I've always assumed the answer to this is no. If a player non-critically fails, they know they failed by 1, failed by 9, or somewhere in between, but they don't know where in that range their roll was. But something from Dark Archive is making me less sure about this.
A psychic with the infinite eye conscious mind gets a pretty nice amp for guidance. For those who don't have the book yet, you can see the full text 17 minutes into the Rules Lawyer's preview video. Here's the relevant paragraph, with the important part bolded:
You can cast an amped guidance spell as a reaction triggered when your ally fails or critically fails an attack roll, Perception check, saving throw, or skill check, and the bonus from guidance would change the failure to a success or the critical failure to a normal failure. The bonus from guidance applies retroactively to their check.
Because the trigger for the reaction requires that the bonus from guidance would be enough to upgrade the degree of success of the roll, that suggests that the player of the psychic needs to know when one of their allies within range fails (or critically fails) a roll by 1. Without that information, the psychic can't know when the trigger for their reaction is met.
As far as I know, this is not standard information for a GM to give players, but maybe I've missed something. Is there any guidance in something like the Gamemastery Guide that says GMs should give players this information? Is the ability to gain this information just something that is implicitly granted to infinite eye psychics? If that's the case, should I post about this in the Dark Archive errata thread, requesting for clarification?
How would you all handle this?
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You don't even have to go to unreleased content to see effects like this. Nudge Fate has identical rules language.
If the GM and players want to keep the DC secret, there is no reason why it wouldn't still work. While the effect is in place, the ability can be handled by the GM behind the screen.
Granted, once the ability is used, the players are going to have a rather accurate estimation of what the DC is...
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I tend to play that once the players succeed at something, namely striking a monster, they learn the DC (or AC). It was once pointed out to me that the only thing which changes in doing this is that the players don't start doing the unconscious math game of "oh, a 24 missed by a 28 hit?" narrowing down on the DC every subsequent check until the number is known anyway. It feels silly it took me so long to realize this when i was the one at the table (when I was a player) who would announce the AC once I found it.
Of course it seems to me the easiest way to handle this ability is simply to tell the player when the trigger was met. They'll know the DC after that but until then it was still an unknown unless they happened to roll an exact succeess already on that check.
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I've always assumed the answer to this is no. If a player non-critically fails, they know they failed by 1, failed by 9, or somewhere in between, but they don't know where in that range their roll was. But something from Dark Archive is making me less sure about this.
A psychic with the infinite eye conscious mind gets a pretty nice amp for guidance. For those who don't have the book yet, you can see the full text 17 minutes into the Rules Lawyer's preview video. Here's the relevant paragraph, with the important part bolded:
You can cast an amped guidance spell as a reaction triggered when your ally fails or critically fails an attack roll, Perception check, saving throw, or skill check, and the bonus from guidance would change the failure to a success or the critical failure to a normal failure. The bonus from guidance applies retroactively to their check.Because the trigger for the reaction requires that the bonus from guidance would be enough to upgrade the degree of success of the roll, that suggests that the player of the psychic needs to know when one of their allies within range fails (or critically fails) a roll by 1. Without that information, the psychic can't know when the trigger for their reaction is met.
As far as I know, this is not standard information for a GM to give players, but maybe I've missed something. Is there any guidance in something like the Gamemastery Guide that says GMs should give players this information? Is the ability to gain this information just something that is implicitly granted to infinite eye psychics? If that's the case, should I post about this in the Dark Archive errata thread, requesting for clarification?
How would you all handle this?
I assume it would be handled like this:
Player 1 - I attempt to strike my foeGM - Make your attack roll
Player 1 - Does a 22 hit?
GM - No, it does not
Player 2 - What about a 23?
GM - Yep, that would hit
Player 2 - I use my reaction to retroactively boost my ally's attack roll by 1.
GM - Okay, Player 1 nearly misses the monster, but Player 2 guides the strike just enough for it to land: Roll your damage.
