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

[Vaalingrade]

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.

Again, it's an act of controlling the ranges of the probability, not removing it entirely. For example when a hit or a miss are fine but a crit is not.

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 disagree. Not announcing a fudge is more about how it's not important to waste time talking about it and doing so would go against the purpose of using fudges to smooth pace and end up as too much inside baseball cruft.

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.

Hence the prior discussion. If you actually talk to the players, get to know them, get to know what matters to them, you totally can tell what they think makes a good story AND that there's no need to waste their time telling them whenever I'm making up for either the incompetence of the dice or myself. If it was me, I'll gladly admit it after the fact, but I'm not going to stop the combat and loudly announce 'LETS DISCUSS HOW I CAN'T MATH'.

 

[Vaalingrade]

I mean, I’d rather just live with the results, whatever they may be.

I would absolutely rather not pay for someone else's mistake. And if they don't want to admit it, fine by me. Better than them ganking me, then berating me for not running or some other foolishness.

 

[Charlaquin]

To be clear: My point in saying “I would much rather the DM tell me they’re fudging” is not to say I actually want the DM to fudge and tell me. It’s to drive home just how much I don’t want them to fudge. As bad as it would be to say “umm… I rolled a hit, but let’s actually call it a miss…” fudging and not telling me is exactly the same thing with an added dose of dishonesty. That only makes it even worse, in my opinion.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

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.

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.

To me the GM doing so openly would ruin the immersion, and signal incompetence that they felt they were unable to fix it smoothly. Also in any hard fight after that I would be thinking whether the game will be paused to adjust the difficulty level, and remind us all that this is fake. I wouldn't want to play with a GM who would do this.

 

[TheSword]

Well, it’s pretty typical on solo monsters.

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.

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?

This is basically why the best thing a DM can do is change at least one thing about every monster or NPC they use in their games. Just one things, hp, a stat, an equipment load out, save DC… whatever they like. Just to prevent the assumption that a monster will fit a cookie cutter template from the Monster Manual with all the meta gaming entitlement that brings with it.

DMs should take ownership of the creatures and NPCs they use. It’s a DMs choice not to alter a creature as much as it is to make it stronger or weaker. No DM is a slave to stats.

If a player ever expected a monster’s stats to be a particular way, because that’s what the Monster Manual says I would very quickly disabuse them of that assumption.

 

[Charlaquin]

To me the GM doing so openly would ruin the immersion,

Again, I don’t think D&D is so immersive that this would make a significant difference.

and signal incompetence that they felt they were unable to fix it smoothly.

As opposed to hiding the exact same incompetence and inability to fix it smoothly.

Also in any hard fight after that I would be thinking whether the game will be paused to adjust the difficulty level, and remind us all that this is fake. I wouldn't want to play with a GM who would do this.

I already know it’s fake. And, yes, I would also rather play with a DM who wouldn’t do this. But, as much as I would dislike playing with a DM who did this, I would dislike playing with a DM who fudged in secret even more. That’s my point.

 

[Charlaquin]

This is basically why the best thing a DM can do is change at least one thing about every monster or NPC they use in their games. Just one things, hp, a stat, an equipment load out, save DC… whatever they like. Just to prevent the assumption that a monster will fit a cookie cutter template from the Monster Manual with all the meta gaming entitlement that brings with it.

DMs should take ownership of the creatures and NPCs they use. It’s a DMs choice not to alter a creature as much as it is to make it stronger or weaker. No DM is a slave to stats.

If a player ever expected a monster’s stats to be a particular way, because that’s what the Monster Manual says I would very quickly disabuse them of that assumption.

I mean, I do change things about monsters - I primarily use custom monsters. I also don’t see anything at all wrong with players recognizing patterns in the design and acting accordingly. Seems very realistic to me that a group of people who are constantly fighting monsters would come to recognize commonalities in certain monsters behaviors and develop counter-strategies.

 

[Vaalingrade]

As opposed to hiding the exact same incompetence and inability to fix it smoothly.

Fi they just fudged and no one made a big deal about it, it would have been fixed smoothly.

 

[Cadence]

Fi they just fudged and no one made a big deal about it, it would have been fixed smoothly.

*If

(Sorry, couldn't resist disrupting the smoothness. Makes everyone feel better, right?)

:-(

 

[TheSword]

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.

It absolutely can be yes. There are lots of secrets DMs keep to be pro-player:

• Reveals that would be inconsequential now but when accumulated pay off big at the end.
• Challenges that if the players knew about them in advance would be trivial.
• Events that if foreknown by players would cause them to act in an unrealistic or unsatisfying way.
• Events regarding other players that aren’t your secrets to tell.

The problem with the overt tinkering you describe in the quote is that once you’ve done it that way, and it’s on the table as an option then not providing it the next time is destructive. If it’s not overt then you can use your discretion.

The DM decides for you what will make a good story every time they stock a dungeon. Every time they decide one of the orcs will be a chieftain, have double hp, a magic great axe and four higher points of Str and Con.

The fact is you probably won’t know your DM is keeping the secret and your DM definitely isn’t going to tell after reading the posts so let’s all smile and nod and pretend all is normal.