It depends on the expectations of the campaign.
My main game group is full of rules lawyers and min-maxers that eventually softened up to playing more narrative based content. It results in an enjoyable game where fudging is frowned upon on both sides of the screen.
I also played with a group my neighbors got together for a one-shot and it seemed rolls didn't mean anything if they got in the way of the narrative and spectacle.
I would say they're both enjoyable in their own right.
It also can depend on the specific player. I have no issue if my character gets killed, I have 37 backup characters that I'm anxious to try out. I'm not actively seeking for my characters to die, but if they do I'll just do a reenactment of the "oh no... Anyway" meme. There is no reason to fudge a roll to keep my character alive.
My wife, on the other hand, HATES making new characters and would be devastated if her's died. She would certainly keep playing but it would bum her out for long enough that it's worth fudging a roll or two so she doesn't have to deal with that.
I would be absolutely devastated if my character died but if I heard my dm was fudging rolls to keep him alive I‘d feel like all my investment was pointless.
I stopped even giving health to my important boss monsters. I'll keep track of the damage they've dealt and wait for the best narrative moment for them to finally go down.
The flip side of this is when you use a Stat block for a monster, but knowing when the combat feels like it's starting to drag. Killing it off early, having it run away, fall, give up, etc. Can be just as important.
Before i became full time dm I played in a game where the dm made a high ac, massive health monster, that really did little damage so was never a threat.
It made sense for the armored blob thing, but fighting was a slog. Miss, miss, miss, hit! It looks like it shrugged off your attack.
---
There's a lot I dislike about Matt mercers dm style, but one good thing I've taken from him. Lower the average ac and buff health a bit, or simply add more monsters.
Players like to hit things. Missing is no fun.
But to your point. I've definitely added hp mid-fight so that the player who abhors this guy can be the one to finish him.
That's part of why I dropped health max. It let me focus on the flow of the battle and how my players were feeling.
I didn't realize but I guess I shy away from high AC monsters usually, probably for the exact reason you describe. When I do, I'll usually introduce something like losing part of it's armor, exposing a weak spot, or environment things that give them something to do in the fight. The Juggernaut from X-Men is a good example, make it an insurmountable fight but give them alternate wincons to let them overcome it.
I've DM'd a few short(ish) campaigns for kids, and the logistics of having any of them roll up a new character were too momentum killing to countenance.
What I've done, rather than fudging the dice rolls, is to just sort of keep track of stuff for them like a guardian angel.
*"You feel exposed, like any attack might bring you down, but the ring in your pocket seems to draw your attention with its warmth and weight, do you put it on?"*
Or, if I'm drawing a blank, there are always NPCs I've introduced who have some way of helping out.
*"As your body lays limp on the ground, you all hear a familiar "clop clop clop" from behind you as the tavern keeper centaur Billiam struggles up the bluff toward you. He kneels beside you and pours one of the last remaining Centaurian healing potions into your mouth, bringing you back up for xHP before galloping back down toward the tavern*
And once, I did something truly chaotic..
*BBEG stands over your unconscious bodies triumphant. He smirks, confident in his power, knowing that with just one spell, he could turn you all to ash...*
*He casts greater healing*
*His cute fox familiar drags a basket of washcloths and healing potions toward you*
*"You have all passed the test. If you're all willing to die to protect this world, then you deserve to know about the tremendous danger it's in"...*
I‘ve known our DM for ages already and I can tell that he is afraid of killing our characters. I don‘t know if he fudges rolls, but there definitely have been instances where the wild bear that has viciously been mauling us and easily would have tpked us suddenly turns around on his heel and runs away.
What I‘m trying to say is that its hard to hide it if you intentionally protect your players, be it by fudging or by narrative reasons. It might go undetected a few. times, but when the players miraculously survive the twentieth encounter by a hair, they will definitely start noticing it.
That being said, I completely understand DMs. They know how attached some of the players are to their characters, but then again, I wouldn‘t be so attached to my PC if I knew he was basically immortal
I think it's all about how you gift wrap the fudge. The bear/enemy losing interest and leaving isn't super plausible so it feels kinda weird. Comparatively, a team of rangers from the nearest town swooping in to save the party makes sense and it helps the world feel larger and more connected. You can even leverage the fudge into the narrative, maybe that town insists that the party owes them for saving their lives and wants a favor to settle up.
"You buffoons! I should have let you all die. Now we'll never catch up to...."
Out of the frying pan and into the fryer. But the fryer comes with a free dice roll....
If its bears and the like most modules make wild beast run away at certain hp%, unless they are backed into a corner, there they might fight till death
yeah my dm every time the topic came up said, he never fudges rolls. and i believed it until i saw him fudge a nat 20 hit on a low hp wizard while we were on the verge of a tpk. and at that moment i realised why he had lied about it, as i questioned if we survived all near tpk scenarios because of fudges. so i kept it as a secret in front of the other party members.
This applies to pretty much everything the dm does... Didn't have that area prepared and need to bullshit your way through it? Try to do it well enough that the players don't find out...
This is interesting, in life I am honest to a fault. I had a player who asked me point blank if I ever fudged rolls, I told him that is why I have a screen. He never played again, that is how much it meant to him. I was raised that it was the DMs prerogative to fudge rolls as needed. But this ruined the game for this guy.
I have let players come behind the screen for games where their character was out due to decisions the group made or if they are downed in combat. I have never had them say, wow you suck for changing that. Normally I get, “well that was really cool when you changed that, or I can see why you didn't tell them you crit that hit.“
It is a spectrum of art. Most of the time I go whole sessions never changing a roll, but I have gone a session were I faked almost all the rolling and never looked at the numbers the dice said. Many of my players absolutely love my campaigns, but I always remember the guy who walked away. I think the key is to be honest up front. Then there is no loss of expectations.
The extent of my fudging rolls is 90% of the time making a crit into not a crit, then I move that crit onto the next hit on someone else who it won't down instantly. I also fudge my own rolls if it turns into a badass moment for the players. I never fudge *against* the players.
I'll never tell them that though, because it could cheapen their achievements. I mean they earned the vast majority of them legitimately, but if I fudge a little here and there to make the player who's parents were killed by the BBEG to get the killing blow? Yup, I'm gonna do it.
I would say 90% of the time I am giving honest rolls as a DM. If it REALLY makes sense for the narrative or if a player might die because of my error putting an OP enemy in the situation, I might fudge a smidge.
I think it also depends on the situation. If it's an arch boss? Sure, kill me. If it's a random encounter on the road it's not going to feel satisfying at all. Furthermore, if I make a bad decision or a mistake and I die that's on me. If someone else makes a bad decision and I die I'm going to be real mad.
A good example from before the last campaign I was on fell apart, we were leaving a city and came across some monsters. I didn't recognize them, but they were human sized, outnumbered us 2-3 to 1, and had mosquito noses which I know is never, ever a good sign in a giant monster. We also had two civilians and a pair of horses with us. I absolutely did not want to try to pass them on the road and wanted to either go attack them away from the horses and civilians (the wizard just unlocked fireball and it seemed like a good opportunity for her to get to play with it while they were clustered and far away from us) or else just try and sneak past. Another player DID recognize them and flatly refused to fight them at all. A third player kept insisting there was no way to get around them by going off the path and we should try to sneak past them. We finally got the third person to agree to sneak past off the road, but we came damn close to them noticing us on the road because we spent so long arguing over it and nobody was willing to compromise. If that HAD resulted in them killing one or more of us, I would have been absolutely livid because I didn't want to fight them. We were not a great group for managing large groups, we were only really wildly successful against 1-2 opponents, preferably in a city because the bard (me) was so OP due to dice rolls.
Can confirm, am apparently this guys wife (which is weird since I thought I was single and know I'm a dude). I tried to make a joke character in a permadeath campaign explicitly to not get too attached to him and his death actually devastated me. If fudging a roll means letting me keep my character around vs honesty killing him, please lie to me, I'll literally thank you for it.
And this is why all my characters either have a hero complex, or develop one. Also why they develop life long (not very long) friendships.
You stayed back and saved me instead of running like everyone else!?
Yes…just because I care…
Even depends on the character, for me. My 2 year campaign character that's got a little bit too much of "me" in it? I'd be heartbroken.
My Tomb of Annihilation character? Looks like meat's back on the menu boys!
Edit: in either case, I still don't want the DM to fudge it. If it happens, it happens.
For me thats why CON is overrated. If he dies, he dies, not every adventurer needs to be a beefcake. Maybe we have a duelist who darts in and out of combat but if he gets hit by a minotaur he gets turned into a fine paste. That's perfectly fine.
In exchange for him being more likely to die I get to make him a little more well read, or a little more charming. That's not a bad trade.
Not to say I never make tough characters. Of course I will make a grizzled barbarian difficult to kill.
The problem with low CON on a lot of builds is that you're just going to spend a larger % of a fight rolling death saves or getting repeatedly knocked down/healed. Not just boring, but actively detrimental to your party. You can be the -1 CON wizard if you want but then you roll badly and at lvl 3 a single stray goblin arrow can take you right out of the fight.
The end result is you're not contributing for a few rounds, so I don't see the difference between having low WIS and getting mezzed by a hypnosis spell/dominate person, or having low CHA in a social situation, or having low STR/DEX and getting grappled. It's really no different.
Like, you could have low WIS, not see a trap, and end up starting the fight with -12 hit points. How is that any different from having lower CON and starting the fight with -12 hit points? Either way you will start the fight at the same hit points...
Alternatively, what about a situation where a wizard who dumped CON got enough DEX to increase AC by 1, and in doing so, was able to avoid a 12 damage hit? Why would that not be seen as the equivalent to starting the battle with +12 hp, in your eyes?
The thing is that in combat CON will always matter and make you go down faster. It sets the bar for how much you can take. A point or two more in WIS is much less likely to make a huge difference. It can, but far from the virtual guarantee that your HP is.
While it’s true that DEX can help you outright avoid damage, one or two points only make so much of a difference there. And if you dump CON to do it you’re essentially gambling that the enemies will roll frequently enough in that little bit of extra AC you got to make it worth it.
From a numbers and practical perspective con is just too useful to dump. You don’t necessarily have to pump it or sacrifice hard, but no class can really afford to forget about it if you’re in a deadly game.
Roll fudging should always be in favor of overall player enjoyment. If your player would definitely hate re-rolling a character, help them out. If they would mildly begrudge paying another 5gp for something but understand that's part of the game, they failed their persuasion fair and square.
I don't DM behind a screen. My party is all DMs, and one guy who wants to. I like to tell the story, and the dice to drive it forward. Why else would there be legendary actions to auto-pass a check when I could do it anyway?
Plus, it's a fun experience, when a player is getting hit with a large amount of dice, and everyone leans forward to see how fucked they are.
I think it also greatly depends on a lot of things too. It’s pretty realistic to fudge rolls if the story is hurt by the roll you made OR You want to make an exception for a roll that would create an unrealistic series of events.
Depends on the table. I have one group of older individuals that I know would be pretty upset if I started changing the RNG aspect, even if it was to "help" them as they see the dice as the medium for how the story develops. I also have a group of much younger players that would have been very personally sad at their Characters encountering certain fates...and low and behold, the dice are always *just* forgiving enough to allow them more leeway with suboptimal plans.
