Not only do I announce the results of combat rolls, I'll straight-up tell my players what the target numbers are if it makes sense. "The raggedly little goblin is wearing scavenged bits of chain and scale, poorly fastened together. It's not going to be a difficult target for a trained warrior. Armor class 13 to whallop the little bastid." "This is a dragon fight, y'all knew this was coming...I'm gonna need a DC 17 Dexterity saving throw against red dragon fire breath."
It cuts down on unneeded back-and-forthing, "does this work?" junk, and it doesn't detract anything from the game. If nothing else, players having that information allows them to make more tactical decisions, lets them better gauge their odds and choose appropriate courses of action like the trained, combat-hardened adventurers they're supposed to be portraying. Rolls that need to stay hidden, such as spot checks and the like, stay hidden. But nobody ever ruined their D&D game by "giving away" AC or saving-throw DCs in combat.
I don’t tell them. Yurei makes good practical arguments, but I prefer the drama and theater of of the players not knowing. And as a player I like not knowing/figuring it out as the fight goes on. It’s a fun little mini-puzzle.
Ever since our games transitioned to online play, I have been rolling openly as DM. Now, even when we play in person, I roll openly. It may not be for everyone, but it works well at my table.
I always roll in the open. I feel like my players deserve the honesty, Nat 20s and all.
I try to narrate pass/fail on encounter saves rather than saying pass/fail. The players can see my roll anyway - although it does give away possible bonuses if they are canny.
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"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
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"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
The only rolls I keep secret are things like Deception and Stealth. Things that might spoil the plot or surprise of an encounter, but the Attack rolls and stuff are announced to the players. I don't typically tell the players the AC or HP of an enemy though.
The only rolls I keep secret are things like Deception and Stealth. Things that might spoil the plot or surprise of an encounter, but the Attack rolls and stuff are announced to the players. I don't typically tell the players the AC or HP of an enemy though.
This is a good point. I think I would keep those kinds of story-related rolls secret, and I think the table would expect that of me.
I generally just put it in narrative form, but if a player ever wants to know the math, I show them.
I also do what Yurei1453 does with saves. I tell the player the target for success before the roll, so there is no unspoken concerns about fudging rolls or fluid saves. I think trust at the table is pretty important and laying this groundwork in the beginning does wonders for the game over time.
Personally, as a DM, I try to keep most of my rolls hidden. I openly invite players to peek at some (Nat 1 or 20) if they want.
My ONLY reason for hiding the rolls is in case an encounter takes an unexpected turn and really starts falling apart, one way or the other. I might fudge a roll and have my monster miss, if the players have been having horrible dice rolls and are looking a TPK in the face, or I might have an enemy hit, if the players are cake-walking an encounter because my monsters are being mocked by the dice gods.
I do try to narrate pretty well, what they are facing, "The 4 scruffy goblins leading the group are clad in scraps of assorted leather and hide armor, while the 3 orcs marching along behind them wear matching chain shirts and carry what appear to be well-made and well-maintained longswords on their hip." Tells the group goblins are easy to hit, orcs less so and orcs likely carry a whallop with the longsword. Also, as fun, I have a few monsters who lose AC as hey are damaged. So a 17 that glanced off a shoulder piece early in the fight might find a gap later, scoring a hit. Dynamic.
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Talk to your Players.Talk to your DM. If more people used this advice, there would be 24.74% fewer threads on Tactics, Rules and DM discussions.
I don’t give my players any numbers ever. I want them thinking about numbers as little as humanly possible. Thinking about the numbers per se actively impedes the game I want to run.
Open rolls via the dice roller on roll20. Sometimes I won't tell the players what they are rolling - such as insight or a 'passive knowledge' check to see if they know something based on heir character background. In those cases I would just say roll a d20 and work out their total. But all the rolls are on the vtt and in the open.
There have been campaigns during which I rolled in the open, but usually I keep it behind the screen. So, to be exact: I hide the rolls, I announce the results. The players know the goblin's attack roll resulted in an 18, they don't know that that 18 was a 13 + modifiers.
Do you hide the results of your attack rolls and saving throws from your players? "The goblin hits you."
Or
Do you announce the results. "The Goblin rolled an 18 to hit."
