I view fudging the dice the same way I do videogames that use tricks or illusions to make something look tense, but if you just don't go along with it, it breaks the illusion. That is to say, if it's clear to me that the outcome the dice I rolled would create without my intervention is one that my players will not enjoy, then I intervene. Maybe the damage isn't as bad as it says. Maybe it's not really instant death. Maybe that target number wasn't quite so high.
I improvise so much of my game during the session, including NPC/monster stats, that I feel like improvising things to keep it fun is just par for the course.
The thing is though, say for example you make your end boss pretty strong that it could nearly wipe your party if the party isn't careful. You, as the DM, keep missing the party by getting low rolls. Is it then unfair to the fudge a roll behind a DM screen and say that it does hit so you can make your end boss seem like an actual threat? Or do you just keep missing while your boss just keeps getting pelted?
That is why I think it is alright to fudge some, not all, rolls. Of course given the occasion. I also think that is why the DM screen is useful. It lets you also keep a space that you and only you are able to look at.
You can also use it to hide your favourite snacks.
The thing is though, say for example you make your end boss pretty strong that it could nearly wipe your party if the party isn't careful. You, as the DM, keep missing the party by getting low rolls. Is it then unfair to the fudge a roll behind a DM screen and say that it does hit so you can make your end boss seem like an actual threat? Or do you just keep missing while your boss just keeps getting pelted?
That is why I think it is alright to fudge some, not all, rolls. Of course given the occasion. I also think that is why the DM screen is useful. It lets you also keep a space that you and only you are able to look at.
You can also use it to hide your favourite snacks.
Come on Gary, we can smell the wings. You're not fooling anyone.
The thing is though, say for example you make your end boss pretty strong that it could nearly wipe your party if the party isn't careful. You, as the DM, keep missing the party by getting low rolls. Is it then unfair to the fudge a roll behind a DM screen and say that it does hit so you can make your end boss seem like an actual threat? Or do you just keep missing while your boss just keeps getting pelted?
That is why I think it is alright to fudge some, not all, rolls. Of course given the occasion. I also think that is why the DM screen is useful. It lets you also keep a space that you and only you are able to look at.
You can also use it to hide your favourite snacks.
Come on Gary, we can smell the wings. You're not fooling anyone.
No you can't. I rolled for your perception at the start of the session, and it was a 1.
The thing is though, say for example you make your end boss pretty strong that it could nearly wipe your party if the party isn't careful. You, as the DM, keep missing the party by getting low rolls. Is it then unfair to the fudge a roll behind a DM screen and say that it does hit so you can make your end boss seem like an actual threat? Or do you just keep missing while your boss just keeps getting pelted?
That is why I think it is alright to fudge some, not all, rolls. Of course given the occasion. I also think that is why the DM screen is useful. It lets you also keep a space that you and only you are able to look at.
You can also use it to hide your favourite snacks.
Come on Gary, we can smell the wings. You're not fooling anyone.
No you can't. I rolled for your perception at the start of the session, and it was a 1.
That's it, I'm taking my Code Red and going home.
Roll for intimidation...
The thing is though, say for example you make your end boss pretty strong that it could nearly wipe your party if the party isn't careful. You, as the DM, keep missing the party by getting low rolls. Is it then unfair to the fudge a roll behind a DM screen and say that it does hit so you can make your end boss seem like an actual threat? Or do you just keep missing while your boss just keeps getting pelted?
That is why I think it is alright to fudge some, not all, rolls. Of course given the occasion. I also think that is why the DM screen is useful. It lets you also keep a space that you and only you are able to look at.
You can also use it to hide your favourite snacks.
If I wanted the "boss enemy" to be able to hit the party and threaten them, then I'd use an enemy that's guaranteed to threaten them. The Bulette from the story I told on the last page was meant to be a very tough encounter. And it was. It could hit anybody in the party outside of the heavy armored tank on a nat 5+. 75% hit chance on its attack means it's not just going to miss all its attacks. I made it clear that they better prioritize taking that thing down fast or it was going to go sideways for them. I fully expected they might end up using the flee rule to escape the fight, but they also understood that probably meant the local town they've been hanging out in becoming Bulette food.
But if I rolled a bunch of nat 1s the whole fight and they dominated it, I'd fictionally position it as it failing its attacks in a bad way and make the PCs feel like badasses.
But no, there's no way I would just make it hit even when it misses so the "boss enemy" seemed like a big threat. Because again, then why am I rolling dice? Why am I then not just going "You run into the tough boss, you all take 25 damage because he's super badass. What do you do?"
A big fight should never boil down to both sides just pelting each other with damage until one side is dead anyway. Use the environment, there are all sorts of fun ways to make a fight more memorable even if your boss guy misses his attacks more than you might expect.
If my stance seems hardline on this, it's just because I really do believe that if you are fudging rolls, then you should allow and expect for your players to just cheat and tell you they rolled whatever they feel like too. And if both sides are doing that, you could just stop using dice and just do a collaborative freeform storytelling game where there are no dice and you just trade outcomes narratively.
The principle "play to find out what happens" is the most important one in any games I run, and that includes seeing what the outcomes of the dice are.
In my last Monster of the Week session, two of my PCs blew a hole in the roof of a building where their friend was being held captive, and jumped inside to run to his rescue. Except the first guy rolled a 6 on his act under pressure roll. The other guy decided to try to aid the first guy to bump him to a 7. I told him sure you can do this, but if you roll a 6- to aid then you snowball another 6- on your own act under pressure it's going to go badly. He did it anyway, rolled 6- on both checks. First guy gets scraped up and takes damage on the way down. Second guy breaks his leg botching his attempt to try to help his friend catch his footing while also falling.
Then he had to choose whether to show up late to the friend rescue hobbling along or do something. He uses magic to temporarily set his leg and ignore the pain so he can still use it and move normal speed. But I told him too if he 6- that roll then his leg would be permanently damaged. He nailed that roll though and was okay, just had to go to the hospital to get it fixed properly after the monster was dead.
If i'm playing a game where I am fudging then instead of playing to find out what happens, I just tell him that he took a hard fall and moved on, and we miss a really tense piece of the session that only exists if you're willing and enthusiastic about seeing where the story goes, success or failure.
The thing is though, say for example you make your end boss pretty strong that it could nearly wipe your party if the party isn't careful. You, as the DM, keep missing the party by getting low rolls. Is it then unfair to the fudge a roll behind a DM screen and say that it does hit so you can make your end boss seem like an actual threat? Or do you just keep missing while your boss just keeps getting pelted?
That is why I think it is alright to fudge some, not all, rolls. Of course given the occasion. I also think that is why the DM screen is useful. It lets you also keep a space that you and only you are able to look at.
You can also use it to hide your favourite snacks.
If I wanted the "boss enemy" to be able to hit the party and threaten them, then I'd use an enemy that's guaranteed to threaten them. The Bulette from the story I told on the last page was meant to be a very tough encounter. And it was. It could hit anybody in the party outside of the heavy armored tank on a nat 5+. 75% hit chance on its attack means it's not just going to miss all its attacks. I made it clear that they better prioritize taking that thing down fast or it was going to go sideways for them. I fully expected they might end up using the flee rule to escape the fight, but they also understood that probably meant the local town they've been hanging out in becoming Bulette food.
But if I rolled a bunch of nat 1s the whole fight and they dominated it, I'd fictionally position it as it failing its attacks in a bad way and make the PCs feel like badasses.
But no, there's no way I would just make it hit even when it misses so the "boss enemy" seemed like a big threat. Because again, then why am I rolling dice? Why am I then not just going "You run into the tough boss, you all take 25 damage because he's super badass. What do you do?"
A big fight should never boil down to both sides just pelting each other with damage until one side is dead anyway. Use the environment, there are all sorts of fun ways to make a fight more memorable even if your boss guy misses his attacks more than you might expect.
In some ways I agree with you. I think there's a certain romance to letting the dice decide the fight. And there's also a lesson you should teach PCs about building actually viable characters. However, I also feel like there is a certain point where the logic falls apart. For example, isn't "using the environment" or any kind of weird deus ex machina just another way of changing numbers at the end of the day? If a unicorn comes in and saves the party, isn't that just the same as fudging the monster's health down? Like maybe you meant 'using the environment' to be a lot more basic (hiding behind a tree, burrowing under ground, etc) but it seems to me that any alteration on the combat that isn't determined by dice is ultimately another flavor of 'fudging'.
I mean a bulette has an int of 2 (according to the compendium on roll20). How well can he use the environment before he is functionally exceeding his intelligence level?
