D&D 5E DM: I think my players WANT me to fudge my dice roles!

[Klaudius Rex]

I am the DM of a very fun a good group of players, running Out of the Abyss.

Last night, I my players battled a Death Tyrant beholder. They are all level 13 and 14 players. The cleric in the group acted first on initiative and turned undead right away. This poor beholder critically failed (he rolled a natural 1), and was subsequently turned as per the rules.

This made this particular battle easy as the beholder could not escape and was tucked into a corner.

What bugged me,...is later that night, i heard one of the players scoffing at the battle, telling someone on the phone, that "I went easy on them" by throwing a "cowardly beholder".

This could not be further from the truth.

He is a seasoned player, and was paying attention, so its hard to understand why he said this, from my point of view.

I wanted to have a more challenging battle myself, of course. A Death Tyrant is the most difficult beholder in the game, with a CR 14. He was a guardian in a wizards tower. By no means, was he a coward.

I can only speculate that this player wanted me to fudge the dice so the battle would be more formidable....which i understand.

Admittedly, I have fudged dice in the past. But its a tricky thing to do as DM. I want some adherence to the rules, and dont want to break them every time. Plus, the beholder rolled a critical fail, in which really I really couldn't justify fudging the saving throw for this poor beholder.

I just didnt like that one of my favorite players (he's a good guy) was mocking me, or belittling the encounter.

It gives me mixed feelings about him...

...anyone want to try to make me feel better about this? or was he right?!

 

[Tales and Chronicles]

As a player who love to be challenged, I can see the point of your player, but remember that this is only anecdotal and he never asked anything, he just made a comment on how easy was a particular fight. Next time, you could add more monsters: solo fight are too easy for a party because of the action economy, even more at high level.

 

[Savage Wombat]

Death Tyrants don't get legendary saves? Too bad for him.

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[robus]

I think rather than fudge the dice you could have fudged the stats HP, # of attacks, err. Basically they wanted a challenge. The one thing you can play with is the NPCs stats (of course not AC once that's established). But basically you can have your NPCs do pretty much anything you want surely?

But don't fudge the dice - just don't roll them if you want to narrate a particular outcome.

As far as mocking you - I think more likely the player just couldn't believe they got away with murder. It's always a bit disappointing when the players don't feel like the challenge they expected lived up to expectations.

The beholder could have made a save perhaps to shake off the turn undead at the end of it's turn (or you could have just narrated that it did?) and normal combat thrills resumed...

 

[alienux]

Well, there's a reason we use dice. Sometimes dice make a great character or NPC do really badly, and sometimes they make a weaker character or NPC do great things. I'd just chalk it up to this dice roll meaning that this particular death tyrant wasn't as frightening as most death tyrants would normally be. The dice just decided he either flubbed up or had a bark much worse than his bite. The next time they fight a death tyrant, they may let their guard down and find that they're in for a little more than they had with this one.

 

[iserith]

Honestly it sounds like a setting failure. I don't know the specifics of the terrain, but in my view a flying creature shouldn't be able to be cornered. I would have set the scene in a location where it could keep on moving, then return when the effect of the turn undead was done.

Further, with four players, it's only a Medium difficulty challenge unless there was some aspect of the environment that favored only the beholder (doesn't sound like it). It only gets easier with more players. It may get easier still if you've allowed Feats which I don't think the modules expect.

In any case, I can't recommend fudging. They won fair and square. The story just ends up being about how this cleric's faith is so strong that it overwhelmed a powerful creature and led to the party's ultimate victory.

 

[redrick]

I wouldn't read too much into comments overheard from a player on the phone.

Some very memorable moments for me are when player characters managed to find the "easy win" button in a supposedly hard combat and easily steamroll the opposition. By playing up how thoroughly the PCs have managed to humiliate the supposedly impossible opponent, I was able to keep the encounter to feeling too anticlimactic. Instead of an hour of tense dice rolls, we got 15 minutes of humiliated opponent trying to overcome a save or suck effect while the PCs handily took care of business. As long as you work hard at your encounters so that the PCs don't steamroll EVERY monster they fight, this can be a nice change of pace.

 

[aco175]

I admit that I have fudged a few times in the past. A few weeks ago the party was getting killed in a fight with a bunch of goblins and a giant. I knew that they were being slowly beat down by arrows and were almost out of spells. I did have a 'miss' by a giant boulder on the cleric so he could pull back and heal some others.

I also had a group of NPCs that could come and aid them if needed.

 

[Quickleaf]

I am the DM of a very fun a good group of players, running Out of the Abyss.

Last night, I my players battled a Death Tyrant beholder. They are all level 13 and 14 players. The cleric in the group acted first on initiative and turned undead right away. This poor beholder critically failed (he rolled a natural 1), and was subsequently turned as per the rules.

This made this particular battle easy as the beholder could not escape and was tucked into a corner.

What bugged me,...is later that night, i heard one of the players scoffing at the battle, telling someone on the phone, that "I went easy on them" by throwing a "cowardly beholder".

This could not be further from the truth.

He is a seasoned player, and was paying attention, so its hard to understand why he said this, from my point of view.

