D&D General Dice Fudging and Twist Endings

[EzekielRaiden]

I’ve adjusted HP on the fly until I learned to just give my monsters max HP. Part of that is learning how to balance the challenge to your players.

Question: Would you secretly take the amount of damage a player had dealt and ignore it or nerf it?

 

[Oofta]

<areas of agreenent or no comment snipped>




A lot of MtG tournaments are against strangers and I don't think my null hypothesis there is that they're cheating/fudging/lying either. ::::

Now I'm wonder if trying to think about whether I'm suspecting them or not sometime will actually make me do it.



This line started with me saying sometimes I like the players not knowing a roll was made. I should have given the example in my head at the time. I was picturing some hidden guards trying to spot the party. If the party isn't doing anything special and their passive perception isn't high enough then they don't see the guards. Knowing a roll was taking place feels like it will result in the party being extra cautious simply because a roll was made even though the characters didn't notice a change.

I wouldn't use passive perception on obvious and non-hidden-non-small things like a general room description.

I roll a D20 a dozen or so times before the game starts and put the numbers in my prep notes. If I ever want a hidden roll, I just start from the top of the list and check them off as I go.

 

[Oofta]

I’ve adjusted HP on the fly until I learned to just give my monsters max HP. Part of that is learning how to balance the challenge to your players.

Depends on the role of the monster and the encounter for me. My last game I just about had a TPK because they chose to have a fight they could have avoided, since it was a solo I doubled the HP. The last person standing (with only a handful of HP) took them out. In other encounters I want a threatening creature that's relatively easy to take out so I'll use less HP than normal, or do it because it makes sense for the story.

But in virtually all cases once I decide things at the start of combat it's pretty set in stone.

 

[robus]

Question: Would you secretly take the amount of damage a player had dealt and ignore it or nerf it?

Nope, because HP is a measure of a number of factors and I just wanted my NPCs to be luckier than they were (I am the low roller after all )

 

[robus]

Depends on the role of the monster and the encounter for me. My last game I just about had a TPK because they chose to have a fight they could have avoided, since it was a solo I doubled the HP. The last person standing (with only a handful of HP) took them out. In other encounters I want a threatening creature that's relatively easy to take out so I'll use less HP than normal, or do it because it makes sense for the story.

But in virtually all cases once I decide things at the start of combat it's pretty set in stone.

Yep I started doing it with bosses after the debacle that was the Black Spider encounter at the end LMoP. That was such a disappointing finale. Eventually I learned to just give max HP and things went better. We’re constantly talking about turning the D&D dials to make the game work for a table.

Is turning the dials during play while you’re learning what works such a bad thing?

 

[Oofta]

Yep I started doing it with bosses after the debacle that was the Black Spider encounter at the end LMoP. That was such a disappointing finale. Eventually I learned to just give max HP and things went better. We’re constantly talking about turning the D&D dials to make the game work for a table.

Is turning the dials during play while you’re learning what works such a bad thing?

I don't think it's a bad thing to adjust. It's the DM's job to make the game fun for the group, which typically requires making it challenging.

I write custom monsters on a regular basis so I have no problem making changes to existing ones.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I roll a D20 a dozen or so times before the game starts and put the numbers in my prep notes. If I ever want a hidden roll, I just start from the top of the list and check them off as I go.

Just to be clear on my position: I don't consider this fudging. Despite moving away from secret rolls myself, rolling in secret is not fudging if you use the roll, and it really doesn't matter when you roll if you do, in fact, use the roll.

Nope, because HP is a measure of a number of factors and I just wanted my NPCs to be luckier than they were (I am the low roller after all )

I don't understand why the one is different from the other. Changing a creature's HP is exactly equivalent to changing the amount of damage players have dealt to it. Why is it good to alter the HP value but not good to alter player damage output?

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I don't think it's a bad thing to adjust. It's the DM's job to make the game fun for the group, which typically requires making it challenging.

I write custom monsters on a regular basis so I have no problem making changes to existing ones.

The difference is whether you change them while they are in play, or before they are in play. (Changing them after they have left play is...not particularly useful, so I don't imagine you do much of that.) Making changes to something before it enters the play-space is perfectly acceptable. Necessary, even. Making such changes after it enters play, however, is neither necessary nor (I argue) acceptable.

