Cheating, Action Points, and Second Wind

[Jinete]

if the DM is good, you won´t ever have an undeserved win. My rule as a DM can be described as following:

If the PCs don´t act as complete fools, they won´t die because of a very unlucky roll. If they do, bad luck hits them mercilessly... if they have particular good ideas they may get get some bonuses, which account for their good roleplaying.
Call it cheating or fudging or conditional bonuses of a different sort.

The fumble in the example above could have just hit the unconsciuos employer, and the luck bonus spent could have meant, that the enemy was so surprised, that he lets him go, or is even also hit by the arrow which shot right through the hostage...

and instead of a funeral, you could have brought him to a healer etc...

IMO DM fudging should be very rare and unnecessary. The rules themselves should never allow that the fate of a character or campaign relies on a single die roll.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

IMO DM fudging should be very rare and unnecessary. The rules themselves should never allow that the fate of a character or campaign relies on a single die roll.

And this is why I am looking foreward to 4e. In 3.x at first Level a crit from an Orc with a great axe meant certain dead, and later Levels were more or less unplayable if characters were not protected vs death magic.

Max damage for crits and double damage for special attacks will make sure that you never accidently kill a character...
but you could ask yourself if it is less fudging to hold back your 1/encounter double damage power for no reason...

And even though I admited to fudge (only with good intentions...) I am usually doining it only in very unlucky situations... and later, when resurrection is available, I am even more hesitant to fudge anything.

 

[Professor Phobos]

The thing is, deciding the stakes and consequences of a die roll is the GM's job anyway. You can always rule some different calamity occurs as a result of a fumble, particularly once you take into account the idea that there are other things PCs can lose besides their lives.

 

[WayneLigon]

Rule 0 is as stupid in D&D than in Monopoly.
Of course you can change any damn game if all the people around the table agree to it, don't need to write it down anywhere.

You might see this as transparent and obvious but there are people that really do need a section that gives them 'permission' to change the rules set down in black and white. I've seen it first hand, especially with new players as one might expect, but it's also a great way to defuse any argument with a player who seems to feel that because it's in the RAW that you can't change it.

 

[WayneLigon]

A single dice roll had ended the campaign.

This sort of this is the major reason I love action points/hero points/bennies/whatever. After playing Savage Worlds, 7th Sea, Eberron, and Mutants and Masterminds, it's highly unlikely I will play in a game that doesn't feature action points in some manner.

I like the Savage Worlds and 7th Sea systems where the GM gets action points as well. In 7th Sea you can spend hero points but when you do, they go to the GM to use for his characters, though I think he only gets to spend them in certain ways. It's been several years since I played it so my recollection is fuzzy.

Savage Worlds with the Adventure Deck was quite a bit of fun since there are cards in there that let you mess with the GM's cards or bennies. They had a big climatic fight against a vampire priestess and she was down to one bennie; I started to use it to keep her from that final Wound but one of the players grins and slaps down that card, confiscating my lone bennie. Funny, funny, funny.

 

[Rel]

So yes, I am in favour of a mechanic that grants players a limited ability to overrule the dice. I don't regard it as cheating. I regard it as a necessity to prevent a bad dice roll at a critical moment from derailing an evening's fun. And I firmly believe that any GM/ST/DM/Ref should always be able to override game mechanics.

You see, I've seen what can happen when they don't.

I also like a mechanic that grants a limited ability to overrule the dice. This is usually in the form of action points or something similar. Sometimes PC's will have innate abilities like Heroic Surge that lets them take an extra action at some critical moment. But when all is said and done I like to let the dice fall where they may.

Whether that leads to a success or failure of a campaign is, in my opinion, largely a matter of player expectations. My players know that I'm not out to screw them over but that sometimes bad luck can bite you. The deck is stacked in their favor by virtue of all kinds of things. But once in a while you get that moment where a confluence of bad circumstances and rotten dice rolls will kill off a PC (or beloved NPC or hated NPC or somebody else important).

My experience has been (as you'd probably expect) that the more beloved the PC, the more this impacts the storyline. But not necessarily negatively. There have been times when the other PC's will drop everything and undertake whatever quests or actions are necessary to bring the PC back to life. Other times they seek vengeance on whatever group or individual killed the character. Still other times they will press forward with whatever goals and ideals were championed by the fallen PC. Any and all of these things have strengthened my games, not ended them.

However I say that while again underscoring that the players are ON BOARD with this. They, like me, feel that their victories are all the sweeter for having won them when they know they could have died. And their rare defeats are plot hooks, not plot stoppers.

 

[buzz]

So, for those taking a strict no-fudging policy, who insist that GMs should stick strictly to the rules no matter what: I hold this up as an example of how that can be a bad thing for a campaign.

Well, first, I think this is more an indictment of the RPG in question than fudging/not-fudging. Your group had certain expectations that were not shared by the rule system (possibly due to a bait-and-switch on the part of the RPG, which is pretty common).

That said, if your group wasn't looking to deal with the consequences of failure, I'm not sure why failure was on the table in the first place. What was the point of playing out the hostage situation if no one wanted any chance of losing?

And even if it was a campaign-ending moment where a major character got killed... isn't that pretty dramatic? What's wrong with a story that doesn't end happily? It obviously had a big impact on the group, and isn't that worth something?

So yes, I am in favour of a mechanic that grants players a limited ability to overrule the dice.

I agree that it's a simple way to "patch" games to make them more story-centric.

 

[buzz]

The thing is, deciding the stakes and consequences of a die roll is the GM's job anyway.

Depends on the game. There is no stakes-setting in D&D as-written, and most consequences are outlined in the rules. E.g., failing a save vs a given spell is always going to have the effect given in the spell's description. Failing a Jump check means the PC doesn't clear the distance (or can make a Ref check to grab the ledge if they fail by 5 or less), and then the existing terrain dictates what occurs after that.

Expanding a die roll's scope beyond the task level in D&D is changing the rules.

 

[marune]

I agree that it's a simple way to "patch" games to make them more story-centric.

"patch" is too nice to describe Illusionism/Participationism

 

[Raloc]

Rule 0 is as stupid in D&D than in Monopoly.

Of course you can change any damn game if all the people around the table agree to it, don't need to write it down anywhere.

You only need to remember that this "changed game" hasn't been tested and that the average player doesn't have the knowlege & experience of the original designer -> YMMV.

Never the less, it's in the rules, so claiming it's "cheating" is simply false.

Also, I don't use the CR system, since it's largely crappy anyway, and thus have no problems using other advancement/treasure/etc. rules without issue. My players have fun in my games, and haven't complained, so I must be doing something right (and I've *never* had anyone accuse me of cheating by using DM powers to rule on something...never).

If you have an abusive DM, s/he is going to be unfun to play with regardless of the rules.