I mostly just report the results of the roll, not the roll itself, with exceptions for when players have spells and abilities that might affect it (i.e. shield)
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Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock) Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric) Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue) Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
Before my D&D group imploded we were playing in Fantasy Grounds, most of our rolls during combat were visible and logged, but our DM asked us to roll things like Stealth and Persuasion in the dice tower that hid our results from us.
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Canto alla vita alla sua bellezza ad ogni sua ferita ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
I keep my rolls secret. Normally I am pretty honest about whether I hit or not (or succeed on a check or not), but there are plenty of times when the narrative requires you to fudge numbers some. Perhaps the story might work better if a party passed or failed to succeed on their stealth check or to deceive an NPC. Perhaps a combat encounter is too easy or too hard and some numbers need to be adjusted on the fly.
Players do not need to know why the system works, so long as they trust you as the DM not to actively destroy them or make things way too easy. If you start saying some of the rolls, but hide others, it can be a little suspicious, so I err on the side of caution and just hide them all.
This is also one of several reasons why I homerule ban the Lucky feat--forcing me to say various rolls breaks the emersion and effects my ability to fudge numbers as the DM. Combined with generally being frustrating to deal with, and it's out of there.
Do you hide the results of your attack rolls and saving throws from your players? "The goblin hits you."
Or
Do you announce the results. "The Goblin rolled an 18 to hit."
I mostly just report the results of the roll, not the roll itself, with exceptions for when players have spells and abilities that might affect it (i.e. shield)
Yes, the two scenarios that OP mentions result in drastically different power levels of shield. In a "you got hit" game it would really suck to burn your Reaction and a spell slot only to still get hit.
Completely hiding to-hit rolls is one of those classic scenarios where a DM is so against any chance of metagaming that they actually start robbing players of stuff their characters should know. If a fighter has an AC of 18, an attack roll of 19 should be observably different than an attack roll of 30 - or 21 for that matter, considering they are masters of weapons and armor. The numbers are just a shorthand for the action that the characters are experiencing, keeping everyone on the same page about how exactly things are unfolding. A player acting on an attack roll of 19 is a character acting on a blow that is positioned to just slip by his shield. That information is right there for the characters to see.
Yes, the DM can narrate the quality of the attacks. That's fine at level 1, but it begins to get more and more complicated as characters level up and get new features and spells. You need to keep track of everything they have and make sure your narration gives them the relevant information for all of those things. In short, it's exhausting and you will invariably fall short sooner or later. Besides, you can narrate alongside the numbers and have the best of both worlds.
I play in a game where we don't ever see the DM's rolls. Every combat, the monsters come out strong and manage to hit us no matter what we do and every combat we eventually turn the tide and eke out a win. In combat I feel like a puppet in a puppet show. I don't care what my AC is because I'm certain to be hit in round 1 and missed in round 3. Even if we manage to pull something crazy off honestly by the dice, I won't know it. I'll just assume it was orchestrated to turn out that way. I'm not against fudging in some situations, but when you do it as a matter of course it really takes away some agency of the players.
I'll describe things like absolute misses, glancing blows, and absolute hits:
DM: Player 1, 2 Goblins make attacks. AC 19 and 11.
Player: 19 hits, 11 doesn't since I have plate.
DM: Goblin scampers in with its dagger and finds a weak spot in your plate mail, poking you for 6 points of piercing damage. The other one doesn't have such luck as the dagger just bounces off your greaves.
Once the players figure out what the AC or DC is for saving throws, I'll just communicate that as needed, but until that happens I don't say what the number is. There has to be a balance between player knowledge and storytelling. There are also some rules that specifically narrate when a player is allowed to use certain abilities to manipulate dice rolls so I have to give that player a chance. Cutting Words is a great example of this, where the verbiage is "You can choose to use this feature after the creature makes its roll, but before the GM determines whether the attack roll or ability check succeeds or fails". In that scenario, for the player that is a Lore Bard, for each roll I'll go "I rolled a X", which is the Lore Bards queue if they want to use their reaction or not. I won't tell them what the final number is with bonuses, but I will tell them what I rolled. RAW, I don't have to do that I just have to go "Would you like to use your Cutting Words reaction" after I roll, provided the roll isn't a crit or just beyond the bards capabilities. I don't like the player feeling like they don't have all the data needed for their specific subclass niche in that case, so I'll be a bit more numbers conscious.
