Ick. As a player, I find it makes me miserable when I feel like nothing the PCs do matters; we do incredibly awesome, and the DM fudges for the monster, and we do incredibly horrible and the DM fudges for us. Why do we spend all this time playing out the battle if all the dramatic results are going to be smoothed away for us?
Maybe because all of the effort the players have gone through shouldn't necessarily be thrown away because of a hot streak on the dice? I mean if you want the ultimate expression of "nothing the PCs do matters" - that's what a TPK based on a series of unlucky rolls might be. A player could make all the right moves and still throw a 1 on the d20 leading to a total failure. Should all those right moves be ignored because the dice say so? How exactly is that making sure the things the PCs do matter?
By fudging a bit as a GM, I can help those preparations, those good decisions, and the things the PCs do matter when the dice don't.
Just because you think the players don't know doesn't mean they really don't.
I don't have a strong stand against fudging die rolls, but luck is part of the game. Given a choice between knowing that no matter what we do, the BBEG will stand for 4 or 5 rounds, and knowing that depending on luck we might be able to kill him before he gets to act or he might kill us, I'd take the latter. Suffering at the hands of fate is fair game; being puppets being led on to a predetermined conclusion isn't.
I will sometimes fudge not often but I think it is a tool in the DM toolbox that can be used to save a game or stop a player from being miserable.
I can count on one hand the times I have fudged a dice roll but those times I was glad to know I had the ability to do so.
I had a PC die at the start of a session he ended up not playing much in that session he did help me run some NPCs in combat but that is not the same as playing your character. Next session he is raised back in the thick of things and they are in combat again and what was supposed to be a cake walk turned into a disaster I kept rolling crits and he kept rolling misses. I could tell that he was getting frustrated and not having fun. When I rolled another crit I didn't roll to confirm it and I halved the damage on the dice so that he would go down but not die. After the game he said to me i don't know if you fudged any of that but if you did thank you. It was absolutely the right decision to do as a DM for my player at that time.
Another time I had a player who found out on Friday that they were going blind. I knew she depressed and was looking forward to playing. She was the type that really hated character death. You could do anything else and she was okay but killing her PC was not something she enjoyed she accepted it as part of the game but it was her least favorite.
I made a decision that no matter what her PC would not die that night and I fudged a few dice rolls so that it didn't become a possibility. Her fun that night was more important than dice rolls.
This is why I roll behind a screen so that I have the ability to fudge if I think it is the right thing to do. Like I said I rarely do it. And I don't think it is a tool that should be used all the time. Another reason I roll behind the screen is I often roll things I don't want the players to see. For example I roll their listen checks and spot checks as well as bluff and sense motive. This was agreed upon because this way the players don't change their actions if they fail because they don't know they failed.
I also change things on the fly I will take off hit points if I can see a fight dragging on and on and the players are not having fun or I will add a few hit points to make it more exciting if the players are having a great time. I refuse to be a slave to a planned encounter. A DM needs to know when to be flexible.
I had a bad experience with this as a player. I was given at the start of the game a magic bow that was especially devastating against elves. We got to sixth level and not one elf had ever been in the campaign. Finally with one arrow left we came against the BBEG who was a drow he was about to sacrifice an innocent. I was two range increments away so was taking penalties on the shot. I made it and it was a crit. I rolled max damage and the bow special damages finally came into play. It was one of those moments players live for a chance to really shine be the big hero and save the day. Except it wasn't he had a brooch of shielding and absorbed all my damage and I was out of arrows. But what they hey right the wizard/druid took care of him and was the big hero again.
The DM showed me that when he wrote the encounter he had put a brooch of shielding on the guy and that he was not trying to stop my character from having a moment. And on one hand he was right but on the other I think it was bad DMing because he was being a slave to his game encounter as written. As a DM if I had a player do that especially a player who had never had the opportunity to use their ability in game I would have instantly thrown out the brooch and furthermore I would have had it kill the NPC.
