D&D 5E To fudge or not to fudge: that is the question

[iserith]

That's a very honest way of doing it, and I'll bet many players would appreciate knowing. Transparency between DM and Player is a great way to build trust. I've recently stopped fudging entirely, as I've started an open policy. I use Roll20 so all my rolls are in the open, and I even go so far as to tell players the AC of monsters after a few attacks and the DC of checks beforehand so they can have more information for their decisions. I give out perks to players for playing to their characters personality and mannerisms instead of always taking the most optimal approaches, and they seem to enjoy it. Not for every group, but I'm glad mine is full of good friends.

Same here. I have the macros show the monster AC so that we don't have to stop to hear someone say "Hit" or "Miss" and monster hit point bars and names are visible to players.

 

[Pvt. Winslow]

Same here. I have the macros show the monster AC so that we don't have to stop to hear someone say "Hit" or "Miss" and monster hit point bars and names are visible to players.

It sounds like we have a similar style, as I show hp and names as well. Though I admit, I tried a few techniques after reading some of your suggestions in past threads, so I'm not one to take credit. Haha.

 

[iserith]

It sounds like we have a similar style, as I show hp and names as well. Though I admit, I tried a few techniques after reading some of your suggestions in past threads, so I'm not one to take credit. Haha.

Haha. It got to where Roll20 was so useful with some of this stuff that I even use it for in-person games. I haven't seen an actual die in years!

 

[Pvt. Winslow]

Haha. It got to where Roll20 was so useful with some of this stuff that I even use it for in-person games. I haven't seen an actual die in years!

Roll20 let's me play with my friends who've all moved to various cities throughout the years so I'll always be grateful for finding out about it.

I suppose I could mention for the sake of the discussion that since I use Roll20, fudging is possible but a lot more difficult than when you're behind a DM screen. The extra hassle might have had something to do with me ditching the concept, but I definitely don't regret it.

 

[Cody C. Lewis]

Haha. It got to where Roll20 was so useful with some of this stuff that I even use it for in-person games. I haven't seen an actual die in years!

I know right?

Without a doubt, Roll20, is the single reason I have the ability to game.

Without Roll20, I would not have been able to go down this rabbit-hole, and TTRPGs would be nothing more than a fond memory for me right now.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Since when does the player decide if he should roll for something? Isn't it the job of the DM to say if he should, or should not roll for his charisma attempt?

In which case, as Iserith pointed out, you simply don't ask for a roll, and declare it a failure.

Yes, but by that same token, people have repeatedly given the reversed case as though it is an impeccable argument in favor of fudging: the "success would be way more interesting/cooler/funner/awesomer, but I asked for a roll and it failed" examples. If success is so clearly, obviously better and more interesting than failure, why even bother with a roll that you will ignore if it doesn't go the way you want it to go? If "obvious failure means you shouldn't even ask for a roll" holds true, then I see little to no reason why "obvious success" shouldn't do the same. I can certainly say that I feel pretty damned good when I present my case to the DM so well, he (or she, though I've not yet had a female DM) simply says, "Sure, that's what happens."

This is a poor example. Here is a good one: The players fight against an enemy which they should be able to defeat with ease. But due to insanely bad luck, the players keep rolling 1's, and the DM keeps rolling 20's for his monsters. The players are starting to get annoyed, and clearly feel that this isn't fair.

Now you could just roll with it, and accept the fact that your group of players gets absolutely butchered in an encounter that they should have been able to handle. And that's a perfectly fine way to handle it. Some DM's play this way, and I have nothing against that.

Or, you could change some of those crits to normal hits. This is something that I'm not against either. I've done it on rare occasion.

But in order to make it a good example, you must overstate your case. A DM rolling 20 after 20 after 20, while players roll 1 after 1 after 1, is an incredible statistical improbability. If we're talking just two DM-run creatures vs. a party of four PCs, the odds of even two rounds where this occurs would be (.05)^((4+2)*2) = .05^12 = 0.000000000000000244140625, or approximately 1 in four quadrillion (4,096,000,000,000,000 to be precise). Even if all of the 7.5 billion-ish people on the planet participated in a thousand two-round combats a day, every day, that would be (4.096 quadrillion/((7.5 billion/5 players)*1000 games/day*365.25 days/year) = ~7.48 years of playing, just to expect one combat that was that bad.