I don't want my players thinking about numbers, I want them thinking about the image and the story. They'll know if they did well or not by the dice they roll. I'll communicate roughly how close they were to doing damage or how far over they were via narration. The advantage is that if the dice are about to be terrible for the story, I can fudge them a little without suspicion.
If and when I have a party of old hats that will know the stats off by heart, I'll most likely change tactics and roll openly. I'm not going to be able to preserve immersion by hiding the rolls anymore and the tension coming from the dice rolls will liven things up a bit.
Until then, though? I'll do what I can to get them to use the numbers as a tool rather than as a goal. Trying to get them to focus on the narrative rather than my dice rolls helps with that.
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If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
I always roll privately, but I occasionally share the results. When the dice are against my players and they are getting frustrated, I'll say things like, "Oof, that's a natural 17 on his attack, sorry," or "BIG fail with a 4 on his Con save!" I find doing this sparingly helps my players feel like the dice are the enemy, and I'm on the same side even though my monsters are beating the living tar out of their characters.
On very rare occasions, when the stakes are astronomical, I sometimes ask my players to roll on my behalf. Recently, they needed to teleport to an unfamiliar location to stop some cultists from summoning elder evils. A teleportation mishap could have had significant in-world repercussions if they didn't get to their destination in time, so I had one of them roll the d100 for me. My players like to take their fate into their own hands when they can, and I honor that by letting them make key rolls that will have lasting consequences for their characters.
I know some DMs like to roll openly, and I see the value of it. The reason I don't is twofold: 1) sometimes I misjudge an encounter and need to course-correct discreetly, and 2) sometimes the dice and I disagree on what would make a satisfying story.
Often times I just roll closed and say the to hit number anyway. But folks keep acting as if I'm trying to kill them (I roll well) on purpose so I'm starting to transition to open rolling. I hate it. I almost killed 2 of my players because I was a dumbass and tossed them a monster that was clearly too tough for them (they were just a 2 person party that session....yeah) and I couldn't take back the rolls. Hate it. Luckily one of the players crit on their death save and reckless'd + GWM'd + crit and so I just said that killed it even tho it wasn't dead whatsoever.
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Do you hide the results of your attack rolls and saving throws from your players? "The goblin hits you."
Or
Do you announce the results. "The Goblin rolled an 18 to hit."
She/Her Player and Dungeon Master
Not only do I announce the results of combat rolls, I'll straight-up tell my players what the target numbers are if it makes sense. "The raggedly little goblin is wearing scavenged bits of chain and scale, poorly fastened together. It's not going to be a difficult target for a trained warrior. Armor class 13 to whallop the little bastid." "This is a dragon fight, y'all knew this was coming...I'm gonna need a DC 17 Dexterity saving throw against red dragon fire breath."
It cuts down on unneeded back-and-forthing, "does this work?" junk, and it doesn't detract anything from the game. If nothing else, players having that information allows them to make more tactical decisions, lets them better gauge their odds and choose appropriate courses of action like the trained, combat-hardened adventurers they're supposed to be portraying. Rolls that need to stay hidden, such as spot checks and the like, stay hidden. But nobody ever ruined their D&D game by "giving away" AC or saving-throw DCs in combat.
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I don’t tell them. Yurei makes good practical arguments, but I prefer the drama and theater of of the players not knowing. And as a player I like not knowing/figuring it out as the fight goes on. It’s a fun little mini-puzzle.
Ever since our games transitioned to online play, I have been rolling openly as DM. Now, even when we play in person, I roll openly. It may not be for everyone, but it works well at my table.
"Not all those who wander are lost"
I always roll in the open. I feel like my players deserve the honesty, Nat 20s and all.
I try to narrate pass/fail on encounter saves rather than saying pass/fail. The players can see my roll anyway - although it does give away possible bonuses if they are canny.
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
-Ilyara Thundertale
The only rolls I keep secret are things like Deception and Stealth. Things that might spoil the plot or surprise of an encounter, but the Attack rolls and stuff are announced to the players. I don't typically tell the players the AC or HP of an enemy though.
She/Her Player and Dungeon Master
This is a good point. I think I would keep those kinds of story-related rolls secret, and I think the table would expect that of me.
"Not all those who wander are lost"
I generally just put it in narrative form, but if a player ever wants to know the math, I show them.
