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

[Mort]

have strict rules on when I fudge and to what degree. They favor no player over another and never favor me. That's impartial.

I'm actually quite curious about this.

Firstly from a definitional point: If there are strict rules then (known to the players or not) it's not really fudging - it's just application of a rule ie Adjudication. For ex. If the rule is (completely arbitrarily just for ex.) every time a d20 rolls a 11-12, I treat it as a 13 - well ok. I don't think that's fudging if it's a strict rule and it's simple adjudication of that rule!

But second, what warrants strict rules on changing the result? Is it something like: If a creature with multiple attacks rolls a crit, I only count 1 of the attacks as a crit?

Genuinely curious.

 

[LordEntrails]

Dishonesty is on the part of the doer, not the interpreter. A misinterpretation of my actions doesn't make them dishonest. The feelings are valid, but the interpretation is not. Since I am not engaging in a deception, there is not dishonesty going on.

The result of the roll is what I say it is, not what the game says it is. If I roll a 20 and simply announce a hit and not a crit, it was only ever a hit. At no point was it a crit that was changed to a hit. My announcement is completely honest.

If one of the players at the table thinks someone else is dishonest, it doesn't matter if the person doing the action doesn't agree. The table has a problem that might end the campaign.

It doesn't matter if you are right, if your actions lead to the game dissolving and people thinking less of one another, then everyone has lost.

 

[Monayuris]

I'm actually quite curious about this.

Firstly from a definitional point: If there are strict rules then (known to the players or not) it's not really fudging - it's just application of a rule ie Adjudication. For ex. If the rule is (completely arbitrarily just for ex.) every time a d20 rolls a 11-12, I treat it as a 13 - well ok. I don't think that's fudging if it's a strict rule and it's simple adjudication of that rule!

But second, what warrants strict rules on changing the result? Is it something like: If a creature with multiple attacks rolls a crit, I only count 1 of the attacks as a crit?

Genuinely curious.

Yeah you are getting into house rules territory which I think is a different situation.

Sometimes you have to make an on the fly ruling and sometimes you have to come up with a house rule if the rules create an undesirable outcome for the group.

Fudging to me is different. To me it is changing the outcome of a known applied rule to suit the preferred outcome of the DM.

The ability for a monster with multi attack to roll multiple crits is a known potential result of the rules. It should be implicit that it can happen and anyone playing the game should expect it if it happens.

A DM may look at the three natural twenties they rolled and think that is a little too harsh, they’ll only count one of them. That is fudging.

The DM may decide a creature can only roll one crit on a multiattack, that’s a house rule.

Generally house rules should be shared with the players and it’s perfectly ok for a DM to make the house rule on the spot and tell the players.

The DM may also just fudge it and tell the players: “I rolled three crits but I will only count one of them, because I think that is too harsh.”

I think once you have hard fast rules for fudging you are really house ruling and you should just make those rules known.

 

[FrozenNorth]

That's probably true. But as I've noted before, a lot of things don't get discussed that should at the start of campaigns because people take it as a given. This is especially true of GMs used to various kinds of game culture who hit people who have different ones.

Communication can be hard, who knew?

Yes, but that kind of emphasizes the importance of these threads, exposing that there are other players and DMs that interact with the game differently.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

The DM may decide a creature can only roll one crit on a multiattack, that’s a house rule.

Generally house rules should be shared with the players and it’s perfectly ok for a DM to make the house rule on the spot and tell the players.

Eh, that's getting pretty muddy, especially if the 'houserule' is part of the monster rules. The GM certainly is not obligated to tell the players the stats and rules of the monsters. I alter and homebrew the monster statblocks all the time, and I'm not usually telling the players. (Though recently I told them when they were struggling with certain monsters, that they were actually nerfed* from what the MM said.)

(* And good thing I had read the statblock carefully and done so.)

 

[FrozenNorth]

I think it's interesting how several folks on here's views about character's using players knowledge in a metagame way (reading monster books, knowing the module, doing IRL things the character wouldn't know) contrasts with their views on DMs fudging die rolls (for combat, saves, and skill checks anyway) - there seem to be a lot of OK/Bad and Bad/Ok. I wonder how many OK/OK and Bad/Bad there.

Just throwing it out there, but one way of building trust is demonstrating trust in others. If a player says their character knows lightning heals shambling mounds, and I accept that, it can make it more likely that they will trust me as a DM when I tell them I have a reason for something that may seem illogical.

 

[DEFCON 1]

It doesn't matter if you are right, if your actions lead to the game dissolving and people thinking less of one another, then everyone has lost.

On the contrary. If a game ends because it was discovered there was that large of a fissure between the playstyles of all the players, I think everybody wins. Because now they can go find other players who better suit them.

Playing a game with a ticking timebomb of a group is no way to go through life. Always being on edge checking to make sure everyone is going to play the way I need it to be? No thanks! Rip the bandaid off early and move on, I say.

 

[iserith]

Just throwing it out there, but one way of building trust is demonstrating trust in others. If a player says their character knows lightning heals shambling mounds, and I accept that, it can make it more likely that they will trust me as a DM when I tell them I have a reason for something that may seem illogical.

As well, the DM has more power in the game than players, where the rules are concerned. Identifying, communicating, and adhering to GM principles consistently helps put a check on that power imbalance and creates consistency in a way that I've found the players really appreciate.

 

[Lanefan]

I didn't say that. I answered your question on how it wouldn't erode trust.

Because there is no lie or deception going on. When the DM fudges a roll from a crit to a hit, there was never a crit, so when he announces a hit, that's all it ever was. No lie. No deception.

But loss of integrity? Yes.

If I-as-DM rolled a 16 last time and, by the rules of the game, that 16 was enough to hit your PC, then integrity of the game tells me that (barring some improvement in your PC's defenses) any further roll of 16 or better by that opponent is also going to hit. So if I then roll a 19 and declare it a miss, while I might be technically within the rules to do so as per the DMG's foolish advice, I've still violated the integrity of my own game.

Whether such violation matters to anyone or not is a matter of personal taste, I suppose; but the existence of said violation is itself undeniable.

 

[Lanefan]

This is false. If you trust the DM, you can trust him to be impartial, fudging or no.

That's just it: I can't trust a fudging DM to be either impartial or consistent in his fudging.

No you haven't been misled. Or if you have, you've only been misled by your own assumption.

It occurs to me that the bit that keeps getting referenced here is in the DMG, meaning that technically it's not player-side info. Unless there's a corollary reference in the PH or some other player-side book, a player in theory has no way to know that fudging is allowed by RAW and thus has every reason to feel misled or distrustful when (not if) she notices it occurring.