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When is it ok to "fudge" a roll?
Romantic Undead
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Hey guys,
I'm writing this up as a reaction to my last D&D session (3.5 if it matters) where my party was to encounter an evil prince etc etc.
I spent a large amount of time painstakingly creating their nemesis to ensure that they last battle against him would be suitably epic while not being overly challenging.
Finally, the day comes, the confrontation is at hand... and my mage casts confusion on my boss.
I roll to save (behind the DM screen)... a 1.
I decide "how bad can it be?" and let them know that the spell has taken effect. The following fight results in a complete slaughter of my boss and his minions with my PCs barely breaking a sweat because mr. evil prince was standing there babbling to himself the whole fight.
So I put the question to you: In retrospect, would I have been justified in "fudging" my boss' save to keep the fight challenging? Bear in mind I have a Rules Lawyer (tm) in my group who would love nothing more than to call me on when I make executive decisions like that. How do I deal with players like that when it comes to fudging rolls and drawing non-roll based conclusions.
Another example: My PCs are in a shoreboat on their way to their ship. Unbeknowst to them, Pirates have attacked their ship and crew while they were away adventuring and have turned the ships cannons on the PCs shoreboat. To move the story along, I build tension, describing the cannonballs whizzing by the PCs heads, but the adventure called for the shoreboat eventually getting hit (prompting a Reflex save).
My Rules Lawyer chimes up and says "Bullshit! I didn't see you roll to hit!" Was I abusing my power by telling him to shut up and do his reflex roll? Should I have conceded and proceeded to roll?
What are your opinions on this matter?
I'm writing this up as a reaction to my last D&D session (3.5 if it matters) where my party was to encounter an evil prince etc etc.
I spent a large amount of time painstakingly creating their nemesis to ensure that they last battle against him would be suitably epic while not being overly challenging.
Finally, the day comes, the confrontation is at hand... and my mage casts confusion on my boss.
I roll to save (behind the DM screen)... a 1.
I decide "how bad can it be?" and let them know that the spell has taken effect. The following fight results in a complete slaughter of my boss and his minions with my PCs barely breaking a sweat because mr. evil prince was standing there babbling to himself the whole fight.
So I put the question to you: In retrospect, would I have been justified in "fudging" my boss' save to keep the fight challenging? Bear in mind I have a Rules Lawyer (tm) in my group who would love nothing more than to call me on when I make executive decisions like that. How do I deal with players like that when it comes to fudging rolls and drawing non-roll based conclusions.
Another example: My PCs are in a shoreboat on their way to their ship. Unbeknowst to them, Pirates have attacked their ship and crew while they were away adventuring and have turned the ships cannons on the PCs shoreboat. To move the story along, I build tension, describing the cannonballs whizzing by the PCs heads, but the adventure called for the shoreboat eventually getting hit (prompting a Reflex save).
My Rules Lawyer chimes up and says "Bullshit! I didn't see you roll to hit!" Was I abusing my power by telling him to shut up and do his reflex roll? Should I have conceded and proceeded to roll?
What are your opinions on this matter?
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That's why you roll dice behind a screen.
He stands up and says BULLSHIT
you tell him to fuck off and run a game or sit down and shut up
but seriously, like salt said; it's your prerogative to fudge dice, and it doesn't sound like you want to fudge to be an asshole, so you have every right to ignore your rules lawyer. or hit him with a lead pipe, which I think would be cooler
But isn't there a point where if you start fudging rolls all the time you lose the trust of your players? Obviously you fudge secretly, but if all of their powerful spells start failing at critical (but dramatically appropriate) times, won't they start suspecting me of chicanery?
Exactly. When I used to GM I fudged rolls whenever it was warranted. As long as you dont make a habit of it or do it just to fuck the players its your game do what you want.
that's why you develop a sense for evaluating when fudging = most fun for the group. it's all about finding that careful balance. sometimes you just have to shrug and bite the bullet, pat your players on the back and say good job, and plot to make the next villain even more kickass and hopefully able to rebound from those nasty 1's when they show up.
Same thing. They get the advantage, so do the enemies, but only every once in awhile.
Fudging rolls is a game mechanic.