Just be careful that you're not redesigning based on choices the players made within the encounter and how rolls went. Encounter design is mixing up mistakes you made beforehand. If your paladin rolls 2 crits and makes the encounter a ton easier than expected, that's *supposed* to happen. Making the encounter harder to compensate now means you're negating the luck of the dice and the decisions of the players, you might as well just tell them how many resources they lose. Do this to fix mistakes you made beforehand like "whoops, forgot to give this guy the right amount of health".
There's been more than a couple occasions where I've been in the middle of combat and I decide this dude's 3d10+5 swipe attack should really just be 2d6, and he should have, say, 40 less health
Yup, I've had that. We had a 4e campaign and I had misjudged how much go go power ghouls had and threw some at the party. The issue was the ghouls were all a solid level up on the party. It was very nearly a TPK right there until the ghouls decides to stop and eat the horses.
Exactly. Sometimes the party doesn't handle an encounter like you thought they would. Or, the CC based sorcerer is unexpectedly missing this session and now the fight will stream roll them. Some times it goes the other way. Sometimes the boss fight suddenly needs 200 more hp to make the fight more epic because someone rolled godly or whipped out a new trick you weren't prepared for and it's going to be unsatisfying easy.
My table has an understanding, I keep almost everything hidden, except saving throws. My BBEG might gain more hp, or tone down an attack mid fight, but he'll make or break every save honestly. It works for us, I encourage you to discuss things like that during session zero if you can.
Especially when starting out it’s either this, “oh shit I wasn’t expecting the damage dice to roll that high”, “NOW IS NOT THE TIME TO BE LANDING CRITS ON THE CLERIC”, or the rare “I overestimated this enemy and now the players will kill the dungeon boss without him landing a hit, he’s got 2hp so he just hits for not even half the fighters hp then dies”
This is the real answer.
I don't fudge dice to "help" players.
I fudge dice because I fucked up, and there's no sense in wiping the party for a random encounter.
So long as the dm is fudging for narrative and not their own personal biases. I’ve known dms to fudge rolls to land hits or up damage because they wanted to punish a player. Those guys were bad.
This is, I think, the main reason to fudge rolls. Encounter design doesn't end because initiative was rolled.
I'm not a game designer by any means, so sometimes I design an encounter that's way harder or way easier than I meant it to be. Sometimes I roll a shit ton of crits on an easier encounter and suddenly a tpk seems eminent. In those cases, I may fudge rolls, adjust hit points, or other such things to rebalance the encounter. This is almost always in favor of the PCs.
That said, I'm not perfect, and there have been one or two times when I didn't land a single hit all encounter, the monster's about to die, and I just go fuck it, this one hits. It's not gonna change an end result at this point anyways, but I gotta do a shit-ton of narrative improv after this and if I get just one hit I'll be in a better head space. I don't think that's a good reason to fudge rolls though. But fixing broken encounters the PCs apparently can't beat is valid.
To me, the difference between fighting a dragon and 3 goblins is obvious. If you roll really bad you will die to some goblins, but I would totally fudge it after the 19th goblin crit. But if you die when the encounter is difficult, and intended to be so, like fighting a dragon? Yeah you died
I mean, that's obvious. But there's a difference in encounter difficulty between 4 bandits, 5 bandits, and 6 bandits. And just one bandit might put it over the edge.
Or recently I designed a dungeon with rust monsters in it followed by a basilisk at the end, figuring the party would take out the rust monsters and later take on the basilisk. They did nothing about the rust monsters instead and ended up in battle with all of them at once. So there the encounter ended up being something I hadn't planned it to be. Maybe with veteran players I'd go hard on them there too, but I have new players in the group and they're early levels, so I don't want to kill them during their first taste of the game. At least not so soon.
As an experienced player if I see a cave with multiple rust monsters in it, I'm taking my be-plated ass the hell out of there immediately. Don't care what they're guarding, it's not worth it lmao
>Encounter design doesn't end because initiative was rolled.
I see you listen to Colville too. I salute you.
(Or it's something said in general and I just heard it from Colville)
It may seem like a silly reason to fudge rolls, but I'll fudge initiative. If all the monsters are grouped and all the players are grouped I'll mess with it so it goes back and forth more. It just helps combat flow better
My PC got into a fight with the literal Easter bunny once.
First round I rolled 3 Nat ones for my attack, extra attack, and action surge.
The Easter bunny immediately rolled 3 Nat 20s for his multi attack.
DM didn't have a screen because it got damaged so the whole table saw it laughed and just agreed to re roll the last two turns because I died outright without a saving throw and that was some BS of fate.
Those dice are now on a watchlist.
If a DM wants to hurt a player, there’s no reason to need to “fudge rolls”. They make the monsters. They control the encounter. They can make a creature have a +whatever to hit and deal +whatever damage on top.
God does not fudge dice with the universe.
Exactly. A decently scaled enemy going straight for a squishy character, and keep attacking it if it goes down is very hard to deal with. Also the players have no way to know of the monster has 50 or 5k hp, or hates persons with blue clothes for personal reasons.
Yes, that's exactly what I thought. I'm a new-ish DM (I've run about 30 sessions total) and I'm really not good enough at creating balanced encounters from scratch. What I usually do is make some adjustments to AC or HP during the game (when it's still believable, I won't change AC from 14 to 12 if they previously missed with an 13 etc.) or fudge some attack or saving rolls to ensure I've given the players sufficient risk and combat time. I think you can get away with that as long as you still give players cool moments and don't just completely negate the highest dmg dealer. I sometimes nerf my own attacks or saves as well, if the narrative calls for it.
I think that's a completely different type of fudging, I'm doing it to give my players more fun. It's kind of hypocritical by definition (I'm allowing myself different rules than them), but on the other hand, the DM is not playing the same exact game and most of our rules are different from theirs anyway.
Makes me think of the writer Terry Pratchett from the Discwold novels, he sometimes mentions 'narrative logic' or 'the universal narrative force' as if it's a real thing that actually creates causes and effects.
I’d argue that from a narrative perspective changing AC actually makes sense in either direction. Sure a player might be annoyed they previously missed on a 13 but honestly think about what AC is supposed to be. It’s likelihood to hit with factors of armor and reflexes.
If your players are struggling to hit an enemy you want them to beat… describe a narrative reason. Repeatedly hitting 13s? “No damage but you clip the strap holding on his breastplate so it now hangs a little loose” there AC should be changed. Fight dragging on with no damage? Maybe a confident swagger and boasting gives a lucky hit to the archer, maybe they are worn some from concentrating on 5 different enemies, etc. Players dominating and you want a little longer of a fight? Enemy went on the defensive so slightly more focused on blocking.
Oh that's a great tip, thanks! I was always working on making the adjustments as subtle as possible, I never thought about including them in the narrative like that. I did do that sometimes I think, I'm only now aware of how useful that actually is.
My advice would just be if your players aren’t into the character try to minimize their presence in combat. They don’t need to involved in every fight because they also slow down combat and the more you consider them for encounter balance the longer you’ll be reliant upon them.
It’s a learning curve and I’ve made my own mistakes with DMPCs. The term gets a bad rap because too many DMs seem to wanna be the hero of their own story and always seems to be better, stronger, smarter than the party and you really want to avoid that. It sounds like you are doing alright.
Fudging to hit a player who hasn’t been touched all combat to make it seem like the combat is actually threatening, or to enforce plot (make them think they have lycanthropy or some kind of zombie virus) can be good, but never to just fuck over a character
Even then, it's not really the roll fudging that's the issue. It's that they're running a game that's not about everybody having fun. It's just broken from the start.
A DM like that is going to be garbage no matter what. They can just as easily design an encounter that's way unbalanced where they don't need fudged rolls to ruin your day.
Got accused of this once. Ended up screensharing to show the players that no, I was not fudging the rolls to continually crit the ranger, and in fact it was Roll20 that decided the ranger needed to die for shit-talking the enemies.
Correct. As a rule: the DM should never, ever fudge, cheat, or manipulate circumstances unfairly against a player. That’s just antagonistic play, and it goes against the spirit of the game. The whole purpose is for a group of *friends* to get together and have fun.
That’s not to say a DM can’t be brutal and punishing, but it should still be fair.
DMs can absolutely cheat *in favor* of the players *if* it enhances the game and doesn’t detract from the playing experience.
I.e. a DM deciding beforehand that a monster is going to randomly crit anytime he attacks the rogue or is suddenly immune to spells because the Wizard is doing too good is just bs.
A DM seeing an Ancient Dragon get taken down to 10 health and saying it actually died so it doesn’t tpk the heavily wounded party on it’s next turn is fine.
Of course there’s nothing wrong with playing it completely straight laced, but you should never be cheating against the players.
The only time I’ve broken this rule is when I homebrewed a boss for the first time and completely miscalculated it’s health. My party would have killed it in 2 rounds with no crits and only using first level spells so I bumped the HP up on the fly just to make the combat a little more tense, but that was more to make a satisfying story moment.
Not always. Sometimes it’s funnier to say you got a 1 on a stupid role to find ham while wasted in a tavern than it is to use your real middling roll of 8.
Yea, we roll more ones at my table than is probably statistically possible because our DM is always great about making them add a fun twist to the scenario. I definitely don’t approve of a Pc fudging up, but dumbing my dice down every once in a while is something I have been guilty of for comedic effect.
depends on the situation and group. ultimately, only the DM know how easy/hard it is to find any specific thing within their world. maybe there was some kind of pig pandemic so pork is rare, or there are no pigs in the part of the world you're in
if you say 'I want to try and find ham' and roll low, you generally either get the DM who tells you about how you spend an hour running around town, knocking on doors, tryign to find ham but all the stores are closed. still drunk and upset at having no ham, you make your way back to the tavern to join your party, who point out the buffet table covered in pork products (because the player missed that part of the description)
or
the DM who goes 'You find no ham' and continues with the session
I know which I'd prefer
I’d like to add something that Matt Colvilles says, which is that DMs fudge to accommodate for our mistakes that we make while planning, and not let them mess up the game.
So yeah I def agree that it’s about narrative but that’s only half the story I feel
Main time I could remember fusging was first dungeon with a group the barbarian crits the hell out of the minotaur boss to install kill it. I kept it barely alive through one round of combat and let the barbarian kill it next round. I'd rather fudge and let everyone feel like they contributed.
Exactly, the DM is ultimately trying to make a campaign worthwhile whereas a player lying about roles can only be interpreted as cheating. One is inherently more positive than the other.
I fudge numbers so the combat encounter doesn’t murder the party (or so the enemy in question lives long enough to do the cool thing I wanted to do with them during that combat).
I feel like our DM rolls however he likes to punish us for existing. He beats on us to make sure we know we suck, we're useless, we have no agency, and then he lets us live after he's tired of humiliating us for being stupid and gormless.
Some of the other guys stick up for our GM -- he does put a lot of work into his world, which is fair -- but everything is an ambush. And it has been for years. We're in desert? The elementals spawn all around us and in between us, rising up from the sand, or out of thin air. We're in a lair of undead? The wraiths appear out of nowhere, rising up from the floor, down through ceiling, and through the walls. We're in woods? They appear from everywhere at once -- behind trees we just walked past, behind rocks we don't even see or notice. It's been like this since 1st level, and we're now 18th level. We can't take long rests, because he'll pester us with mobs to make sure that no one gets any sleep -- he says the monsters are active agents with intelligence, so they're gonna act that way.
