Giving the GM (finite, visible) rerolls might be a fix that works for some people. But that would be different from fudging because fudging is not a reroll but a chosen result, has no limit, and is not only done in secret but if players found out many of them would be mad.
D&D General How do players feel about DM fudging?
Giving the GM (finite, visible) rerolls might be a fix that works for some people. But that would be different from fudging because fudging is not a reroll but a chosen result, has no limit, and is not only done in secret but if players found out many of them would be mad.
EzekielRaiden
Follower of the Way
If I actually saw all that many people doing this, I would 100% agree with you, but I find such examples pretty rare. Likewise, I find reversed examples like "trying to use a screwdriver as a hammer" etc. to be pretty uncommon as well.
Instead, I find a lot of them occupy a liminal space, something like trying to use a sedan as a hauler for moving cross-country and asking around for ways to strap extra load on top of the vehicle. Or playing a PC game with a controller and talking about the convoluted button setup they've used so they can still do the four dozen actions you need independent buttons for with only the limited inputs a controller permits, but now a new feature has been added and they're shopping around for advice on how to squeeze in a few more button combinations to include it.
That is, these are examples of people either seeking advice or describing their pretty heavy hacks of something that takes it rather far afield...in ways that may not be wise or effective. If you're having to concern yourself about strapping a large load on top of your sedan in order to move, it is not unreasonable to suggest that renting a moving vehicle is a better (and safer) choice, though it may be the case that such rental is unworkable or outside the person's budget. Similarly, can understand being proud of having figured out how to use a controller, which I know a fair chunk of people find more comfortable than M&KB. However, even if you prefer that approach and have put a lot of effort into making it work, if the button capacity is already strained, it seems perfectly reasonable to suggest that learning to play with M&KB may be needed. That's not dismissive of their preferences or denigrating to the idea of using a controller, it's just noting that doing all that effort to preserve controller use may be simply unworkable in the long run. (I am reminded of a YouTuber I watch who tried, unsuccessfully, to use a SNES-style controller for a game he loves. It ultimately couldn't work; there just aren't enough buttons on a Super Nintendo controller to do all the things you need to do.)
Note that I chose my example analogies because they are, at least in part, a matter of judgment calls. It is neither obvious nor totally objective that a certain size of load is too much to be crammed into and onto a sedan in most cases, even though facts do play a part in making that judgment. It is neither obvious nor totally objective that developing a complex button input system to give you more options will be insufficient or unwieldy for playing any given game, particularly if a given player really loves controllers or really hates keyboards, or has some kind of physical disability that makes M&KB much harder to use than controller.
It need not be impugning preferences (after all, de gustibus non disputandum est) nor judgment to tell someone that their ends might be better served by employing different means. That need not be saying the thing they like is bad nor that they have made a bad choice. Instead, if it's said with due caution after appropriately examining someone's stated intent and current methods, it can be perfectly cromulent to say, "There are other methods which achieve the goal you seek, such as X or Y, have you considered them?"
I am reminded of some extremely tedious conversations I have had in the past where people have asked (paraphrasing and de-contexting to avoid drama) "why can't I play a Vanguard that's purely focused on butt-kicking?" I and others would then tell them, "well, you can choose to focus more on butt-kicking than other things as a Vanguard if you want, but if you really want to be a mundane sword-lady who fights aliens and doesn't afraid of anything, you should look at Myrmidon, because it was specifically designed to do the thing you're asking for." They would then retort with some variation on "NO, it HAS to be Vanguard, it's so dumb that I can't choose not to have the Vanguard's Defense thing that I don't want. Myrmidon isn't Vanguard!" And I would just be left frustrated and annoyed because that meant literally just the NAME of the class was more important to them than getting the experience they claimed to want; that writing "Vanguard" on their character sheet was so unbelievably important to them that it trumped any other consideration, period.
If I have spoken at length with someone, long enough to get a good idea of what their goals are and what effort they have put in to achieve those goals, and evaluated that they seem to be placing more emphasis on "no it must be a system named D&D!" rather than on what the system actually does or is designed for, I won't feel bad telling them that. That doesn't make me a jerk crapping on their love of D&D, it means I am frankly telling them that they seem to be preoccupied with a mere label to the extent that it is preventing them from finding things that will work for their goals.
Yup. And it should be discussed in session 0!
Advice after hearing what people want sounds great.
If the only complaint about the system is that once in a while you hate strings of really bad/good luck, would parsimony suggest just putting a fix in for that? (Hence the furniture example).
My guess is folks who have heavily hacked one system will heavily hack most systems if you give them enough time.
EzekielRaiden
Follower of the Way
If the DM does it openly, then there is no difference. This is (one) part of why I emphasize secrecy so strongly: if it is done in the open, then realistically it is little different from giving players the ability to do it themselves.