Look at me. Look at me. Look at how large the monster inside me has become. Crunch Crunch! Munch Munch! Chomp Chomp! Gulp!
The thing is though, say for example you make your end boss pretty strong that it could nearly wipe your party if the party isn't careful. You, as the DM, keep missing the party by getting low rolls. Is it then unfair to the fudge a roll behind a DM screen and say that it does hit so you can make your end boss seem like an actual threat? Or do you just keep missing while your boss just keeps getting pelted?
That is why I think it is alright to fudge some, not all, rolls. Of course given the occasion. I also think that is why the DM screen is useful. It lets you also keep a space that you and only you are able to look at.
You can also use it to hide your favourite snacks.
If I wanted the "boss enemy" to be able to hit the party and threaten them, then I'd use an enemy that's guaranteed to threaten them. The Bulette from the story I told on the last page was meant to be a very tough encounter. And it was. It could hit anybody in the party outside of the heavy armored tank on a nat 5+. 75% hit chance on its attack means it's not just going to miss all its attacks. I made it clear that they better prioritize taking that thing down fast or it was going to go sideways for them. I fully expected they might end up using the flee rule to escape the fight, but they also understood that probably meant the local town they've been hanging out in becoming Bulette food.
But if I rolled a bunch of nat 1s the whole fight and they dominated it, I'd fictionally position it as it failing its attacks in a bad way and make the PCs feel like badasses.
But no, there's no way I would just make it hit even when it misses so the "boss enemy" seemed like a big threat. Because again, then why am I rolling dice? Why am I then not just going "You run into the tough boss, you all take 25 damage because he's super badass. What do you do?"
A big fight should never boil down to both sides just pelting each other with damage until one side is dead anyway. Use the environment, there are all sorts of fun ways to make a fight more memorable even if your boss guy misses his attacks more than you might expect.
In some ways I agree with you. I think there's a certain romance to letting the dice decide the fight. And there's also a lesson you should teach PCs about building actually viable characters. However, I also feel like there is a certain point where the logic falls apart. For example, isn't "using the environment" or any kind of weird deus ex machina just another way of changing numbers at the end of the day? If a unicorn comes in and saves the party, isn't that just the same as fudging the monster's health down? Like maybe you meant 'using the environment' to be a lot more basic (hiding behind a tree, burrowing under ground, etc) but it seems to me that any alteration on the combat that isn't determined by dice is ultimately another flavor of 'fudging'.
I mean a bulette has an int of 2 (according to the compendium on roll20). How well can he use the environment before he is functionally exceeding his intelligence level?
Actually, no, it isn't, and in kind of an important way. If I just fudge the numbers so the PCs win, then they just kinda win, right? Status quo? But if they're losing, and an outside force comes in to rescue them, well - I've now got a new possibly-recurring NPC that the PCs need to deal with and probably owe a favor to, it sets up something about the world (e.g., "The Enchanted Forest is patrolled by at least one unicorn who really hates ogres"). If I do it really, really well and smoothly, then it looks like something I had planned from the get-go.
"Using the environment" also, usually, leads to double-edged swords and interesting tactical decisions. Like, yes, the enemy can manipulate the environment in some way to make the fight more interesting and "fudge the numbers in their favor" - making pools of liquid fire, for instance - but then the PCs get to use them, too, by maneuvering other enemies into them, etc.
Fudging die rolls isn't about being unable to accept the story going certain ways, at least not for me. For me it's about making sure the game stays fun. I am 100% absolutely okay with dice screwing with the story in major ways. In fact, in the campaign I'm currently running there was a moment where a character pushed a random button on a very powerful device that could have thrown the whole campaign out of whack. What I did was I had every player say one possible thing that could have happened, then I said one possible thing that could have happened after each player, and I rolled a d10 in the open to decide which of the 10 possibilities occurred.
It came out as the best possible result and it was a great moment, especially because that best result was sandwiched by two hugely campaign shaping consequences. One of them was player death, one of them was destruction of the goal they'd been seeking. But I rolled that die out in the open. I would also have been fine with a player rolling the die, whatever works.
That's a moment where the dice created a huge amount of tension and the payoff was so good and for all the unfortunate universes where a character died there instead I wouldn't change how I did it. It was awesome.
But the finale of this campaign is coming up this weekend and my dice rolling is notoriously wildcard. You better believe that climax encounter that occurs in a giant monolith suspended many stories up in the air by an arcane power is going to have enemies that are a real tangible threat to the players and that pays off the tension they've been building this whole time. The players might crit every round, I am 100% fine with that. But I am absolutely not fine with the final boss of the campaign being impotent against the players, and if the dice come up that way then I will ignore what's on their face and give the players an actual dangerous encounter.
Apologies if I wasn't clear. I didn't mean use the environment to cheat. I mean in your boss fight, have environmental dangers and challenges that ALSO threaten/block the PCs if they fail skill checks on top of the boss enemy attacking them and trying to achieve whatever its objective in the fight is. Conversely, it also allows the PCs to use environmental factors in their favor creatively.
The Bulette fight I mentioned was just a tough ass random encounter I rolled(I rolled extra low on the 2d6 to determine how tough it was going to be), it didn't have any environmental factors outside of 2 dire wolves and a Bulette trying to eat the party. But it didn't need it, because those enemies, especially the Bulette forced the party to prioritize resources and play as carefully as possible knowing that they were really outmatched in terms of sheer power.
I was talking about not having a "boss fight" with the bad guy at the end of a story arc fall flat because he is missing with his attacks. You can do that by having extra objectives the party has to achieve during the fight, having extra enemies besides just the boss in the fight, having terrain obstacles, environmental dangers, etc. All of it should involve the dice though, for sure.
E.g. The closest thing I had to a "boss fight" so far in my 13A game was my level 2 party against a level 4 large sized young white dragon, 3 kobold leaders(each of these kobolds attacks gave a +3 damage boost to all other kobold mooks in the fight), and 12 kobold mook enemies, many of whom were fighting from platforms on the wall, too high up to be hit with non-ranged attacks.
Even if the dragon itself missed its attacks, which was unlikely because I used an enemy that was higher level on purpose, because it's + to hit was high enough to have a very high hit probability against my PCs then the rest of the fight was intense and dangerous too. They had to priotize taking out the leaders who were buffing the mooks, the mooks who were getting buffed, and then also deal with a pissed off dragon. The party tank took multiple big hits from the dragon including a crit, and ended up unconscious I think 3 different times in the fight because he refused to play cautiously at all and the healer was just having to do everything he could to keep him up.
One good crit on him when he was low could've killed him. He knew it, and he knew I wouldn't fudge it if it happened, so when they were collecting their magic items after winning, it felt good as hell.
I also tore one of our monk's arms off with an Owlbear, and when he got it back using a ritual that involved diabolist magic his hand now has demonic claws on it and he absolutely loves it and uses it to flavor how he fights differently.
Any one of these things would be lost if I fudged rolls to protect the PCs from the results of the dice, and the sigh of relief wouldn't be real when I miss them with huge attacks if they thought I was just fudging it to miss them with attacks that actually hit.
And for the players parts, they love that using spells and abilities that give them defensive advantages actually matter. One fight, my wife's wizard cast Blur on our Bard while he was surrounded by enemies, and the 20% miss chance on attacks against him saved him from getting hit like 6 or 7 times in a single fight. You lose that if you aren't willing to let the dice hit when they hit, etc.
Fudging die rolls isn't about being unable to accept the story going certain ways, at least not for me. For me it's about making sure the game stays fun. I am 100% absolutely okay with dice screwing with the story in major ways. In fact, in the campaign I'm currently running there was a moment where a character pushed a random button on a very powerful device that could have thrown the whole campaign out of whack. What I did was I had every player say one possible thing that could have happened, then I said one possible thing that could have happened after each player, and I rolled a d10 in the open to decide which of the 10 possibilities occurred.
It came out as the best possible result and it was a great moment, especially because that best result was sandwiched by two hugely campaign shaping consequences. One of them was player death, one of them was destruction of the goal they'd been seeking. But I rolled that die out in the open. I would also have been fine with a player rolling the die, whatever works.
That's a moment where the dice created a huge amount of tension and the payoff was so good and for all the unfortunate universes where a character died there instead I wouldn't change how I did it. It was awesome.