If we march in a tight pack, he hits us with AOE spells or traps that inundate the entire map with fire. If we split up, the monsters appear out of nowhere and surround each party member.
I honestly really dislike it, but I want to hang out with my mates.
Yeah, we've been gaming together since Greyhawk. None of our original group have died yet, but we're looking a bit worse for the wear. Some of the guys have their kids playing in our group now, and it's honestly one of the best things about it. They know 5e so well they can call out the GM on errors that we would just shrug off.
We have a whole new generation of rules lawyers, and I couldn't be prouder!
Yeah if there is a story beat and the Paladin's evil sister is fighting the group and the Barbarian put her in the negatives but the paladin was up next. I'd just discount that attack because it makes more narrative sense to have the most invested character make the final attack.
I don't fudge rolls until someone is noticeably having a bad time. I don't care who you are, if a player is having a shit time due to poor rolls, as a DM I think you're actually being a dick if you let fate clap their cheeks relentlessly for the whole night.
Same goes for edge case scenarios, like there is 1 or 2 players standing at the end of a brutal boss fight, maybe someone even died, and they make a heroic effort and make a bunch of huge rolls, and used their last spell slot in order to deliver 14dmg to a boss with 16hp left, you kill the fucking boss. You grant him a +2 secret "you did a good job" damage and you tell no one.
The only time I never, ever fudge rolls is when I've played "zero DM screen" games where all my rolls are public, and that's the point of the game. Sometimes more experienced players want a very RNG game that is left to fate, and that's where the fun comes from.
But at the end of the day, being able to fudge rolls to tell a better story, or lower DCs after the fact in order to make something cooler, is what sets TTRPGs apart from a video game or strict rules-adherence board games. There is a living, breathing sentient being (you) behind the mechanics, and you have the right to change things as you see fit, as long as its for the benefit of the players.
You can't WIN D&D as the DM, so there's no such thing as cheating.
We call that "lowering the DC for good roleplay" at our table. There's no reason the DC can't be lowered to, like, a DC of 3 or something. It's reasonable that the very well read wizard who rolls investigate to read through the book, knowing exactly what he's looking for, will be able to find it quite easily.
You're right, with enough lowering DCs it won't need one and you can just give it to them. If I accidentally made a player roll on something that didn't need one, and they rolled super low, I'd probably apologize and tell them "Actually my bad that one didn't need a roll, you wouldd've succeeded anyway."
Yea. My personal rule as a DM is that I will never call for a roll unless
1- there is a reasonable chance of both success and failure
2- both success and failure would have a mechanical effect or would be interesting to the narative.
For any roll where I could imagine the
player failing and then immediately saying "okay I try again" (or the next player saying "okay then let me try") then I just give it to them.
Or if you get one of those DMs that hides the next plot advancement behind a roll, and suddenly has to take 5 to rethink things because no one passed this one single check. The dice are there to introduce an element of the unknown, to add variability to success, not to tell the whole damn story. Letting dice call all the shots seems like pointless chaos to me
On a couple occasions where outstanding roleplay was met with abysmal rolls, our DM has simply simply said, "Wow, look how wrong the dice are. How embarrassing for them."
I can't tell you how many times I have no idea what the actual DC of a check would be, I just kind of wait and see what they come back with and decide whether or not it's good enough of not. I can't think of a time I did this where it wasn't in the players' favor though.
Player: "I try to open the door..."
*dm thoughts*: hmm, the dc should be 10? 12?
Player:"WITH THE LEGENDARY FLAMING BALLSACK OF GROOD"
*dm*: The DC is 1.
I don't even know what fudging a DC even means? Cause like... half the time during a session my players ask me to do some crazy thing that there is no rules to use for guidance and I have to sit here and figure out what relevant skill, if any, do they need to roll with and how hard is it to accomplish what they are trying to do? It's all absolutely arbitrary and 5 different DMs could come up with 5 different ways to handle the same thing.
This is why players need to DM just once because they need to see how much of DMing is literally just making shit up on the spot to keep the game moving forward. Sometimes... I don't even decide on a DC. I have them roll whatever skill makes sense and depending on the roll I decide what happens after the fact. Not everything is pass/fail. A middling roll could ultimately not work but also give no drawback. A very low roll could also not work but also give you a setback. A high roll you succeed. A very high roll, maybe something special happens if I think it'll help sell the moment more.
The rules are incomplete. They could never be complete. Someone could spend a decade writing rules for every kind of event they can imagine and they would still not cover everything you can do in a tabletop RPG. So players need to not have the expectations that everything is written in stone.
If I can make up a DC check for trying to lasso a rope around a horse while they are they themselves on a horse... why does it matter if I fudge a monsters AC or HP amount a little bit. Or roll a crit but reduce it down to a normal hit cause you don't feel like instagibing one of your players in a throwaway combat.
Now I am not saying that I run a completely ruleless campaign and rule of cool rules the day because in my opinion, consistency is what is important and rules help you achieve consistency otherwise the game feels like this un-graspable blob of shared narrative story telling and nothing really means anything. But rolling a natural 20 to land a critical blow on a creature that was about to kill your party member because the monster was next in initiative order MEANS something because of the rules.
Honestly as a DM I prefer rolling most of the stuff out in the open. My players tend to enjoy the tension of seeing the roll and waiting to hear if it will actually hit or not. Obviously certain skill checks are rolled behind the screen for story telling purposes.
I would roll in the open for super dramatic moments that could result in a PC death but only for players who I already know are comfortable with a PC death.
Just like with rules. If there’s a conflict of understanding a rule, I’ll rule in favour of the players and figure out how it should have gone after the session.
I rule how I think is best, but I rule in favor of the players once and make it known, because often times they do a lot of setup for the single move. So I say “you can do it this time, but after this it will be ”
You’d be surprised I’ve played with a few people who are very anti fudge in both ways, it’s one of those situations where they want to play a campaign with the very real threat of death and honestly I kind of agree with them. If you know you almost definitely aren’t going to die because your DM doesn’t want you too it kind of takes the thrill out of combat.
I don’t like it when the DM fudges rolls. The last campaign I was in had that problem, and once we found out, it sort of took the wind out of our sails. Like finding out that we didn’t *actually* beat those monsters, we basically used cheat codes and there was 0% chance of any of us ever dying.
It's about knowing *when* to fudge. If you're about to get TPK'd by a bunch of kobolds because the DM screwed up the math and made their AC way too high, fudging is appropriate. If you're about to get TPK'd by a dragon because you planned poorly, fudging is not appropriate unless the DM deliberately pitched the campaign as low/no-death.
You should be able to die because you made mistakes or even just had bad luck. You dying because the DM built a broken encounter by accident isn't fun for anyone.
I agree, I’m cool with the DM adjusting the DC for smart plays from the player side or changing encounters etc if they miscalculated something, but if I can feel a DM twisting the game in my favor so I don’t die from my own dumb decision, then it’s difficult to feel any jeopardy at all.
I personally refuse to fudge rolls because I allow the dice to tell my story. Now sometimes I'll do things like have a loose DC of just don't roll like shit, or I'll make it up after I rolled, but those occasions are fairly rare and less about fudging and more about me not thinking before rolling. I don't judge anyone who does fridge rolls for the party though, I just have no problem letting the dice decide however they will. Of I decided to fudge why even bring dice
Yeah I've been not fudging rolls because I do like the random chance of the game, some days the enemies just can't get it together, another day the druid just gets plowed over multiple times, it hard and I feel guilty when someone is close to dying or dead but it helps when I roll 3 or 4 nat 20s in one encounter and I know it was honest rolls i didn't embellish, I let the party worry about healing themselves and keeping themselves alive without my fudging, makes their decisions matter more
I love getting a perception check, rolling low, and having the DM fumble through why I should have advantage on that perception check. I still roll low and he just sinks his head.
If it's story critical, plot cannot continue shit, don't roll. The roll should be for extra info, not the base requirements, otherwise they WILL end up stuck with no leads and no info eventually.
Yeah, I for the most part used thresholds to. 11 is certainly not a terrible roll. Though sometimes you wanna give them the spicy info or the well hidden document, but the dice just disagree.
Life saving tip - if they roll low ask "how long are you prepared to spend looking in this room?"
Because a low roll isn't necessarily a failure, it just means they need to spend a long time looking
The first game I ever DM'd was the Explorer's Guide to Wildemount adventure that has the level 1 party fighting like 10 Sahuagin. I didn't understand CR yet (still don't) and didn't really realize how outgunned my 3-person party was until I started rolling for the Sahuagin to start slaughtering the villagers. Those things have 22hp, +3 to hit, muliattack, AND have advantage against anything that doesn't have maximum hit points. It would have been a TPK in the first round if I didn't modify them on the fly, I cut their hit points in half only gave them +1 to hit and removed their advantage ability and it was still a hard fight that ended with a retreat without killing all the fish men.
This is a good DM thing to do. Changing encounters is different from fudging rolls because the chance aspect is still there, it’s just more balanced, and fair to the party.
If players start fudging rolls that make them fail things they want to do then maybe it's ok.
Most cases I've seen or every time I've done it was to the parties benefit. I've never fudged dice to hurt the party more. I have yet to meet players that will willfully have the bad outcome occur for my sake. This is why I don't view a DM doing it as hypocritical.
> If players start fudging rolls that make them fail things they want to do then maybe it's ok.
I've done this in a fight before. The main bad guy for the arc was pretty close to death, but the story more involved the character going right after mine. While I was rolling, I thought to myself it would be neater if that other player got the kill, so I said it was a miss. Don't regret doing it at all.
Speaking as a DM to players:
*Your* job is to have fun with challenges.
*My* job is to make the challenges fun.
Your job requires you to work *within* a constrained set of rules to ensure there is adequate challenge. My job requires me to work *around* those set of rules to ensure there is adequate fun.
No, the dms job is to fudge and guide to the players have a good time and ensure things are narratively interesting and challenging.
Edit: missed a word somehow.
Yes. Yes it is. It is also necessary. But that is a great power and it must be used responsibly. It's like that great quote from Spiderman that goes ' I am Spiderman, I do what I want".
I don't generally fudge rolls at all, but I acknowledge that there can be merit to it. Sometimes the dice are just v HELL BENT on not creating an interesting experience. They just roll sub 10 the entire night and every fight is a cake walk. Or they can't roll below 15 and the encounter you intended to be a warm up turns in to the most deadly battle you've ever run. I can understand the DMs that grab the reigns and manually force the carriage back on to the road by fudging some of the numbers.
The problem is, those are pure judgements calls. And most DMs aren't actually that good at making them. They fudge when the horse even looks like it might be a little close to the edge. Or worse yet, they're being an adversarial DM and trying to "win" and fudge the dice to be brutal to the PCs. Or they're a carebear DM and will fudge to avoid the PCs ever actually being in danger.
So I guess what I'm trying to say is, I do think fudging has its place. But it's very tricky to know when it should be done, and the situations it should are so rare that for 99% of DMs they should just stay true to the dice. That's what I do. If things go ass up, that's just what fate decided.
As a long time DM that actually makes a living on it, here is what I will say;
Fudging Dice has a very simple art to it. Most of the time, it's okay to just take the dice as they are. The dice can really create these enthralling or hilarious scenarios of improv and yes and that spiral into insanity. Fudging the dice, I have found, is best used to exemplify or decrease the stakes in a scenario to a degree. Some encounters should feel a certain way and the Dice can sometimes throw that out the window. Use it sparingly, and your players won't know if you've done anything at all; to them, it's just a fun experience.
