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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dausuul" data-source="post: 4220186" data-attributes="member: 58197">This.I've wrestled with this for a long time in D&D, and so has every other DM I know.  The rules as written have always tended toward a fairly high PC mortality rate, higher than most gaming groups (at least the ones I've played in) are comfortable with.  But if you consistently fudge the dice to prevent PC death, eventually the players will figure out that it's happening--players are smart like that--and the excitement of combat is lost.So it becomes a balancing act.  You have to fudge the dice enough to bring mortality down to an acceptable level, without eliminating it completely.  You have to be careful to make your fudging evenhanded, so you aren't favoring one PC.  And you have to know how to do it subtly, so it's not obvious that you just threw the fight to the PCs--players should never, ever know when you fudged a roll; my experience has been that it's better to let a PC die than it is to reveal that you're intervening to keep him/her alive.Some DMs can manage this balancing act.  Many can't.For the first time ever, 4th Edition seems to be recognizing and addressing this problem.  It is my fond hope that I will be able to run my 4E game without any fudging at all.  I certainly intend to try.</blockquote>