I had a boss fight go south on me just last week when a player's samurai character one-shotted a purple worm with his iaijutsu attack and some insanely good rolls. I'd been hoping for a big setpiece battle with PCs trying to hack their way out of its gullet, but it would have been petty of me to deny him his big moment for the sake of my plans - especially since killing the worm didn't actually derail my story, just truncated it a bit.
STEAM
ever
if i wanted to be arbitrary or just make something happen
i don't bother rolling
i am of the opinion that if a player casting a certain spell is going to totally ruin an encounter, i find a way within the rules with as little fiat as possible to make it not an issue.
good ole amulet of mind blank
basically by picking up the dice and rolling it, i am saying, to myself and the players "I am allowing the dice to decide the outcome of this action and I am comfortable accepting the results, whatever they may be."
if i'm not, i don't roll.
Ok, now this is interesting, because I figure this is how my Rules Lawyer, who is, of course, also a munchkin, would like for me to play the game.
The problem that I'm having at this point is that my game group is extremely varied. I have 2 players who are veterans, one of whom is a role player and the other who is the aforementioned Rules Lawyer. The other three are new to RPs and are not familliar at all with how the game functions, though one of them is the Rule Lawyer's girlfriend and gets a lot of imput from him.
My point is this: Is it possible for me to be able to satisfy everyone (i.e. satisfy the rule lawyer while going easy on the newbies), without destroying the balance of my game? My rules lawyer is a Cleric of Kossuth with Firey Burst and crazy AC, while my Role Player, though good spirited, is nonetheless a mage hoping to become an Initiate of the Sevenfold Veil (which I believe to be a pretty unbalanced class already). Sure, I could up the general difficulty/cheapness to make things challenging for them, but then the inevitable happens; Either my inexperienced players (a vanilla rogue, ranger and a Dwarven Defender) all end up getting slaughtered and/or feeling useless, or the experienced players wipe the floor with my enemies and the unexperienced ones still feel useless.
Maybe it's just part of the tribulations of having a mixed level of player experience in my group. Anyone else ever have to face this?
I dunno, I think a magic item suddenly appearing out of thin air is as much fiat as deciding that the 1 you rolled was actually a 15.
As GM, it's your job to keep things interesting and progress the story.
If you decide that a boat gets hit without rolling, the boat gets hit- it's an important story element, so it happens.
Of course, some GMs are just dicks and fudge dice to screw over their players, which is not cool. But it's not the fudging that's uncool, it's GMing with the sole intent to screw over your players.
Perhaps your rules lawyer needs to be taken aside, explained what GMing is all about, and told to his face that there will be times when you will a) decide stuff happens without rolling for plot purposes, and b) dice rolls you make will be modified because SOMETIMES STUPID DICE ROLLS CAN SCREW UP YOUR STORY, and assure them that c) you are not in fact out to screw the PCs with this- it's at least as likely that this fudging will prevent powerful NPCs from one-shotting the character/party as it is to prevent the characters from steamrolling the opposition.
If they can't deal with that, you either have to compromise with them, or show them where the door is.
That's my 2 coppers, anyhow.
I mean, the fact that you clearly identify to of your experienced players as a Role Player and the other as a Rules Lawyer, shows that their preferred playing style is so evident you feel comfortable with labelling them as such.
One thing to remember is D&D is "big in options".
For example, for as much work as you put into your big evil prince villain guy, did it not occur to you he could get one-round waylayed by a simple mind-affecting spell like confusion?
Did you not give him any options, in terms of magic items or whatever, in order to mitigate this?
An important part of DMing D&D, especially at higher levels and especially with spellcasters, is knowing what spells and tricks your players like to use, what stuff they have access to, and how inclined they are to use it.
This doesn't mean give a counter to every single thing they can do. That will frustrate your players easily.
But ask yourself this: Even if your big villain had say, an amulet of mind blank, and thus was immune to confusion... what if the spellcaster dropped "Flesh to Stone" instead? And you rolled a 1 on the villains save? Now he's at your players' mercy, easy to kill with a single pickaxe. And for good, most likely.
There are many, many ways using spells and magic items that are totally "fair" and not fiat at all that will allow your carefully crafted nemesis the ability to escape and torment the players another day. If the players got into combat with this guy and suckerpunched him with a spell that defeated him due to a single bad save, well... maybe you hadn't prepared that villain as carefully as you thought, huh?