But the finale of this campaign is coming up this weekend and my dice rolling is notoriously wildcard. You better believe that climax encounter that occurs in a giant monolith suspended many stories up in the air by an arcane power is going to have enemies that are a real tangible threat to the players and that pays off the tension they've been building this whole time. The players might crit every round, I am 100% fine with that. But I am absolutely not fine with the final boss of the campaign being impotent against the players, and if the dice come up that way then I will ignore what's on their face and give the players an actual dangerous encounter.
And I get where you're coming from, but my question then is why are you rolling dice in that last encounter? Why not just put the dice down and go around the table describing what cool thing they do to the bad guy, and what he does to them?
Because if you refuse to let the players lose the final fight, and you refuse to let them win it decisively, then you've already decided that the big climactic fight of the campaign must be a knock down drag out fight. And MAYBE you get that by just rolling the dice and letting them lay. But realistically it means you're just going to fudge the enemy to hit when they miss, miss when they hit, change their HP on the fly, etc. In which case the dice are pointless, unless tricking your players into thinking the dice actually matter is a thing you're okay with. I'm just not okay with that.
The thing is though, say for example you make your end boss pretty strong that it could nearly wipe your party if the party isn't careful. You, as the DM, keep missing the party by getting low rolls. Is it then unfair to the fudge a roll behind a DM screen and say that it does hit so you can make your end boss seem like an actual threat? Or do you just keep missing while your boss just keeps getting pelted?
That is why I think it is alright to fudge some, not all, rolls. Of course given the occasion. I also think that is why the DM screen is useful. It lets you also keep a space that you and only you are able to look at.
You can also use it to hide your favourite snacks.
If I wanted the "boss enemy" to be able to hit the party and threaten them, then I'd use an enemy that's guaranteed to threaten them. The Bulette from the story I told on the last page was meant to be a very tough encounter. And it was. It could hit anybody in the party outside of the heavy armored tank on a nat 5+. 75% hit chance on its attack means it's not just going to miss all its attacks. I made it clear that they better prioritize taking that thing down fast or it was going to go sideways for them. I fully expected they might end up using the flee rule to escape the fight, but they also understood that probably meant the local town they've been hanging out in becoming Bulette food.
But if I rolled a bunch of nat 1s the whole fight and they dominated it, I'd fictionally position it as it failing its attacks in a bad way and make the PCs feel like badasses.
But no, there's no way I would just make it hit even when it misses so the "boss enemy" seemed like a big threat. Because again, then why am I rolling dice? Why am I then not just going "You run into the tough boss, you all take 25 damage because he's super badass. What do you do?"
A big fight should never boil down to both sides just pelting each other with damage until one side is dead anyway. Use the environment, there are all sorts of fun ways to make a fight more memorable even if your boss guy misses his attacks more than you might expect.
In some ways I agree with you. I think there's a certain romance to letting the dice decide the fight. And there's also a lesson you should teach PCs about building actually viable characters. However, I also feel like there is a certain point where the logic falls apart. For example, isn't "using the environment" or any kind of weird deus ex machina just another way of changing numbers at the end of the day? If a unicorn comes in and saves the party, isn't that just the same as fudging the monster's health down? Like maybe you meant 'using the environment' to be a lot more basic (hiding behind a tree, burrowing under ground, etc) but it seems to me that any alteration on the combat that isn't determined by dice is ultimately another flavor of 'fudging'.
I mean a bulette has an int of 2 (according to the compendium on roll20). How well can he use the environment before he is functionally exceeding his intelligence level?
Actually, no, it isn't, and in kind of an important way. If I just fudge the numbers so the PCs win, then they just kinda win, right? Status quo? But if they're losing, and an outside force comes in to rescue them, well - I've now got a new possibly-recurring NPC that the PCs need to deal with and probably owe a favor to, it sets up something about the world (e.g., "The Enchanted Forest is patrolled by at least one unicorn who really hates ogres"). If I do it really, really well and smoothly, then it looks like something I had planned from the get-go.
"Using the environment" also, usually, leads to double-edged swords and interesting tactical decisions. Like, yes, the enemy can manipulate the environment in some way to make the fight more interesting and "fudge the numbers in their favor" - making pools of liquid fire, for instance - but then the PCs get to use them, too, by maneuvering other enemies into them, etc.
That seems fair, I hadn't considered those particular consequences as far as a deus ex machina. An additional NPC in the mix can always be interesting. I'm not sure that changes what is happening, though. Yes, it makes 'fudging' more interesting - but it is still fudging. It was change done to the fight because of the way the fight is unfolding, instead of something you originally intended. I don't feel it's fair to assume that standard 'fudging the dice' is just, "okay he misses you every round and you take 0 damage" and not "you are knocked unconscious and it cost you all of your spells/surges/resources just to win this fight, but you did win". Obviously it's tactless to just throw a free win at the PCs. But if you have a feel for player HP pools, you can definitely bring your players to the brink of a loss and still have it be an enjoyable, rewarding experience instead of having it be a TPK because your luck ran high instead of low and you got a crit at all the right times.
Look at me. Look at me. Look at how large the monster inside me has become. Crunch Crunch! Munch Munch! Chomp Chomp! Gulp!
The thing is though, when do you as a DM say, 'I don't want this outcome because things don't seem to be going well'? Could it be on a DC or an attack roll? That's something that you can fudge to make things a bit less pressured.
But hey, Im still trying to figure out how to make sense of all the little bits of info I have for my first campaign as DM.
I take a completely different approach and fudge rolls for narrative effect frequently.
I'm really comfortable with adjustmemts for narrative pacing within the games. 1st time out you might not want to do much fudging... but I disagree entirely with a hard Dice Rules All constraint for the DM.
You know I played a session of dnd once which was combat heavy, I rolled over 40 dice, none of them came up over 10. I know this because I had been having such terrible luck that I decided to log all of my die rolls to prove I was actually cursed and not just experiencing psychological bias. (before you ask, it wasn't the dice, I switched dice to ones my friends were using, switched to lots of different ones I owned, etc. None of them had exhibited this sort of behavior in any other context)
The chance of that happening is about one in a trillion. Literally! The chance of 10 <10 rolls on a d20 in a row is about one in a thousand, 20 is one in a million, 30 is one in a billion, 40 is one in a trillion. Approximately. It's probably reasonable to assume that no other human being has ever experienced this phenomenon in all of history.
So, understand that when you say "at a 5+ to hit they won't miss that often" it falls on somewhat deaf ears to me. Sometimes the dice give me outcomes that are dramatically totally bereft of anything interesting. If the encounter is not particularly significant, or if the roll is not particularly significant, there's not a problem with it. Let them fall how they may. But if it's important for me to fudge a die roll in order to keep things interesting then I do not give a half of a shit what the actual face of the die says.
Also, if you're ignoring your players' defensive capability and fudge the dice to make those defenses useless, that's not really great. Players take defenses to protect them, and so I am extremely reticent to fudge any roll on a character that has active defense on them, and for characters with high passive defense, I use it very sparingly. Those characters and situations are DESIGNED to be protective and so ignoring them would be as much of a crime as never presenting a challenge at all.
Because if you refuse to let the players lose the final fight, and you refuse to let them win it decisively
I have actually not decided either of these things. They are fully capable of losing the fight! And they are also capable of winning it much faster and more decisively than I anticipate. What they are NOT capable of doing is winning the fight without taking a couple licks. Proving that you're more of a badass than the final badass thought is awesome. Proving that the final badass was actually a pushover is not awesome.
Apologies if I wasn't clear. I didn't mean use the environment to cheat. I mean in your boss fight, have environmental dangers and challenges that ALSO threaten/block the PCs if they fail skill checks on top of the boss enemy attacking them and trying to achieve whatever its objective in the fight is. Conversely, it also allows the PCs to use environmental factors in their favor creatively.
The Bulette fight I mentioned was just a tough ass random encounter I rolled(I rolled extra low on the 2d6 to determine how tough it was going to be), it didn't have any environmental factors outside of 2 dire wolves and a Bulette trying to eat the party. But it didn't need it, because those enemies, especially the Bulette forced the party to prioritize resources and play as carefully as possible knowing that they were really outmatched in terms of sheer power.
I was talking about not having a "boss fight" with the bad guy at the end of a story arc fall flat because he is missing with his attacks. You can do that by having extra objectives the party has to achieve during the fight, having extra enemies besides just the boss in the fight, having terrain obstacles, environmental dangers, etc. All of it should involve the dice though, for sure.
E.g. The closest thing I had to a "boss fight" so far in my 13A game was my level 2 party against a level 4 large sized young white dragon, 3 kobold leaders(each of these kobolds attacks gave a +3 damage boost to all other kobold mooks in the fight), and 12 kobold mook enemies, many of whom were fighting from platforms on the wall, too high up to be hit with non-ranged attacks.
