Quote Originally Posted by Morgaln View Post
A lot of time, I have people roll perception just to see if they notice some minor detail about a situation that might help them figure out something earlier or that will give them deeper insight into something. This will never be vital information, so it's not necessary for the players to have it. If they fail that roll, they will never know that they missed something, because I won't tell them and I won't let them know whether they succeeded or failed. I do make decisions there immediately, it's just that the players are not aware of that decision, and in that particular case, it adds to the realism because no one knows when they overlooked something in real life either. So not every roll should and will have an apparent effect to the players.
Personally I don't like making rolls with low stakes. I feel like it's a waste of everyone's time. If there's some cool minor detail here I'd just tell them.

But I don't see anything inherently wrong with saying something like "Make a DC 15 spot check and I'll give you a little something extra." Making fake rolls for ~paranoia~ is just dumb and obnoxious though.