DMs! Have you ever had a “boss encounter” turn into a cakewalk? What happened?

[5ekyu]

Your choice.

I prefer to use prudence in randomness. But it would be more disheartening to my players when they finally meet Mr. Baddie if the encounter played out like he was a wimp and/or buffoon. Of course, I would never cheat my players if they do something clever or such. But, I disagree, a BOSS is suppose to be climatic! Otherwise, they are just another encounter...

Also, I won't penalize a player, either, sometimes making a critical hit that would kill them into a normal hit (unless I know they have a way to restore them later on) or decreasing the effect of a spell or something on a failed save. Luck is part of the game, to be certain, but if you are such a slave to fate as to not use good judgment, then you are doing a disservice to your players IMO. But, that is your game and you know your players best.

For the record, everything I wrote was "you can", not "you should". I have most of my encounters go as the dice indicate, but the OP was about what happens when your finale fizzles because of a single bad die roll? My point was, you have the power as DM to say it won't happen and give your players the enjoyable and challenging reward of a good, dramatic encounter.

And the point of having stats? Well, they are the guideline. Sometimes the baddie has too many HP and is about to TPK. Why not let the last hit, when only one player is standing, win out the day and send the foe to the floor in defeat? That makes the encounter heroic and something to remember, instead of "Hey, remember when the monster killed us all off? Wasn't that a great way to end the campaign?"

Regarding this graph...
"Also, I won't penalize a player, either, sometimes making a critical hit that would kill them into a normal hit (unless I know they have a way to restore them later on) or decreasing the effect of a spell or something on a failed save. Luck is part of the game, to be certain, but if you are such a slave to fate as to not use good judgment, then you are doing a disservice to your players IMO. But, that is your game and you know your players best."

See, my experience says that the vast majority of players would agree that replacing"you get the outcomes your character stats and task and action mechanics determine" with "you get the outcome the GM chooses for you even if they go against the mechanics and choices you made - success or fail" as very, clearly a " penalize them change.

My bet is a GM who does this by means of " my rolls all behind the screen" and "players dont know my stats" also knows it's a penalty too (whether they admit it or not) , or they would be open and up front about it.

There are diceless games and plenty of mechanics for that kind of thing that can be ported and where open and up front the resolution system is more than "what the GM wants to happen when it matters" and only "what the characters, player choices and mechanics we agreed to resolve" only when it doesnt matter a lot.

 

[5ekyu]

I have never had a TPK in any of my campaigns, surprisingly. No matter how hard I try.



You say that, but then in the very next sentence you say that you may make a hit a crit, or tell them they've failed a save when it wasn't so. How is that not changing their rolls?



My players would get rightfully upset at me if I told them that they failed a save, when they didn't. The point of setting challenges, is that the players can attempt to overcome them. When I ask my players to make a jump, I have a difficulty in mind. I don't tell my players that one of them failed their jump, just for the sake of suspense. If they made it, then they made it.



But that is what the game is about. A lot of the suspense comes from the chance for failure and success. While the DM is in his rights to change things, I don't think you are being 'a slave to fate' for following the rules of the game as they are laid out. Plus, a DM who understands how to balance his encounters does not need to change the outcome of die rolls, ever.



And I would advise completely against this. There is only one thing you need to worry about as a DM: Is everyone having fun?

Sometimes the players outsmart their DM, and they often feel proud for doing so. Just allow them to have this moment. Yes, this can make a big boss fight over in a heartbeat, and it may feel anti-climactic (to you). It may not be at all what you intended, but as long as the players had fun, the outcome is probably a lot more memorable than some prolonged battle. In the end a big bad is merely another disposable story element that is on borrowed time. As soon as you introduce a villain, realize that he is on borrowed time, and be prepared to let him die (even if it isn't in the climactic way you intended).

D&D (the game) isn't a movie (that is to say, not when you're playing it). You can try to have cinematic moments, but in the end the game also has a lot of unpredictability. Embrace the joy of not knowing what may happen next. You may have planned one thing, when your players do something totally unexpected that drastically changes the fight... and that is okay. Embrace the chaos!