Even if the dragon itself missed its attacks, which was unlikely because I used an enemy that was higher level on purpose, because it's + to hit was high enough to have a very high hit probability against my PCs then the rest of the fight was intense and dangerous too. They had to priotize taking out the leaders who were buffing the mooks, the mooks who were getting buffed, and then also deal with a pissed off dragon. The party tank took multiple big hits from the dragon including a crit, and ended up unconscious I think 3 different times in the fight because he refused to play cautiously at all and the healer was just having to do everything he could to keep him up.
One good crit on him when he was low could've killed him. He knew it, and he knew I wouldn't fudge it if it happened, so when they were collecting their magic items after winning, it felt good as hell.
I also tore one of our monk's arms off with an Owlbear, and when he got it back using a ritual that involved diabolist magic his hand now has demonic claws on it and he absolutely loves it and uses it to flavor how he fights differently.
Any one of these things would be lost if I fudged rolls to protect the PCs from the results of the dice, and the sigh of relief wouldn't be real when I miss them with huge attacks if they thought I was just fudging it to miss them with attacks that actually hit.
And for the players parts, they love that using spells and abilities that give them defensive advantages actually matter. One fight, my wife's wizard cast Blur on our Bard while he was surrounded by enemies, and the 20% miss chance on attacks against him saved him from getting hit like 6 or 7 times in a single fight. You lose that if you aren't willing to let the dice hit when they hit, etc.
I've played, and enjoyed, these types of games. It's definitely different, and DEFINITELY rewarding, but it has to be done with the right people and the people have to know going in that this is how it's going to be. Honestly, it may even be more enjoyable for me to play one of those games personally. But the group I play in (and may eventually DM for) is considerably less tactical than those people sound. We also, sometimes, roll for stats instead of point buy. They play the character, and sometimes the character is just stupid. One of them played an overweight farmer who would eat all the time (I think he rolled a 6 intelligence), and currently one is playing a monk who absolutely insists on trying to 'ride' every damn large+ creature we encounter. This includes the dragons we fought in a plane of ice/snow/cold shit.
Could any dragon easily deal with something riding it? Yeah, I think it could. But this is how these players have fun, so we find ways to work with/around it.
Either way, I yield. I think strictly following the rolls can be a good way to play, and may be something I want to do again some day. It just may not be as enjoyable for the people I play with.
Look at me. Look at me. Look at how large the monster inside me has become. Crunch Crunch! Munch Munch! Chomp Chomp! Gulp!
You know I played a session of dnd once which was combat heavy, I rolled over 40 dice, none of them came up over 10. I know this because I had been having such terrible luck that I decided to log all of my die rolls to prove I was actually cursed and not just experiencing psychological bias. (before you ask, it wasn't the dice, I switched dice to ones my friends were using, switched to lots of different ones I owned, etc. None of them had exhibited this sort of behavior in any other context)
The chance of that happening is about one in a trillion. Literally! The chance of 10 <10 rolls on a d20 in a row is about one in a thousand, 20 is one in a million, 30 is one in a billion, 40 is one in a trillion. Approximately. It's probably reasonable to assume that no other human being has ever experienced this phenomenon in all of history.
So, understand that when you say "at a 5+ to hit they won't miss that often" it falls on somewhat deaf ears to me. Sometimes the dice give me outcomes that are dramatically totally bereft of anything interesting. If the encounter is not particularly significant, or if the roll is not particularly significant, there's not a problem with it. Let them fall how they may. But if it's important for me to fudge a die roll in order to keep things interesting then I do not give a half of a shit what the actual face of the die says.
Also, if you're ignoring your players' defensive capability and fudge the dice to make those defenses useless, that's not really great. Players take defenses to protect them, and so I am extremely reticent to fudge any roll on a character that has active defense on them, and for characters with high passive defense, I use it very sparingly. Those characters and situations are DESIGNED to be protective and so ignoring them would be as much of a crime as never presenting a challenge at all.
Because if you refuse to let the players lose the final fight, and you refuse to let them win it decisively
I have actually not decided either of these things. They are fully capable of losing the fight! And they are also capable of winning it much faster and more decisively than I anticipate. What they are NOT capable of doing is winning the fight without taking a couple licks. Proving that you're more of a badass than the final badass thought is awesome. Proving that the final badass was actually a pushover is not awesome.
Once in 4e my paladin failed his save to escape a basic net over 20 consecutive times.
It was AMAZING. The fight ended after 5 turns with the rest of the PCs cleaning up, but on a whim I kept rolling until I 'escaped' (legit needed to roll an unmodified 10 or above). 20+ times before I managed it. We still laugh about that.
Look at me. Look at me. Look at how large the monster inside me has become. Crunch Crunch! Munch Munch! Chomp Chomp! Gulp!
At the PAX South Acquisitions Inc game, Mike was unconscious through most of the session and didn't get to play during the climax at all.
I think that kind of sucked for him.
Yeah. It ended up with a really hilarious moment, but I remember thinking to myself that he seemed like he was having a pretty bad time and it bummed me out.
Yeah I was there for that. That kind of stuff really sucks.
Also, I'm glad people finally stopped trying to tell Patrick Rothfuss what to do. He was getting pissed and they were not taking the hint.
Look at me. Look at me. Look at how large the monster inside me has become. Crunch Crunch! Munch Munch! Chomp Chomp! Gulp!
The thing is though, when do you as a DM say, 'I don't want this outcome because things don't seem to be going well'? Could it be on a DC or an attack roll? That's something that you can fudge to make things a bit less pressured.
But hey, Im still trying to figure out how to make sense of all the little bits of info I have for my first campaign as DM.
I take a completely different approach and fudge rolls for narrative effect frequently.
I'm really comfortable with adjustments for narrative pacing within the games. 1st time out you might not want to do much fudging... but I disagree entirely with a hard Dice Rules All constraint for the DM.
I think using it for narrative and a tiny bit of combat is fine. I don't think that it is a problem at all. It can even have your players take you down a road that you didn't even think was possible to begin with and even then you, players and DM, have a fun time because of how you decided to take the untraveled road.
Sometimes it can mess with some balances, but I don't see that happening often.
In encounters that matter I feel like you have to fudge the rolls as a DM if you are missing super bad. You are generally already pretty steep disadvantage from an action economy perspective, and if you go 3 or 4 rounds without having anything land your big bad is going to be so buried in the players avalanche to be almost inconsequential.
Yeah I was there for that. That kind of stuff really sucks.
Also, I'm glad people finally stopped trying to tell Patrick Rothfuss what to do. He was getting pissed and they were not taking the hint.
Was the suggestion to stop becoming GRRM 2: The Next GRRMeration and finish Doors of Stone? Because I know whom I'm agreeing with on that one.
Hard disagree about fudging dice. IMO you don't fudge dice unless you're okay with players fudging their dice rolls too and just telling you results they didn't actually roll.
IMO if you are fudging dice you don't need to be playing a game. If you're not going to accept the outcomes of the dice for good or bad, then just stop rolling them and go around the table describing what each character does.
It's why I don't use things like GM screens, I roll my dice in my tower where my players can see them if they want.
Yeah let me TPW this party of lvl 1s playing DnD first time ever because they failed a perception check, that sounds fun and like it will encourage them to play again after we just took an hour to get them each a character...
Hard disagree about fudging dice. IMO you don't fudge dice unless you're okay with players fudging their dice rolls too and just telling you results they didn't actually roll.
IMO if you are fudging dice you don't need to be playing a game. If you're not going to accept the outcomes of the dice for good or bad, then just stop rolling them and go around the table describing what each character does.
It's why I don't use things like GM screens, I roll my dice in my tower where my players can see them if they want.
Yeah let me TPW this party of lvl 1s playing DnD first time ever because they failed a perception check, that sounds fun and like it will encourage them to play again after we just took an hour to get them each a character...
You could run an adventure that doesn't wipe the party because of a single failed check.
That's an amazingly absurd strawman even by internet standards.
Hard disagree about fudging dice. IMO you don't fudge dice unless you're okay with players fudging their dice rolls too and just telling you results they didn't actually roll.
IMO if you are fudging dice you don't need to be playing a game. If you're not going to accept the outcomes of the dice for good or bad, then just stop rolling them and go around the table describing what each character does.
It's why I don't use things like GM screens, I roll my dice in my tower where my players can see them if they want.
