I have very mixed feelings on secret checks. One the one hand, they make a lot of sense, they seem like they really help roleplay and being in character, and they generate suspense and uncertainty.
On the other hand, I like rolling my pretty math rocks. I’m a minor dice goblin, and my expensive RNGs demand to be rolled!
Which is fine, I’m the GM at my table, but if I were on the other side of the screen, I think it’d drive me a little crazy.
I also know that they’re a controversial topic more generally, and some players have really, really strong negative reactions to them.
So, how do you feel? Does your table use them? If not, why not? If so, how do they feel? Do you have anyone at the table with very strong feelings about them? If so, how have they articulated those feelings?
As a GM, I use them fairly regularly. Any time I think the player character would reasonably not know whether or not the outcome was successful, I roll it for them…if I remember to. So that’s all perception checks, especially Sense Motive. Usually I let them roll lore checks themselves because critical failures are rare enough and the price of a regular failure is usually just “you don’t know” (so it’s obvious to the PC that they failed).
I might sometimes use it for things like Deception and Stealth, especially if the NPCs their trying to deceive wouldn’t immediately notice/react. But usually I let the players roll these themselves.
Mostly the thing that bothers my players is when they roll before I tell them I’m going to roll, and they got a good result. But if they got a bad result they’re glad about it, so I think it balances out.