Fudging for fun and profit.

[Cadfan]

In general, no. Fudging can be a useful way to put a finger on the scale when random chance has dealt unusually unlikely and undesirable outcomes, but the less "swingy" your game's math is, the less you need to do it. I don't find 4e to be very swingy, so I don't do it anymore.

...actually, there's one circumstance where I would fudge a die roll these days. If the party is winning a fight, and a monster has one really cool thing he hasn't done yet, and I think that letting the monster do his cool thing will be more interesting than having him die without accomplishing it, then I might fudge to let the monster hit with his cool trick.

 

[Pickles JG]

I do occasionally, like last week when I was worried about killing one of the PCs before they had acted in the climactic fight.

I roll openly nowadays so fuidging is usually more making suboptimal targetting choices & "forgetting" to recharge powers, I seem to remember this being given as advice in the DMG too.

 

[JediSoth]

Heh...there's a similar thread over in the GitP forums.
Sometimes I fudge, sometimes I don't.

If the end result would be anti-climatic and sucktastic, like a rat gnawing on a paralyzed PC, I generally try to fudge in the PC's favor, especially if its a situation that would wreck my campaign due to pure, bad luck.

If the PC does something stupid, like an arcane caster entering melee combat with a magic warhammer-wielding dwarven vampire, I let the dice fall where they may (full attack + crit = Gallagher show with the Artificer's head in the place of a melon).

If it's the Final, Climatic battle of the campaign, I have the monsters/NPCs fight no-holds-barred: if PCs die, they die. If they live, they can revel in their triumph!

 

[Umbran]

It depends on the game/campaign I am playing. Some games call for the dice to fall where they may. Some call for a fudge here and there.

 

[The Ghost]

I'm a pretty stalwart proponent of letting the dice fall where they may. To me, a big part of the fun and excitement of the game is overcoming the challenges put in front of me. A DM who cheats in my favour is, I feel, cheating me out of the thrill of success or failure at the hand of fate.

This. 100% this.

 

[El Mahdi]

deleted

 

[billd91]

I fudge results from time to time. I probably do it less now than I used to because I've gotten a bit lax about using a screen. But with the awesome new Pathfinder GM Screen, I'm definitely going to bring it out and use it more.

 

[Umbran]

A DM who cheats in my favour is, I feel, cheating me out of the thrill of success or failure at the hand of fate.

I understand some of this (as I noted, sometimes I run a no-fudge game). However, I have a question: How did you come by the idea that the "hand of fate" is involved?

I suppose is the GM is running a published module unedited (say, in a tournament), or strictly following a formula to design encounters, I could understand this. However, in the general case the GM designed the encounter, presumably with some specific intended difficulty in mind. Clearly, the GM has a significant amount of editorial control.

What, fundamentally, is the difference between putting all of that editorial control on the back end (in the design) and taking some of it up front (at runtime)?

 

[rogueattorney]

What, fundamentally, is the difference between putting all of that editorial control on the back end (in the design) and taking some of it up front (at runtime)?

This is a good question. I think, in my case (and I agree with Kzach's post on this topic) I don't assume that the DM has put everything in the adventure to be beaten by my character now, I don't assume that the DM is perfect in his balancing of combats, and I don't assume that the DM is taking any interest in whether my character lives or dies. To a large extent, I hope that the DM has put in some challenges well beyond my character's current capabilities. I have my character act accordingly.

If my character gets whooped, I tend to assume it's more because I bit off more than I could chew than anything else, and should have looked to a non-combat solution (i.e. ran away).

 

[Merlin the Tuna]

Do you fudge the dice rolls?

Absolutely, and it seems ridiculous not to. I've had way too many encounters where the main villain -- often an Elite or Solo -- curses my d20 with the complete inability to roll above a 4. That makes for a boring fight for the players and a frustrating experience for me as a DM, since those are the big battles that have dominated my planning for the session or campaign arc. It would be stupid of me to allow that to be a dull experience out of some sense of entropic obligation.

I agree that, as a DM, you can't namby-pamby about with your dice rolls to make the players look invincible, but even fudging a roll, defense value, or HP value once or twice during an encounter doesn't look bad if you're still finishing the battle with 2 PCs barely standing and the others down a few death saves.