Yeah let me TPW this party of lvl 1s playing DnD first time ever because they failed a perception check, that sounds fun and like it will encourage them to play again after we just took an hour to get them each a character...
You could run an adventure that doesn't wipe the party because of a single failed check.
That's an amazingly absurd strawman even by internet standards.
Yeah, like, seriously. Holy cow.
Also, your first time playing D&D should be done with premades. Get into the action! Do not begin by playing Spreadsheets and Statrolls for an hour!
EDIT: And, just to be clear from the above, I'm not a "Hard Rolls Absolutist" by any means, but I do prefer games that follow the rules and that includes using the dice when the dice are being used, if you catch my drift.
I'll very occasionally fudge dicerolls but most the time if I'm rolling poorly I'll keep it legit and let the players enjoy the 'DM's new monster rendered completely impotent by bad rolls' sounds I make.
Other times I'll fudge the HP of enemies typically lower on account of the players doing something fun/cool and it's more fun to have a pile of enemies just explode rather than there being an awkward one or two left
Also, also, those first premade characters should have active options in every phase of the game (but not many of them - new players, right?). As in, things they can do in-combat beyond make basic attacks and things they can do in exploration beyond rolling Perception.
I played a D&D game once with some friends, and the guy who was DMing was introducing some of his other friends to D&D. He gave them some premades. Check. The premade for the wife of the husband-wife pairing was, IIRC, a Barbarian, who could choose when to rage in combat. Check. Out-of-combat, she had almost no particular ability other than her Strength, no-check, but was really good at that and there were several places where that could come up, sooo ... half-check?
The husband's character was a thiefrogue thief. Described as a "second-story man," he had some good skills in climbing and lock picking, check, but there wasn't much (any?) of either in the adventure he was running. So no check. For his combat abilities, the thief had Combat Expertise and ... Skill Focus (?!). Now, you and I know that the first, at least, is a decent stepping stone to a potentially effective Rogue build later on; however, at first level, the character couldn't even use Combat Expertise because his base attack bonus was +0 (and even if he could it's boring) and his normal attack with his Strength penalty (?!) already sucked and we were fighting undead so he definitely wasn't getting his Sneak Attack on. So really, really big uncheck.
Plus the Rogue's AC was pretty poor (no armor, I think? It was ridiculous) and the player kept charging into combat, where he'd get swarmed and knocked out. It was painful to sit there and watch, though we were trying to help the guy out. He really just needed a copy of his wife's character, since that's what he wanted to be playing. No idea what the DM was thinking.
Hard disagree about fudging dice. IMO you don't fudge dice unless you're okay with players fudging their dice rolls too and just telling you results they didn't actually roll.
IMO if you are fudging dice you don't need to be playing a game. If you're not going to accept the outcomes of the dice for good or bad, then just stop rolling them and go around the table describing what each character does.
It's why I don't use things like GM screens, I roll my dice in my tower where my players can see them if they want.
Yeah let me TPW this party of lvl 1s playing DnD first time ever because they failed a perception check, that sounds fun and like it will encourage them to play again after we just took an hour to get them each a character...
You could run an adventure that doesn't wipe the party because of a single failed check.
That's an amazingly absurd strawman even by internet standards.
You say "amazingly absurd strawman" I say "fairly early on, Hoard of the Dragon Queen makes the entire party pass a DC 5 stealth check to advance the plot or die".
And it doesn't sound unreasonable, unless maybe some kind of character in heavy armor with a low Dex bonus steps up to try, but it's still an option, and this is a published adventure.
The great thing about PbtA systems too is that while the GM has a list of moves they must obey, they can make moves as soft or hard as they want. You can make a whole bunch of super narratively interesting moves against players when they fail rolls in say Dungeon World that don't have to be about dealing damage to the PC and KOing them, if dealing damage isn't the move you want to make in that instance.
Well, yeah, but I'm just saying. When you follow along with the GM advice and be a fan of the players, sometimes you wind up being a homer, and then when everybody's on the rocks and somebody gets an amazing idea to turn the tide, you're like "sweet, let's see how awesome the dice say that is" and they roll snake eyes. And then you've got to grab your brain's handbrake and do a bootlegger turn and try to come up with how things just got worse. Or... better?
Hard disagree about fudging dice. IMO you don't fudge dice unless you're okay with players fudging their dice rolls too and just telling you results they didn't actually roll.
IMO if you are fudging dice you don't need to be playing a game. If you're not going to accept the outcomes of the dice for good or bad, then just stop rolling them and go around the table describing what each character does.
It's why I don't use things like GM screens, I roll my dice in my tower where my players can see them if they want.
Yeah let me TPW this party of lvl 1s playing DnD first time ever because they failed a perception check, that sounds fun and like it will encourage them to play again after we just took an hour to get them each a character...
You could run an adventure that doesn't wipe the party because of a single failed check.
That's an amazingly absurd strawman even by internet standards.
You say "amazingly absurd strawman" I say "fairly early on, Hoard of the Dragon Queen makes the entire party pass a DC 5 stealth check to advance the plot or die".
And it doesn't sound unreasonable, unless maybe some kind of character in heavy armor with a low Dex bonus steps up to try, but it's still an option, and this is a published adventure.
I'm completely comfortable with you drawing the inference from this that I think many of the published adventures are horribly written and designed.
You know I played a session of dnd once which was combat heavy, I rolled over 40 dice, none of them came up over 10. I know this because I had been having such terrible luck that I decided to log all of my die rolls to prove I was actually cursed and not just experiencing psychological bias. (before you ask, it wasn't the dice, I switched dice to ones my friends were using, switched to lots of different ones I owned, etc. None of them had exhibited this sort of behavior in any other context)
The chance of that happening is about one in a trillion. Literally! The chance of 10 <10 rolls on a d20 in a row is about one in a thousand, 20 is one in a million, 30 is one in a billion, 40 is one in a trillion. Approximately. It's probably reasonable to assume that no other human being has ever experienced this phenomenon in all of history.
So, understand that when you say "at a 5+ to hit they won't miss that often" it falls on somewhat deaf ears to me. Sometimes the dice give me outcomes that are dramatically totally bereft of anything interesting. If the encounter is not particularly significant, or if the roll is not particularly significant, there's not a problem with it. Let them fall how they may. But if it's important for me to fudge a die roll in order to keep things interesting then I do not give a half of a shit what the actual face of the die says.
Also, if you're ignoring your players' defensive capability and fudge the dice to make those defenses useless, that's not really great. Players take defenses to protect them, and so I am extremely reticent to fudge any roll on a character that has active defense on them, and for characters with high passive defense, I use it very sparingly. Those characters and situations are DESIGNED to be protective and so ignoring them would be as much of a crime as never presenting a challenge at all.
Because if you refuse to let the players lose the final fight, and you refuse to let them win it decisively
I have actually not decided either of these things. They are fully capable of losing the fight! And they are also capable of winning it much faster and more decisively than I anticipate. What they are NOT capable of doing is winning the fight without taking a couple licks. Proving that you're more of a badass than the final badass thought is awesome. Proving that the final badass was actually a pushover is not awesome.
Once in 4e my paladin failed his save to escape a basic net over 20 consecutive times.
It was AMAZING. The fight ended after 5 turns with the rest of the PCs cleaning up, but on a whim I kept rolling until I 'escaped' (legit needed to roll an unmodified 10 or above). 20+ times before I managed it. We still laugh about that.
I had a character death in a Shadowrun game back in the 90s that involved another player trying to heal me, and spending every single thing he could to boost the number of total dice he could roll. In the end, he had 36d6 to roll. A single 6 would have saved me.
Naturally, he rolled the dice one at a time for dramatic effect. Not a single 6. We still reference her passing to this day.
Hard disagree about fudging dice. IMO you don't fudge dice unless you're okay with players fudging their dice rolls too and just telling you results they didn't actually roll.
IMO if you are fudging dice you don't need to be playing a game. If you're not going to accept the outcomes of the dice for good or bad, then just stop rolling them and go around the table describing what each character does.
It's why I don't use things like GM screens, I roll my dice in my tower where my players can see them if they want.
Yeah let me TPW this party of lvl 1s playing DnD first time ever because they failed a perception check, that sounds fun and like it will encourage them to play again after we just took an hour to get them each a character...
You could run an adventure that doesn't wipe the party because of a single failed check.
That's an amazingly absurd strawman even by internet standards.
My first time DMing, I'm going to use the thing that came with the box, lost mines if Phalvander. And 30 feet into the first cave is a trap that can easily wipe you (well, not a trap exactly but a hidden goblin with a lever).