I wanted to have a more challenging battle myself, of course. A Death Tyrant is the most difficult beholder in the game, with a CR 14. He was a guardian in a wizards tower. By no means, was he a coward.

I can only speculate that this player wanted me to fudge the dice so the battle would be more formidable....which i understand.

Admittedly, I have fudged dice in the past. But its a tricky thing to do as DM. I want some adherence to the rules, and dont want to break them every time. Plus, the beholder rolled a critical fail, in which really I really couldn't justify fudging the saving throw for this poor beholder.

I just didnt like that one of my favorite players (he's a good guy) was mocking me, or belittling the encounter.

It gives me mixed feelings about him...

...anyone want to try to make me feel better about this? or was he right?!

Players wanting to be challenged absolutely in NO way whatsoever means they want you to fudge dice rolls. That's just a bad assumption. As a quick way to save this, you could borrow the Flameskull's Rejuvenation trait, and make the Death Tyrant come back for round 2 later on – normally this would be a cheap move, but since a wizard was powerful enough to bind the Death Tyrant's service, then maybe the wizard was powerful enough to give it Rejuvenation.

EDIT: You could even seed areas of the wizard's tower (or treasure they've taken from the wizard's tower if they've left already) with notes about the wizard's experiments to bind a deathless servitor that would return after destroyed unless special ceremony precautions were taken.

There are *good* anticlimaxes thanks to PCs clever thinking and preparation. However, simply winning initiative and using a feature built into a class since 2nd level is not one of them. This was a bad anticlimax.

To avoid bad anticlimactic situations, the 2 key questions to ask yourself during game prep are:

1. What hurt can the PCs bring to the table?
2. How can I challenge the PCs / players in this scene?

What hurt can the PCs bring to the table?
So in your Death Tyrant example, you know there's a cleric in the party and you know the Death Tyrant is undead, so you know the cleric may use Turn Undead. He or she has had access to Turn Undead since 2nd level after all. You want this to be an epic challenge. So you review what Turn Undead does...

[SECTION]Channel Divinity: Turn Undead
As an action, you present your holy Symbol and speak a prayer censuring the Undead. Each Undead that can see or hear you within 30 feet of you must make a Wisdom saving throw. If the creature fails its saving throw, it is turned for 1 minute or until it takes any damage.

A turned creature must spend its turns trying to move as far away from you as it can, and it can't willingly move to a space within 30 feet of you. It also can't take reactions. For its action, it can use only the Dash action or try to escape from an effect that prevents it from moving. If there's nowhere to move, the creature can use the Dodge action.[/SECTION]

So it needs an escape route!

But since the Death Tyrant is a nasty villain, you might want to place a bunch of minions and/or traps along its escape route that it can trigger with a bonus action (or it simply avoids by virtue of levitating). Alternately, LET it take damage from a trap, because that will break the cleric's turning. And heck, since this is a levitating beholder, why not makes its escape route vertical? Even more fun! Because it's anti-magic eye always functions, any PCs trying to pursue it with magical flight up the vertical shaft are going to have a challenge. EDIT: Sorry, confused its eye with normal beholder for a second.

Just because it gets turned, doesn't mean that it loses all of its malign cunning. Instead, it needs to adapt to a longer term strategy of survival, leading its assailants through a horrific maze in which it gets to use its Lair Actions to maximum effect.

As you can see, Turn Undead + Undead BBEG requires some changes to the way you may be used to designing dungeons.

How can I challenge the PCs / players in this scene?
One of the things I like to do for set piece encounters is to list 2-4 complications I can throw at the PCs to spice up the fight. Sometimes this might include a complication introduced specifically to make a certain strategy the PCs might take (e.g. ambush) more difficult. Sometimes this might be a wave of minions. Sometimes this might be changes to the environment that introduce hazards. Not only does this list help you keep the encounter fresh, but it also gives you a recourse when your BBEG is getting stomped.

For your Death Tyrant example...

• I want long sight lines for the Death Tyrant in this encounter, so it needs a big room, probably around 100 feet in diameter, so that with the Death Tyrant at the center, it's hard for a player to get close in one round without magic. And this allows the Death Tyrant to use its difficult terrain lair action to maximum effect. It would only be fair to provide some cover...but what if there are mirrors the Death Tyrant or its ogre minions can pivot to see around cover? Or what if it uses its spectral eye lair action?
• Hidden obstacles or grappling monsters in the intervening space. I want these obstacles/monsters to potentially stop the PCs advance on the Death Tyrant and do a little damage so it can exploit its Negative Energy Cone to maximum effect. And not just on the PCs, but turning any humanoid monster servants into zombies as well. And a CR 14 against a 14th level party should have minion monsters backing it up.
• Drop the floor out from under them. Literally. Use disintegration ray on a critical section of the floor causing massive collapse into a lower chamber. What's in the lower chamber? What (hazardous) routes can the PCs use to get back into melee range with the Death Tyrant hovering above?
• Include spiked pit traps (or other traps/hazards) that the Death Tyrant can use its telekinetic ray to drop PCs into. EDIT: Even better if the pit seals off with a spring-loaded trap door locking into place and green slime or centipede swarms begin crawling in through tiny fissures in the pit.