Do you "save" the PCs?

[Fifth Element]

Why shouldn't the DM change the ability scores, race, class, sex I have chosen?
Why shouldn't the DM change my character from 1st level to 30th, or vice-versa?
Why shouldn't the DM drop an asteroid for an extinction-event TPK?
Why shouldn't the DM have my player's spells randomly produce almost anything -- from a rabbit to tapioca pudding -- except what they are supposed to?

Why shouldn't the DM "save" the PCs?
It's the same fundamental answer.

I know you're hyperbolizing for effect, but these situations are not remotely the same thing as the fudging that has been the topic of this thread for 38 pages now. If you think these items are on the same scale as fudging a die roll once in a while, it's no wonder you don't seem to grasp my argument.

It's essentially a slippery slope fallacy - if you save a PC once from a bad die roll, you may as well just do everything by fiat. But it is possible to fudge a die roll, for instance, without then making every decision that way.

("We're" in the general sense of people in the thread, by the way.)

 

[Fifth Element]

And, how does changing a monster's die roll have anything to do with the player's controlling the action? The players have no control here either way. Whether their fate is left to the dice or to the DM, at no point are they masters of their own fate. Barring, of course, game mechanics like in Mutants and Masterminds which explicitly give them this power.

But, "I'm going to reduce the damage here so that the PC is at -5 hp instead of flat out dead" has nothing to do with player control over the action.

Indeed. Say you fudge one out of every 100 rolls, just for argument's sake. Does this tiny change have any real effect on how the players control their actions, or indeed play the game? You can "let the players play the game" and still fudge because you only fudge things they don't have any control over anyway.

DM fiat or random die roll, it's the same thing to the people on the other side of the screen.

 

[Hussar]

Ariosto's reply highlights what bugs me about this thread. As Fifth Element so rightly points out, no one in this thread is saying that fudging is 100% good 100% of the time.

Just like anything, you can use fudging badly. Of course you can. There are anecdotes in this thread that show that it can be bad.

What blows my mind is this total unwillingness to accept even the possibility that it could be good. Raven Crowking flat out states that it is 100% wrong. Ariosto has compared it to blowing up your campaign with an asteroid. I'm sure there are other examples.

It would really, really help if people could dial back the hyperbole just a smidgeon and accept that other people are perfectly capable of judging their own games. Like I said, I don't actually fudge the die rolls in my game. But I'm certainly not going to say that I never change things in other ways. Monsters dying before the dice decree they should, for example, just to speed along a combat that is already in the bag is fudging.

And one that I have done, will do and will likely always do.

 

[Ariosto]

I know you're hyperbolizing for effect, but these situations are not remotely the same thing as the fudging that has been the topic of this thread for 38 pages now.

That's your opinion!

It's a very spiffy and cozy and even "natural" opinion, I am sure, for one accustomed to holding it closely.

It is not incumbent on anyone else to hold it, though.

As I wrote, the fundamental reason a DM "should not" do A, G, P or Z is the same.

That is most definitely not "the slippery slope fallacy" -- although your rhetoric about "ignoring the polar bear rule" somehow making it okay to fudge combat dice sure looks like that!

Come on, now. This is really quite simple, if you will choose not to go out of your way to complicate it with sophistry.

Is there anything in that "hyperbole" that you would want the DM not to do? Why? If not, then is there anything a DM could do that would be a problem because you do not want to play that kind of game?

If there is not, then what the heck is your vested interest in "fudging" in the first place?! If it doesn't matter, then it doesn't matter.

Your logical problem lies in mistaking the peculiarities of your personal preference for some sort of universal truth.

Now, I still can't make head or tail of what you think you are talking about. I, however, am talking about the subject of the thread as stipulated in the first post on the first page.

 

[Fifth Element]

That's your opinion!

I'm sorry, but no. Pretending that a monster rolled a 10 on his attack instead of a 17 at times is not in the same ballpark as suddenly changing a character's ability scores or having the world blow up all of a sudden. It's not in the same universe.

As a player, you may dislike it to the same degree, I suppose, but in all other ways they are drastically different things.

[Edited to remove potentially antagonistic post, which Doug seems to have given me XP for already...]

 

[Fifth Element]

Monsters dying before the dice decree they should, for example, just to speed along a combat that is already in the bag is fudging.

And one that I have done, will do and will likely always do.

I'm fond of that one as well, because it removes a bit of grind and as such increases the fun factor. If there's a few baddies left sometimes I'll take a healing surge off of everyone to simulate the few hit points they probably would have lost if they had fought it out.

Edit: Just noticed Hussar's post doesn't necessarily means he just asks the players if they want to skip to the end of the fight, as I assumed. He could just be pretending the monsters had fewer hit points than the piece of paper said they did. I've done that as well.

It doesn't follow the rules, but I know my players appreciate getting back into the important stuff and leaving the clean-up duty behind.

 

[Ariosto]

Just like anything, you can use fudging badly. Of course you can.

If only we could all turn to you to tell us when to "fudge".

Obviously, I in fact cannot "use fudging badly" if do not use it at all. That is not the problem is it? No, the problem is that I am "of course" wrong not to fudge.

Ariosto has compared it to blowing up your campaign with an asteroid.

I'm guessing that's also "of course" wrong, because Hussar so decrees?

 

[Fifth Element]

No, the problem is that I am "of course" wrong not to fudge.

No, you're not, and I've certainly never said so. I don't think Hussar has either. In fact, his writing that we should "accept that other people are perfectly capable of judging their own games" indicated very clearly he's not arguing that.

Perhaps I'm misremembering due to the great amount of back-and-forth in this thread, but in my mind I've put you in Raven Crowking's camp, who asserted that it is wrong for anyone to fudge. If I shouldn't be attributing that argument to you, my apologies.

My argument is solely that fudging is not inherently wrong. That if it improves your enjoyment of the game, you should do it. From this, it follows that if fudging is not right for your game, you should not do it.

 

[Ariosto]

It doesn't follow the rules, but I know my players appreciate getting back into the important stuff and leaving the clean-up duty behind.

So? You keep arguing that it doesn't matter what we prefer -- so how is it anything but moot in that case? If your players happened to disagree with you, and agree with us, then would they not be just as obviously wrong on the same basis?

 

[Fifth Element]

So? You keep arguing that it doesn't matter what we prefer -- so how is it anything but moot in that case? If your players happened to disagree with you, and agree with us, then would they not be just as obviously wrong on the same basis?

Say what? If my players disagreed with me, then fudging would not be good for my game, and I wouldn't do it. I'm not the only person playing in my game.

You're not wrong to not fudge, you're wrong to suggest that it's wrong that I fudge. Again, if that's not your position (for it was Raven Crowking's), I apologize.