In my experience, a 'missed by 1' roll on a non-secret roll would often be described as such anyway ('your foe just manages to dodge your strike' or the like) but this will obviously vary from situation to situation (even at the same table: Failing a Will Save by 1 is a bit harder to describe).
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So wait... this ability more or less tells us that the FULL statblock and all related modifiers from opponents should always be just... openly available... or at the very least, it would be for PCs with this (and similar) ability. That kinda (not even kinda, more like completely) blows even the BEST CASE SCENARIO of literally ANY FORM of a Recall Knowledge Check out of the water since for this to work the player would always HAVE to know the AC, Skill DCs, Save DC, Perception DCs and therefore know the exact bonuses they have to all such Skills, Saves, and Perception.
That is unless this info is only EVER supposed to be exposed when these kinds of abilities are ABLE to be used ... but still, that means that the amount of info dump that is available at all times when just such a PC exists is, and let me be clear about this, MASSIVELY and profoundly game-changing...
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Hyperbole much?
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I approve.
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I approve.
You didn’t approve a million times, so we know you hate it with a passion.
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The only thing the GM really has to change is to change this:
"You failed, but not by so much that you critically fail"
To this:
"You failed, by more than 1" / "You failed, by 1"
It's not needed to give the full numbers, just whether it was on the threshold or not.
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That said, my experience with PF2 is that it really isn't needed to keep numbers secret after they've been "used". If after throwing one fireball, the players know if the monster dodged it easily or barely, then they can make a decision on whether to try a different spell. This is a good thing, it means the players can engage more with the specific encounter you're running, instead of blindly repeating what they think is the best tactic in the average situation.
Being too secretive doesn't make the game more fun.
The decision of saying the DC or how closer to it or even to ignore secret checks is entirely to GM discretion. Depending on the situation and how fun it can be. The GM can say or not the numbers.
So it's not uncommon for me to tell DC from a skill check that players need to do like climbing to help them to know how difficult it will be to their characters and many time we have some fun with it with players celebrating when they win by 1 and something like that.
While in many other situations I don't tell the DC or turn the entire roll secret because in some situations I don't fell that's right to they know how well they were. Like diplomacy checks for example.
There no need to overthink about it the GM will decide when it will interesting or not to know a DC or a roll.
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I usually describe near-misses differently than I do complete misses. But I won't say "missed by 2". Once players could have figured out the DC though, there's no reason to keep it a secret.
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The decision of saying the DC or how closer to it or even to ignore secret checks is entirely to GM discretion. Depending on the situation and how fun it can be. The GM can say or not the numbers.
So it's not uncommon for me to tell DC from a skill check that players need to do like climbing to help them to know how difficult it will be to their characters and many time we have some fun with it with players celebrating when they win by 1 and something like that.
While in many other situations I don't tell the DC or turn the entire roll secret because in some situations I don't fell that's right to they know how well they were. Like diplomacy checks for example.
There no need to overthink about it the GM will decide when it will interesting or not to know a DC or a roll.
Yeah, things like climb DCs should really just be told to the player. It should be obvious to a character that climbing this tree will be easier than the sheer wall with no handholds.
Nothing says or even implies that the DC of non-secret checks are secret. A lot of GMs are in the old mindset that everything is secret "for the immersion" but that's not how PF2 was written
The CRB says that some DCs are known before the roll and some are not. The section talking about it doesn't mention secret rolls at all, and the example given for an unknown DC is for a non-secret check (an Athletics check to swim).
Step 3: Compare the Result to the DC
Other times, you might not know the DC right away. Swimming across a river would require an Athletics check, but it doesn’t have a specified DC—so how will you know if you succeed or fail? You call out your result to the GM and they will let you know if it is a success, failure, or otherwise. While you might learn the exact DC through trial and error, DCs sometimes change, so asking the GM whether a check is successful is the best way to determine whether or not you have met or exceeded the DC.
