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

[Crimson Longinus]

How, exactly, you're reconciling an irreconcilable conflict between fudging and players being challenged? What's the point of executing smart plans, managing risks and picking your own battles, y'know, addressing the challenge, if you're doing too well enemies will get stronger, and if you're doing too poorly, DM is gonna save your gluteus maximus?

One could use fudging to enhance the chances of player's clever plan succeeding. Sometimes the players come up with something really smart, but the dice conspire to ruin it. Now such result is fine in my book, but it is also hard to argue that using fudging in such situation to let the smart plan to succeed would somehow diminish the player agency. It only becomes a problem if the GM fudges so that the players win regardless of what they do.

 

[loverdrive]

One could use fudging to enhance the chances of player's clever plan succeeding. Sometimes the players come up with something really smart, but the dice conspire to ruin it. Now such result is fine in my book, but it is also hard to argue that using fudging in such situation to let the smart plan to succeed would somehow diminish the player agency. It only becomes a problem if the GM fudges so that the players win regardless of what they do.

I'd say, if the plan can be ruined by randomness (assuming, that DM doesn't ask nor makes rolls where they're uncalled for), it's not really that smart of a plan.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I'd say, if the plan can be ruined by randomness (assuming, that DM doesn't ask nor makes rolls where they're uncalled for), it's not really that smart of a plan.

I think that is rather unreasonable standard.

 

[loverdrive]

I think that is rather unreasonable standard.

Why? There are always factors that are out of your control. Minimizing impact of those factors, having contingencies and expediently adapting when things don't go exactly as planned is pretty much what good planning means.

 

[TheSword]

Given that saves are as abstract a concept they are, what's going on at the player level is not what's going on at the character level in this scenario anyway; at the character level its probably more like "These sort of strong creatures usually seem to be able to shrug off a few things that would effect others, but it would catch up with them." The fact its three is a player level thing, and no worse than engaging with a number of other things that are fundamentally metagame.

The suggestion was that characters via players should be expected to make patterns and connections between monsters seems very odd to me in the context of legendary resistance. Even more so, when as you say it’s an abstract concept. I just disagreed that that was a good reason for legendary creatures to always have 3 doses of legendary resistance.

 

[TheSword]

Why? There are always factors that are out of your control. Minimizing impact of those factors, having contingencies and expediently adapting when things don't go exactly as planned is pretty much what good planning means.

‘no plan of operations can with any certainty reach beyond the first encounter with the enemy.’

 

[Cadence]

Why? There are always factors that are out of your control. Minimizing impact of those factors, having contingencies and expediently adapting when things don't go exactly as planned is pretty much what good planning means.

And by your previous post it still isn't a good plan unless it success with absolute certainty (since you said it isn't good if randomness has any chance at all of scuttling it).

 

[Hussar]

I voted neutral because I'm not entirely convinced by what is meant by "fudging". Simply changing numbers? At what point? I mean, we certainly fudged character generation numbers for years. And I fudged die rolls back when I played on the tabletop. Virtual tabletop makes numerical fudging more difficult, simply because most rolls are out in the open. OTOH, as DM, you can simply choose less optimal or more optimal strategies and stack the deck on the back end. End result is the same.

 

[Grendel_Khan]

Why? There are always factors that are out of your control. Minimizing impact of those factors, having contingencies and expediently adapting when things don't go exactly as planned is pretty much what good planning means.

Also, what makes for a great heist story is when something random throws a wrench in the works, and the heisters have to recalibrate to overcome it.

 

[Grendel_Khan]

I voted neutral because I'm not entirely convinced by what is meant by "fudging". Simply changing numbers? At what point? I mean, we certainly fudged character generation numbers for years. And I fudged die rolls back when I played on the tabletop. Virtual tabletop makes numerical fudging more difficult, simply because most rolls are out in the open. OTOH, as DM, you can simply choose less optimal or more optimal strategies and stack the deck on the back end. End result is the same.

I could be wrong, but if you look at the thread it seems like the element we've settled on really discussing is changing dice rolls in the moment, and maybe similar quantifiable tweaks (dropping or adding HP during the fight, etc.). But you can also do secret GM rolls in most VTTs, and some VTTs don't show clear success or failure for a roll, just the roll itself, so behind the scenes AC or hit-bonus adjustment is still totally possible.