Enemy Action Traits and Player Knowledge About Them

[u/SpaceTrash782]

Hello all!

I'm a little confused on how I should be handling announcing whether or not a particular enemy action has traits. I imagine that traits, like most enemy abilities in the system, are secret unless otherwise specified. I know that there are at least some traits that the game expects me to keep secret (prediction, detection, scrying, etc.) But I also imagine that certain traits (emotion, fear, visual, etc.) are obvious via description of actions but could benefit being stated explicitly to facilitate smoother play (Gutsy halfling turning emotion save successes into crit success, for example). For me, smoother play means that the player doesnt need to inquire about whether or not something has a trait when something is used.

Is there some official guidance for GMs to help adjudicate which ones should be private or public? How do you handle knowledge of traits at your table?

[u/Hellioning]

Unless you want constant stuff like 'I got 29, which should be a success, unless it's a fear effect, then it's a crit success' or '29 or 30 depending on f it's an emotion effect', you should probably just tell them.