Now, let's take your example and tone it down--to simply "all four PCs miss all their attacks, which they have a 60% chance of landing, and the DM crits with all four of the attacks made by the creatures." That would be a miss chance of p=0.4, so we'd have (.4)^8*(.05)^4 = 0.000000004096 (I swear I didn't plan that!), or approximately 1 in 244,140,625. I think it's safe to assume that that number is bigger than the total number of all games ever played in any dice-based gaming system (particularly since it's slightly over three-quarters of the current US population!) Even if every campaign had a thousand instances of "two consecutive rounds of combat with this many participants" (which sounds like a buttload of fights, since even 4e only expected ~300 combats to reach maximum level), that's still 244,000 campaigns just to get an expected value of one two-round situation like this weakened case.

In other words: Something so severe where fudging is necessary, where no one is at fault and the dice are purely responsible, is so statistically unlikely, even over the course of an individual gamer's entire lifetime, that I feel completely justified in dismissing it as a valid example. Yes, it could happen--just like I could be struck by lightning on the same day as buying the winning lottery ticket (if I ever bought any). But the odds are low enough to be negligible. In fact, I think it's actually quite unlikely that it ever has happened to anyone in this conversation, even if 50 posters have participated at any point. In fact, a calculation: p(hasn't happened to any of us) ≈ (1-0.000000004096)^50 ≈ 0.9999997952, meaning the inverse--that it has happened to at least one of us--is about 1 in 4.9 million

The much, much more likely scenario is that the GM, the players, or both are at least as much "at fault" for the bad situation happening. At which point, I would argue that the more useful response, in the long run, is to use it as a learning exercise, instead of handwaving it away. The DM needs to think about how they design and employ combats. This may mean weakening or eliminating combats that have not yet happened, employing unwise but context-appropriate enemy tactics, playing enemy creatures more cautiously and having them retreat more often, etc. For those times where a fight doesn't pan out as quite the climactic battle you wanted, you should instead have prepared items "waiting in the wings" so to speak--perhaps extra soldiers who were ordered to stay out of the fight, but rush in when seeing their commander "at death's door"; or giving an awesome boss a "NOW YOU SHALL SEE MY TRUE FORM" ability that triggers on reaching 0 HP; or giving most bosses a health potion they can quaff as a reaction (and simply choosing not to use it when you, as DM, don't think it necessary--again, "unwise but context-appropriate tactics"). Similarly, the players need to think about whether they're managing resources and risks as well as they could be--and whether they're employing sound strategic thinking. Knowing their abilities, knowing wise strategies (e.g. "better to deal damage and let your ally bleed on the ground for a round, than to spend a spell healing and delay the damage-dealing that much longer"), preparing for dangerous situations, having known simple attack plans the group can employ (which can be a delightful RP opportunity as well!).

So...again, I don't see any situations where fudging is necessary unless one or more participants "made a mistake" (in the sense of pursuing an enjoyable situation). I believe that it is better for all people involved to face those "mistakes" and learn from them, so that the enjoyable situation flows naturally from the choices made. Does that mean DMs shouldn't, for example, make preparations for the possibility that the group has "failed"? Not at all! The DM would absolutely be wise to always consider, "What would happen if there's a TPK? Will it actually be the party's deaths, or will it be something else? How can I raise the stakes after a TPK, so that the players still fear 'dying,' without ending their characters' stories prematurely?" These are extremely useful questions to ask, and any answers you come to are just another form of DM preparation for things failing to go to plan--a skill I think every DM has to hone at some point.

 

[Maxperson]

But in order to make it a good example, you must overstate your case. A DM rolling 20 after 20 after 20, while players roll 1 after 1 after 1, is an incredible statistical improbability. If we're talking just two DM-run creatures vs. a party of four PCs, the odds of even two rounds where this occurs would be (.05)^((4+2)*2) = .05^12 = 0.000000000000000244140625, or approximately 1 in four quadrillion (4,096,000,000,000,000 to be precise). Even if all of the 7.5 billion-ish people on the planet participated in a thousand two-round combats a day, every day, that would be (4.096 quadrillion/((7.5 billion/5 players)*1000 games/day*365.25 days/year) = ~7.48 years of playing, just to expect one combat that was that bad.

You're taking what he said too literally. In a single compbat I've seen multiple 1's happen on the player side of things while multiple criticals happened on the DM side of things. They don't have to happen sequentially. Every roll doesn't have to result in one. Heck, the players don't even have to roll 1's. Misses are sufficient. It happens, albeit rarely. For me, since my campaigns are once a week for 1.5 years or so, I see it happen anywhere from 2-4 times a campaign.

