As a GM, How Often Do You Fudge Dice Rolls?

[Hussar]

But it's a ridiculous question. The answer is meaningless because there is always a cost.

Say we fudge that d8 roll because we don't want to kill a PC in a random encounter for story reasons. We don't want pointless death at this time in the game. At low level we don't fudge because the players aren't very invested in that character so killing then is fine.

How do you include that in the rules?

 

[Zak S]

But it's a ridiculous question. The answer is meaningless because there is always a cost.

I've already answered this:

You don't answer "Would you want this if it's free?" with "But it isn't!" That's something you say after first establishing whether you want it. Which we still don't know because you still refuse to answer.

Again, I am not asking any of these questions yet...

Not "Do you think it will be easy to change the loophole?"
Not "Is your first priority changing the loophole?"
Not "Do you think your game will fall apart if you close the loophole?"
Not "What are all the ways you might close the loophole wrong?"
Not "Do we call the loophole 'rules' or 'content' before changing it?"
I am not asking for various catastrophizations about imaginary problematic rules that you can think up. That would be the next step after figuring out whether closing the loophole is desirable in the first place.

Say we fudge that d8 roll because we don't want to kill a PC in a random encounter for story reasons. We don't want pointless death at this time in the game. At low level we don't fudge because the players aren't very invested in that character so killing then is fine.
How do you include that in the rules?

There are a great many games that include that idea in their rules (for example: many games have stake-setting mechanics which mean a combat can only be deadly when a player gambles their life on a combat).

Which (if any) are right for your group or what new and novel modifications of the existing D&D rules would suit your particular group would depend on a lot of things about your group that I don't know yet because you haven't said. If I give one random solution, it could be easy to shoot down because of requirements unique to your group, but that doesn't mean there is no possible solution.

But before we can get into those more complex questions, it's important to know:

Were such a solution available at no cost, would you take it--yes or no?

If no: then we can talk about why not (I, as yet, have no idea why not).

If yes: we can talk about what kinds of costs are too high and which aren't and which situations you would and would not consider a "cost".

 

[Hussar]

Or, instead, we skip over the ridiculous hair splitting and give this up as a bad job. Unfortunate. I thought perhaps this topic had legs, but, I refuse to get bogged down in semantics over "well would it be okay if it were free"? Who cares? It's completely and utterly pointless point of discussion. Now, that's three times I've tried to end around your dogged refusal to give up this ludicrous notion of "free". I'm done.

 

[Zak S]

Or, instead, we skip over the ridiculous hair splitting and give this up as a bad job. Unfortunate. I thought perhaps this topic had legs, but, I refuse to get bogged down in semantics over "well would it be okay if it were free"? Who cares?

If you don't understand the reason for the question, you can just ask, rather than assume (bizarrely) that there is no reason for the question.

The reason for the question is:

If you believe there is no value at all in closing the loophole, then that is one conversation. It requires investigating why that's undesirable.

If you believe there is a value in closing the loophole, but that the only problem is potential cost to closing the loophole, that is an entirely different conversation, requiring that we talk about completely different things to arrive a point where we understand each other.

If you refuse to answer, then there is no way that the conversation can progress. We don't know where you stand, so there's no way to address your concerns.

 

[Umbran]

Incorrect: I never said you need to do anything.

As I have said - several times there have been points of strong implication. I've pointed them out as we've gone.

Oh well, I guess we'll never know what you actually think then.[/qupte]

Oh, you can know what I think - I think it that particular question is not meaningful. I think that the question is a kind of rhetorical trap, and I will not step into it.

1. Can you type what the impossible assumptions implicit in the question are?

Without trying to be all-inclusive, the "takes no time" (and the implied no work, no effort) is impossible. Even if someone hands you a solution, there's effort in learning it, educating your players and getting them to accept it, and so on. There's always effort in rules changes. Positing a genie who says, "poof, here is your new rule" doesn't give us a case worth discussing, because that case doesn't exist.

2. If I said "If you could snap your fingers and a free pizza would appear, would you do it?" I am proposing a nonsensical hypothetical--but you can still answer it and we can use that as a baseline to talk about how much you would or wouldn't do for pizza.

Ah, but you see, I'm not interested in that conversation. I didn't enter into this for you to draw lines of ever increasing cost, to see where I bolt. Largely because, again, I don't view that as a useful discussion. I view fudging as best used as an option for particular cases - my position doesn't generalize into a neat classification and a line drawn in the sand. The devil is in the details - the context of what's happened in the session, what the people are like, the flow of the campaign, and so on. Sometimes, it isn't about teh rules and the challenge, but the narrative - and there is no accounting for it.

 

[Zak S]

As I have said - several times there have been points of strong implication. I've pointed them out as we've gone.

Please ignore what you think I'm implying and stick to what I actually say.

Oh, you can know what I think - I think it that particular question is not meaningful. I think that the question is a kind of rhetorical trap, and I will not step into it.

1. You're assuming bad faith--and that's a bad thing to do.
2. There's no possible trap. I'm not a psychopath--I learn nothing by "trapping" you. I gain nothing by going "HAHA I'M RIGHT!" There are literally no rewards for "trapping" you.

(And what's more: even if we assume for the sake of argument my question is some kind of "trap"--then you get "trapped" and then what? Nothing. You don't get kicked off the internet, you don't get shot full of death rays--what happens is someone types something. You literally risk nothing by just giving an honest answer to the question of whether you value closing loopholes or not. There is no possible negative outcome of any consequence to explaining whether you would value this kind of rules change.)

I simply need you to answer a question if I am to walk away knowing more about how you think about games than I did before I walked in.

You either go:

"Yeah, Id close that loophole" and we talk about whether the costs can or can't be ameliorated and what those are.

or you go:

"No, I wouldn't" and then I ask why you wouldn't and then I find out your reasoning.

Positing a genie who says, "poof, here is your new rule" doesn't give us a case worth discussing, because that case doesn't exist.

In any philosophical discussion there are LOTS of reasons to discuss nonexistent hypotheticals. In this case we need to know your answer to establish whether the discussion goes down the path of "Ok,what are the necessary costs" or "Ok, why do you see closing the loophole as inherently valueless even sans cost"

So: please answer the question. There is no point in having a conversation at all unless you actually say you think something that we didn't already know during an earlier part of the conversation.

If you do not wish to know or explain more than you did before starting the conversation, you are always free to leave.

 

[fjw70]

I regularly fudge the last hp or two for minion-type monsters. If a goblin has 7 hp and some does 6 pts to them then I will usually just call it dead. Other than that, not much.

 

[steenan]

While I don't fudge dice, I do something similar with "minion-type" monsters. A goblin, kobold or similar creature with only 1 or 2 HP left often just falls down and plays dead.

In most cases it's not different from just having it die, but sometimes it matters: when the PCs need to ask some questions, or when they assume all monsters died and move forward (letting the survivors run away and raise an alarm), or when they notice that somebody is still alive and we have a fun roleplaying moment when the creature tries to beg or trick its way to freedom.