice" satisfaction that a lot of people derive from the game. It also removes the illusion that you have control over your character's fate through the dice.
This issue issue can be resolved while still allowing GMs to request secret checks with a dice tower. The players can roll their own favorite or lucky dice and not know what the result is.