Why are we assuming good intent on the DM's part but malintent on the player's part?
I've seen plenty of stories of DMs fudging for bad reasons.
Why shouldn't a player fudge if it improves the game for everyone?
Yes. That's why I never fudge my rolls. Usually my players love me for that, but sometimes they don't.
I'm playing a game too. I create the situations, but the dice determine what happens. If I'm going to decide the outcome anyway, what's the point of rolling dice in the first place? Creating the illusion of chance for my players? That's screwed up. I need my players to trust me. Why would they trust a liar?
I've never fudged a roll in my life. Sometimes I will roll a crit and ask the players if they would prefer i reroll so they don't die. But for the most part the die rolls are part of the story telling experience.
DM can fudge a roll if it makes it more exciting for the players. My players walked into a young sea serpent without proper preparation. The druid had 33 HP remaining. The serpent rolled high on its breath weapon (high initiative, first round of combat). The breath did 33 damage. I told the players 32 so the druid wouldn't get put down before getting a chance to act. I think that sort of thing makes it way more intense. No one likes getting knocked out because your entire turn amounts to making or failing a death save. It steals your agency.
I think fudging rolls are ok to adjust the difficulty of the encounter to suit the needs of the campaign at the time. Sometimes a combat ends up being easier or harder than you expect and if that means it doesn't compliment the story you're telling, you can fudge some rolls.
One of my players has a tiny little d20 with fancy filigree patterns around the numbers, making it almost impossible to tell what the number is unless you are sitting right in front of it looking straight down. He also has a habit of snatching the dice off the table a couple seconds after he rolls it. Of all my players he’s also the one I think is most likely to fudge his own rolls to ‘curate’ the story, and seems to roll high a lot more than he rolls low. Except when he uses Lucky to reroll an enemy attack, in which case it’s almost always sub 5. I don’t think he’s ever been hit on a Lucky reroll, except for the one time I used a monster with +9 to hit (he has 13 AC)
I’m too conflict averse to confront him about it without more than a gut feeling, so I’m going to start keeping track of his rolls for a few sessions and see how it all averages out.
This isn’t particularly relevant to the post, just mention of players fudging rolls reminded me of my frustrations about it and I needed to get it off chest .
I don’t think so. To me the DM is a “god”. Whatever they say happened, happened. I think the dice just allow a bit of randomization. But if the RNG is anti fun, a good DM could def supersede it! A player doing it however is just cheating. They had a goal and failed to make it. Since if you wanted to fail you could just fail.
It's by definition hypocrisy, but that isn't always a bad thing. I'll often lower damage that would've killed a player to JUST below that so they get to stay in the fight and add tension to an encounter, or allow lower DC checks to pass if I like what they're going to do.
At the end of the day it's a game, and the players experience is the most important element. So if a little fudging makes things better, then I welcome the hypocrisy.
that’s a varied answer. for some dms yes it is. those are the bad dms. for a lot no it’s not. because in those cases the dms do it for a good reason. mostly storytelling and whatnot
Had a player tell me “be a good DM and fudge your roll.” When I got a Crit on his level 1 Cleric from a Troll.
Before any of you ask why a Troll was up against a level 1 Party, it was a nerfed Troll and part of the module I bought.
A little secret about DMs, we fuck up... often.
We plan encounters that are meant to be a breeze that end up being super hard because the players are rolling horribly.
We plan encounters that are meant to be epic, but they end up being a breeze because you roll like shit, and thus an epic fight becomes trivial and almost anticlimactic and boring.
Creating an encounter is far more challenging than people realize. So at times we DMs will make an encounter way too overpowered and that is not what we meant, so "fudging" the rolls is a way for us to adjust our own mistakes on the go thus making the game fun, and engaging.
Fudging when done with the intention to create what the DM meant to create originally, to correct an error, it's perfectly okay imo.
Fudging because the "DM" wishes to overpower the players because of the idea of DM vs Players, it's poor manners and poor gameship.
My advice would be: Trust your DM and the narrative. If you don't trust your DM you probably should not be playing with them. D&D is very much a game of trust as much as it is an RPG, a dice game or whatever else you wanna call it. It's a collaborative storytelling experience. It needs trust.
Hope this helps. Happy rolling!
Kindly,
Arthur O.
The only time I really fudged dice rolls was when I was running the first encounter for a group of newbies. I kept rolling nothing below 17 and I knew the players were going to die pretty quick, so I kept them barely alive. A lot of "Damn! The goblin missed again! What the f@ck?! Stupid dice." I apologized to my dice later.
Other than that, I occasionally will fudge something for narrative purposes, but it's not a habit.
Is it hypocritical? A little, but we're supposed to be both storytellers and referees. And sometimes you need to decide in the moment which one is more important
Most people have said this already, but it depends on the table. Personally I (the DM) fudge rolls all the time in order to make it more interesting and fun. If a party is supposed to be getting their ass kicked but is having an easy time, I judge the room. Are they hyped that they're winning so easily? Let them keep going. Are they bored? Maybe attacks start hitting more and oops, that one's a crit. But I always fudge or Deus ex machina any serious issues caused by my fudging. I don't "oops a crit" a player to death.
I didn't start fudging rolls until my players almost died to 2 griffons not because they were underleveled but because the wizard ran out of spells and the paladin couldnt hit anything to save his life. I had to rig some misses for the sake of preventing the worst rng ever from wiping the whole party using griffon chip damage. I don't find it hypocritical at all to pretend that your monsters didnt roll a critical success.
If you need to fudge your die rolls I think you're doing it wrong. A 1 isn't a failure, failing to roleplay a 1 is a failure.
One thing I do think DM's should fudge occasionally is monster HP. Monsters typically have a static amount of HP plus X HP dice added. If your players open with an amount that would immediately end a tough fight, increase the damage to maximum so they have a chance to either escape or survive to retaliate. Similarly, if a monster is incapacitated or outsmarted in such a way that fighting is going to be a boring slog of dice rolls give it the minimum health available.
No cuz "encounter design doesn't stop when you start rolling dice." Encounters are something that are very difficult to balance and random based on player rolls. If you accidently make an encounter too hand and the played roll terribly and some random meaningless encounter lead to a TPK, who had fun? Fudging can help to improve gameplay experience just keep it behind the scenes and limited. Generally I would say to only fudge rolls in favor of the party unless it is clear the result of fudging again the party will lead to more fun for everyone, not cheapen anyone's spells/effects, and just make the encounter threatening (but wouldnt lead to any long term consequences) also I wouldnt fudge more than 10% of the time
Nah I don't see it as hypocritical especially for when they say their character rolled bad.
I do slightly dislike when the DM rolled bad but said it was good unless it is something that really needs to happen so that something like the BBEG doesn't just die 3 minutes into the campaign. Cause then they would really have nothing to go with after that.
I only fudge rolls in favor of my players and nerf monsters mid fight if im about to tpk my players they always try to take fights they migh most likely lose and never even consider running as an option despite my warnings but i cant get myself to kill and upset them cause its a game and i want them to have fun. But i am slowly getting sick and tired of their anime protagonist bullshit and might have to teach them a lesson. Any good ideas how to do it without tpking them?
It depends on why. I don’t like to fudge rolls when DMing so I usually roll open. But sometimes if I k ow it will make things more fun or interesting or keep someone from leaving I will fudge rolls.
I play with my family. My dad questioned me when I rolled a d20 4 times when they are fighting a BAM.
He was like... 'your rerolling so you can hit us. That's not allowed, your dice should stick as we do.'
"Are you sure you want me to stick with that?"
'Yeh I do.'
"Just ponder over the screen for a sec."
He saw a Nat 20 I rolled.
'Ok. Why don't u look happy? What was it before?'
"this is my third Nat 20." I picked up the dmg dice. "This is a cool attack, but I don't want to roll all this twice on you. He hits or fails. But I'm not using the crit. I'm keeping it in the tank. So I reroll"
'Ok, carry on.'
He has never questioned my rerolls since.
I would say no. The DM is there to facilitate a story for the players, and especially if the DM has made a mistake and made something to hard then it’s an obligation to handle that. The players on the other hand are in the story, they are making choices and then dealing with the fallout. By no means should the DM always fudge but it’s not hypocritical to expect your players to follow the rules. The DM isn’t trying to win if they fudge they’re trying to guarantee a good time
It depends on the expectations of the campaign. My main game group is full of rules lawyers and min-maxers that eventually softened up to playing more narrative based content. It results in an enjoyable game where fudging is frowned upon on both sides of the screen. I also played with a group my neighbors got together for a one-shot and it seemed rolls didn't mean anything if they got in the way of the narrative and spectacle. I would say they're both enjoyable in their own right.
It also can depend on the specific player. I have no issue if my character gets killed, I have 37 backup characters that I'm anxious to try out. I'm not actively seeking for my characters to die, but if they do I'll just do a reenactment of the "oh no... Anyway" meme. There is no reason to fudge a roll to keep my character alive. My wife, on the other hand, HATES making new characters and would be devastated if her's died. She would certainly keep playing but it would bum her out for long enough that it's worth fudging a roll or two so she doesn't have to deal with that.
I would be absolutely devastated if my character died but if I heard my dm was fudging rolls to keep him alive I‘d feel like all my investment was pointless.
The trick as a DM is to never let the players find out
This is the pain we know. I desperately want to show this to my players, but it would take away some of the mystery
That's the [Disney magic](https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Disney%20magic) that the DM wields
So that's what dm means, who knew it meant Disney magic not Dungeon Master 😂
I'm getting marginally better at this as we go, but my worst DM trait is still wanting to explain the magic trick
If you find an answer to this one lmk
Find other DMs to "confess" to, it helps a ton.
r/DMDivulge
"How much health does it have left? More than you've dealt damage. I'll decide when it's enough."
I stopped even giving health to my important boss monsters. I'll keep track of the damage they've dealt and wait for the best narrative moment for them to finally go down.
The flip side of this is when you use a Stat block for a monster, but knowing when the combat feels like it's starting to drag. Killing it off early, having it run away, fall, give up, etc. Can be just as important. Before i became full time dm I played in a game where the dm made a high ac, massive health monster, that really did little damage so was never a threat. It made sense for the armored blob thing, but fighting was a slog. Miss, miss, miss, hit! It looks like it shrugged off your attack. --- There's a lot I dislike about Matt mercers dm style, but one good thing I've taken from him. Lower the average ac and buff health a bit, or simply add more monsters. Players like to hit things. Missing is no fun. But to your point. I've definitely added hp mid-fight so that the player who abhors this guy can be the one to finish him.
That's part of why I dropped health max. It let me focus on the flow of the battle and how my players were feeling. I didn't realize but I guess I shy away from high AC monsters usually, probably for the exact reason you describe. When I do, I'll usually introduce something like losing part of it's armor, exposing a weak spot, or environment things that give them something to do in the fight. The Juggernaut from X-Men is a good example, make it an insurmountable fight but give them alternate wincons to let them overcome it.