For example: I did not expect that my players would use the powers of a giant lens to banish the menacing ghostship from the big pirate battle I had laid out in front of them. This drastically shifted the odds in their favor, but I embraced it, and loved it. Players can be amazingly inventive, if you let them. <-- very important

Regarding this graph...
"But that is what the game is about. A lot of the suspense comes from the chance for failure and success. While the DM is in his rights to change things, I don't think you are being 'a slave to fate' for following the rules of the game as they are laid out. Plus, a DM who understands how to balance his encounters does not need to change the outcome of die rolls, ever."

My take on this is that it's about timing... as in the wrong time to think about "do I need a parachute" is **after** you jump out of the plane.

If you dont want the *fateful moment* to come down to a single roll, dont dedign and push it that way so much that you have to then make the choices thst got you there pointless.

Is your climax out of the box built as "one roll up or down"? If so, that's pretty out of sorts if you and your players wont like that.

Is your climax a whole lots of choices and resolutions and they happen to end up st one key roll? Well, then a unilateral takeover at that point puts the lie to all those choices. On top of that, yeah, there likely should be more variety there - I know many of my NPC etc do not work all that way to then let it all rest on a chance - so run/negotiate/abandon are part of their setups. Frankly, it's rather uncommon for the key yo the mission being *kill the boss* but often they are just *in the waay* or more of a stretch goal - which opens the chances of loss of the fight but still great outcomes and heroic tales.

After all, one awesome epilog and campaign wrap trope is the scene where survivors lift a cup and tell the tales in honor of those who gave it all so the rest could live. I cant imagine how jnsatisfactory it would feel if that was reached by "and then the GM decided that this was how it should turn out" instead of "at that point they chose to... "

 

[WhosDaDungeonMaster]

I've had a fight with an evil wizard be trivialized by my players blasting him with a cannon (which was hilarious btw). But I still had a powerful minion of the wizard in reserve that had not entered the stage yet. So I made it two powerful minions instead. The fight was still a bit easier than intended, with the minions now not having the backup of the wizard. But it was enough to challenge the players a little bit. The fact that my players often talk about their glorious victory with the cannon, tells me that it was probably fine.

So, in other words, instead of adjusting the result of a die roll, you change the encounter by adding more opponents, making it more challenging in order to make up for players' luck/planning.

How is that really any different?

I'll leave you to reflect on that. I am guessing you probably think there is an enormous amount of difference...

 

[billd91]

So, in other words, instead of adjusting the result of a die roll, you change the encounter by adding more opponents, making it more challenging in order to make up for players' luck/planning.

How is that really any different?

I'll leave you to reflect on that. I am guessing you probably think there is an enormous amount of difference...

It isn’t really any different. As I see it, they’re just elements of editing the game within the GM’s purview. But there are people out there who put an importance on the ‘integrity’ of the dice that borders on fetishistic.

 

[5ekyu]

It isn’t really any different. As I see it, they’re just elements of editing the game within the GM’s purview. But there are people out there who put an importance on the ‘integrity’ of the dice that borders on fetishistic.

It's not the integrity of the dice, not at all. It's the integrity of the campaign. We agreed on the rules at the beginning and it did not include the GM changing the rules to let the players and their characters task roll successes or failures be jusrpt set aside by the GM when he prefers a different result.

On the other hand, the GM having scenarios eith lotsa enemies in different places arriving at different times and making choices about who does what for what reasons is wholly within the agreed boundaries.

But, for me, it's more about choices and it's far more than the final campaign climax cuz there are quite a few story climaxes thru a long campaign.

If I accept that I can/will adjust at the end, last minute, when a single die toll or two is a game breaker then I am removing some of the reasons and pressure to make sure that's not the only or even most likely last moment. Further, if my players/pcs have seen this in prior climaxes or tough fights, they get shown "this is the way we do things".

But, when both they and I know all those rolls are made by them in the open, we all make efforts to dang sure make sure it's not coming down to a single roll or two. The PCs/players see getting to the risk of a few rolls as a bad plan, not the norm, cuz they sure don't see behind the screen swings of bad villain tolls at the right moment.

Moreover, on my end, I make efforts to present richer sets of options so that rush in and hope we roll ok is never their only option. They have opportunities to have options beyond that and we have options for failure other than dead and lost.

So, nah, no fanatical devotion to dice or putting dice over story but the long practiced experience that when both sides agree fudging the dice is off the table then both sides get to be better at that bit of fun including the story.