Basically what I am getting at here is that with the right amount of preparation and a good understanding of your players and their characters, you should rarely (if ever!) find yourself using fiat or fudging to "fix" an encounter or adventure.
I have in fact thought about this, and, to be fair, my evil prince was not a "main" villain. In other words, the PCs were in fact meant to defeat him.
I bring this up to address your item fiat. The problem with giving enemy PCs powerful items to counter certain PC abilities/spells is that if that character is meant to be defeated, what happens to those items? If I had given my prince an amulet of mind wipe and then my PCs kill him, that amulet is now in their hands! Do I really want my party's tank to suddenly be immune to mind affecting spells?
They are both bullshit.
Bad guys fail saves, if no important bad guy ever fails a save their is no fucking reason to ever play a mage.
You're upset because your bad ass villain spent the encounter babbling. The mage is going to remember that time he was such an awesome bad ass that the super villain failed his save.
The boat thing from the OP is a place where I wouldn't bother to roll either. It doesn't curtain player abilities so much as describe the narrative and provide challenge to the players.
no
which is why you have to be careful about these things
a very important rule is simply "don't ever give the NPC a magic item you don't want the players to have"
never, ever break this rule.
here's the thing i'm not entirely clear on and you should clarify
are you miffed with the situation as it worked out because they defeated him so easily, or because it was anti-climactic, or you feel like you wasted your time with so much work, or you feel you got suckerpunched by a spell you didn't expect... what?
spells that are essentially "save or get proper-fucked" like flesh to stone, confusion/insanity, power word kill, destruction, disentegrate, etc. exist to actually be used against villains and for, sometimes, those villains to fail the save.
it is my opinion, if the PC casts the spell, and the enemy isn't immune to it due to magic items, spells, natural abilities, or circumstance, you should pick up the dice, roll it, and accept the result. even if it's a 1.
if you rolled, and it came up a big ole fail, and you decided to fudge it and say "he saved" to your players, ask yourself: why did you roll the dice in the first place? for the sake of illusion? to give your players the hope that it might work? why did you do this? why would you?
this is why i am against fudging. D&D is a game of consensual enjoyment. it only functions when everyone at the table is co-operating to have fun. if the party spellcaster whipping out a save-or-get-screwed spell in combat that you wanted to take longer and be more dramatic is interfering with your enjoyment as a DM, then maybe that's something you should address with the spellcaster player.
not just deny his spell because it didn't suit your plot. and that's what you are doing when you fudge a save. you're taking the spell he cast and just saying "denied!" while simultaneously giving him the false hope that it might actually work.
I seriously doubt the guy who cast the spell is upset it worked.
I realize this, which is why I made this post.
As for my mage, he doesn't think he's a badass for what he did, he thinks my boss that they had been hearing about was a pussy and boring to fight. This is exactly what I DIDN'T want that fight to be. The whole session becaume a yawnfest because I failed to consider what might happen if my boss failed his save. I want to make sure that doesn't happen again without being a cheap bastard about it, and without putting balance-breaking items in my NPCs or my character's hands.
there's a difference between fudging rolls, and doing something for the scenario.
in your example, bad DMing would be saying "the cannonball strikes the ship, and you all fall down"
that's fiat. you didn't give them a balance check, a reflex save, nothing.
you just imposed a result on their characters without any ability to do anything by the players.
what you actually did was the better way to do it. "the cannonball hits the ship, make a reflex save" (i would've gone with a balance check, but whatever)
the rules-laywer guy can pike it. is he playing the ship? no. is he playing the pirates? no.
if he's in a bar and an unruly customer harasses the barmaid and she slaps him, does he call for an initiative and a to-hit roll?
seriously, dude needs to calm down on that crap.
if your party was disappointed because the confusion spell totally negated this villain... then maybe the mage shouldn't have dropped confusion.
i remember the one time, i was playing a sorceror, and i disintegrated this high-level blackguard we were supposed to fight. he was the mini-boss of the module. the "nasty lieutenant" bond villain type.
i got first initiative and i killed him with one spell. turned him to dust. he didn't get to act. shit the fighter didn't even get to draw his sword.
such is the nature of D&D magic.
if your players and you got a problem with what that does to an encounter, in terms of climax and dramatic impact, maybe you should as a group assess how you want spells to be part of your campaign.
