Jealous Hex and metagaming

[Ravingdork]

Do you know which penalty the target takes when casting jealous hex?

[breithauptclan]

Hmm... Interesting.

The spell doesn't say that you do. So for full immersion play, probably not. You could make Recall Knowledge check (before or after) to try and find out which ability would be highest. You could also make a perception check (after only) to find out which one the target started doing worse at.

But I'm not sure that playing to that high of a level of fidelity would really be worth it. And it certainly wouldn't be easy to hide that information from the players.

[The Raven Black]

The spell does not tell you. The condition is as obvious as usual.

[Malk_Content]

I would say that how you describe the spell taking effect should make it clear. That's just a good bit of narration.

[SuperBidi]

Like Raven Black states, the conditions are quite common and should be recognizable. Not stating the condition would face issues if the PCs can apply it another way (like the Rogue giving Enfeebled) or if the condition triggers some effects (quite common with Frightened for example).

[cavernshark]

As a GM, what do you gain by hiding which condition is applied? Most creature's highest stat will probably be obvious based on form (ex. big ogres are highest in strength or constitution; the rogue-y shadowy chap is probably going to be dexterity).

In particularly odd situations where the monster is totally unknown and the stat isn't what the form would suggest, all you did it tip the player off that this may be a different kind of fight than they expected. It doesn't tell them much else -- intelligence on a brutish creature could be a wizard, alchemist, or investigator style creature but it still might also hit very hard. It's a neat, if slightly unnerving, piece of information in that case which is probably more fun to share than hide.