I also do what Yurei1453 does with saves. I tell the player the target for success before the roll, so there is no unspoken concerns about fudging rolls or fluid saves. I think trust at the table is pretty important and laying this groundwork in the beginning does wonders for the game over time.
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Personally, as a DM, I try to keep most of my rolls hidden. I openly invite players to peek at some (Nat 1 or 20) if they want.
My ONLY reason for hiding the rolls is in case an encounter takes an unexpected turn and really starts falling apart, one way or the other. I might fudge a roll and have my monster miss, if the players have been having horrible dice rolls and are looking a TPK in the face, or I might have an enemy hit, if the players are cake-walking an encounter because my monsters are being mocked by the dice gods.
I do try to narrate pretty well, what they are facing, "The 4 scruffy goblins leading the group are clad in scraps of assorted leather and hide armor, while the 3 orcs marching along behind them wear matching chain shirts and carry what appear to be well-made and well-maintained longswords on their hip." Tells the group goblins are easy to hit, orcs less so and orcs likely carry a whallop with the longsword. Also, as fun, I have a few monsters who lose AC as hey are damaged. So a 17 that glanced off a shoulder piece early in the fight might find a gap later, scoring a hit. Dynamic.
Talk to your Players. Talk to your DM. If more people used this advice, there would be 24.74% fewer threads on Tactics, Rules and DM discussions.
I don’t give my players any numbers ever. I want them thinking about numbers as little as humanly possible. Thinking about the numbers per se actively impedes the game I want to run.
Open rolls via the dice roller on roll20. Sometimes I won't tell the players what they are rolling - such as insight or a 'passive knowledge' check to see if they know something based on heir character background. In those cases I would just say roll a d20 and work out their total. But all the rolls are on the vtt and in the open.
There have been campaigns during which I rolled in the open, but usually I keep it behind the screen. So, to be exact: I hide the rolls, I announce the results. The players know the goblin's attack roll resulted in an 18, they don't know that that 18 was a 13 + modifiers.
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
I mostly just report the results of the roll, not the roll itself, with exceptions for when players have spells and abilities that might affect it (i.e. shield)
Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock)
Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric)
Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue)
Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
Before my D&D group imploded we were playing in Fantasy Grounds, most of our rolls during combat were visible and logged, but our DM asked us to roll things like Stealth and Persuasion in the dice tower that hid our results from us.
Canto alla vita
alla sua bellezza
ad ogni sua ferita
ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty
To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me
The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
I keep my rolls secret. Normally I am pretty honest about whether I hit or not (or succeed on a check or not), but there are plenty of times when the narrative requires you to fudge numbers some. Perhaps the story might work better if a party passed or failed to succeed on their stealth check or to deceive an NPC. Perhaps a combat encounter is too easy or too hard and some numbers need to be adjusted on the fly.
Players do not need to know why the system works, so long as they trust you as the DM not to actively destroy them or make things way too easy. If you start saying some of the rolls, but hide others, it can be a little suspicious, so I err on the side of caution and just hide them all.
This is also one of several reasons why I homerule ban the Lucky feat--forcing me to say various rolls breaks the emersion and effects my ability to fudge numbers as the DM. Combined with generally being frustrating to deal with, and it's out of there.
Yes, the two scenarios that OP mentions result in drastically different power levels of shield. In a "you got hit" game it would really suck to burn your Reaction and a spell slot only to still get hit.
Completely hiding to-hit rolls is one of those classic scenarios where a DM is so against any chance of metagaming that they actually start robbing players of stuff their characters should know. If a fighter has an AC of 18, an attack roll of 19 should be observably different than an attack roll of 30 - or 21 for that matter, considering they are masters of weapons and armor. The numbers are just a shorthand for the action that the characters are experiencing, keeping everyone on the same page about how exactly things are unfolding. A player acting on an attack roll of 19 is a character acting on a blow that is positioned to just slip by his shield. That information is right there for the characters to see.
Yes, the DM can narrate the quality of the attacks. That's fine at level 1, but it begins to get more and more complicated as characters level up and get new features and spells. You need to keep track of everything they have and make sure your narration gives them the relevant information for all of those things. In short, it's exhausting and you will invariably fall short sooner or later. Besides, you can narrate alongside the numbers and have the best of both worlds.