If the DM does it secretly though... that's why it's a "bigger rules change." Because I as a player cannot possibly adapt to nor learn from such things. That's the whole point of making it secret! It's specifically done so I should not, even in principle, be able to learn from it. With open rerolls or number changing (including open actions like "alright, this fight is just cleanup now, you've won, let's skip the boring bits") I can make decisions informed by this, e.g. if I know the DM tends to call fights when only a couple of scraggly minion-types remain, I can choose to focus my efforts on the bigger, badder enemies, or if I know that the DM doesn't call fights when there's some cost or danger to even a single opponent escaping, I can keep that in mind and try to avoid putting myself in a bad spot. Etc. If the DM fudges fights, though, I cannot learn any of this, and will make tactically unsound decisions because I literally don't know how the world "actually* works, I only know the filtered and glossed version the DM redacts behind the scenes.
Sure. Which is what I, at least, have been doing. I have said that "fudging" (secretly modifying rolls/stats of/applied to creatures already in play) does the thing people have asked for, but it comes with serious costs and flaws. Instead of doing that, I have suggested others use a mix of a small handful of other approaches, which collectively completely negate any need to "fudge" (as defined) while still achieving the intended goal. As a benefit, this mixed approach inherently (by design) avoids all of the serious costs and flaws associated with "fudging" (as defined).
To be specific, the mix I am speaking of is primarily:
Do things openly, be it explicit changes ("this fight is going way harder than I meant it to, sorry guys") or implicit ones ("calling" fights to skip the cleanup phase, telling players they don't need to roll they just succeed, etc.)
Do things diegetically, e.g. invoke divine intervention or a cursed/blessed bloodline or Luck/Fate/Death meddling etc. so there is a reason why things would be expected to change.
Do things before they have entered play, e.g. build safeguards into fights in advance, if absolutely necessary remove opponents or tweak encounter design, etc.
These are, I admit, a less "clean and neat" solution than just "you're the DM, rewrite (fictional) reality and invoke plausible deniability." But the gains are absolutely, I would argue unequivocally, worth the price of (very slightly) higher complexity and effort.
I mean maybe? I spent literal years trying to kludge a Paladin into 3.X that didn't suck enormously. I dug up homebrew options and ACFs and houserules and custom spells and the official Prestige Paladin PrC and...just the list goes on and on and on, and I never came away satisfied. I then tried 4e's Paladin and fell in love, having wanted only and exactly one houserule for it ever (and that one only because WotC were jerks who took away a shiny awesome toy you ORIGINALLY had access to. Specifically, Call Celestial Steed for non-Cavalier Paladins.)My guess is folks who have heavily hacked one system will heavily hack most systems if you give them enough time.
Sometimes people tinker because they just like tinkering, sure. But I find a lot of tinkering comes from dissatisfaction with the thing as it exists, and it's not that rare for that dissatisfaction to be rooted deep enough that a person may not know the true cause. Again, I speak from personal experience. I spent years trying to make 3.X into the game I wanted it to be, and failed, in part because what I thought I wanted wasn't quite the same as what I actually wanted, and in part because 3.X's faults run so deep, you can't fix them without gutting the system and effectively starting over (as Paizo's designers eventually admitted).
Ovinomancer
No flips for you!
Where did this idea that it's a big rule change come from? I must have missed who asserted that fudging requires something like this. It doesn't, it just requires replacing what the rules say with what the GM wants.
One of the other things that rankles me with the usual discussion of fudging is that it's absolutely considered a GM side thing only to do. This sauce is not considered as good for the goose as it is for the gander!
Ovinomancer
No flips for you!
Do we have examples of people recommending different games in this scenario? I mean, I don't think anyone has recommended a different game because someone wants to fudge a bit in D&D.Advice after hearing what people want sounds great.
If the only complaint about the system is that once in a while you hate strings of really bad/good luck, would parsimony suggest just putting a fix in for that? (Hence the furniture example).
My guess is folks who have heavily hacked one system will heavily hack most systems if you give them enough time.
I really feel this thread has gotten off on a tangent where a non-existent thing is being discussed as if it's a common occurrence and needs to be corrected. But, it doesn't exist!
I'm not sure how much there is to learn from "the DM probably won't let the bad guy crit multiple times in a row".
Unless the player hates player side metagame mechanics.
Does the safeguard give you at least one of the negatives you listed above (how do you learn things from an ad hoc safe guard that may or may not happen again) .
What kind of safeguards were you picturing?
Going from the lowest tier to second highest does feel like a thing
And some people liked 3.5 and loathed 4... ::
:;
Right. I have no idea how it came up with it being a big idea.
History of the rules and asymmetry in how D&D is set up I guess.
Somehow suggesting new games came up before I jumped in, and given the thread was about fudging I might have added two and two when they weren't meant to be combined.
That seems par for course
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