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

[Crimson Longinus]

I sometimes fudge the world, but not combat. If I rolled a random encounter like six hostile werewolves when my party is already badly wounded, I absolutely will fudge and roll again. Or just make up something myself.

But once combat or a skill challenge starts? Whatever happens is what happens. I don't know why that space is sacred compared to only moments prior, but it is for me.

I'm sure a lot of people feel the same way, it kinda feels like that to me as well. Though I really can't muster any particularly logical argument why this distinction actually would or should matter.

 

[Charlaquin]

I sometimes fudge the world, but not combat. If I rolled a random encounter like six hostile werewolves when my party is already badly wounded, I absolutely will fudge and roll again. Or just make up something myself.

But once combat or a skill challenge starts? Whatever happens is what happens. I don't know why that space is sacred compared to only moments prior, but it is for me.

If I may offer a suggesaction: the difference to me is that what happens during combat is something the players can affect with their decisions, whereas what random encounter they face is not. By fudging in combat, you rob the players of their agency. It’s not really their win or loss, if you pick the result regardless of what they do. Conversely, what monster they randomly bump into was never their choice to begin with, so whether it’s decided randomly or you consciously choose, it doesn’t really make a difference to their experience.

 

[iserith]

Again.

You've 'randomly generated' an encounter with 6 hostile werewolves. The PCs are 4th level, lack any silver or magical weapons, and have no effective magic to stop them. They have been working well together, have bought into your campaign and are having fun. The last campaign ended with a TPK, and the players were unhappy and took some time off from gaming afterwards.

At present they are holed up in a room, badly injured, with only one way in or out (so the way the lycanthropes are coming from), desperately attempting to Short Rest.

It is self evidently a certain TPK.

Do you proceed with the randomly generated encounter, or ignore the roll and select a more appropriate one, that doesn't result in a TPK?

Which is it?

Again, I disagree with the premise on its face and also choose option C as I stated above. I'm not rolling on a table where I can't abide by any of the results. That violates a GM principle for me, so your example will just never arise in a game that I run.

You can either accept that as my considered answer or keep posting some version of your example and declare that I'm obfuscating without end.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I agree with this and I want to add a secondary point. While not all types of fudging require rolling behind a screen, some do. I find that rolling in the open has benefits for its own sake that are lost if you roll behind a screen in order to be able to fudge.

I just dislike having the screen there, honestly. Not enough table space for all my other stuff, and then it’s in the way constantly. Maybe if screens were half as tall, I’d like them.

But I also just would rather eliminate as much of the implicit divide between DM and players as possible.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Yeah, he said it on this site too. I'm fine with judging the advice without considering the source, but if something is possibly being presented as an authoritative source, it's good to know a little more about that authority.

Yeah, well put.

oof.

 

[Flamestrike]

Again, I disagree with the premise on its face and also choose option C as I stated above.

Groan.

OK, you select a 'random' encounter for your PCs instead of rolling, and throw it at them. A bunch of mindless Zombies shamble into the room, as a portcullis drops, trapping the PCs in the room. The encounter is supposed to be a medium difficulty encounter, to spice up an otherwise quiet session. The campaign has been going really well, the players have all gelled, are working together well as a team, and have bought into your campaign. You all have great chemistry and the last campaign ended with a disappointing TPK, which was nearly the end of the group.

Your dice are on fire. You roll natural 20 after natural 20. One by one the PCs drop, and they continue to roll poorly. The mood at the table is grim. The Paladin stands grimly over the bodies of his downed comrades, down to 1 HP, but he has a smite remaining, and is facing an equally badly wounded Zombie (the last monster standing). He also has enough lay on hands remaining to stabilise the rest of the party.

You go before him, roll an attack behind your screen, and it's a natural 20. If the result stands, it's a certain TPK, in an encounter not connected to the story, and through no fault of the players.

Do you TPK the party, or fudge the roll?

 

[Crimson Longinus]

If I may offer a suggesaction: the difference to me is that what happens during combat is something the players can affect with their decisions, whereas what random encounter they face is not. By fudging in combat, you rob the players of their agency. It’s not really their win or loss, if you pick the result regardless of what they do. Conversely, what monster they randomly bump into was never their choice to begin with, so whether it’s decided randomly or you consciously choose, it doesn’t really make a difference to their experience.

That's actually a fair point. This would also apply to the GM inventing allies that come to help the PCs or anything like that. And I'm not sure how this would apply to solving out of combat problems in a situation where the GM improvises a lot of the environment. It starts to get pretty muddy.

Though I wouldn't characterise the sort of fudging people have said they use in these threads as "picking the result regardless of what the PCs do." It seems to be mostly about mitigating extreme streaks of bad luck. (Perhaps d20 system simply is more swingy than some people like?)

 

[Flamestrike]

In that scenario, I wouldn’t roll the dice at all. I’d just pick a different encounter from the table in the first place.

So you would ignore the requirement to roll on the random monster table and instead just arbitrarily select a result?

How is that different from rolling the dice and ignoring the result and instead arbitrarily selecting a result?

 

[Cadence]

By lying about the result of the dice roll? No, thank you. I don’t care if the DM thinks it will make the experience better for me, that shouldn’t be their call to make. I don’t like being lied to.

Are they telling you the die roll was something it wasn't (which seems to meet the definition of a lie to me), or are they saying hit or miss (which is something the rules explicitly empower them to do and we're calling fudging on here - just like your ignoring a random encounter roll). You might hate it as much as a lie, but I think a lot of people on here would rather you didn't brand them liars for playing the game the rules say they are fully welcome to.

If I may offer a suggesaction: the difference to me is that what happens during combat is something the players can affect with their decisions, whereas what random encounter they face is not. By fudging in combat, you rob the players of their agency. It’s not really their win or loss, if you pick the result regardless of what they do. Conversely, what monster they randomly bump into was never their choice to begin with, so whether it’s decided randomly or you consciously choose, it doesn’t really make a difference to their experience.

It feels like in @iserith 's game and in many modules that the players do have some control over what wandering monsters they run into, since the monsters occur at given time intervals (or if they're noisy or what not). And further that the monster are at a discoverable difficulty level, just like BAB bonuses are, for example.

 

[iserith]

Groan.

OK, you select a 'random' encounter for your PCs instead of rolling, and throw it at them. A bunch of mindless Zombies shamble into the room, as a portcullis drops, trapping the PCs in the room. The encounter is supposed to be a medium difficulty encounter, to spice up an otherwise quiet session. The campaign has been going really well, the players have all gelled, are working together well as a team, and have bought into your campaign. You all have great chemistry and the last campaign ended with a disappointing TPK, which was nearly the end of the group.

Your dice are on fire. You roll natural 20 after natural 20. One by one the PCs drop, and they continue to roll poorly. The mood at the table is grim. The Paladin stands grimly over the bodies of his downed comrades, down to 1 HP, but he has a smite remaining, and is facing an equally badly wounded Zombie (the last monster standing). He also has enough lay on hands remaining to stabilise the rest of the party.

You go before him, roll an attack behind your screen, and it's a natural 20. If the result stands, it's a certain TPK, in an encounter not connected to the story, and through no fault of the players.

Do you TPK the party, or fudge the roll?

My campaigns don't "end with disappointing TPKs" that are "nearly the end of the group." I don't roll behind a screen. I don't have a "story" except what might emerge incidentally through play. And I don't fudge rolls.