Two of them picked from the premades (still took like 15 minutes each to explain what all the stuff means). One wanted to roll her own, and it was a priest, so that was another 30 min the.
Hard disagree about fudging dice. IMO you don't fudge dice unless you're okay with players fudging their dice rolls too and just telling you results they didn't actually roll.
IMO if you are fudging dice you don't need to be playing a game. If you're not going to accept the outcomes of the dice for good or bad, then just stop rolling them and go around the table describing what each character does.
It's why I don't use things like GM screens, I roll my dice in my tower where my players can see them if they want.
Yeah let me TPW this party of lvl 1s playing DnD first time ever because they failed a perception check, that sounds fun and like it will encourage them to play again after we just took an hour to get them each a character...
You could run an adventure that doesn't wipe the party because of a single failed check.
That's an amazingly absurd strawman even by internet standards.
You say "amazingly absurd strawman" I say "fairly early on, Hoard of the Dragon Queen makes the entire party pass a DC 5 stealth check to advance the plot or die".
And it doesn't sound unreasonable, unless maybe some kind of character in heavy armor with a low Dex bonus steps up to try, but it's still an option, and this is a published adventure.
I'm completely comfortable with you drawing the inference from this that I think many of the published adventures are horribly written and designed.
Well, yeah. I mean, we've both been around the block. "I'm going to play D&D! I'm going to buy a published adventure and run it!" is as much of a trap as "I'm going to play Morrowind! I'm going to choose one of the premade classes and play it!" If you know what you're getting into you can make it work, sure, but...
The idea that a published adventure could be bought at a game store and then played as written - the idea that you could purchase a product and then use it for what it said on the packaging - is not an "amazingly absurd strawman".
The thing about the hardline 'never fudge dice' position is that the DM is almost always in a position to determine outcomes anyway. Even if you 100% always play the dice as they lie, eventually a player in a bad spot is gonna do something not entirely covered by the rules, like "I want to try to drop this chandelier on the monster". What you decide about whether he can do that, how hard it is to do, what effect it has when done is going to do just as much to dictate the outcome of the fight as fudging the dice directly. Even the basic decision of whether or not to go 'that's a cool idea, you can have advantage on the roll for it' is a judgment call that has the DM pretty directly influencing the outcome independently of the actual rules. You just can't really escape the fact that the DM absolutely has exactly the kind of narrative control that "I roll all my dice in public" tries to pretend he doesn't have.
For a while I experimented with just working 'dice fudging' into the rules, a la 4e's Dice of Auspicious Fortune - the DM gets a limited pool of 'stored' rolls and can swap a roll he doesn't like with a stored one, using the stored roll now and storing the unwanted one for later. It worked pretty well; felt more 'fair' because A)while it was homebrewed, it was still governed by a rule instead of actually 'fudging', and B)every crit fudged away still had to come back eventually, which helped solve both the 'this monster is about to gib a player with a lucky crit and wipe the party' and the 'this monster keeps rolling 3s and looks like a helpless idiot' problems. As a bonus, it also created a fun little minigame for me behind the screen, where I tried to keep the pool 'balanced' so I had both good and bad rolls available in case I wanted them.
I think we've already established that 5e encounter building is a pain in the behind - and especially CR doesn't make any sense.
Its hard to make good encounters for low level players, especially as a new DM for new players, Either they're way to hard, or way to easy. And as a result - this means adjusting your encounter difficulty while its happening behind the screen.
I don't like fudging dice - but sometimes I do it. I prefer though to just adjust the to hit chance of monsters or their overall HP, when I notice that this encounter is nowhere near the level it should be. Either up or down.
I understand not wanting to fudge dice, its the system you're playing, its the thing you do, verisimilitude with the rules and all that. but the argument that If you fudge dice you give the players a fiat to do the same seems like a real stretch. I'm not policing their die roles, nor am I making sure they do basic math right - there's some trust there - the idea that we play this game fairly to have a good time. The other side of the coin isn't that they expect me to roll fairly - its that react in a sensible and properly dramatic fashion that is enjoyable for all the players.
For me the suspension of disbelief with my players is important, which means not having them see the mechanics behind the screen. (also my eyesight is pretty bad, so my notes are printed out with big letters - and they can read it from the other end of the table), which is why I use a screen - its also where all the hp of the monsters are written and stuff...
That said, I do like rolling big damage spells like fireballs or blight or something infront of the players to put the fear of god into them. Which is also dramatic.
The idea that a published adventure could be bought at a game store and then played as written - the idea that you could purchase a product and then use it for what it said on the packaging - is not an "amazingly absurd strawman".
You're combining two separate claims of mine here. Let's move past that though and instead ask:
"Do you think that DC 5 stealth check with failure equals death is appropriate?" and ''Would you run it as written?"
AegisFear My DanceOvershot Toronto, Landed in OttawaRegistered Userregular
I don't fudge dice. I might decide that an encounter/mob/whatever that was planned on showing up mysteriously vanishes if the party's having trouble (or add in some things if I find what I planned is less difficult than I anticipated), but those things haven't happened yet and are fair game for me to do with however I feel.
The idea that a published adventure could be bought at a game store and then played as written - the idea that you could purchase a product and then use it for what it said on the packaging - is not an "amazingly absurd strawman".
You're combining two separate claims of mine here. Let's move past that though and instead ask:
"Do you think that DC 5 stealth check with failure equals death is appropriate?" and ''Would you run it as written?"
Right now? No and no.
Back when I started running D&D, lo those many years ago? When I had no idea how to write an adventure and the published adventures seemed so interesting and cool? Probably yes to both!
So why does "DC 5 stealth check with failure equals death" show up in the published adventure?
- because the DM is meant to call bullshit and come up with their own thing
- because the DM is meant to run it as written, experience what it actually means to the players, and learn to call bullshit on it in the future
- because the DM is meant to run it as written, full stop
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I improvise so much of my game during the session, including NPC/monster stats, that I feel like improvising things to keep it fun is just par for the course.
That is why I think it is alright to fudge some, not all, rolls. Of course given the occasion. I also think that is why the DM screen is useful. It lets you also keep a space that you and only you are able to look at.
You can also use it to hide your favourite snacks.
Come on Gary, we can smell the wings. You're not fooling anyone.
No you can't. I rolled for your perception at the start of the session, and it was a 1.
That's it, I'm taking my Code Red and going home.
Roll for intimidation...
If I wanted the "boss enemy" to be able to hit the party and threaten them, then I'd use an enemy that's guaranteed to threaten them. The Bulette from the story I told on the last page was meant to be a very tough encounter. And it was. It could hit anybody in the party outside of the heavy armored tank on a nat 5+. 75% hit chance on its attack means it's not just going to miss all its attacks. I made it clear that they better prioritize taking that thing down fast or it was going to go sideways for them. I fully expected they might end up using the flee rule to escape the fight, but they also understood that probably meant the local town they've been hanging out in becoming Bulette food.
But if I rolled a bunch of nat 1s the whole fight and they dominated it, I'd fictionally position it as it failing its attacks in a bad way and make the PCs feel like badasses.
But no, there's no way I would just make it hit even when it misses so the "boss enemy" seemed like a big threat. Because again, then why am I rolling dice? Why am I then not just going "You run into the tough boss, you all take 25 damage because he's super badass. What do you do?"
A big fight should never boil down to both sides just pelting each other with damage until one side is dead anyway. Use the environment, there are all sorts of fun ways to make a fight more memorable even if your boss guy misses his attacks more than you might expect.
The principle "play to find out what happens" is the most important one in any games I run, and that includes seeing what the outcomes of the dice are.
In my last Monster of the Week session, two of my PCs blew a hole in the roof of a building where their friend was being held captive, and jumped inside to run to his rescue. Except the first guy rolled a 6 on his act under pressure roll. The other guy decided to try to aid the first guy to bump him to a 7. I told him sure you can do this, but if you roll a 6- to aid then you snowball another 6- on your own act under pressure it's going to go badly. He did it anyway, rolled 6- on both checks. First guy gets scraped up and takes damage on the way down. Second guy breaks his leg botching his attempt to try to help his friend catch his footing while also falling.
Then he had to choose whether to show up late to the friend rescue hobbling along or do something. He uses magic to temporarily set his leg and ignore the pain so he can still use it and move normal speed. But I told him too if he 6- that roll then his leg would be permanently damaged. He nailed that roll though and was okay, just had to go to the hospital to get it fixed properly after the monster was dead.