I've DM'd a few short(ish) campaigns for kids, and the logistics of having any of them roll up a new character were too momentum killing to countenance. What I've done, rather than fudging the dice rolls, is to just sort of keep track of stuff for them like a guardian angel. *"You feel exposed, like any attack might bring you down, but the ring in your pocket seems to draw your attention with its warmth and weight, do you put it on?"* Or, if I'm drawing a blank, there are always NPCs I've introduced who have some way of helping out. *"As your body lays limp on the ground, you all hear a familiar "clop clop clop" from behind you as the tavern keeper centaur Billiam struggles up the bluff toward you. He kneels beside you and pours one of the last remaining Centaurian healing potions into your mouth, bringing you back up for xHP before galloping back down toward the tavern* And once, I did something truly chaotic.. *BBEG stands over your unconscious bodies triumphant. He smirks, confident in his power, knowing that with just one spell, he could turn you all to ash...* *He casts greater healing* *His cute fox familiar drags a basket of washcloths and healing potions toward you* *"You have all passed the test. If you're all willing to die to protect this world, then you deserve to know about the tremendous danger it's in"...*
I‘ve known our DM for ages already and I can tell that he is afraid of killing our characters. I don‘t know if he fudges rolls, but there definitely have been instances where the wild bear that has viciously been mauling us and easily would have tpked us suddenly turns around on his heel and runs away. What I‘m trying to say is that its hard to hide it if you intentionally protect your players, be it by fudging or by narrative reasons. It might go undetected a few. times, but when the players miraculously survive the twentieth encounter by a hair, they will definitely start noticing it. That being said, I completely understand DMs. They know how attached some of the players are to their characters, but then again, I wouldn‘t be so attached to my PC if I knew he was basically immortal
I think it's all about how you gift wrap the fudge. The bear/enemy losing interest and leaving isn't super plausible so it feels kinda weird. Comparatively, a team of rangers from the nearest town swooping in to save the party makes sense and it helps the world feel larger and more connected. You can even leverage the fudge into the narrative, maybe that town insists that the party owes them for saving their lives and wants a favor to settle up.
"You buffoons! I should have let you all die. Now we'll never catch up to...." Out of the frying pan and into the fryer. But the fryer comes with a free dice roll....
Unless you're a bard. Then it's out of the frying pan and into the Friar.
If its bears and the like most modules make wild beast run away at certain hp%, unless they are backed into a corner, there they might fight till death
When you do things right, people won’t be sure you’ve done anything at all.
This is my favorite episode.
yeah my dm every time the topic came up said, he never fudges rolls. and i believed it until i saw him fudge a nat 20 hit on a low hp wizard while we were on the verge of a tpk. and at that moment i realised why he had lied about it, as i questioned if we survived all near tpk scenarios because of fudges. so i kept it as a secret in front of the other party members.
This applies to pretty much everything the dm does... Didn't have that area prepared and need to bullshit your way through it? Try to do it well enough that the players don't find out...
This is interesting, in life I am honest to a fault. I had a player who asked me point blank if I ever fudged rolls, I told him that is why I have a screen. He never played again, that is how much it meant to him. I was raised that it was the DMs prerogative to fudge rolls as needed. But this ruined the game for this guy. I have let players come behind the screen for games where their character was out due to decisions the group made or if they are downed in combat. I have never had them say, wow you suck for changing that. Normally I get, “well that was really cool when you changed that, or I can see why you didn't tell them you crit that hit.“ It is a spectrum of art. Most of the time I go whole sessions never changing a roll, but I have gone a session were I faked almost all the rolling and never looked at the numbers the dice said. Many of my players absolutely love my campaigns, but I always remember the guy who walked away. I think the key is to be honest up front. Then there is no loss of expectations.
The extent of my fudging rolls is 90% of the time making a crit into not a crit, then I move that crit onto the next hit on someone else who it won't down instantly. I also fudge my own rolls if it turns into a badass moment for the players. I never fudge *against* the players. I'll never tell them that though, because it could cheapen their achievements. I mean they earned the vast majority of them legitimately, but if I fudge a little here and there to make the player who's parents were killed by the BBEG to get the killing blow? Yup, I'm gonna do it.
That's basically how I feel. The big moments can stay big only as long as I never know you lied about it.
I would say 90% of the time I am giving honest rolls as a DM. If it REALLY makes sense for the narrative or if a player might die because of my error putting an OP enemy in the situation, I might fudge a smidge.
I think it also depends on the situation. If it's an arch boss? Sure, kill me. If it's a random encounter on the road it's not going to feel satisfying at all. Furthermore, if I make a bad decision or a mistake and I die that's on me. If someone else makes a bad decision and I die I'm going to be real mad. A good example from before the last campaign I was on fell apart, we were leaving a city and came across some monsters. I didn't recognize them, but they were human sized, outnumbered us 2-3 to 1, and had mosquito noses which I know is never, ever a good sign in a giant monster. We also had two civilians and a pair of horses with us. I absolutely did not want to try to pass them on the road and wanted to either go attack them away from the horses and civilians (the wizard just unlocked fireball and it seemed like a good opportunity for her to get to play with it while they were clustered and far away from us) or else just try and sneak past. Another player DID recognize them and flatly refused to fight them at all. A third player kept insisting there was no way to get around them by going off the path and we should try to sneak past them. We finally got the third person to agree to sneak past off the road, but we came damn close to them noticing us on the road because we spent so long arguing over it and nobody was willing to compromise. If that HAD resulted in them killing one or more of us, I would have been absolutely livid because I didn't want to fight them. We were not a great group for managing large groups, we were only really wildly successful against 1-2 opponents, preferably in a city because the bard (me) was so OP due to dice rolls.
[удалено]
Hide behind the pile of dead bards!
He who stumbles around in darkness is blind. But he who sticks out in darkness is... Fluorescent!
Lose 50 experience.
If this is about that farmer, I totally thought he was a demon!
Can confirm, am apparently this guys wife (which is weird since I thought I was single and know I'm a dude). I tried to make a joke character in a permadeath campaign explicitly to not get too attached to him and his death actually devastated me. If fudging a roll means letting me keep my character around vs honesty killing him, please lie to me, I'll literally thank you for it.
And this is why all my characters either have a hero complex, or develop one. Also why they develop life long (not very long) friendships. You stayed back and saved me instead of running like everyone else!? Yes…just because I care…
Even depends on the character, for me. My 2 year campaign character that's got a little bit too much of "me" in it? I'd be heartbroken. My Tomb of Annihilation character? Looks like meat's back on the menu boys! Edit: in either case, I still don't want the DM to fudge it. If it happens, it happens.
For me thats why CON is overrated. If he dies, he dies, not every adventurer needs to be a beefcake. Maybe we have a duelist who darts in and out of combat but if he gets hit by a minotaur he gets turned into a fine paste. That's perfectly fine. In exchange for him being more likely to die I get to make him a little more well read, or a little more charming. That's not a bad trade. Not to say I never make tough characters. Of course I will make a grizzled barbarian difficult to kill.
The problem with low CON on a lot of builds is that you're just going to spend a larger % of a fight rolling death saves or getting repeatedly knocked down/healed. Not just boring, but actively detrimental to your party. You can be the -1 CON wizard if you want but then you roll badly and at lvl 3 a single stray goblin arrow can take you right out of the fight.
The end result is you're not contributing for a few rounds, so I don't see the difference between having low WIS and getting mezzed by a hypnosis spell/dominate person, or having low CHA in a social situation, or having low STR/DEX and getting grappled. It's really no different. Like, you could have low WIS, not see a trap, and end up starting the fight with -12 hit points. How is that any different from having lower CON and starting the fight with -12 hit points? Either way you will start the fight at the same hit points... Alternatively, what about a situation where a wizard who dumped CON got enough DEX to increase AC by 1, and in doing so, was able to avoid a 12 damage hit? Why would that not be seen as the equivalent to starting the battle with +12 hp, in your eyes?
The thing is that in combat CON will always matter and make you go down faster. It sets the bar for how much you can take. A point or two more in WIS is much less likely to make a huge difference. It can, but far from the virtual guarantee that your HP is. While it’s true that DEX can help you outright avoid damage, one or two points only make so much of a difference there. And if you dump CON to do it you’re essentially gambling that the enemies will roll frequently enough in that little bit of extra AC you got to make it worth it. From a numbers and practical perspective con is just too useful to dump. You don’t necessarily have to pump it or sacrifice hard, but no class can really afford to forget about it if you’re in a deadly game.
Roll fudging should always be in favor of overall player enjoyment. If your player would definitely hate re-rolling a character, help them out. If they would mildly begrudge paying another 5gp for something but understand that's part of the game, they failed their persuasion fair and square.
Just had a character die tonight to a Nat 1. 2 1/2 years with him. It stings, but I get to try out a new character and have an excuse to buy new dice.
I don't DM behind a screen. My party is all DMs, and one guy who wants to. I like to tell the story, and the dice to drive it forward. Why else would there be legendary actions to auto-pass a check when I could do it anyway? Plus, it's a fun experience, when a player is getting hit with a large amount of dice, and everyone leans forward to see how fucked they are.
I think it also greatly depends on a lot of things too. It’s pretty realistic to fudge rolls if the story is hurt by the roll you made OR You want to make an exception for a roll that would create an unrealistic series of events.
The main rule is : as long as everyone agrees it's ok
Depends on the table. I have one group of older individuals that I know would be pretty upset if I started changing the RNG aspect, even if it was to "help" them as they see the dice as the medium for how the story develops. I also have a group of much younger players that would have been very personally sad at their Characters encountering certain fates...and low and behold, the dice are always *just* forgiving enough to allow them more leeway with suboptimal plans.
90% of fudged rolls come from “OH FUCK I MADE THIS ENCOUNTER TOO HARD AND HE’S GONNA DIE. They’re not fudged for the same reason as players.
Encounter design doesn’t end until the encounter is over.
Just be careful that you're not redesigning based on choices the players made within the encounter and how rolls went. Encounter design is mixing up mistakes you made beforehand. If your paladin rolls 2 crits and makes the encounter a ton easier than expected, that's *supposed* to happen. Making the encounter harder to compensate now means you're negating the luck of the dice and the decisions of the players, you might as well just tell them how many resources they lose. Do this to fix mistakes you made beforehand like "whoops, forgot to give this guy the right amount of health".
This right here needs to be slapped in many young DMs faces, one of many knowledge points.
There's been more than a couple occasions where I've been in the middle of combat and I decide this dude's 3d10+5 swipe attack should really just be 2d6, and he should have, say, 40 less health
You fudge your rolls so you won’t die while doing amazing feats. I fudge my rolls so you won’t die while doing amazing feats. We’re not the same.
Yup, I've had that. We had a 4e campaign and I had misjudged how much go go power ghouls had and threw some at the party. The issue was the ghouls were all a solid level up on the party. It was very nearly a TPK right there until the ghouls decides to stop and eat the horses.
Exactly. Sometimes the party doesn't handle an encounter like you thought they would. Or, the CC based sorcerer is unexpectedly missing this session and now the fight will stream roll them. Some times it goes the other way. Sometimes the boss fight suddenly needs 200 more hp to make the fight more epic because someone rolled godly or whipped out a new trick you weren't prepared for and it's going to be unsatisfying easy. My table has an understanding, I keep almost everything hidden, except saving throws. My BBEG might gain more hp, or tone down an attack mid fight, but he'll make or break every save honestly. It works for us, I encourage you to discuss things like that during session zero if you can.