You don't even have to go to unreleased content to see effects like this. Nudge Fate has identical rules language.
If the GM and players want to keep the DC secret, there is no reason why it wouldn't still work. While the effect is in place, the ability can be handled by the GM behind the screen.
Granted, once the ability is used, the players are going to have a rather accurate estimation of what the DC is...
I didn't know about nudge fate, so thanks!
But I do think that in respect to learning about near-misses, amped guidance is larger in scope than nudge fate. With nudge fate, you have to cast it on an ally ahead of time, and you sustain it every round; if they get a near-miss while the spell is active, you learn about it and can give a bonus. With amped guidance, you don't need to cast anything to learn the information; merely being capable of amping it would mean you learn about near-misses for all allies within 120 ft.
And oddly enough, once an infinite eye psychic reaches 11th level, their ability to determine an exact DC due to their trigger being met becomes less accurate, since the bonus for amped guidance increases to +2 once heightened to 6th level. When the trigger is met, you would know the DC is 1 or 2 higher, but you'd have no way of knowing which.
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Yes, secret rolls are intended to fix a different problem. They prevent meta-gaming based on the value rolled.
Though if you do want the value of the DC to be hidden even after characters succeed at checks against it, you would almost certainly have to roll the checks in secret. Which isn't really fun for the players.
Yes, learning about a near miss does leak information to the player. But I don't think that is game-breaking. As others above pointed out, often a near miss is information that the GM gives to the players anyway.
I also think giving out DCs is probably the least interesting and useful thing a GM can give out for Recall Knowledge.
I usually don't provide the DC values for RK due the risk of the players to calculate the monsters level "for free". But I rarely do theses check secretly (I don't like secret check too much except if the situation requires that they aren't even know what they are rolling. Secrect checks removes the dice roll's fun from the players and some of their sensation of control once they usually not even know what check they are really rolling. So I turn many secret checks to secret DC whatever sutiation that I think that's knows if was a natural critical sucess or a critical failure isn't a big problem). I just ask to them roll them I say if some creature information or not depending from success rate.
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So wait... this ability more or less tells us that the FULL statblock and all related modifiers from opponents should always be just... openly available... or at the very least, it would be for PCs with this (and similar) ability. That kinda (not even kinda, more like completely) blows even the BEST CASE SCENARIO of literally ANY FORM of a Recall Knowledge Check out of the water since for this to work the player would always HAVE to know the AC, Skill DCs, Save DC, Perception DCs and therefore know the exact bonuses they have to all such Skills, Saves, and Perception.
That is unless this info is only EVER supposed to be exposed when these kinds of abilities are ABLE to be used ... but still, that means that the amount of info dump that is available at all times when just such a PC exists is, and let me be clear about this, MASSIVELY and profoundly game-changing...
It's called player / character knowledge segregation. Just because you may be able to sing the Monster Manual backwards doesn't mean your toon does. Basically, the Knowlege/Lore check tells you what your character knows, and is supposed to inform your roleplaying.
It's the same thing with knowing the damage roll before you decide to use a shield block. It's supposed to not make shield blocking a 'Gotcha!' moment, but it can create some weirdness.
Oh and things like Reactive Shield are in the same boat really. Technically, your character also doesn't know by how much a monster beat your AC with its attack roll, but since these abilities are specifically being called out for triggering when they would actually make a difference...
I've always assumed the answer to this is no. If a player non-critically fails, they know they failed by 1, failed by 9, or somewhere in between, but they don't know where in that range their roll was. But something from Dark Archive is making me less sure about this.
A psychic with the infinite eye conscious mind gets a pretty nice amp for guidance. For those who don't have the book yet, you can see the full text 17 minutes into the Rules Lawyer's preview video. Here's the relevant paragraph, with the important part bolded:
You can cast an amped guidance spell as a reaction triggered when your ally fails or critically fails an attack roll, Perception check, saving throw, or skill check, and the bonus from guidance would change the failure to a success or the critical failure to a normal failure. The bonus from guidance applies retroactively to their check.Because the trigger for the reaction requires that the bonus from guidance would be enough to upgrade the degree of success of the roll, that suggests that the player of the psychic needs to know when one of their allies within range fails (or critically fails) a roll by 1. Without that information, the psychic can't know when the trigger for their reaction is met.