If i'm playing a game where I am fudging then instead of playing to find out what happens, I just tell him that he took a hard fall and moved on, and we miss a really tense piece of the session that only exists if you're willing and enthusiastic about seeing where the story goes, success or failure.
In some ways I agree with you. I think there's a certain romance to letting the dice decide the fight. And there's also a lesson you should teach PCs about building actually viable characters. However, I also feel like there is a certain point where the logic falls apart. For example, isn't "using the environment" or any kind of weird deus ex machina just another way of changing numbers at the end of the day? If a unicorn comes in and saves the party, isn't that just the same as fudging the monster's health down? Like maybe you meant 'using the environment' to be a lot more basic (hiding behind a tree, burrowing under ground, etc) but it seems to me that any alteration on the combat that isn't determined by dice is ultimately another flavor of 'fudging'.
I mean a bulette has an int of 2 (according to the compendium on roll20). How well can he use the environment before he is functionally exceeding his intelligence level?
Crunch Crunch! Munch Munch! Chomp Chomp! Gulp!
Actually, no, it isn't, and in kind of an important way. If I just fudge the numbers so the PCs win, then they just kinda win, right? Status quo? But if they're losing, and an outside force comes in to rescue them, well - I've now got a new possibly-recurring NPC that the PCs need to deal with and probably owe a favor to, it sets up something about the world (e.g., "The Enchanted Forest is patrolled by at least one unicorn who really hates ogres"). If I do it really, really well and smoothly, then it looks like something I had planned from the get-go.
"Using the environment" also, usually, leads to double-edged swords and interesting tactical decisions. Like, yes, the enemy can manipulate the environment in some way to make the fight more interesting and "fudge the numbers in their favor" - making pools of liquid fire, for instance - but then the PCs get to use them, too, by maneuvering other enemies into them, etc.
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
It came out as the best possible result and it was a great moment, especially because that best result was sandwiched by two hugely campaign shaping consequences. One of them was player death, one of them was destruction of the goal they'd been seeking. But I rolled that die out in the open. I would also have been fine with a player rolling the die, whatever works.
That's a moment where the dice created a huge amount of tension and the payoff was so good and for all the unfortunate universes where a character died there instead I wouldn't change how I did it. It was awesome.
But the finale of this campaign is coming up this weekend and my dice rolling is notoriously wildcard. You better believe that climax encounter that occurs in a giant monolith suspended many stories up in the air by an arcane power is going to have enemies that are a real tangible threat to the players and that pays off the tension they've been building this whole time. The players might crit every round, I am 100% fine with that. But I am absolutely not fine with the final boss of the campaign being impotent against the players, and if the dice come up that way then I will ignore what's on their face and give the players an actual dangerous encounter.
The Bulette fight I mentioned was just a tough ass random encounter I rolled(I rolled extra low on the 2d6 to determine how tough it was going to be), it didn't have any environmental factors outside of 2 dire wolves and a Bulette trying to eat the party. But it didn't need it, because those enemies, especially the Bulette forced the party to prioritize resources and play as carefully as possible knowing that they were really outmatched in terms of sheer power.
I was talking about not having a "boss fight" with the bad guy at the end of a story arc fall flat because he is missing with his attacks. You can do that by having extra objectives the party has to achieve during the fight, having extra enemies besides just the boss in the fight, having terrain obstacles, environmental dangers, etc. All of it should involve the dice though, for sure.
E.g. The closest thing I had to a "boss fight" so far in my 13A game was my level 2 party against a level 4 large sized young white dragon, 3 kobold leaders(each of these kobolds attacks gave a +3 damage boost to all other kobold mooks in the fight), and 12 kobold mook enemies, many of whom were fighting from platforms on the wall, too high up to be hit with non-ranged attacks.
Even if the dragon itself missed its attacks, which was unlikely because I used an enemy that was higher level on purpose, because it's + to hit was high enough to have a very high hit probability against my PCs then the rest of the fight was intense and dangerous too. They had to priotize taking out the leaders who were buffing the mooks, the mooks who were getting buffed, and then also deal with a pissed off dragon. The party tank took multiple big hits from the dragon including a crit, and ended up unconscious I think 3 different times in the fight because he refused to play cautiously at all and the healer was just having to do everything he could to keep him up.
One good crit on him when he was low could've killed him. He knew it, and he knew I wouldn't fudge it if it happened, so when they were collecting their magic items after winning, it felt good as hell.
I also tore one of our monk's arms off with an Owlbear, and when he got it back using a ritual that involved diabolist magic his hand now has demonic claws on it and he absolutely loves it and uses it to flavor how he fights differently.
Any one of these things would be lost if I fudged rolls to protect the PCs from the results of the dice, and the sigh of relief wouldn't be real when I miss them with huge attacks if they thought I was just fudging it to miss them with attacks that actually hit.
And for the players parts, they love that using spells and abilities that give them defensive advantages actually matter. One fight, my wife's wizard cast Blur on our Bard while he was surrounded by enemies, and the 20% miss chance on attacks against him saved him from getting hit like 6 or 7 times in a single fight. You lose that if you aren't willing to let the dice hit when they hit, etc.
And I get where you're coming from, but my question then is why are you rolling dice in that last encounter? Why not just put the dice down and go around the table describing what cool thing they do to the bad guy, and what he does to them?
Because if you refuse to let the players lose the final fight, and you refuse to let them win it decisively, then you've already decided that the big climactic fight of the campaign must be a knock down drag out fight. And MAYBE you get that by just rolling the dice and letting them lay. But realistically it means you're just going to fudge the enemy to hit when they miss, miss when they hit, change their HP on the fly, etc. In which case the dice are pointless, unless tricking your players into thinking the dice actually matter is a thing you're okay with. I'm just not okay with that.
That seems fair, I hadn't considered those particular consequences as far as a deus ex machina. An additional NPC in the mix can always be interesting. I'm not sure that changes what is happening, though. Yes, it makes 'fudging' more interesting - but it is still fudging. It was change done to the fight because of the way the fight is unfolding, instead of something you originally intended. I don't feel it's fair to assume that standard 'fudging the dice' is just, "okay he misses you every round and you take 0 damage" and not "you are knocked unconscious and it cost you all of your spells/surges/resources just to win this fight, but you did win". Obviously it's tactless to just throw a free win at the PCs. But if you have a feel for player HP pools, you can definitely bring your players to the brink of a loss and still have it be an enjoyable, rewarding experience instead of having it be a TPK because your luck ran high instead of low and you got a crit at all the right times.
Crunch Crunch! Munch Munch! Chomp Chomp! Gulp!
I take a completely different approach and fudge rolls for narrative effect frequently.
I'm really comfortable with adjustmemts for narrative pacing within the games. 1st time out you might not want to do much fudging... but I disagree entirely with a hard Dice Rules All constraint for the DM.
The chance of that happening is about one in a trillion. Literally! The chance of 10 <10 rolls on a d20 in a row is about one in a thousand, 20 is one in a million, 30 is one in a billion, 40 is one in a trillion. Approximately. It's probably reasonable to assume that no other human being has ever experienced this phenomenon in all of history.
So, understand that when you say "at a 5+ to hit they won't miss that often" it falls on somewhat deaf ears to me. Sometimes the dice give me outcomes that are dramatically totally bereft of anything interesting. If the encounter is not particularly significant, or if the roll is not particularly significant, there's not a problem with it. Let them fall how they may. But if it's important for me to fudge a die roll in order to keep things interesting then I do not give a half of a shit what the actual face of the die says.
Also, if you're ignoring your players' defensive capability and fudge the dice to make those defenses useless, that's not really great. Players take defenses to protect them, and so I am extremely reticent to fudge any roll on a character that has active defense on them, and for characters with high passive defense, I use it very sparingly. Those characters and situations are DESIGNED to be protective and so ignoring them would be as much of a crime as never presenting a challenge at all.
I have actually not decided either of these things. They are fully capable of losing the fight! And they are also capable of winning it much faster and more decisively than I anticipate. What they are NOT capable of doing is winning the fight without taking a couple licks. Proving that you're more of a badass than the final badass thought is awesome. Proving that the final badass was actually a pushover is not awesome.
I've played, and enjoyed, these types of games. It's definitely different, and DEFINITELY rewarding, but it has to be done with the right people and the people have to know going in that this is how it's going to be. Honestly, it may even be more enjoyable for me to play one of those games personally. But the group I play in (and may eventually DM for) is considerably less tactical than those people sound. We also, sometimes, roll for stats instead of point buy. They play the character, and sometimes the character is just stupid. One of them played an overweight farmer who would eat all the time (I think he rolled a 6 intelligence), and currently one is playing a monk who absolutely insists on trying to 'ride' every damn large+ creature we encounter. This includes the dragons we fought in a plane of ice/snow/cold shit.