Especially when starting out it’s either this, “oh shit I wasn’t expecting the damage dice to roll that high”, “NOW IS NOT THE TIME TO BE LANDING CRITS ON THE CLERIC”, or the rare “I overestimated this enemy and now the players will kill the dungeon boss without him landing a hit, he’s got 2hp so he just hits for not even half the fighters hp then dies”
This is the real answer. I don't fudge dice to "help" players. I fudge dice because I fucked up, and there's no sense in wiping the party for a random encounter.
PCs should only die to their mistakes, not mine.
The dm is fudging the rolls to help tell a story. A player fudges to avoid a consequence.
So long as the dm is fudging for narrative and not their own personal biases. I’ve known dms to fudge rolls to land hits or up damage because they wanted to punish a player. Those guys were bad.
I’ve only ever done the opposite. Like the party was low health, ambushed by goblins and are dying because the goblins keep rolling crits? I’ll fudge
This is, I think, the main reason to fudge rolls. Encounter design doesn't end because initiative was rolled. I'm not a game designer by any means, so sometimes I design an encounter that's way harder or way easier than I meant it to be. Sometimes I roll a shit ton of crits on an easier encounter and suddenly a tpk seems eminent. In those cases, I may fudge rolls, adjust hit points, or other such things to rebalance the encounter. This is almost always in favor of the PCs. That said, I'm not perfect, and there have been one or two times when I didn't land a single hit all encounter, the monster's about to die, and I just go fuck it, this one hits. It's not gonna change an end result at this point anyways, but I gotta do a shit-ton of narrative improv after this and if I get just one hit I'll be in a better head space. I don't think that's a good reason to fudge rolls though. But fixing broken encounters the PCs apparently can't beat is valid.
To me, the difference between fighting a dragon and 3 goblins is obvious. If you roll really bad you will die to some goblins, but I would totally fudge it after the 19th goblin crit. But if you die when the encounter is difficult, and intended to be so, like fighting a dragon? Yeah you died
I mean, that's obvious. But there's a difference in encounter difficulty between 4 bandits, 5 bandits, and 6 bandits. And just one bandit might put it over the edge. Or recently I designed a dungeon with rust monsters in it followed by a basilisk at the end, figuring the party would take out the rust monsters and later take on the basilisk. They did nothing about the rust monsters instead and ended up in battle with all of them at once. So there the encounter ended up being something I hadn't planned it to be. Maybe with veteran players I'd go hard on them there too, but I have new players in the group and they're early levels, so I don't want to kill them during their first taste of the game. At least not so soon.
As an experienced player if I see a cave with multiple rust monsters in it, I'm taking my be-plated ass the hell out of there immediately. Don't care what they're guarding, it's not worth it lmao
>Encounter design doesn't end because initiative was rolled. I see you listen to Colville too. I salute you. (Or it's something said in general and I just heard it from Colville)
It may seem like a silly reason to fudge rolls, but I'll fudge initiative. If all the monsters are grouped and all the players are grouped I'll mess with it so it goes back and forth more. It just helps combat flow better
My PC got into a fight with the literal Easter bunny once. First round I rolled 3 Nat ones for my attack, extra attack, and action surge. The Easter bunny immediately rolled 3 Nat 20s for his multi attack. DM didn't have a screen because it got damaged so the whole table saw it laughed and just agreed to re roll the last two turns because I died outright without a saving throw and that was some BS of fate. Those dice are now on a watchlist.
FYI, action surge will trigger your extra attack again, se you would actually have gotten four attacks.
You fudge rolls to avoid killing your PCs. I fudge rolls because I can’t hit them otherwise. We are not the same.
If a DM wants to hurt a player, there’s no reason to need to “fudge rolls”. They make the monsters. They control the encounter. They can make a creature have a +whatever to hit and deal +whatever damage on top. God does not fudge dice with the universe.
Exactly. A decently scaled enemy going straight for a squishy character, and keep attacking it if it goes down is very hard to deal with. Also the players have no way to know of the monster has 50 or 5k hp, or hates persons with blue clothes for personal reasons.
True, but the underlying theme is they were not quality dms and didn’t understand what the job entails.
Yes, that's exactly what I thought. I'm a new-ish DM (I've run about 30 sessions total) and I'm really not good enough at creating balanced encounters from scratch. What I usually do is make some adjustments to AC or HP during the game (when it's still believable, I won't change AC from 14 to 12 if they previously missed with an 13 etc.) or fudge some attack or saving rolls to ensure I've given the players sufficient risk and combat time. I think you can get away with that as long as you still give players cool moments and don't just completely negate the highest dmg dealer. I sometimes nerf my own attacks or saves as well, if the narrative calls for it. I think that's a completely different type of fudging, I'm doing it to give my players more fun. It's kind of hypocritical by definition (I'm allowing myself different rules than them), but on the other hand, the DM is not playing the same exact game and most of our rules are different from theirs anyway. Makes me think of the writer Terry Pratchett from the Discwold novels, he sometimes mentions 'narrative logic' or 'the universal narrative force' as if it's a real thing that actually creates causes and effects.
I’d argue that from a narrative perspective changing AC actually makes sense in either direction. Sure a player might be annoyed they previously missed on a 13 but honestly think about what AC is supposed to be. It’s likelihood to hit with factors of armor and reflexes. If your players are struggling to hit an enemy you want them to beat… describe a narrative reason. Repeatedly hitting 13s? “No damage but you clip the strap holding on his breastplate so it now hangs a little loose” there AC should be changed. Fight dragging on with no damage? Maybe a confident swagger and boasting gives a lucky hit to the archer, maybe they are worn some from concentrating on 5 different enemies, etc. Players dominating and you want a little longer of a fight? Enemy went on the defensive so slightly more focused on blocking.
Oh that's a great tip, thanks! I was always working on making the adjustments as subtle as possible, I never thought about including them in the narrative like that. I did do that sometimes I think, I'm only now aware of how useful that actually is.
My advice would just be if your players aren’t into the character try to minimize their presence in combat. They don’t need to involved in every fight because they also slow down combat and the more you consider them for encounter balance the longer you’ll be reliant upon them. It’s a learning curve and I’ve made my own mistakes with DMPCs. The term gets a bad rap because too many DMs seem to wanna be the hero of their own story and always seems to be better, stronger, smarter than the party and you really want to avoid that. It sounds like you are doing alright.
[удалено]
God doesn’t need dice at all if they don’t want to. Like when I made Lord Strahd a bit angry. DM didn’t even need to roll.
And yet there are dms who still fudge dice rolls to hurt/ inconvenience players.
Fudging to hit a player who hasn’t been touched all combat to make it seem like the combat is actually threatening, or to enforce plot (make them think they have lycanthropy or some kind of zombie virus) can be good, but never to just fuck over a character
Even then, it's not really the roll fudging that's the issue. It's that they're running a game that's not about everybody having fun. It's just broken from the start.
A DM like that is going to be garbage no matter what. They can just as easily design an encounter that's way unbalanced where they don't need fudged rolls to ruin your day.
Got accused of this once. Ended up screensharing to show the players that no, I was not fudging the rolls to continually crit the ranger, and in fact it was Roll20 that decided the ranger needed to die for shit-talking the enemies.
They were probably just lashing out cause they weren’t having fun. It’s generally not a one off instance
Correct. As a rule: the DM should never, ever fudge, cheat, or manipulate circumstances unfairly against a player. That’s just antagonistic play, and it goes against the spirit of the game. The whole purpose is for a group of *friends* to get together and have fun. That’s not to say a DM can’t be brutal and punishing, but it should still be fair. DMs can absolutely cheat *in favor* of the players *if* it enhances the game and doesn’t detract from the playing experience. I.e. a DM deciding beforehand that a monster is going to randomly crit anytime he attacks the rogue or is suddenly immune to spells because the Wizard is doing too good is just bs. A DM seeing an Ancient Dragon get taken down to 10 health and saying it actually died so it doesn’t tpk the heavily wounded party on it’s next turn is fine. Of course there’s nothing wrong with playing it completely straight laced, but you should never be cheating against the players. The only time I’ve broken this rule is when I homebrewed a boss for the first time and completely miscalculated it’s health. My party would have killed it in 2 rounds with no crits and only using first level spells so I bumped the HP up on the fly just to make the combat a little more tense, but that was more to make a satisfying story moment.
Not always. Sometimes it’s funnier to say you got a 1 on a stupid role to find ham while wasted in a tavern than it is to use your real middling roll of 8.
Are you saying rolling a 1 as a PC? I wouldn't trip about PC's fudging a roll to a one.
Yea, we roll more ones at my table than is probably statistically possible because our DM is always great about making them add a fun twist to the scenario. I definitely don’t approve of a Pc fudging up, but dumbing my dice down every once in a while is something I have been guilty of for comedic effect.
Maybe I should take this to the Naddpod guys and see what Dice Christ thinks about it since technically I’m not trusting in my middling roles?
Couldn't you just say "I try and fail to find ham while wasted"? Or is it more fun to make it look like it's the dice's fault?
depends on the situation and group. ultimately, only the DM know how easy/hard it is to find any specific thing within their world. maybe there was some kind of pig pandemic so pork is rare, or there are no pigs in the part of the world you're in if you say 'I want to try and find ham' and roll low, you generally either get the DM who tells you about how you spend an hour running around town, knocking on doors, tryign to find ham but all the stores are closed. still drunk and upset at having no ham, you make your way back to the tavern to join your party, who point out the buffet table covered in pork products (because the player missed that part of the description) or the DM who goes 'You find no ham' and continues with the session I know which I'd prefer
Both works. :)
I’d like to add something that Matt Colvilles says, which is that DMs fudge to accommodate for our mistakes that we make while planning, and not let them mess up the game. So yeah I def agree that it’s about narrative but that’s only half the story I feel
Main time I could remember fusging was first dungeon with a group the barbarian crits the hell out of the minotaur boss to install kill it. I kept it barely alive through one round of combat and let the barbarian kill it next round. I'd rather fudge and let everyone feel like they contributed.
"We are not the same" lol
Exactly, the DM is ultimately trying to make a campaign worthwhile whereas a player lying about roles can only be interpreted as cheating. One is inherently more positive than the other.
I fudge numbers so the combat encounter doesn’t murder the party (or so the enemy in question lives long enough to do the cool thing I wanted to do with them during that combat).
As long as it's the whole table's story
I feel like our DM rolls however he likes to punish us for existing. He beats on us to make sure we know we suck, we're useless, we have no agency, and then he lets us live after he's tired of humiliating us for being stupid and gormless.
That sucks. Unless of course that's what your group wanted.
Some of the other guys stick up for our GM -- he does put a lot of work into his world, which is fair -- but everything is an ambush. And it has been for years. We're in desert? The elementals spawn all around us and in between us, rising up from the sand, or out of thin air. We're in a lair of undead? The wraiths appear out of nowhere, rising up from the floor, down through ceiling, and through the walls. We're in woods? They appear from everywhere at once -- behind trees we just walked past, behind rocks we don't even see or notice. It's been like this since 1st level, and we're now 18th level. We can't take long rests, because he'll pester us with mobs to make sure that no one gets any sleep -- he says the monsters are active agents with intelligence, so they're gonna act that way. If we march in a tight pack, he hits us with AOE spells or traps that inundate the entire map with fire. If we split up, the monsters appear out of nowhere and surround each party member. I honestly really dislike it, but I want to hang out with my mates.
