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<blockquote data-quote="Imaculata" data-source="post: 8958076" data-attributes="member: 6801286">I think another way to look at it is:If you don't want dice to have swingy outcomes, then why resolve it with dice, or use crits? There are other ways to resolve game situations.It can happen that your players roll really well. And it can turn what was intended as a challenging encounter, into a trivial one. But to a player, those lucky streaks are pretty rare, and they feel pretty good. Wouldn't the players feel cheated if you negated the outcome of their dice, by turning those crits into normal hits, or by adding a few hundred extra hitpoints to the boss? I know I would feel cheated.Likewise, a fight could become a lot harder than intended, by an enemy that rolled really well. Will that lucky crit on that powerful attack down a player? Do you know for sure that it will? What if the players improvise a brilliant way to cheat death? Wouldn't you be robbing the players of a chance for a memorable escape, or a memorable defeat, by bending the rules?I've been surprised by my players plenty of times, when I wasn't pulling my punches. But at lower levels, I did make defeat a bit more forgiving. After all, during the opening of Empire Strikes Back, Luke didn't get instantly eaten. He got dragged to the Wampa's lair first, where he could escape, and eventually be saved by Han. You have the power to design your encounters that way, without fudging dice.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Imaculata, post: 8958076, member: 6801286"] I think another way to look at it is: If you don't want dice to have swingy outcomes, then why resolve it with dice, or use crits? There are other ways to resolve game situations. It can happen that your players roll really well. And it can turn what was intended as a challenging encounter, into a trivial one. But to a player, those lucky streaks are pretty rare, and they feel pretty good. Wouldn't the players feel cheated if you negated the outcome of their dice, by turning those crits into normal hits, or by adding a few hundred extra hitpoints to the boss? I know I would feel cheated. Likewise, a fight could become a lot harder than intended, by an enemy that rolled really well. Will that lucky crit on that powerful attack down a player? Do you know for sure that it will? What if the players improvise a brilliant way to cheat death? Wouldn't you be robbing the players of a chance for a memorable escape, or a memorable defeat, by bending the rules? I've been surprised by my players plenty of times, when I wasn't pulling my punches. But at lower levels, I did make defeat a bit more forgiving. After all, during the opening of Empire Strikes Back, Luke didn't get instantly eaten. He got dragged to the Wampa's lair first, where he could escape, and eventually be saved by Han. You have the power to design your encounters that way, without fudging dice. [/QUOTE]

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