Could any dragon easily deal with something riding it? Yeah, I think it could. But this is how these players have fun, so we find ways to work with/around it.
Either way, I yield. I think strictly following the rolls can be a good way to play, and may be something I want to do again some day. It just may not be as enjoyable for the people I play with.
Crunch Crunch! Munch Munch! Chomp Chomp! Gulp!
Once in 4e my paladin failed his save to escape a basic net over 20 consecutive times.
It was AMAZING. The fight ended after 5 turns with the rest of the PCs cleaning up, but on a whim I kept rolling until I 'escaped' (legit needed to roll an unmodified 10 or above). 20+ times before I managed it. We still laugh about that.
Crunch Crunch! Munch Munch! Chomp Chomp! Gulp!
I think that kind of sucked for him.
Yeah. It ended up with a really hilarious moment, but I remember thinking to myself that he seemed like he was having a pretty bad time and it bummed me out.
Also, I'm glad people finally stopped trying to tell Patrick Rothfuss what to do. He was getting pissed and they were not taking the hint.
Crunch Crunch! Munch Munch! Chomp Chomp! Gulp!
I think using it for narrative and a tiny bit of combat is fine. I don't think that it is a problem at all. It can even have your players take you down a road that you didn't even think was possible to begin with and even then you, players and DM, have a fun time because of how you decided to take the untraveled road.
Sometimes it can mess with some balances, but I don't see that happening often.
Was the suggestion to stop becoming GRRM 2: The Next GRRMeration and finish Doors of Stone? Because I know whom I'm agreeing with on that one.
Yeah let me TPW this party of lvl 1s playing DnD first time ever because they failed a perception check, that sounds fun and like it will encourage them to play again after we just took an hour to get them each a character...
You could run an adventure that doesn't wipe the party because of a single failed check.
That's an amazingly absurd strawman even by internet standards.
Yeah, like, seriously. Holy cow.
Also, your first time playing D&D should be done with premades. Get into the action!
EDIT: And, just to be clear from the above, I'm not a "Hard Rolls Absolutist" by any means, but I do prefer games that follow the rules and that includes using the dice when the dice are being used, if you catch my drift.
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
Other times I'll fudge the HP of enemies typically lower on account of the players doing something fun/cool and it's more fun to have a pile of enemies just explode rather than there being an awkward one or two left
Want to play co-op games? Feel free to hit me up!
I played a D&D game once with some friends, and the guy who was DMing was introducing some of his other friends to D&D. He gave them some premades. Check. The premade for the wife of the husband-wife pairing was, IIRC, a Barbarian, who could choose when to rage in combat. Check. Out-of-combat, she had almost no particular ability other than her Strength, no-check, but was really good at that and there were several places where that could come up, sooo ... half-check?
The husband's character was a thief rogue thief. Described as a "second-story man," he had some good skills in climbing and lock picking, check, but there wasn't much (any?) of either in the adventure he was running. So no check. For his combat abilities, the thief had Combat Expertise and ... Skill Focus (?!). Now, you and I know that the first, at least, is a decent stepping stone to a potentially effective Rogue build later on; however, at first level, the character couldn't even use Combat Expertise because his base attack bonus was +0 (and even if he could it's boring) and his normal attack with his Strength penalty (?!) already sucked and we were fighting undead so he definitely wasn't getting his Sneak Attack on. So really, really big uncheck.
Plus the Rogue's AC was pretty poor (no armor, I think? It was ridiculous) and the player kept charging into combat, where he'd get swarmed and knocked out. It was painful to sit there and watch, though we were trying to help the guy out. He really just needed a copy of his wife's character, since that's what he wanted to be playing. No idea what the DM was thinking.
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
You say "amazingly absurd strawman" I say "fairly early on, Hoard of the Dragon Queen makes the entire party pass a DC 5 stealth check to advance the plot or die".
And it doesn't sound unreasonable, unless maybe some kind of character in heavy armor with a low Dex bonus steps up to try, but it's still an option, and this is a published adventure.
Well, yeah, but I'm just saying. When you follow along with the GM advice and be a fan of the players, sometimes you wind up being a homer, and then when everybody's on the rocks and somebody gets an amazing idea to turn the tide, you're like "sweet, let's see how awesome the dice say that is" and they roll snake eyes. And then you've got to grab your brain's handbrake and do a bootlegger turn and try to come up with how things just got worse. Or... better?
I'm completely comfortable with you drawing the inference from this that I think many of the published adventures are horribly written and designed.
I had a character death in a Shadowrun game back in the 90s that involved another player trying to heal me, and spending every single thing he could to boost the number of total dice he could roll. In the end, he had 36d6 to roll. A single 6 would have saved me.
Naturally, he rolled the dice one at a time for dramatic effect. Not a single 6. We still reference her passing to this day.
My first time DMing, I'm going to use the thing that came with the box, lost mines if Phalvander. And 30 feet into the first cave is a trap that can easily wipe you (well, not a trap exactly but a hidden goblin with a lever).
Two of them picked from the premades (still took like 15 minutes each to explain what all the stuff means). One wanted to roll her own, and it was a priest, so that was another 30 min the.
Well, yeah. I mean, we've both been around the block. "I'm going to play D&D! I'm going to buy a published adventure and run it!" is as much of a trap as "I'm going to play Morrowind! I'm going to choose one of the premade classes and play it!" If you know what you're getting into you can make it work, sure, but...
The idea that a published adventure could be bought at a game store and then played as written - the idea that you could purchase a product and then use it for what it said on the packaging - is not an "amazingly absurd strawman".
Monte Cook is full of something, but it's not straw
For a while I experimented with just working 'dice fudging' into the rules, a la 4e's Dice of Auspicious Fortune - the DM gets a limited pool of 'stored' rolls and can swap a roll he doesn't like with a stored one, using the stored roll now and storing the unwanted one for later. It worked pretty well; felt more 'fair' because A)while it was homebrewed, it was still governed by a rule instead of actually 'fudging', and B)every crit fudged away still had to come back eventually, which helped solve both the 'this monster is about to gib a player with a lucky crit and wipe the party' and the 'this monster keeps rolling 3s and looks like a helpless idiot' problems. As a bonus, it also created a fun little minigame for me behind the screen, where I tried to keep the pool 'balanced' so I had both good and bad rolls available in case I wanted them.
Its hard to make good encounters for low level players, especially as a new DM for new players, Either they're way to hard, or way to easy. And as a result - this means adjusting your encounter difficulty while its happening behind the screen.
I don't like fudging dice - but sometimes I do it. I prefer though to just adjust the to hit chance of monsters or their overall HP, when I notice that this encounter is nowhere near the level it should be. Either up or down.
I understand not wanting to fudge dice, its the system you're playing, its the thing you do, verisimilitude with the rules and all that. but the argument that If you fudge dice you give the players a fiat to do the same seems like a real stretch. I'm not policing their die roles, nor am I making sure they do basic math right - there's some trust there - the idea that we play this game fairly to have a good time. The other side of the coin isn't that they expect me to roll fairly - its that react in a sensible and properly dramatic fashion that is enjoyable for all the players.
For me the suspension of disbelief with my players is important, which means not having them see the mechanics behind the screen. (also my eyesight is pretty bad, so my notes are printed out with big letters - and they can read it from the other end of the table), which is why I use a screen - its also where all the hp of the monsters are written and stuff...
That said, I do like rolling big damage spells like fireballs or blight or something infront of the players to put the fear of god into them. Which is also dramatic.
You're combining two separate claims of mine here. Let's move past that though and instead ask:
"Do you think that DC 5 stealth check with failure equals death is appropriate?" and ''Would you run it as written?"
Currently DMing: None
Characters
[5e] Dural Melairkyn - AC 18 | HP 40 | Melee +5/1d8+3 | Spell +4/DC 12
Right now? No and no.
Back when I started running D&D, lo those many years ago? When I had no idea how to write an adventure and the published adventures seemed so interesting and cool? Probably yes to both!
So why does "DC 5 stealth check with failure equals death" show up in the published adventure?
- because the DM is meant to call bullshit and come up with their own thing
- because the DM is meant to run it as written, experience what it actually means to the players, and learn to call bullshit on it in the future
- because the DM is meant to run it as written, full stop