....your mage dude is weird. It's not like the guy rolled a 10 and didn't have the will bonus to bring it up to snuff, he got the 5% failure rate that everybody gets. I'm confused as to why he cast the spell if he didn't want it to succeed.
Also, just to be clear, they dispatched the minions then moved onto the big bad right? You know if you attack anybody who is confused they attack back, right?
It's not like he didn't want it to succeed, I guess he just didn't expect it to completely neuter the boss. I mean, aside from the fact that my boss failed his save, he also kept rolling crap on the following percent die (i.e. the babbling).
Obviously when a mage casts a spell, he wants it to work, but the mage doesn't always take into consideration the fact that his spell causes the entire encounter to go from challenging to trivial.
Like I said, this wasn't an "end" boss that my whole campaign hinged on, so I'm not THAT upset about it, he was a session boss to put a fun and challenging cap to the day (a CR 10 to a CR 8 group), who ended up being a pushover because of a shitty roll. It's not like the players thought up some wicked tactical idea that would give them an advantage (and thus deserved to be rewarded as such). No, the mage cast a spell and I failed a save. I just felt it was lame and believe that the entire session as a whole would have benefitted from an end fight that would have taken more than 10 minutes.
I also want to make sure I learn from this to ensure my future, more important, bosses don't meet the same fate.
get used to entire encounters getting fucked up by single spells and bad rolls.
CR 10
A Sahaguin/Fighter 8 riding a Great White Shark plus 4 minions. With all the mounted feats. (Spirited Charge, Ride by attack, etc...)
My mage cast confusion twice. The first time confusing the shark mount and 2 minions from about 100 feet away, the second time confusing the boss himself plus another minion.
IIRC, the encouter lasted 6 rounds. Two of the minions did nothing but fight each other, the boss babbled and got off maybe 2 crossbow shots while out of range (since his shark wouldn't move) while the party dispatched the other two minions effortlessly.
Did I overlook something?
What the shit.
My mage is an abjurer, (wanting to become Initiate, etc etc...) so he doesn't get any of the "usual" evocation spells, relying instead on luck based spells like confusion and such.
They attacked the boss, right?
He'd hop off his damn mount and go kill them. Nothing says he couldn't (and/or wouldn't) do that. The same would go for the shark if they attacked it.
He would take a huge hit since all his feats are geared towards mounted combat but mounted combat always has the issue of your mount being easier to kill then you are. (Well, unless you're Paladin 5.)
Edit: Also, agree with the two castings thing above. Whining when your spells work, the second time you cast them?
Well with two people and enough room you can kite somebody who is confused, kinda. That's about it for how bad it gets though.
I think my main fear in making challenging encounters is that my newbies will get slaughtered and/or frustrated while the vets do all the heavy lifting.
That's less a game issue and more a group issue.
that's an issue with your players
dice fudging and fiat won't fix it
*nods*
Looks like I have my work cut out for me.
Thanks for hearing me out guys.
A common thing in my games is to give the bosses special abilities, skills, spells, etc. that are not seen in other places in the game. For instance, one low level boss had an action where he would taunt the party. If anyone in the party attacked him within a round of him using that ability, the attack would miss, and the opponent would tumble behind the character and attempt to sneak attack him.
This, obviously, worked the first time. The fighter accepted the challenge, and got stabbed for it.
Next time, though, they rethought their actions and didn't attack him that round, but instead prepared themselves in various ways. The fighter, for example, took a prepared action against him and stepped up. They found out about the second part of the ability-- that if nobody attacks him, he loses his stance and dexterity bonus to AC for one round, and is denied his action. Sweet! Party wins there. Free sneak attacks and a round of heals.
One idea for something like your scenario is to give a bad guy a resilience ability... for instance, make debuffs last only half as long, or somesuch. Or give him an ability where he can use one or two full round actions to purge himself. It awards the player for casting the spell by stunning the opponent, but allows the opponent to still remain challenging by not being screwed over the entire fight, from round 1.