I play in a game where we don't ever see the DM's rolls. Every combat, the monsters come out strong and manage to hit us no matter what we do and every combat we eventually turn the tide and eke out a win. In combat I feel like a puppet in a puppet show. I don't care what my AC is because I'm certain to be hit in round 1 and missed in round 3. Even if we manage to pull something crazy off honestly by the dice, I won't know it. I'll just assume it was orchestrated to turn out that way. I'm not against fudging in some situations, but when you do it as a matter of course it really takes away some agency of the players.
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(Artificer) Swordmage | Glasswright | (Barbarian) Path of the Savage Embrace
(Bard) College of Dance | (Fighter) Warlord | Cannoneer
(Monk) Way of the Elements | (Ranger) Blade Dancer
(Rogue) DaggerMaster | Inquisitor | (Sorcerer) Riftwalker | Spellfist
(Warlock) The Swarm
I'll describe things like absolute misses, glancing blows, and absolute hits:
DM: Player 1, 2 Goblins make attacks. AC 19 and 11.
Player: 19 hits, 11 doesn't since I have plate.
DM: Goblin scampers in with its dagger and finds a weak spot in your plate mail, poking you for 6 points of piercing damage. The other one doesn't have such luck as the dagger just bounces off your greaves.
Once the players figure out what the AC or DC is for saving throws, I'll just communicate that as needed, but until that happens I don't say what the number is. There has to be a balance between player knowledge and storytelling. There are also some rules that specifically narrate when a player is allowed to use certain abilities to manipulate dice rolls so I have to give that player a chance. Cutting Words is a great example of this, where the verbiage is "You can choose to use this feature after the creature makes its roll, but before the GM determines whether the attack roll or ability check succeeds or fails". In that scenario, for the player that is a Lore Bard, for each roll I'll go "I rolled a X", which is the Lore Bards queue if they want to use their reaction or not. I won't tell them what the final number is with bonuses, but I will tell them what I rolled. RAW, I don't have to do that I just have to go "Would you like to use your Cutting Words reaction" after I roll, provided the roll isn't a crit or just beyond the bards capabilities. I don't like the player feeling like they don't have all the data needed for their specific subclass niche in that case, so I'll be a bit more numbers conscious.
I hide them.
I don't want my players thinking about numbers, I want them thinking about the image and the story. They'll know if they did well or not by the dice they roll. I'll communicate roughly how close they were to doing damage or how far over they were via narration. The advantage is that if the dice are about to be terrible for the story, I can fudge them a little without suspicion.
If and when I have a party of old hats that will know the stats off by heart, I'll most likely change tactics and roll openly. I'm not going to be able to preserve immersion by hiding the rolls anymore and the tension coming from the dice rolls will liven things up a bit.
Until then, though? I'll do what I can to get them to use the numbers as a tool rather than as a goal. Trying to get them to focus on the narrative rather than my dice rolls helps with that.
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
I always roll privately, but I occasionally share the results. When the dice are against my players and they are getting frustrated, I'll say things like, "Oof, that's a natural 17 on his attack, sorry," or "BIG fail with a 4 on his Con save!" I find doing this sparingly helps my players feel like the dice are the enemy, and I'm on the same side even though my monsters are beating the living tar out of their characters.
On very rare occasions, when the stakes are astronomical, I sometimes ask my players to roll on my behalf. Recently, they needed to teleport to an unfamiliar location to stop some cultists from summoning elder evils. A teleportation mishap could have had significant in-world repercussions if they didn't get to their destination in time, so I had one of them roll the d100 for me. My players like to take their fate into their own hands when they can, and I honor that by letting them make key rolls that will have lasting consequences for their characters.
I know some DMs like to roll openly, and I see the value of it. The reason I don't is twofold: 1) sometimes I misjudge an encounter and need to course-correct discreetly, and 2) sometimes the dice and I disagree on what would make a satisfying story.
Often times I just roll closed and say the to hit number anyway. But folks keep acting as if I'm trying to kill them (I roll well) on purpose so I'm starting to transition to open rolling. I hate it. I almost killed 2 of my players because I was a dumbass and tossed them a monster that was clearly too tough for them (they were just a 2 person party that session....yeah) and I couldn't take back the rolls. Hate it. Luckily one of the players crit on their death save and reckless'd + GWM'd + crit and so I just said that killed it even tho it wasn't dead whatsoever.
Er ek geng, þat er í þeim skóm er ek valda.
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