If the players do their research and find out that the slime monsters are averse to cold, it is foul play on the DM's part to change their mind midway through the adventure and decide the slimes are actually weak to acid, there just happened to always be acid involved in the places where the slimes were avoiding cold without establishing why. If they do their research and know that owlbears never form groups larger than mated pairs and one or two juvenile offspring, then it is foul play on the DM's part to spring a pack of five adult owlbears on the party without establishing why. Etc.

There is no meaningful difference between this and changing a monster's AC or HP values after those have already become tested by the players' actions (attacks made and damage dealt, respectively.) The players have acquired real information about those values, even if the precise number remains uncertain. To change those values without potentially observable justification is foul play on the DM's part, even if the DM only does so for the absolute best of reasons. Cooking the books is still cooking the books if you do it to donate the gains to charity or (to use a real-world example) to help a sovereign nation try to work its way out of debt.

Note the word "potentially." The players do not have to succeed. But they must be furnished with the opportunity, and the opportunity must be genuine, not structured in such a way that it technically is an opportunity but practically ensures they'll never succeed. Players should be responsible for their own unwise choices, lapses of attention, or (some of the time!) sheer dumb luck because that's how flat-dice rolls work. But the chance should be there, and should be real, no "roll 3 crits in a row" BS to skirt the line.

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Above, I said changing things before they enter play is potentially even necessary, and I stand by that. If the players don't have any reasonable way of knowing how much HP a creature has, then there is no difference if it changes. Once they do, even if it is at a distance removed, they need to be able to know that their previous information is actually faulty, because it wasn't faulty before but is now. For those aforementioned slimes, some kind of hint (or even direct statement from an NPC or evidence they encounter) that cold doesn't do anything or that acid is effective is plenty. For the owlbears, finding out there's an evil druid warping the behavior of animals in the forest, or that it's Owlbear Mating Season so groups of male owlbears sparring to attract mates, would be perfect evidence for contradicting a pattern that is usually true most of the time but happens to not be true in this specific case. Etc.

Covering these things up with mere fudging is doing both the game and oneself a disservice.

 

[robus]

The difference is whether you change them while they are in play, or before they are in play. (Changing them after they have left play is...not particularly useful, so I don't imagine you do much of that.) Making changes to something before it enters the play-space is perfectly acceptable. Necessary, even. Making such changes after it enters play, however, is neither necessary nor (I argue) acceptable.

I guess I see my role as delivering an exciting experience and if I'm not doing that in a pivotal session (like a boss battle) then I better address it. As I said, after experimenting turning the HP dial (generally upwards) in order to provide the expected challenge I eventually settled on max HP and things have been pretty smooth since.

And yes I started turning the dial up before the session and then sometimes turned it up further during the session if things weren't challenging enough. As someone posted earlier, which is my pre-session number picking more legitimate than my in-session number picking?

 

[EzekielRaiden]

And yes I started turning the dial up before the session and then sometimes turned it up further during the session if things weren't challenging enough. As someone posted earlier, which is my pre-session number picking more legitimate than my in-session number picking?

Why is it more legitimate to assign you a homework question based on material actually presented in class, and not legitimate to assign you a homework question based on the lesson the teacher wishes they had taught originally?

It isn't complicated. The number you picked in advance is something the players could actually learn about--at least its general shape, if not its actual value. The number you "pick" on the fly, after battle is already joined and damage dice have already been rolled, is not something they can learn about--not even in principle. The whole point of doing the change is to make it undetectable, because if the players found out about the change, they'd probably feel at least a little disappointed (and possibly a lot disappointed.) The experience would instantly become less exciting.

This is why I legit do not understand the "I'm here to deliver an exciting experience" response. You're doing something that, if it were discovered, would instantly damage the excitement of the scene. Even if the players have already said in advance that they're fine with it, it would probably still damage the excitement of the scene, just to a lesser extent. For players that haven't, it's a risky gamble every time you do it.

If your goal is excitement, why use the technique which has a serious (even if small) risk of doing the complete opposite of that, when there are other techniques that achieve exactly the same claimed end (fostering excitement) with exactly zero risk of this kind of unintended damage?