D&D General How do players feel about DM fudging?

[Charlaquin]

Well I think you absolutely should use legendary resistance sparingly because if every monster had it, it would definitely diminish casters fun.

Well, it’s pretty typical on solo monsters.

I find it an odd concept that you make a distinction between custom creatures and stock creatures. To the PCs and particularly the characters they are all just creatures. It’s bad enough that experienced players are meta enough to know the difference but for us as DMs to treat them differently is odd to me.

You said presumably I choose the number of uses of legendary resistance the monsters have. But, no, I don’t choose that, unless it’s a monster I custom-made.

I certainly would never expect the players to assume a creature has 3 uses of legendary resistance because other creatures did. That seems like pretty bad meta gaming to me, just asking to be disabused.

Even if I cared about metagaming this seems like the most inane case of it I can possibly imagine. Why on earth would this matter to anyone at all?

 

[Maxperson]

You keep referring to this awful advice in the 5e DMG like it's something we should actually listen to.

Well, sorry: just because something's written in the DMG doesn't make it right. Designers, writers, editors - they're all quite capable of mistakes; and have made one here.

I'm referring to it like it's officially endorsed by WotC, which it is. Listen to it or not, it's not cheating to do.

 

[Charlaquin]

Sometimes you want a range that isn't as extreme as those the dice give, so you dummy out some parts of that range. Hence, fudge.

DMs and players have a lot of tools to mitigate the swingyness of the roll. Again, if that’s not enough, I don’t think it’s appropriate to call for a dice roll. The dice are for when you want the outcome to be decided by uncaring probability rather than a partial arbiter.

 

[Charlaquin]

I generally don't want the DM to fudge. But I don't want to have my character killed for no reason.
Sometimes the DM misjudges difficulty of an encounter or there isnextreme bad luck happening.
Then I expect some way out, even if that was not planned ahead of time. That does not mean I want a win, but at least a chance to retreat or surrender.

Personally, if an encounter turns out to be much harder than I had meant for it to be, I just tell the players so, openly and honestly. “Hey, sorry everybody, I badly underestimated the difficulty of that encounter. Do you all want to take a mulligan on that one?”

As a player, I would much rather the DM do that, rather than secretly changing the results of rolls, or HP or AC numbers. Again, if you felt the need to hide it, then you knew I wouldn’t like it if I knew you we’re doing it. So don’t do it.

 

[LordEntrails]

Lots of times I don't particularly have anything written down as DM and am winging it ("expletive, I wasn't planning on them going there... what will be there"). Obviously in those cases what I decide to put in is related to their health and things. What makes that materially different than fudging by upping/downing the hitpoints of something in a room that they are getting to? Is that much different in effect than fudging?

To me it is. In both impromptu and planned encounters, you are estimating wat will be a fun encounter. Fudging is changing that part way through the encounter. To me, its not having faith in the players being able to account for their current situation and adapting to it.

So, you plan a CR 12 Deadly encounter yet when the party reaches it they are spent, it is there job to know they can't handle it and to avoid it or retreat or deal with it in another way. No need for you to remove their agency and the importance of their choices (good or bad) by fudging.

In an impromptu encounter you decide a CR 10 moderate encounter is appropriate and not a CR12 Deadly.

In both cases you are making a plan based upon your current information. In both cases you might be right or wrong as to how hard it will be. But in both cases the party is presented with a challenge and gets to deal wit it appropriately.

Should the answers to all of those be written down before the combat starts to avoid having to decide on the spur of the moment when influenced by how it is going? Is not doing so much different in effect than fudging?

No. You are making rulings, not adjusting a plan just to accommodate die rolls.

If the problem is swinginess of dice, is it bad if the DM either has some fixed rule to ameliorate it (will have monsters have possible fumbles but not crits if party is doing bad, and vice versa if good) or have a DM pool of inspiration (one per session? two per session) to balance things out? Is that too fudgey?

