Provide a "player's view" version of the success/fail roll dialog for NPC rolls.

[crnormand]

Possibly even for damage... so the player's can see if someone succeeded or failed, but not by how much. Same for damage... they wouldn't be able to look to see the DR value.

Make this a system setting, maybe?

[Farmeroz]

NPC vs NPC / NPC vs PC / PC vs PC / PC vs NPC. You then possibly have variations of Friendly, Neutral, or Hostile. Settings about what the PCs can see in this regard should probably work from a matrix that covers these relationships and dispositions.

Then you can consider the level of disclosure (and this is very handy when you keep forgetting to make your rolls silent or the damage results silent...I'm looking right at ME!) looking at success/failure separately to damage/healing (other "resultant rolls" maybe?):

Full Rolls (see all the numbers and margins) Full Damage (see all the numbers including DR etc.) Descriptive Rolls (see Success/Failure/CS/CF) Descriptive Damage (a set of words or phrases that describe the resultant damage or healing, probably based on percentage of character's HP done, and whether there are any crippling or possibly crippling affects and shock and wounds (cf. ADD) - have default messages and breakpoints, but allow GM to set variable numbers and messages). No Rolls (see no numbers or margins) No Descriptors (see nothing about the damage or healing done)

Makes sense as a system setting, and if you allow a matrix as mentioned above that provides granularity as to what you want to share. So friendly NPCs may get treated like PCs where everything is visible, for example. The matrix reflects what happens if the entity specified is the target, of course, because it's all based on the "Player's View" as you say.

You may be able to include other rolls and results into accessing the matrix/view later. Perhaps even switches for "Rolls", "Damage", "Healing", "etc." so it can be really fine tuned as to what you want to disclose. This then impacts things like "hidden" or "GM" rolling and the ADD for the Apply Injury options.

[crnormand]

That's pretty involved, and something we may get to. But for now, I am thinking about our game, and how the GM rolls Blind Rolls when working with his NPCs and he just tells us that "they dodged" or they "crit dodged". Which is fine.. but maybe the would be a way for the GM to allow the roll to appear to the players with just "Dodge success", and not by how much, or what their Dodge level is. Also when our players hit the NPCs, it shows the complete math (so we can see how much DR they have).

So for now, the GM can hide "most" of the NOC information just by using private (or blind) rolls). Except for damage. So I am first going to work on a setting to allow the players to damage an NPC, but have it only report that the NPC was "damaged", but not by how much.

And then, over time, we might be able to expand this to include more of the options that you mentioned.

[Farmeroz]

In terms of Dodged or Parried or whatever, that would be great. However, you might want to allow a "fudge" in case the GM needs to save a character's bacon by letting them hit or, indeed, the opposite. Allow a setting to bring up a pop up confirmation that allows overriding the value/response text?

With damage - currently, when a PC damages an NPC, the ADD comes up and has 4 options: Apply Injury, Apply Injury (Quietly), Apply Injury/Keep Open, and Apply Injury (Quietly)/Keep Open. I don't think there's a way to change the default selection. Anything that displays a number tells the whole story. Even if you don't show the maths, PCs know how much damage they rolled and can generally know the rules on DR and location to work out what the numbers were if they see the final amount. So if you show just the final damage, I'm not sure you're hiding a lot, really.

Since the players know the damage they rolled, I think the most interesting and fun aspect here is some descriptor about how hard you damaged the NPC in terms of the NPCs Hit Points. An Ineffective Attack, A Minor Blow, a Solid Hit, A Massive Strike, and the like. Perhaps also adding in things like "A Potentially Crippling Blow" if it calculates to be a Major Wound, for example.

Maybe you have a global setting to turn these on or off, and maybe in the ADD you have a toggle tick box. If you can then have a global setting for the ADD Normal/Quiet/Keep Open, again with overrides which can be persistent for a session or a combat? Might be getting overly complex, there. I think that would be very cool.

[mjeffw]

Chris, please discuss this feature with me before you write any code.

[crnormand]

Sure, no problem. I just created this issue because of a conversation I saw on Discord.

I had no initial plans, just a vague idea that we would try to offer an limited form of the "success/failure" chat message (since the ADD already offers the "Apply Quietly" options.