Running a few diceless gsmes does imo wonders for diced GMing.

 

[Mouseferatu]

This whole side-tangent is the meta-level out-of-game equivalent to "white room" mechanical balance discussions. It completely omits something so vital as to be an exercise in futility: specifically, the individual group.

People argue over whether it's better "for the game" or "for the players" to fudge or not to fudge, without ever considering context. Some of us have DMed for (roughly) the same group of people long enough to know whether a particular random event is going to make things more or less fun for our players, and decide accordingly. No, we're not flawless--we're not mind-readers--but we're right more often than not.

Similarly, even with complete strangers, sometimes there are circumstances where we might have reason to think fudging is a good idea, even if we normally wouldn't, or vice-versa. For instance, if some bizarre combo of bad luck, critical hits, and failed saves is going to kill a character in the first half hour of a three-hour convention game, I think the DM's well within their rights to tweak things a little, as long as they can do it subtly.

The "fudge regularly" contingent and the "never fudge" contingent are both going to be wrong for some groups. They are, ultimately, arguing personal preference as though it were a universal solution, and it frankly gets ridiculous seeing people tell DMs they don't play with what's wrong for that DM's table.

 

[WhosDaDungeonMaster]

This whole side-tangent is the meta-level out-of-game equivalent to "white room" mechanical balance discussions. It completely omits something so vital as to be an exercise in futility: specifically, the individual group.

Great point.

The "fudge regularly" contingent and the "never fudge" contingent are both going to be wrong for some groups. They are, ultimately, arguing personal preference as though it were a universal solution, and it frankly gets ridiculous seeing people tell DMs they don't play with what's wrong for that DM's table.

Along those lines, I hope my suggestions to the OP didn't come off as "fudge regularly". If they did, that was never my intent. Very rarely do I feel the need to alter a die roll for the situation, but I also feel perfectly justified in my prerogative, as DM, do to so when I do feel it is warranted.

My suggestion for others, if it doesn't go against their sensibilities, is to remember that the DM has the final say in all things. Since the inception of D&D, that has always been the case. If the DM doesn't like a race, remove it, a class, alter it, a monster, improve it, a rule, revise it, and so on. And that same thing is true with both an encounter... and a die roll. No one is saying you have to do this, only that you can.

 

[cmad1977]

My most dramatic example of this was:
I had planned on introducing the Villain early and forcing the PCs to flee from him and his minions. The shadow rogue(it was 3.5 I forget the exact class) had hidden, ambushes the villain with multiple crits(and didn’t they ‘explode’ back then?) and basically killed my villain in 1 attack round.

Had to come up with some stuff reaaaaaal quick.

Also it’s a tale my friend tells every time the subject of D&D comes up. ‘Hey man! Do you remember that time when...’
yes friend... I remember.

 

[Imaculata]

So, in other words, instead of adjusting the result of a die roll, you change the encounter by adding more opponents, making it more challenging in order to make up for players' luck/planning.

How is that really any different?

I'll leave you to reflect on that. I am guessing you probably think there is an enormous amount of difference...

I do. One is breaking the rules as agreed upon by the players and their DM, while the other is what a DM normally does throughout running a campaign.

Until the players explore a room, that room is unrevealed, and can thereby contain anything the DM wishes. It may contain monsters, or it may not contain monsters. It may contain more monsters than the DM initially planned, or it may contain no monsters at all, if the DM feels there's been enough combat. At no point does the DM need to change die-outcomes or cheat with statistics to change the fiction of the game. And it is perhaps the best way for a DM to balance his (boss) encounters on the fly, without fudging. If a boss fight is too hard, have reinforcements show up (or more reinforcements than originally planned). If the fight is taking too long, leave out those reinforcements entirely, even if they were planned. Until the DM says they exist, they don't.

 

[Nebulous]

Oh, yeah...and for creatures without Legendary Resistance to saves, that polymorph into a chicken can take down some pretty powerful foes at least for a little while.

Polymorph in my opinion is a save or die spell. The PCs will polymorph a powerful foe into a slug or something, then cram the body into a small space, like a crevice in a rock wall, and end the spell and the expanding body instantly crushes the monster into paste.