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Message: <blockquote data-quote="DonTadow" data-source="post: 2745796" data-attributes="member: 22622">Hmmm those instances never happened.  As said, I've never known when a DM has fudged a dice (well ecept in my diceless games).  But I've enjoyed the games I've been in.  I've had some of the best DMs I believe that are in my state.  I"ve learned from the best.  And I've had a ton of fun doing it.  I love it when a DM trys to make his player happy instead of solve his own board game needs.  What I said was , if i know the players are having an incredibly bad time with the dice and situation I might lower the ac a bit.  That pretty much follows what I've been saying.  AS a DM I run the game and that means I need the weapons to maneuver bad situations to give the pcs a great experience. Case in point, i lowered the ac of some creature when the party had an incredibly unlucky time with the last encounter (a bunch of -2 crs whom critted often).  I analzyed the following encounter and figured that it wouldn't be fair for the party to have an ac of 27 when the party was struggling in their current condition to get to 25 the way the dice were rolling that nice.  The dice are a mechanic of the game, not the game itself.  Hey, I consider myself one of the best at what I do and that's provide quality role playing to my players.  I understand that the game is not controlled by the dm, but guided by him and I dont control everything.  But I have weapons that can assist in dire situations and I use those to produce desired effects when needed.  IN the DMG, it specifically says that dms have the power to provide bonus and minus circumstance bonuse's when they believe the situation deems so.  And thats what I do when A add one or two to a dice roll.  The monster may have pulled up slightly or been distracted by his own previous blows.  He may have lost footing as he plunged deeper.  THere may be tears on his armor reducing his effective ac.  ...All that is right there in the DMG.  Now, as for houserules, well they aren't in the DMG.  To arguie against this fudging (which again is a misappropriate word) is to argue against the Core DMG.  I'm glad that you're good enough so that your games are static and you don't have to make changes on the fly, but I guess I'm not.  My players are constantly changing the battlefield, encounter and the world and I adapt on the fly for that.  So circumstance bonus's come about at different occasions.  If my pc's are creative enough to tell me about a a specific advantage they are trying to make I take a page out of Iron HEroes and make it into a stunt .  I can't see sitting down at a table and saying (this is it, this is all thats going to happen a, b or c)You kept comparing it to solitaire, which is a game, and can be a competitve game like chess.  I could have used solitaire but I wanted some variety.  Regardles, its an adversarial game and you did bring up the comparsiion between D and D and SOlitaire.  I always find it wierd that people will bring up an analogy, and then I prove how the analogy does not apply to the given subject, and then they get upset because I used to analogy to prove the analogy's irrelevance to the thread and say the analogy wasn't fair.  There are two kinds of DMs, those whom hug books fairly close during game play and those whom don't let books dm his games.  That's not to say you don't follow the rules, but in the end you're the one navigating the game and there are instances that aren't ruled in the book.  The first DM ignores the instances, the second has to make rulings and judging on the fly, sometimes on his gut and knowledge of what is going to provide the PC the best experience.  Sometimes that means staying out of it and letting the PC die, sometimes that means adding that circumstance bonus to the player.  But its a decision that the dm needs to make, not the lack of a ruling for it in the book.  Do you play football?? IF all the other players did was block and catch you'd have a pretty bad team... or the Detroit Lions.  A quarterback runs the team on the field.  He provides the situations (encounters), he designs the weapons to do this (npcs, magic, encounters) and he guides the plays so that they gain the result that is going to benefit the team the most). Regardless its the players that make the plays happen.  RArely is a play ever created and it happens like hte qb thought it was, that comes from the creativty of his team.  So what kind of DM are you?  It sounds like you're on the other end of the spectrum, you refuse to allow a story effect the precious worshipping of the dice.  Chance states this and thats whats going to happen is what I"m hearing, whether its fun for your players or not.  I think you've played with some great gms, and you never knew what those dice really did.</blockquote>

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