DM Cheating

[Dragon Snack]

Do you feel the DM should cheat in the PCs favor? Also, are you answering as a DM or a player?

No, I think you should let the dice fall, whether I'm the DM or a player. It's the DMs job to design callenging encounters that the players can overcome or should know better than to get into in the first place. I'm currently stuck DMing, since I'm the only one my group can agree on.

That said, I have fudged the dice in the players favor a few times. That doesn't mean I don't kill PCs - quite the opposite actually. I just don't make a habit of fudging the dice.

But when the new guy would be bringing in his 3rd character in as many sessions (not all PC deaths, one of them was retired) or the player who left early would have their PC killed off - then it's time. Outside of a special circumstance though, if I roll a critical - I roll a critical (and if it's phenomally lucky or good, I let the player sitting next to me see the roll).

I got rid of the DM screen for a while and ended up killing more PC than when I had one (I think I was more cutthroat), so it's back now. Sadly, as a player, there are a few DMs who I would have liked to see lose the screen...

 

[pawsplay]

Roll 'em and weep.

To me, finding out my GM has been cheating die rolls in my favor is a bit like finding out someone likes you... "as a friend."

 

[Maliki]

As a DM, I have no problem with fudging a dice roll or two to further the game. Bat things still happen and character still die, but with a little more control on my part.

On the other hand as a player, if I think the DM is fudging things in my favor, I hate it and quickly lose intrest in my character and the campaign. I have no problem with a character death, for me it adds to the realism of the game.

 

[Thurbane]

I think a certain amount of DM fudging is OK, as long as it doesn't go overboard. I'd be more upset as a player losing a beloved character to an extremely unfortunate series of dice rolls than I would knowing my DM was occasionally shielding me from the Gods of Poor Rolling.

Naturally, if it is taken too far, and the players face no real risk of dying, then the game quikcly ceases to be fun.

Having said that, the group I DM for at the moment prefer the "let the dice fall where they may" school of philosophy, so all dice are rolled in the open, fudge free. I do make the occasional exception, especially when a character's player is not present. For example, one of the guys I play with recently couldn't make the game, so his character was being run by another player. He got a critical from the arrow of an Erinyes, which would have killed him if it was confirmed. I ruled that the horse he was next to gave him sufficient cover that the critical confirmation failed.

 

[ThoughtBubble]

I think Kahuna nailed it.
I'd prefer an up front "Hm. You know, 1750 damage seems a little too high. Anyone mind if I tone this down?" to a quick change for whatever reason.

In one campaign, my character risked life and limb to rescue her friends. She failed. She should have been dead. She survived with 2 hp. The game was never the same after that. In another game, a wizard of mine basically exploded upon impact from an enemy grenade as we attacked a flying ship. It was almost sad watching everyone try to scramble around to find ways to reduce the damage I took.

"So. I'm dead."
"What?"
"I'm at -15 HP."
"Well, if we take into account this dubious ruling then you're at -"
"The falling damage would still kill me."

The value of my surviving up unti that point would have been totally destroyed if they'd found a way to retroactively keep me alive. So, if you're going to do it, I can only say do it honestly and openly.

 

[billd91]

As a DM, I have pulled punches before. I don't like it when a crit takes a person from full HP to dead in one blow. I perfer to drop them to just a couple of HP and let them decide whether they should still go on and possibly die heroically, or try to withdraw to fight another day. It still puts the "Oh, Sh**" into them, but doesn't make them feel like they are a helpless victim to the dice.

I pretty much feel the same way. Now, doing something foolish like splitting up a party to pursue a retreating BBEG and getting in over your heads in another unscouted encounter area all alone as well, that's another story. I had to kill to PCs over that one. The sad thing was, one of them was totally saveable. The good thing was, the way that saveable PC died was because another player played in character without metagaming the situation.

 

[frankthedm]

So long I don't know, I don't care.

"The greatest trick the dungeon master ever played was to convince the player-characters he doesn't exist."

I think

"If you've done things right, people won't be sure if you've done anything at all. '"

says it best.

 

[ivocaliban]

I'm a DM and I "cheat" in favor of/against the players quite a bit. I've always felt that the rules were simply there to support the game, not the other way around. I figure if my players want something where mathematical equations and an almost obsessive knowledge of how to build the most efficient characters takes precedent over drama and roleplaying...well, they'd be playing World of Warcraft.

I've attempted be a neutral agent, crunching numbers and lining up dungeon crawl after dungeon crawl, but I didn't enjoy it and neither did my players. There are plenty of places to get that kind of game if you're looking for it...where you can get the most balanced judge of all...a machine. What you can't get from a machine is a truly interactive story with nearly infinite possibilities.

If this means you don't killed by a trap just before the room containing the BBEG after a year of building up to a conclusion, so be it. I grow bored quickly with repetition and formulas that can transform roleplaying into a science rather than a game. Everyone plays D&D for their own reasons, mine just happen to be more heavily rooted in the story than in the structure. To each his own.

 

[Faraer]

The idea that a GM could cheat suggests that her prerogative ends at defining NPCs' and monsters' capabilities in advance and then obeying the game rules as a higher authority than themselves. Where does this idea come from? Tournament play? It seems to me a gross inflation of the role of rules in RPGs, which are a tool for the GM to help facilitate play. A GM can and should adjust the number, stats or rolls of foes as best befits the campaign, and as Umbran suggests, it should be invisible and irrelevant to players as to which if any of these is being done.

Fudging is, IMO, a kludgy, early generation RPG solution to the same problem later addressed more elegantly by narrative mechanics. Namely, that random chance only randomly produces an enjoyable story.

That's an important point, though I'd hesitate to say one approach was necessarily better than another.

 

[Kestrel]

I roll in the open, but a GM can still "adjust" things if he needs to even when the players are looking at the dice.

Things players don't know: Modifiers, HPs, Spells available, Special abilities. Any of these things can be modified on the fly if you misjudge an encounter.

Of course, they can see when you roll a crit or when a badguy fails a save. But they seem to really enjoy those moments, so I wouldn't take it behind the screen.