 

[Shardstone]

I do fudge. Sometimes I fudge to speed something up, because otherwise it'll take too much time. I fudge because I want something to feel deadly and it isn't because I've miscalculated. I fudge because sometimes my players do something amazing, so I enhance what they did so that way they feel enabled and powerful. Fudge is a tool that, much like railroading, has great uses, amazing versatility, and will ruin a game if not handled properly.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

You're taking what he said too literally. In a single compbat I've seen multiple 1's happen on the player side of things while multiple criticals happened on the DM side of things. They don't have to happen sequentially. Every roll doesn't have to result in one. Heck, the players don't even have to roll 1's. Misses are sufficient. It happens, albeit rarely. For me, since my campaigns are once a week for 1.5 years or so, I see it happen anywhere from 2-4 times a campaign.

Well, I kinda recognized that the stated case was too extreme, hence why I considered a second case that was much less extreme--merely 4 consecutive crits from the DM, and 8 consecutive misses from the party...exactly like you asked for. I'm not sure how I failed to meet your requirements! In fact, since most combats are longer than 2 rounds, even in 5e, you can instead consider that to be non-consecutive ones in a single combat, of say 3-4 rounds--the statistics shouldn't meaningfully change if all other attacks are "average." That you have, in fact, actually seen any combats that were THAT bad, let alone 2-4 per campaign, is eyebrow-raising--and, again, makes me think there is something else going on besides "100% pure double-distilled luck."

I could probably get into some more complex, multi-part binomial statistics, which, sure, would increase the odds (since the DM needs to merely get at least 4 crits in, say, 8 attacks, while the party needs at least 8 misses in 16 attacks). But it's still going to be a hyper-rare event, because of that "lots of DM crits" thing. "At least 4 crits out of 8 DM attacks" has a binomial probability of p₁=0.00037175, while "at least 8 PC misses out of 16 attacks, 40% miss chance" has only a p₂=0.28394. The odds of two independent events happening together is the product of their probabilities, so p₁*p₂ = 0.00037175*0.28394 = 0.00010555, or approximately 1 in 9,474. With weekly sessions for 1.5 years, and an expected value of 3 of these events per campaign, you'd need to have (3*9474)/(1.5*52) = ~364 four-round combats per session to achieve that expected value.

But if the game is so fragile that just one round being unusually unlucky is enough to doom the party...well, again, I'd argue that there's something wrong here that fudging doesn't fix. In that case, it would be "the game system isn't designed to handle its own probability distribution," which is (IMO) a serious and condemnable design flaw.

[Edit: For fairness, I ran the same numbers, e.g. miss chance of 40% for four PCs vs. two monsters over the course of 4 rounds, but with just "one round's worth" of crits on the DM's side (e.g. 2 crits) and misses on the players' side (4 misses). Probability is approximately 1 in 18.69--slightly more common than rolling any individual crit. Events at least this severe, or worse, would happen approximately (78/18.69) = ~4 times per average 1.5 year campaign, if there's only one combat per session on average. I suspect actual practice is going to be more like 3-4 average combats per session, so an average campaign should have around 15 of these events--roughly one per month. If a game system is so fragile, it causes divergent, party-killing issues once every four sessions or so, that's bad and should be fixed. And if it's not so bad that fudging is required if you want to fix it, I don't see how you can argue that my above, toned-down example is not precisely what is being asked for--and still sufficiently uncommon as to be not particularly worth considering.]

 

[Maxperson]

Well, I kinda recognized that the stated case was too extreme, hence why I considered a second case that was much less extreme--merely 4 consecutive crits from the DM, and 8 consecutive misses from the party...exactly like you asked for. I'm not sure how I failed to meet your requirements! In fact, since most combats are longer than 2 rounds, even in 5e, you can instead consider that to be non-consecutive ones in a single combat, of say 3-4 rounds--the statistics shouldn't meaningfully change if all other attacks are "average." That you have, in fact, actually seen any combats that were THAT bad, let alone 2-4 per campaign, is eyebrow-raising--and, again, makes me think there is something else going on besides "100% pure double-distilled luck."

Whoah! Whoah! Whoah! Settle down Tex. I never asked for or required anything, let alone consecutive crits and misses.

It doesn't take consecutive crits and misses to wipe a party due to bad luck. It just takes more crits than usual combined with more misses than usual. That's it. All the good planning in the world is bupkis if that happens. And yes, it happens 2-4 times per campaign on average. Sometimes more. I don't remember it being less.

I also frequently run encounters with more than 2 monsters or monsters that have many attacks. Running sims with only two monsters on the DM's side is being very, very chintzy with the real number of attacks that are going to be directed at the PCs over the course of an encounter and campaign.