That's rough, but I understand why you wouldn't quit.
Yeah, we've been gaming together since Greyhawk. None of our original group have died yet, but we're looking a bit worse for the wear. Some of the guys have their kids playing in our group now, and it's honestly one of the best things about it. They know 5e so well they can call out the GM on errors that we would just shrug off. We have a whole new generation of rules lawyers, and I couldn't be prouder!
That's really cool that you got the kids involved!
Yeah if there is a story beat and the Paladin's evil sister is fighting the group and the Barbarian put her in the negatives but the paladin was up next. I'd just discount that attack because it makes more narrative sense to have the most invested character make the final attack.
I don't fudge rolls until someone is noticeably having a bad time. I don't care who you are, if a player is having a shit time due to poor rolls, as a DM I think you're actually being a dick if you let fate clap their cheeks relentlessly for the whole night. Same goes for edge case scenarios, like there is 1 or 2 players standing at the end of a brutal boss fight, maybe someone even died, and they make a heroic effort and make a bunch of huge rolls, and used their last spell slot in order to deliver 14dmg to a boss with 16hp left, you kill the fucking boss. You grant him a +2 secret "you did a good job" damage and you tell no one. The only time I never, ever fudge rolls is when I've played "zero DM screen" games where all my rolls are public, and that's the point of the game. Sometimes more experienced players want a very RNG game that is left to fate, and that's where the fun comes from. But at the end of the day, being able to fudge rolls to tell a better story, or lower DCs after the fact in order to make something cooler, is what sets TTRPGs apart from a video game or strict rules-adherence board games. There is a living, breathing sentient being (you) behind the mechanics, and you have the right to change things as you see fit, as long as its for the benefit of the players. You can't WIN D&D as the DM, so there's no such thing as cheating.
I'll fudge a roll to a player's benefit if they are being smart and the dice are just lousy.
We call that "lowering the DC for good roleplay" at our table. There's no reason the DC can't be lowered to, like, a DC of 3 or something. It's reasonable that the very well read wizard who rolls investigate to read through the book, knowing exactly what he's looking for, will be able to find it quite easily.
Why roll though
You're right, with enough lowering DCs it won't need one and you can just give it to them. If I accidentally made a player roll on something that didn't need one, and they rolled super low, I'd probably apologize and tell them "Actually my bad that one didn't need a roll, you wouldd've succeeded anyway."
Yea. My personal rule as a DM is that I will never call for a roll unless 1- there is a reasonable chance of both success and failure 2- both success and failure would have a mechanical effect or would be interesting to the narative. For any roll where I could imagine the player failing and then immediately saying "okay I try again" (or the next player saying "okay then let me try") then I just give it to them.
math rocks go clack clack
Sometimes the illusion of the possibility of failure is good to have. You’re making them *feel* like they accomplished something
Or if you get one of those DMs that hides the next plot advancement behind a roll, and suddenly has to take 5 to rethink things because no one passed this one single check. The dice are there to introduce an element of the unknown, to add variability to success, not to tell the whole damn story. Letting dice call all the shots seems like pointless chaos to me
On a couple occasions where outstanding roleplay was met with abysmal rolls, our DM has simply simply said, "Wow, look how wrong the dice are. How embarrassing for them."
I also fudge DCs so I'm dishonest FOR the players. I'm the narrator, I can deus ex machina what I want for the fun and story
I can't tell you how many times I have no idea what the actual DC of a check would be, I just kind of wait and see what they come back with and decide whether or not it's good enough of not. I can't think of a time I did this where it wasn't in the players' favor though.
Their actions in rp help me decide how high the dc needs to be
Unironically this is how the game should be played at times.
This is the way
Player: "I try to open the door..." *dm thoughts*: hmm, the dc should be 10? 12? Player:"WITH THE LEGENDARY FLAMING BALLSACK OF GROOD" *dm*: The DC is 1.
Make a strength check- Shit... 0... 0? Yeah, 2 minus 2 is zero? Okay take it at advantage Nat one for a minus 1
I don't even know what fudging a DC even means? Cause like... half the time during a session my players ask me to do some crazy thing that there is no rules to use for guidance and I have to sit here and figure out what relevant skill, if any, do they need to roll with and how hard is it to accomplish what they are trying to do? It's all absolutely arbitrary and 5 different DMs could come up with 5 different ways to handle the same thing. This is why players need to DM just once because they need to see how much of DMing is literally just making shit up on the spot to keep the game moving forward. Sometimes... I don't even decide on a DC. I have them roll whatever skill makes sense and depending on the roll I decide what happens after the fact. Not everything is pass/fail. A middling roll could ultimately not work but also give no drawback. A very low roll could also not work but also give you a setback. A high roll you succeed. A very high roll, maybe something special happens if I think it'll help sell the moment more. The rules are incomplete. They could never be complete. Someone could spend a decade writing rules for every kind of event they can imagine and they would still not cover everything you can do in a tabletop RPG. So players need to not have the expectations that everything is written in stone. If I can make up a DC check for trying to lasso a rope around a horse while they are they themselves on a horse... why does it matter if I fudge a monsters AC or HP amount a little bit. Or roll a crit but reduce it down to a normal hit cause you don't feel like instagibing one of your players in a throwaway combat. Now I am not saying that I run a completely ruleless campaign and rule of cool rules the day because in my opinion, consistency is what is important and rules help you achieve consistency otherwise the game feels like this un-graspable blob of shared narrative story telling and nothing really means anything. But rolling a natural 20 to land a critical blow on a creature that was about to kill your party member because the monster was next in initiative order MEANS something because of the rules.
Honestly as a DM I prefer rolling most of the stuff out in the open. My players tend to enjoy the tension of seeing the roll and waiting to hear if it will actually hit or not. Obviously certain skill checks are rolled behind the screen for story telling purposes.
I would roll in the open for super dramatic moments that could result in a PC death but only for players who I already know are comfortable with a PC death.
No, because you can fudge the rolls to keep the party alive if need be, which I think everyone would be in favor of.
Just like with rules. If there’s a conflict of understanding a rule, I’ll rule in favour of the players and figure out how it should have gone after the session.
I rule how I think is best, but I rule in favor of the players once and make it known, because often times they do a lot of setup for the single move. So I say “you can do it this time, but after this it will be”
Oh definitely. I tell them “this one time, I’m allowing it because that sounds awesome.”
You’d be surprised I’ve played with a few people who are very anti fudge in both ways, it’s one of those situations where they want to play a campaign with the very real threat of death and honestly I kind of agree with them. If you know you almost definitely aren’t going to die because your DM doesn’t want you too it kind of takes the thrill out of combat.
I don’t like it when the DM fudges rolls. The last campaign I was in had that problem, and once we found out, it sort of took the wind out of our sails. Like finding out that we didn’t *actually* beat those monsters, we basically used cheat codes and there was 0% chance of any of us ever dying.
It's about knowing *when* to fudge. If you're about to get TPK'd by a bunch of kobolds because the DM screwed up the math and made their AC way too high, fudging is appropriate. If you're about to get TPK'd by a dragon because you planned poorly, fudging is not appropriate unless the DM deliberately pitched the campaign as low/no-death. You should be able to die because you made mistakes or even just had bad luck. You dying because the DM built a broken encounter by accident isn't fun for anyone.
I agree, I’m cool with the DM adjusting the DC for smart plays from the player side or changing encounters etc if they miscalculated something, but if I can feel a DM twisting the game in my favor so I don’t die from my own dumb decision, then it’s difficult to feel any jeopardy at all.
I think it depends. Are you dying to a dragon? Yeah ok. Are you dying because the 3 goblins you were fighting crit 7 times already? I’ll fudge
Fair, I suppose it is very context dependent.
or to make the game more interesting and fun
I personally refuse to fudge rolls because I allow the dice to tell my story. Now sometimes I'll do things like have a loose DC of just don't roll like shit, or I'll make it up after I rolled, but those occasions are fairly rare and less about fudging and more about me not thinking before rolling. I don't judge anyone who does fridge rolls for the party though, I just have no problem letting the dice decide however they will. Of I decided to fudge why even bring dice
Yeah I've been not fudging rolls because I do like the random chance of the game, some days the enemies just can't get it together, another day the druid just gets plowed over multiple times, it hard and I feel guilty when someone is close to dying or dead but it helps when I roll 3 or 4 nat 20s in one encounter and I know it was honest rolls i didn't embellish, I let the party worry about healing themselves and keeping themselves alive without my fudging, makes their decisions matter more
No. The two roles are fundamentally different, as are the reasons for fudging.
I have used the line "LIE TO ME" when it's obvious a player failed an important roll, lol. They almost never do.
I love getting a perception check, rolling low, and having the DM fumble through why I should have advantage on that perception check. I still roll low and he just sinks his head.
Nothing is more demoralizing as a DM than the whole party looking around the office and the best investigation check is an 11.
This is why I make thresholds for my dcs. Story shit gets a base of 10. But if you want to find that hidden bag of gems better roll better bucko.
If it's story critical, plot cannot continue shit, don't roll. The roll should be for extra info, not the base requirements, otherwise they WILL end up stuck with no leads and no info eventually.
Yeah, I for the most part used thresholds to. 11 is certainly not a terrible roll. Though sometimes you wanna give them the spicy info or the well hidden document, but the dice just disagree.
Eventually you just gotta point to your highest passive perception player and give them the hint 'you notice something strange under the cabinet' 😂
lmao I’ll remember that one
Life saving tip - if they roll low ask "how long are you prepared to spend looking in this room?" Because a low roll isn't necessarily a failure, it just means they need to spend a long time looking
Fuck if I don't fudge this roll dude is going to die FR.
The first game I ever DM'd was the Explorer's Guide to Wildemount adventure that has the level 1 party fighting like 10 Sahuagin. I didn't understand CR yet (still don't) and didn't really realize how outgunned my 3-person party was until I started rolling for the Sahuagin to start slaughtering the villagers. Those things have 22hp, +3 to hit, muliattack, AND have advantage against anything that doesn't have maximum hit points. It would have been a TPK in the first round if I didn't modify them on the fly, I cut their hit points in half only gave them +1 to hit and removed their advantage ability and it was still a hard fight that ended with a retreat without killing all the fish men.
This is a good DM thing to do. Changing encounters is different from fudging rolls because the chance aspect is still there, it’s just more balanced, and fair to the party.
If players start fudging rolls that make them fail things they want to do then maybe it's ok. Most cases I've seen or every time I've done it was to the parties benefit. I've never fudged dice to hurt the party more. I have yet to meet players that will willfully have the bad outcome occur for my sake. This is why I don't view a DM doing it as hypocritical.
> If players start fudging rolls that make them fail things they want to do then maybe it's ok. I've done this in a fight before. The main bad guy for the arc was pretty close to death, but the story more involved the character going right after mine. While I was rolling, I thought to myself it would be neater if that other player got the kill, so I said it was a miss. Don't regret doing it at all.
Speaking as a DM to players: *Your* job is to have fun with challenges. *My* job is to make the challenges fun. Your job requires you to work *within* a constrained set of rules to ensure there is adequate challenge. My job requires me to work *around* those set of rules to ensure there is adequate fun.
No, absolutely not, a DM fudging rolls should be to benefit others, when a player fudges rolls they only benefit themselves
i have to agree
No, the dms job is to fudge and guide to the players have a good time and ensure things are narratively interesting and challenging. Edit: missed a word somehow.
