How About Perm Hidden Rolls

[Nickademus]

How hard would it be to modify a ruleset (5e in mind here) to always hide the rolls of some skills. Like Perception for PF and 5e, Spot/Search/Listen for 3.5e, Sense Motive for 3.5e and PF, and Insight for 5e. If a GM decides that a specific skill should always act like it was rolled in the DM Tower, is there a convenient place in the ruleset architecture to hijack the flow of a skill check from any source and switch a variable (i.e. Roll.hidden) to true if it is false?

I played around with this briefly for PF but it only seemed to effect the GM's rolls.

[Zacchaeus]

I believe that you can only hide rolls from the DM side or from the player's side by using the dice tower. If you want to hide rolls for skills then use the Party sheet (in 5e - not sure about the other rulesets) to make the rolls.

I can't answer your question on how easy it would be to construct an extension to do what you would want unfortunately. But I'm going to guess and say very hard :)

[Nickademus]

I can't answer your question on how easy it would be to construct an extension to do what you would want unfortunately. But I'm going to guess and say very hard :)

I actually think it would be very easy, if I could find the right spot. Others are more familiar with the architecture of the ruleset than me, but I imagine there is a single function that all the skill rolls have to funnel through. At this point it would just be a matter of checking the hidden variable of the upcoming roll and saying if (Roll.hidden != true) then Roll.hidden = true; It's just a matter of finding where the rolls from all clients converge in the code.

[Trenloe]

Look at manager_action_skill.lua in 3.5E.

[Varsuuk]

On an only slightly related topic:

When looking at table (5E) xml, I see:

<hiderollresults type="number">0</hiderollresults>

I tried setting it to 1 but didn't see a difference. Unfortunately, only can access my macbook now so until tomorrow can't try signing in second time as a player to see if hidden from them?

[Nickademus]

Look at manager_action_skill.lua in 3.5E.

I'll do this when I get home from work. I think last time I try this file it only affected the GM's rolls and I couldn't get the Perception roll for my localhost client to be hidden.

Any clue what file it would be in the 5e ruleset? I'm sure it's faster for someone to point me there than for me to poke around looking for it blindly.

[Zacchaeus]

On an only slightly related topic:

When looking at table (5E) xml, I see:

<hiderollresults type="number">0</hiderollresults>

I tried setting it to 1 but didn't see a difference. Unfortunately, only can access my macbook now so until tomorrow can't try signing in second time as a player to see if hidden from them?

All table results are hidden from the players from 3.1.6 following on from the new methods of outputting the results of the table. You can still share the table with players of course if you want them to make/see the rolls. Before then I believe that there was a hide/unhide toggle on the table which allowed for the players to see the result or not.

[Varsuuk]

Great, thanks. was wondering because I found the setting in the generated XML so I added it to the DD5E Table class with default of 0 but didn't give a way to parse it in, not knowing what it was for. If later when I test, I find I have to output it for FG to accept the XML, I'll add comment in the code to explain history.

[Trenloe]

Any clue what file it would be in the 5e ruleset?
Same file name.

[Moon Wizard]

As Trenloe mentioned, this would be handled in the ActionSkill script (manager_action_skill.lua).

While it would be fairly straightforward to "hide" rolls on the GM, hiding rolls on the player side is much more difficult, because you would need to pass the player-initiated rolls to the GM machine to roll, just like the dice tower does.

Given that, why not make the players use the dice tower for those rolls? It's exactly what it was built for.

If you still wanted to automate, I think it would be easiest to push everybody's rolls into the DiceTower code for making those specific skill checks.

Regards,
JPG

[Varsuuk]

Again, only can test logged in as GM n my MacBook but, does this means that when creating a character logged into someone's DM server - that you won't see the result of a background table roll unless the GM is there to make the roll visible after the fact?

I'm sorry if I am just missing something obvious ;) but when rolled (as GM) on background table, I got the "? .... " results. if I was a player, would I have seen these results?

I understand making most tables hidden... but shouldn't some tables at least have an option to be visible? especially tables where the user need not even go by the results like these flavor/idea/suggestions helper tables?

[Moon Wizard]

All records in the campaign need to be "shared" by the GM or ruleset in order to be seen by the players. This is the default behavior of the FG client, and makes sense for the vast majority of situations.

Modules can be shared as a whole with players, which gives them full access. This is applicable to your scenario above by sharing the Player's Handbook containing the background tables.

By default, all tables are marked to hide GM rolls by default, unless the GM toggles that setting to make the rolls visible. If a player rolls on a table that has been shared, the rolls should always be visible.

Regards,
JPG

[Zacchaeus]

Again, only can test logged in as GM n my MacBook but, does this means that when creating a character logged into someone's DM server - that you won't see the result of a background table roll unless the GM is there to make the roll visible after the fact?

I'm sorry if I am just missing something obvious ;) but when rolled (as GM) on background table, I got the "? .... " results. if I was a player, would I have seen these results?

I understand making most tables hidden... but shouldn't some tables at least have an option to be visible? especially tables where the user need not even go by the results like these flavor/idea/suggestions helper tables?

Yes, I should have qualified my statement earlier. If you have the option set 'Chat: Show GM rolls' to 'On' then all results including rolls on tables will be visible to the players. Also the 'eye' icon will appear in all tables which allows the DM to hide the result of the roll on that table. I keep forgetting about this since I always have GM rolls off.

[Varsuuk]

Thank you both. More experience with FG would probably be good for me since I am working on this parsing app ;) I think I'll work on that next week as a player at least.

Although, I think I'll avoid playing a Dwarf Cleric... I seem to be poor at that... :)

[Varsuuk]

** removed duplicate post **

[Nickademus]

Given that, why not make the players use the dice tower for those rolls? It's exactly what it was built for.

For a feature of my game, I have a system that requires the PCs to make a series of hidden rolls. The players complain about having to drag each one to the dice tower; they want to be able to hotbar the hidden roll. I thought I saw an extension for this a while back but I can't find anything now. So I was planning to just alter the code to have a normal skill roll treated as hidden so they could roll from the character sheet or hotbar as they wish.

[Moon Wizard]

Given that they will never see the rolls, I would just roll from the party sheet personally. They're not even picking up the dice to roll, so no need to say "I need a Perception check, so everybody click your button." and then have to wait for them to all click. It seems like the party sheet would be faster, and not require you to wait for everyone to click. But, that's just me.

If you still want to do it, I would still suggest forwarding those rolls through the DiceTowerManager script to save yourself some work in forwarding player rolls to the GM machine.

Cheers,
JPG