Fixed rules are fine. If you don't need a die roll, don't roll one. DM inspiration? Well, imo if it is to help out the party, then that's bad. Because once again you are removing player agency and the importance of their good and bad decisions.

So, question - did the GMs who made you feel this way discuss using these techniques before play began?

It's happened more than once. But no, they did not. Because like many in this thread, they thought fudging to increase fun was part of their toolkit and felt no need to explain it. Just like most DM's would not bother to pre-explain that they might use random encounters or random treasure generation, why would pre-discussing fudging be needed?

(Not that I agree, but that is the viewpoint it usually comes down to.)

I will say when I start a campaign that I do discuss it. That I generally I don't fudge, or insure that they can beat every encounter through combat, or that they are going to "win" every situation. That I plan to lay out situations, and react to their actions with what it seems logical for the factions to do, come what may - within expectations that in general they will be the heroes of the story.

 

[Charlaquin]

It's weird how the general vibe is that the DM is the main character who gets to do whatever they want because 'DMing is hard' and apparently not voluntary, but the second they do something pro-player and pro-story, they're a cheating scumbag who deserves all sorts of random insults.

Keeping secrets from the players is not pro-player, and deciding to change the results of rolls unilaterally without player input is only pro-the-story-the-DM-wants-to-tell. I’m not opposed to the idea of the DM saying, “hey, I just crit you three times in a row. That feels pretty awful, do you want to call that last one a miss?” because then it’s MY decision as the player. I don’t want the DM deciding for me what I’m going to think makes for a good story, and I ESPECIALLY don’t want them keeping it a secret from me that they’re doing so.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Personally, if an encounter turns out to be much harder than I had meant for it to be, I just tell the players do, openly and honestly. “Hey, sorry everybody, I badly underestimated the difficulty of that encounter. Do you all want to take a mulligan on that one?”

As a player, I would absolutely hate that.

As a player, I would much rather the DM do that, rather than secretly changing the results of rolls, or HP or AC numbers. Again, if you felt the need to hide it, then you knew I wouldn’t like it if I knew you we’re doing it. So don’t do it.

Fudging or TPK are both preferable for intentionally ruining the illusion of the reality like that.

 

[Xetheral]

As a player, I would much rather the DM do that, rather than secretly changing the results of rolls, or HP or AC numbers. Again, if you felt the need to hide it, then you knew I wouldn’t like it if I knew you we’re doing it. So don’t do it.

As a player I'd prefer that the DM hide fudging from me, even though I'm totally fine with the DM fudging. In other words, I'm fine knowing that the DM fudges in the abstract, but I'd prefer not to know which specific things were fudged, just as I prefer not to know which content was improvised and which content was pre-planned.

 

[Charlaquin]

As a player, I would absolutely hate that.

I mean, I’d rather just live with the results, whatever they may be. But if the DM feels guilty about accidentally making the fight harder than they meant to, being honest about it is better than deceiving the players, IMO.

Fudging or TPK are both preferable for intentionally ruining the illusion of the reality like that.

D&D is not such a convincing illusion to me that this would make a meaningful difference. I know the DM (or the author of the module) planned the encounter (or seeded the random encounter table). I know they are an imperfect human being who sometimes makes mistakes. I know they are trying to make an enjoyable gameplay experience for all of us. If they messed up in doing so and want to fix it, I would rather they own up to the mistake and have a human conversation about what to do about it than try to go behind my back and rob me of an organic gameplay experience without my knowledge or consent.

 

[Charlaquin]

As a player I'd prefer that the DM hide fudging from me, even though I'm totally fine with the DM fudging. In other words, I'm fine knowing that the DM fudges in the abstract, but I'd prefer not to know which specific things were fudged, just as I prefer not to know which content was improvised and which content was pre-planned.

Sounds to me like you wouldn’t like the fudging if you knew it was happening. Personally, I think it would be very disrespectful of your preferences then to do it and hide it from you.