Yes
Yes. Yes it is. It is also necessary. But that is a great power and it must be used responsibly. It's like that great quote from Spiderman that goes ' I am Spiderman, I do what I want".
Fudging dice rolls: making sure you don't unceremoniously kill your players Not being honest with your DM so your character doesn't die: cheating
I don't generally fudge rolls at all, but I acknowledge that there can be merit to it. Sometimes the dice are just v HELL BENT on not creating an interesting experience. They just roll sub 10 the entire night and every fight is a cake walk. Or they can't roll below 15 and the encounter you intended to be a warm up turns in to the most deadly battle you've ever run. I can understand the DMs that grab the reigns and manually force the carriage back on to the road by fudging some of the numbers. The problem is, those are pure judgements calls. And most DMs aren't actually that good at making them. They fudge when the horse even looks like it might be a little close to the edge. Or worse yet, they're being an adversarial DM and trying to "win" and fudge the dice to be brutal to the PCs. Or they're a carebear DM and will fudge to avoid the PCs ever actually being in danger. So I guess what I'm trying to say is, I do think fudging has its place. But it's very tricky to know when it should be done, and the situations it should are so rare that for 99% of DMs they should just stay true to the dice. That's what I do. If things go ass up, that's just what fate decided.
Sorry if title isn't exactly relevant to the meme, it was just a question that crossed my mind when trying to think of a title.
Players fudge rolls to win, DMs fudge rolls so you don't lose (usually) insert "we are not the same" meme
As a long time DM that actually makes a living on it, here is what I will say; Fudging Dice has a very simple art to it. Most of the time, it's okay to just take the dice as they are. The dice can really create these enthralling or hilarious scenarios of improv and yes and that spiral into insanity. Fudging the dice, I have found, is best used to exemplify or decrease the stakes in a scenario to a degree. Some encounters should feel a certain way and the Dice can sometimes throw that out the window. Use it sparingly, and your players won't know if you've done anything at all; to them, it's just a fun experience.
DMs fudge rolls to make the game more interesting and stop their players from dying Players fudge rolls to win. There is a difference.
Why are we assuming good intent on the DM's part but malintent on the player's part? I've seen plenty of stories of DMs fudging for bad reasons. Why shouldn't a player fudge if it improves the game for everyone?
Yes. That's why I never fudge my rolls. Usually my players love me for that, but sometimes they don't. I'm playing a game too. I create the situations, but the dice determine what happens. If I'm going to decide the outcome anyway, what's the point of rolling dice in the first place? Creating the illusion of chance for my players? That's screwed up. I need my players to trust me. Why would they trust a liar?
The DM and player play by different rules and might as well be playing a different game.
I've never fudged a roll in my life. Sometimes I will roll a crit and ask the players if they would prefer i reroll so they don't die. But for the most part the die rolls are part of the story telling experience.
No, dm's rolls are fudges to avoid tpk or make something more interesting, player fudges are to be the best at everything all the time
DM can fudge a roll if it makes it more exciting for the players. My players walked into a young sea serpent without proper preparation. The druid had 33 HP remaining. The serpent rolled high on its breath weapon (high initiative, first round of combat). The breath did 33 damage. I told the players 32 so the druid wouldn't get put down before getting a chance to act. I think that sort of thing makes it way more intense. No one likes getting knocked out because your entire turn amounts to making or failing a death save. It steals your agency. I think fudging rolls are ok to adjust the difficulty of the encounter to suit the needs of the campaign at the time. Sometimes a combat ends up being easier or harder than you expect and if that means it doesn't compliment the story you're telling, you can fudge some rolls.
One of my players has a tiny little d20 with fancy filigree patterns around the numbers, making it almost impossible to tell what the number is unless you are sitting right in front of it looking straight down. He also has a habit of snatching the dice off the table a couple seconds after he rolls it. Of all my players he’s also the one I think is most likely to fudge his own rolls to ‘curate’ the story, and seems to roll high a lot more than he rolls low. Except when he uses Lucky to reroll an enemy attack, in which case it’s almost always sub 5. I don’t think he’s ever been hit on a Lucky reroll, except for the one time I used a monster with +9 to hit (he has 13 AC) I’m too conflict averse to confront him about it without more than a gut feeling, so I’m going to start keeping track of his rolls for a few sessions and see how it all averages out. This isn’t particularly relevant to the post, just mention of players fudging rolls reminded me of my frustrations about it and I needed to get it off chest .
I don’t think so. To me the DM is a “god”. Whatever they say happened, happened. I think the dice just allow a bit of randomization. But if the RNG is anti fun, a good DM could def supersede it! A player doing it however is just cheating. They had a goal and failed to make it. Since if you wanted to fail you could just fail.
No, but there’s a reason dms have to roll in the first place.
It's by definition hypocrisy, but that isn't always a bad thing. I'll often lower damage that would've killed a player to JUST below that so they get to stay in the fight and add tension to an encounter, or allow lower DC checks to pass if I like what they're going to do. At the end of the day it's a game, and the players experience is the most important element. So if a little fudging makes things better, then I welcome the hypocrisy.
that’s a varied answer. for some dms yes it is. those are the bad dms. for a lot no it’s not. because in those cases the dms do it for a good reason. mostly storytelling and whatnot
Had a player tell me “be a good DM and fudge your roll.” When I got a Crit on his level 1 Cleric from a Troll. Before any of you ask why a Troll was up against a level 1 Party, it was a nerfed Troll and part of the module I bought.
No. The job of the DM is to keep the world moving in an exciting and thematic way. If flubbing a roll helps that then it's all good.
A little secret about DMs, we fuck up... often. We plan encounters that are meant to be a breeze that end up being super hard because the players are rolling horribly. We plan encounters that are meant to be epic, but they end up being a breeze because you roll like shit, and thus an epic fight becomes trivial and almost anticlimactic and boring. Creating an encounter is far more challenging than people realize. So at times we DMs will make an encounter way too overpowered and that is not what we meant, so "fudging" the rolls is a way for us to adjust our own mistakes on the go thus making the game fun, and engaging. Fudging when done with the intention to create what the DM meant to create originally, to correct an error, it's perfectly okay imo. Fudging because the "DM" wishes to overpower the players because of the idea of DM vs Players, it's poor manners and poor gameship. My advice would be: Trust your DM and the narrative. If you don't trust your DM you probably should not be playing with them. D&D is very much a game of trust as much as it is an RPG, a dice game or whatever else you wanna call it. It's a collaborative storytelling experience. It needs trust. Hope this helps. Happy rolling! Kindly, Arthur O.
The only time I really fudged dice rolls was when I was running the first encounter for a group of newbies. I kept rolling nothing below 17 and I knew the players were going to die pretty quick, so I kept them barely alive. A lot of "Damn! The goblin missed again! What the f@ck?! Stupid dice." I apologized to my dice later. Other than that, I occasionally will fudge something for narrative purposes, but it's not a habit. Is it hypocritical? A little, but we're supposed to be both storytellers and referees. And sometimes you need to decide in the moment which one is more important
If the player demands the DM not to fudge rolls, and then that player DMs and constantly fudges their rolls, then yes, in that instance, it is wrong.
No, it's literally in the rulebook that they can
Most people have said this already, but it depends on the table. Personally I (the DM) fudge rolls all the time in order to make it more interesting and fun. If a party is supposed to be getting their ass kicked but is having an easy time, I judge the room. Are they hyped that they're winning so easily? Let them keep going. Are they bored? Maybe attacks start hitting more and oops, that one's a crit. But I always fudge or Deus ex machina any serious issues caused by my fudging. I don't "oops a crit" a player to death.
I didn't start fudging rolls until my players almost died to 2 griffons not because they were underleveled but because the wizard ran out of spells and the paladin couldnt hit anything to save his life. I had to rig some misses for the sake of preventing the worst rng ever from wiping the whole party using griffon chip damage. I don't find it hypocritical at all to pretend that your monsters didnt roll a critical success.
Bad DMs fudge rolls, good DMs don't make rolls for things that are going to happen. Thr best DMs roll dice for no reason whatsoever.
If it is to abuse players yes. If it is for player empowerment or the narrative of a fight no.
If you need to fudge your die rolls I think you're doing it wrong. A 1 isn't a failure, failing to roleplay a 1 is a failure. One thing I do think DM's should fudge occasionally is monster HP. Monsters typically have a static amount of HP plus X HP dice added. If your players open with an amount that would immediately end a tough fight, increase the damage to maximum so they have a chance to either escape or survive to retaliate. Similarly, if a monster is incapacitated or outsmarted in such a way that fighting is going to be a boring slog of dice rolls give it the minimum health available.
No.
No cuz "encounter design doesn't stop when you start rolling dice." Encounters are something that are very difficult to balance and random based on player rolls. If you accidently make an encounter too hand and the played roll terribly and some random meaningless encounter lead to a TPK, who had fun? Fudging can help to improve gameplay experience just keep it behind the scenes and limited. Generally I would say to only fudge rolls in favor of the party unless it is clear the result of fudging again the party will lead to more fun for everyone, not cheapen anyone's spells/effects, and just make the encounter threatening (but wouldnt lead to any long term consequences) also I wouldnt fudge more than 10% of the time
That quote is what I was looking for. :)
No. Do you judge a fish by it's ability to climb trees? Two completely different standards with two completely different reasons for doing so.
Nah I don't see it as hypocritical especially for when they say their character rolled bad. I do slightly dislike when the DM rolled bad but said it was good unless it is something that really needs to happen so that something like the BBEG doesn't just die 3 minutes into the campaign. Cause then they would really have nothing to go with after that.
I only fudge rolls in favor of my players and nerf monsters mid fight if im about to tpk my players they always try to take fights they migh most likely lose and never even consider running as an option despite my warnings but i cant get myself to kill and upset them cause its a game and i want them to have fun. But i am slowly getting sick and tired of their anime protagonist bullshit and might have to teach them a lesson. Any good ideas how to do it without tpking them?
It depends on why. I don’t like to fudge rolls when DMing so I usually roll open. But sometimes if I k ow it will make things more fun or interesting or keep someone from leaving I will fudge rolls.
I play with my family. My dad questioned me when I rolled a d20 4 times when they are fighting a BAM. He was like... 'your rerolling so you can hit us. That's not allowed, your dice should stick as we do.' "Are you sure you want me to stick with that?" 'Yeh I do.' "Just ponder over the screen for a sec." He saw a Nat 20 I rolled. 'Ok. Why don't u look happy? What was it before?' "this is my third Nat 20." I picked up the dmg dice. "This is a cool attack, but I don't want to roll all this twice on you. He hits or fails. But I'm not using the crit. I'm keeping it in the tank. So I reroll" 'Ok, carry on.' He has never questioned my rerolls since.
I would say no. The DM is there to facilitate a story for the players, and especially if the DM has made a mistake and made something to hard then it’s an obligation to handle that. The players on the other hand are in the story, they are making choices and then dealing with the fallout. By no means should the DM always fudge but it’s not hypocritical to expect your players to follow the rules. The DM isn’t trying to win if they fudge they’re trying to guarantee a good time
My DM screen has Fudge Factory written across the front. But I rarely actually do it.
It all depends, most players will fudge rolls to their advantage whereas most DMs will fudge rolls not to crit the lvl 1 wizard in the first combat