As far as I know, this is not standard information for a GM to give players, but maybe I've missed something. Is there any guidance in something like the Gamemastery Guide that says GMs should give players this information? Is the ability to gain this information just something that is implicitly granted to infinite eye psychics? If that's the case, should I post about this in the Dark Archive errata thread, requesting for clarification?
How would you all handle this?
I'm not a fan of these kinds of ability when it's handled inconsistently like this. You have Reactive Shield, which has to be used even if the effect may or may not still hit/crit you, which is doubly painful when you have Attacks of Opportunity. It's mitigated when you have feats like Quick Block to rely on, or the Boundless Reprisals feat, but it's still pretty lame. There's also Nimble Dodge, which you have to declare prior to knowing if the attack roll will hit or not to aptly avoid it based on it's wording. Bracers of Missile Deflection require knowing that an attack roll is a Success, but not a Critical Success to activate (though you still don't determine by how much that is, meaning it can be useless to activate, another feelsbad moment). Seems silly that the effect couldn't also be used to avoid a Critical hit, which would help keeps its power both consistent and favorable compared to it just being vendor fodder the instant it's acquired. Champion Reactions have to be triggered once you know an enemy has been damaged, which takes place way later than usual. The list goes on.
As others have said, this is just a more unpredictable variant of Nudge Fate, though I can give Nudge Fate a pass simply because it just requires concentration on the Witch's part, and would inherently kick in regardless of triggers needing to tick for a PC to act/react towards it, so it can still function regardless of whether the PCs are aware of it, since the magic is constant, and only kicks in when needed. That makes sense both mechanically and setting-wise. Amped Guidance comes with the additional baggage of readied actions, which just makes it's absurd if the idea is that numbers are an abstraction to simulate combat. If they're not, then what's the point of secret checks? To prevent metagaming? This feels like a relatively metagame-y spell effect as-is. Granted, it's possible to explain how this effect could come into play by expressing that the strike was very close to being able to inflict damage, or by being extremely close to avoid severe damage from an effect, etc. The problem is that's not a defined rule, meaning we can't reasonably rely on that as a means of implementing the spell through the trigger.
It would make more sense if the PCs were aware of what is necessary to hit/crit the enemy after having some combat with it, but I wouldn't expect this to be useable within the first round(s) of combat unless you absolutely smoked the Recall Knowledge check on the enemy you're facing.
Recall Knowledge has nothing to do with it.
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How I would run it:
Me: Your check failed.
Them: Can I use Nudge Fate/Amped Guidance to make it not fail?
Me: Yes/No (based on how much it failed by)
Or
Me: Your check failed, but if you Nudge Fate/Guidance it won't.
Them: Hmm, yea sure I'll use it on this roll.
It's that simple. The PCs don't need to know they are failing by 1 or 2 to ask if their ability could work. You as a GM can also give the option for them to use it as well. It's really all up to your GMing style.
I like to keep rolls open but DCs secret, and my players will try to figure out the DCs they need to hit and which DC is lowest etc. to optimize their strategies. This also leads to "Oh S+$&" moments when the enemy rolls a 35 to hit. They don't know if they just rolled really well or if they are in way over their head, at least not right away, though with how Foundry has been rolling recently it's usually the former lol.
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I usually don't give that kind of info openly in combat, though my players cna usually figure it out after some attempts. I will give them hints if they ask for them or if it seems reasonable to let them know (like if their enemy has got a really high AC), because characters can definitely judge an opponent's abilities.
I do give exact DCs in other cases, like when they are trying to gauge if they can achieve something using a skill.